Lit Does a "moral" Empire still have its place?

The Nazi regime did NOT use Stormtroopers, unless you mean the SA, which Hitler purged really, really early on to appease the Wehrmacht and the exiled Strasser would go on to oppose Hitler's Reich throughout the war. Stormtroopers were used by Imperial Germany, particularly as part of the Prussian Army, as their intention was to 'storm' the trenches in quick attacks, hence the name.

 

Stormtroopers as in storming the lines was used by the imperial german army in late world war 1-they made some gains against the allies yet took severe losses in the process. I remember reading something about 80% casualties.

 

+1. And honestly, in an age when it's fashionable to roll your eyes and go "ugh, politics," I very much appreciate art that doesn't do that.

You know what pop fiction I grew up with? Tom Clancy novels and Donald Bellisario TV. That's very much not my corner of the political spectrum. I disagree with a lot of it. From time to time, it genuinely pisses me off. But I love the fact that the creators are at least trying to engage with the world around them, and that they have something to say about it. That's something I want from my artists, not someone who's going to tiptoe around my feelings by removing anything that might trigger an argument.

 

@Jedi Princess Ha I was confused for a sec before realizing you series of comments was in response to someone I had blocked on this thread. Simply put, yeah I totally agree with you. It gets pretty suspect when people say they want the benefit of the doubt, but when those being heard out are NOT nationalists and militarists do they suddenly change their mind. This is the worry I have with even using fascist imagery for our heroes, and even to an extent for our villains. The intent can be easily lost, the triumph of the will homage is something that I feel was done mostly for the sake of the visual itself, and it honestly was a mistake. The Empire being clearly Nazis is great as it paints the image of what they are clearly, but it also inadvertently creates this mentality we are seeing of the Empire "deserving complexity". But merchandising and frankly fetishizing the Empire, SW has ended up creating a tendency in the fandom for people to see the empire and what they are an analogue for as something debatable or defensible. Cognitive dissonance forms, and once the person is called out they double down. This is part of why I think SW needs to be even more explicit cause while Lucas was very clearly making a political message and wanted it to be clear, he made missteps and could not have predicted what the world would be like decades later. It is similar to the Southern revisionism and the treatment of the Civil War as this friendly rivalry, people forage a connection to their notion of this thing and then double down when called out on the fact that we are talking about literal traitors who wanted to own human beings.

 

I honestly find the need to make everything an anti fascist allegory boring and trite. Not to mention utterly derivative. Nobody in the mainstream thinks fascism or Nazism are defensible.

WW2 and the era of fascism was an anomaly in which there were clear bad guys and clear good guys.

I personally think its worse to create art with grand narratives of good and evil eternally portrayed in the imagery of WW2. There is more to human history than Hitler, Nazism, and the era in which those things were a apart of the zeitgeist.

WW2 and its associated elements should not be the only wellspring from inspiration is gained, or lessons are drawn from.

Antiquity, the medieval period, the 19th century, the cold war-these periods I think we can learn more and draw more for artistic purposes as opposed to "fascists are bad and need to be defeated"-that isn't new art that's just restating consensus.

Also I don't think the purpose of art is to preach-we have pamphlets, sermons, and other means of promoting some sort of ideological message. Art that exists only to preach or advocate on behalf of a particular worldview is at best missionary material, at worst propaganda.

Quite frankly I think the impulse to draw on WW2 is bad for art and culture in general. It all too often is used to simplify the complexities of history, anomalies should not take up the bulk of one's historical understanding. Because that's what WW2 is an anomaly in which one can clearly discern heroes and villains, good and evil. There have been few periods in human history as clear cut and that is perhaps the reason for WW2's enduring appeal and inspiration. Even in the 20th century-heroes and villains were not so clearly delineated-the cold war, WW1, the early century, decolonization, and the post cold war era. There was complexity, bad and good people often fighting for the same causes, or sides in which they interpreted the cause differently. Ultimately though we need nuance and complexity, as opposed to cliched and unimaginative "good guys are good, bad guys are bad, we the audience should root for the good guys". Because that isn't saying anything new, insightful, interesting or even thoughtful. Art should aim to be all those things. That cliché isn't.

 

I don't have nearly the emotional energy to show you just how wrong this is. I also shouldn't have to: this thread is full of people making references to the mainstream defenses of fascism happening RIGHT NOW.

Do you also hang out on Star Trek message boards? "I think this show is ridiculous for acting like the Ferengi are WRONG to subjugate their women, this needs a more nuanced exploration of keeping women as chattel."

You haven't addressed any of my questions or either, you just keep repeating the same things about WWII being an historical anomaly, or latching on to Havoc's post there about stormtroopers (so glad you two saw what was REALLY important here).

You ask for "nuance", but I think what you really want is "obfuscation".

 

That Leni Riefenstahl was really good at her job maybe

 

I think one has to be very carefully about painting everyone in a fascist regime with the same brush. It might feel comfortable to think that everyone in these kinds of institutions are demonic, cartoon villains but it's not at all reflective of reality.

If you're bringing real-world politics into a fictional story then I think it pays to do it correctly. Show just how sinister and insidious these kinds of movements are, how it's not just the loony's and sadists who are drawn to them but often desperate and lost individuals trying to find a better way who are ensarned.

 

Star Wars has already dedicated at least two whole movies to this very topic.

 

She wasn't really, she just was working with unprecedented amounts of money for a production of this kind

 

Indeed, and I'd argue it's integral to the franchise's depiction of fascism. Lucas knew what he was talking about...it's a Faustian evil, not HYDRA/SPECTRE in space.

 

The Galactic Empire is explicitly stated by Lucas himself that it isn't literally Hitler (and neither is Drumpf, for anyone trying to make epic topical references to the modern GOP), but its a combination of the worst of the United States (Palpatine is explicitly referred to as being inspired by Nixon), Soviet Union, British Empire, Roman Empire and yes, Nazi Germany. The thing is, you never get on-the-nose references about Nazis in the OT besides the uniforms. You don't have people heiling Hitler to point out how evil Drumpf is, like the ST does. No, its pretty nuanced. At first glance, the Galactic Empire looks more like the British than the Germans, especially going by the accents.

 

WW2 isn't as nice and clear-cut as people like to think. Evidence for the danger of thinking it was can be seen in the current invoking of 'spirit of the Blitz' by Brexiteers - which neatly forgets that the Blitz was round the clock bombing of civilian targets on a very indiscriminate basis!

 

Pretty much, once the British secured air superiority, bombs fell on a lot of places across Europe, many of them by the British, which targeted even the French whose exiled colonial empire was their own ally. Let's not forget the British also sunk the French navy out of fear that it'd fall into German hands. A lot of countries that were unwilling allies of the Germans and mostly coerced out of fear of invasion also suffered bombardment, even if their troops weren't really on the Western and Eastern fronts. War isn't pretty for anyone.

 

I will have to disagree, even if she was given a unprecedented amounts to work with her movies would not be seen as well-made propaganda pieces if she was not good at her job. They would just be forgotten, or maybe remembered as just another way the Nazis wasted money.

 

So your aim is for Star Wars to present an anti fascist message, becuase you see fascism resurgent? You want SW as a franchise to be apart of the response to the rebirth of the politics of 1930s? That seems strange to me. I really don't want to engage in off topic political debate-but the resurrection of fascism has been greatly exxagerated.

I guess what you want is SW to present a more clear and defined political message, to have less ambiguiity but to take a side and make a stand. I respect that, I just think it's unnecessary and bad for artistic enterprises.

 

No, I'm saying Star Wars has already done that, very explicitly and repeatedly, so I find calls for it to stop doing that highly suspect in their motivations.

 

SW politics have always been rather vague. Democracy is desirable, dictatorships are bad(though the EU went out of its way to cast doubt on that at least IU). SW isn't like Star Trek for example-where the politics of post scarcity, are in vogue, or series like say the Culture which present hedonism and anarchism taken to the highest degree.

SW doesn't have a defined political ideology beyond support for democracy and the assumption that dictatorship is bad. As opposed to other series who have far more explicit and specific political messages

 

Lucas' ideal government has, multiple times, stated to be a benevolent dictatorship. He'd likely like the Fel Empire.

 

I recall he said at one point "a dictator can get things done" he'd love the Fel empire.

 

You both should re-read the original 1999 interview in which he says that; it's preceded by him admitting to his cynicism, and followed by him reminding the interviewer that kind of power corrupts.

He also said it 20 years ago; the infamous "white slavers" Charlie Rose interview has him as a believer in democracy, just not "capitalist democracy".

Which is why, when his films introduce the idea of that "benevolent despot", it's as a symptom of Vader's madness; the "despot" Vader chooses to rule the galaxy, Padmé, shuts him down HARD.

 

There was a concentrated effort of pro-Nazi factions in countries such as Britain and the US to promote Riefenstahl's work as revolutionary in an effort to both elevate the art produced by the Nazi machinery and denegrade the works of the artists the Nazis were persecuting. It was given a wide reach, but when talking cinematic technique, there is little beyond what French, Soviets, and Weimar Germany hadn't already done. Triumph of the Will wasn't even her first Nazi propaganda film; it's kind of a remake of Victory of Faith, which the Nazis purged because it prominently featured Ernst Röhm alongside Hitler

 

I'd have to look at it. One can support benovolent dictatorship as a theoretical ideal but also concede that power corrupts and thus we may have to settle for democracy in practice.

 

Sure, but it also means you're a bit off when you say he'd "love the Fel Empire"; sounds to me more like he would recognize it for the fiction ("lie", if I'm being less generous) that entire idea represents.

 

I think Lucas would look at Roan's fall and say "benovolent dictatorship inevitably runs into this problem, that doesn't make the idea bad in theory as Fel "gets stuff done""