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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Lit How can Imperials be fascists...

Discussion in 'Literature' started by NihilusLordOfHunger, Feb 14, 2018.

  1. Likewater

    Likewater Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 31, 2009
    Nostalgia Chick did a video essay about Bright similar to your viewing Crusade and Starwars

     
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  2. Trip

    Trip Force Ghost star 4

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    Dec 7, 2003
    yeah but it is. I mean, yes, obviously everything save the most primordial rootwords has a cultural context it arose from, but acting like everything is equivalent is silly. there's a continuum from "wood" to "emperor" to "Freudian" to, idk, "Google"-as-a-verb. Where exactly you draw the line is obviously up for debate and pretty much a subjective call (I'd say it's somewhere between "emperor" and "Freudian" and that fascism falls just over it on the "avoid using, especially in dialog" end of the spectrum) but there is a line there.
     
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  3. GrandAdmiralJello

    GrandAdmiralJello Comms Admin ❉ Moderator Communitatis Litterarumque star 10 Staff Member Administrator

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    Nov 28, 2000
    @Trip why is stormtrooper OK and not fascist? That’s even more specific and historically contingent.
     
  4. Ulicus

    Ulicus Lapsed Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Jul 24, 2005
    You joke but that may be pretty close to the actual explanation. We know, from the TLJ VD, that "Jedi Crusaders" were a thing... and "crusade" could well be derived from the era in which Jedi were expected to "take up the cross" in their wars against the Sith.

    See: The Great Scourge of Malachor

    [​IMG]
     
  5. Xander Vos

    Xander Vos Jedi Master star 4

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    Aug 3, 2013
    Nerfherder is the main one off the top of my head from the movies, jawa juice, credits, etc are all substitute words. The difference in a movie is you can show something without naming it and taking away the space feel. Books can't. Heck, even the visual of making the milk blue would fall into this category.
     
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  6. Trip

    Trip Force Ghost star 4

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    Dec 7, 2003
    I guess two reasons-- because "stormtrooper" was introduced from the very start so it's baked into the setting and has arguably long ago supplanted the historical term in the public consciousness; and because it's a compound formed from two common English root words that still makes sense divorced from historical context (a trooper who storms).

    EDIT: honestly I don't think I even agree that it's more specific and historically contingent. it's a term that existed decades before the Nazis and it's generic enough that people irl usually specify "Nazi stormtroopers" when making a reference to those of the Nazi variety; and its a word that's also pretty much impossible to misuse, or be accused of misusing, given its straightforwardly evocative meaning. Whereas pages upon pages have been devoted to debating when it's proper to use the word "fascism"... and that's in real life, let alone in a galaxy far, far away. :p
     
    Last edited: Feb 15, 2018
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  7. GrandAdmiralJello

    GrandAdmiralJello Comms Admin ❉ Moderator Communitatis Litterarumque star 10 Staff Member Administrator

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    Nov 28, 2000
    Is there confusion over the term fascist? Do people first think of Benito Mussolini? Do most people even know who Benito Mussolini was?

    Fascist has become a genericized word. It’s not like Nazi, a proper noun used as an analogy, even though the Italian fascists and Nazis were historical contemporaries. Heck, we even categorize Nazis as a type of fascist now.
     
  8. Trip

    Trip Force Ghost star 4

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    Dec 7, 2003
    I just don't think it makes much sense outside of 20th-century-and-later context; it's not like it's been genericized enough IRL that anyone would find it acceptable to apply backwards to historical regimes like Napoleonic France or the Roman Empire (which have as much in common with the Galactic Empire as Nazis or Italian Fascists do).

    I guess ultimately what it comes down to for me is it's unnecessary and there's so many other ways of expressing the sentiment you want your character to convey here that it's like, hard to see as anything but lazy-- it's worth noting that it didn't even appear in anything until either 2008 (TFU, which is hard to check, so I'm skeptical) or 2011 (CEIII), so somehow star wars writers managed to express themselves without it for thirty years prior (and continue to for the most part, since there's only two sources in the new canon as well). Though granted we did get stuff like characters grousing about "jackboots," which I'd feel like is generic enough except that it doesn't really make sense as an epithet in a culture where everyone wears jodhpurs... :p
     
  9. V-2

    V-2 Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Dec 10, 2012
    Read that, thought of this:
    http://reddwarf.wikia.com/wiki/Napoleon_Bonaparte
    That was produced in an episode of Red Dwarf broadcast in 1988.

    So... You know... For all but the most pedantic it's already quite a generic term than is already used retroactively in popular culture to some extent.
     
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  10. GrandAdmiralJello

    GrandAdmiralJello Comms Admin ❉ Moderator Communitatis Litterarumque star 10 Staff Member Administrator

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    Nov 28, 2000

    1. We don't apply the term to the Romans or the Napoleonic Empire because it doesn't apply, but we do identify the roots of fascist thought from both.

    2. The Empire was explicitly based on 20th century totalitarian governments, among others.

    3. We're talking about use of a word in-universe in a pop culture context.
     
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  11. SpecForce Trooper

    SpecForce Trooper Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 19, 2016
    Ayyy another Nostalgia Chick fan.
    But there is a difference. Bright is an alternate universe. Star Wars has no connection to Earth and its history. Bright will have to explain how the Crusades happened and how Butterflies affected it. Star Wars doesn't have to. The history is entirely different so the crusades could be literally anything.
     
  12. Coherent Axe

    Coherent Axe Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Dec 20, 2016
    Just read this article about the racist origins of certain phrases, and almost all of them have etymologies specific to particular incidents and moments in world history. Now, as far as I can remember none of the phrases in the article have been used in Star Wars, but they're an example of how the etymology of even everyday words and phrases is intrinsically linked to specific points on the timeline of our own culture, (like the 19th century slave trade or the Middle Ages) that just don't have analogues in the GFFA. So if we actually looked into the exact etymology of every word and phrase used in Star Wars, I wonder how many of them would be allowable under the stipulations of the original post?
     
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  13. Trip

    Trip Force Ghost star 4

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    Dec 7, 2003
    from the little context there is there I get the feeling it's a wry statement being made precisely because there's some amusement in calling napoleon fascist. but whatever, fine, bad argument.

    @GrandAdmiralJello yeah but I'd feel like some character in a historical drama shaking their fist at Napoleon and yelling FASCIST as they're led to the guillotine is a bit out of place. same for a character shouting it in star wars. it's just too tied both historically and semantically to the origin of the term for my brain not to be like "hey, wait, what's that even mean in the gffa."
     
    Last edited: Feb 15, 2018
  14. Havac

    Havac Former Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Sep 29, 2005
    Thought experiment: would you be comfortable with people throwing around words like "communist," "libertarian," or "progressive" in Star Wars?
     
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  15. Trip

    Trip Force Ghost star 4

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    Dec 7, 2003
    [​IMG]
     
  16. DarthPhilosopher

    DarthPhilosopher Chosen One star 6

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    Jan 23, 2011
    It would also be silly for ancient Egyptians to say 'democracy', even though you are fine with that term in the films assumingly?
     
  17. GrandAdmiralJello

    GrandAdmiralJello Comms Admin ❉ Moderator Communitatis Litterarumque star 10 Staff Member Administrator

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    Nov 28, 2000
    If they're using all three to describe Mon Mothma, yes.
     
  18. Darth_Duck

    Darth_Duck Chosen One star 5

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    Oct 13, 2000
    Joseph-Ignace Guillotin never lived in a galaxy far, far away, but the device that bares his name has been mentioned. But what else are you going to call a guillotine?

    Sent from my SM-G386W using Tapatalk
     
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  19. Darth Invictus

    Darth Invictus Jedi Grand Master star 5

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    Aug 8, 2016
    I would not unless those terms were justified in their contexts in universe.
     
  20. fett 4

    fett 4 Chosen One star 5

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    Jan 2, 2000
    You want Orange you got orange

    https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=t...gC&biw=375&bih=553&dpr=2#imgrc=zPRg2HsbfE6qeM:

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Feb 15, 2018
  21. MercenaryAce

    MercenaryAce Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 10, 2005
  22. Dr. Steve Brule

    Dr. Steve Brule Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Sep 7, 2012
    Instead of a bundle of sticks, it should be a bundle of the staffs carried by the Senate Guards.

    Thinking about it, I actually think I would be fine with it. Though this may be because I hang out with enough people in real life who already debate whether Saw or Rose was the more ideologically correct communist.
     
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  23. Ulicus

    Ulicus Lapsed Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Jul 24, 2005
    Maybe the dai bendu symbol (or whatever it's called in the NU) is a cross section of a bundle of space sticks.
     
  24. Daneira

    Daneira Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Jun 30, 2016
    The two weirdest Earthisms for me, both from the original Marvel comics, are Han mentioning Sunday school and Leia mentioning Cherenkov radiation.
     
  25. jSarek

    jSarek VIP star 4 VIP

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    Feb 18, 2005
    The films relied on visual bafflegab and didn't need to name most of it. Why do we need milk colored blue? Why does the chessboard with animated monsters on it need to be circular? Why bother with cars with no wheels?

    That said, even the films added some linguistic bafflegab. Tarkin could easily have been an Admiral (be it High, Grand, or otherwise) in the context of the films, and Han could just as easily have fixed the Falcon with a regular spanner (or even a wrench, since Corellians tend towards American English).

    I think you're sorely mistaken about the age of most words in English. We're only a millennium or so out from Beowulf. And as others (particularly @GrandAdmiralJello ) have pointed out, while it originated at a specific point in our history, it's been genericized thoroughly. I haven't personally seen it used for Rome or Napoleon, but I *have* seen it used in earnest for Sparta (though I could point out one or two ways in which Sparta wasn't fascist, and I'm sure Jello could add half a dozen more without even trying).

    There is: Ebla Beer has been around since Han Solo's Revenge.

    This is true, and but one of many areas where verisimilitude is hurt by authors not being on the same page, and/or editors overlooking places where existing terminology would suit a new work.

    This. There are countless words used in Star Wars, like "jeez" and "zombie" and "vampire," with traceable etymologies on Earth. Trying to excise those words would leave us with very little to work with. We either have to accept that these are translations of GFFA terms, or that Basic has a history that recapitulates those language-forming events in the context of the GFFA.