JCC Embrace The FU - Formerly the STAR WARS IS BAD thread

There can be a wide gap between how a story wants you to consider someone and the facts of how they behave.

Uncle Tom was meant to be a model of Christian virtue whose ability to endure suffering and await God’s deliverance sharpens the contrast with the venality and evil of slave-owners. However, it’s also a valid critique of the character that the practical effect of his actions was to allow tremendous harm to his family and loved ones. It’s no less true for being something Stowe didn’t intend.

Disney wants to make a “fun” faux rebellious character that is cool and good-hearted. That is how they will always portray him. That doesn’t mean that the substance of his relationship with Chewbacca doesn’t mimic slavery, or that his decision to resume criminal activity despite being married to—and enjoying the protection of—senior governmental officials isn’t breathtakingly corrupt.

 

Chewbacca's his bitch , after all we know it was based on Lucas's dog .

 

And you see nothing wrong with comparing a thinking, feeling being to a domesticated animal?

 

Dogs think and feel, wocky.

 

And yet they are fundamentally of less consequence than a human life.

 

Chewbacca isn't human either, you hypocritical human supremacist.

 

Woof!

 

As a kid I was traumatized by the lack of rocks concealing R2 in ANH.

 

But he is a human-equivalent. He can fly an airplane. Lucas’s program of animalization has been a key element of the rhetoric of slavery since at least the time of Aristotle.

 

So can Snoopy .

 

The slave thing is a stretch, I think, but I'm pretty sure Han was always supposed to be a drug smuggler.

And as to shooting first and how it might relate to Disney, didn't Rogue One open with one of the two main characters murdering someone?

 

Jar Jar owes Qui-Gon a life debt and his life belongs to him.

• Since Qui-Gon is killed, is Jar Jar free from his debt?
• Should it be passed to Obi-wan who should now own Jar Jar as a "next of kin" type of thing? Or should Jar Jar be property of the Jedi Order?
• But since the Republic doesn't recognize slavery, is the life debt null and void once they leave Tatooine anyway?
• Should Jar Jar be executed since he owes Qui-Gon a life for a life?
• Is this moot because Qui-Gon considers Jar Jar's life debt fulfilled once they survive the planet core? Or once Jar Jar brings the two races of Naboo to work together?
• Qui-Gon just said the life debt stuff to save Jar Jar from being punished and then it didn't matter after that because Lucas is a bad storyteller. Jar Jar life debt - Chewbacca life debt - poetry.

 

There is nothing in the films to indicate Han smuggles drugs, or at least that the cargo he lost was drugs. As I said before, he could simply be smuggling things the Empire heavily taxes.

 

It was turmeric .

 

Outside the film’s, they’ve always been quite explicit it was drugs. Inside the films, they borrow heavily from the imagery of organized crime networks that specifically depended on income from drug distribution networks.

I don’t think he was dodging a tariff on aluminum.

 

I always heard it was spice.

 

That is a Star Wars name for drugs.

 

Yeah, the archetype is clear. Are you saying Lucas intended Han to basically be a delivery truck driver? He's supposed to be smuggling something illegal; that's the clear aim of the script and the character. Han Solo is a total badass, fringe character; you really think Lucas intended his biggest crime to be circumventing tax regulations? We think Jabba the Hutt has a serious enterprise surrounding tax free soap or something?

 

He was smuggling Hot Pockets and sausages.

 

Guys, a major source of income for the Italian mafia is olive oil adulterated with cheaper products. Organized crime isn't all about drugs.

 

“Not all treasure’s silver and gold, mate.” – Jack Sparrow

 

Given that the spice mines of Kessel are an Imperial prison (hence 3PO's fear of being sent to the spice mines, when nearly captured by the Empire) - it would appear that it's not the spice itself that's illegal - it's the sale of it by people like Jabba.

The conversion of it from something fairly harmless to something narcotic.

In TCW, when Hondo wants to ransom Dooku to the Republic- he asks the Republic to pay him in spice. And they do it.

 

Uh huh.

 

Han is like a Star Wars version of Bandit from Smokey & The Bandit.

 

And the Kessel Run is the Silk Road .