I just realized I’d gotten sidetracked and left out part of what I wanted to say, which was to tie it into how satire isn’t something that changes minds so much as it is entertainment and reinforcement for people who already understand and agree with it, and how in that lens Star Wars communicates its point clearly: the Fascist-coded genocidal maniac Empire are obviously intrinsically bad and alluding to several real-world powers, which is clear to anyone who’s the least bit politically literate. But it’s also fun, accessible slop for everyone who’s not, which is most people, and its general themes and style have been further copied by more incoherent and vapid works (including within the Star Wars franchise itself) to the point that people don’t really think about it beyond a sort of “the Sith/Empire wears the designated villain sign, the Jedi/Republic/Rebels wear the designated good guy sign, and which one you stan is a silly aesthetic sportsball choice of strawberry or blue-raspberry flavored lightsaber shaped gummies” level.
Yeah I remember how I spent a long time being exposed to Star Wars (didn’t watch the movies, but generally absorbed its presence in pop culture) without ever learning what made the Empire the bad guys aside from the fact that they had bad guy aesthetics.
It was pretty much the same for me. Both my parents were big Star Wars nerds so I did see the movies and got a ton of the EU books, but even there if you don’t know what to look for it’s just like “oh they’re the bad guys, they’re doing bad guy stuff that opposes the protagonists, and some of them do cartoon villain stuff sometimes but mostly it’s just this team vs team thing where you’re rooting for the POV characters.” I don’t remember any of that slop ever really conveying how realistically awful those cartoon bad guys were, although at the same time that’s not really something that fluffy pop culture media can necessarily do on its own since it relies on knowing the broader context in which a work was made.
Like how a lot of the Empire’s casual atrocities that do make it into the OT are just like things the US was regularly doing in Vietnam, except Americans in general neither know nor think about that and wouldn’t just casually make the association.
I just realized I’d gotten sidetracked and left out part of what I wanted to say, which was to tie it into how satire isn’t something that changes minds so much as it is entertainment and reinforcement for people who already understand and agree with it, and how in that lens Star Wars communicates its point clearly: the Fascist-coded genocidal maniac Empire are obviously intrinsically bad and alluding to several real-world powers, which is clear to anyone who’s the least bit politically literate. But it’s also fun, accessible slop for everyone who’s not, which is most people, and its general themes and style have been further copied by more incoherent and vapid works (including within the Star Wars franchise itself) to the point that people don’t really think about it beyond a sort of “the Sith/Empire wears the designated villain sign, the Jedi/Republic/Rebels wear the designated good guy sign, and which one you stan is a silly aesthetic sportsball choice of strawberry or blue-raspberry flavored lightsaber shaped gummies” level.
Yeah I remember how I spent a long time being exposed to Star Wars (didn’t watch the movies, but generally absorbed its presence in pop culture) without ever learning what made the Empire the bad guys aside from the fact that they had bad guy aesthetics.
It was pretty much the same for me. Both my parents were big Star Wars nerds so I did see the movies and got a ton of the EU books, but even there if you don’t know what to look for it’s just like “oh they’re the bad guys, they’re doing bad guy stuff that opposes the protagonists, and some of them do cartoon villain stuff sometimes but mostly it’s just this team vs team thing where you’re rooting for the POV characters.” I don’t remember any of that slop ever really conveying how realistically awful those cartoon bad guys were, although at the same time that’s not really something that fluffy pop culture media can necessarily do on its own since it relies on knowing the broader context in which a work was made.
Like how a lot of the Empire’s casual atrocities that do make it into the OT are just like things the US was regularly doing in Vietnam, except Americans in general neither know nor think about that and wouldn’t just casually make the association.