This is one of my major criticisms of Star Wars: Lucas relied way more on aesthetics and narrative tension to simply designate the Empire as cartoon antagonists for his fluffy space opera samurai western about the Vietnam war. The whole tone is outlandish and unreal, and the Empire you see is just a sort of sinister and mustache twirling threat to the protagonists while all their arbitrary violence happens offscreen to characters that generally don’t even have screentime.
And I mean media doesn’t have to be deep and thorough or contain harrowing explorations of just why the villains should in fact be considered ontologically evil, but Star Wars is this cultural juggernaut yet is almost entirely just this shallow, light and fluffy slop where aesthetics are everything and the villains’ evil is just implied or kept somewhere in the background. Then this intersects with a broader sort of “villains are cool and have agency while heroes are just dumb nerds fighting to preserve someone else’s status quo” zeitgeist that finds fertile ground in the brain dirt of American treat lads because of how it’s the natural conclusion to draw when looking at how in slop media antagonists are the primary agents of change while heroes must be reluctant and selfless agents of the status quo, not to mention how the powerful and self-actualized villain is an ideal power fantasy for some amoral libertine treat lad.
Just to add to this, and to be fair to George, I don’t know what it was like to make commercial movies during the cold war. Seems like they were very careful, especially since the empire was the US in George’s head. They may have had good reason to be as careful with the messaging and symbolism as they were.
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.
This is one of my major criticisms of Star Wars: Lucas relied way more on aesthetics and narrative tension to simply designate the Empire as cartoon antagonists for his fluffy space opera samurai western about the Vietnam war. The whole tone is outlandish and unreal, and the Empire you see is just a sort of sinister and mustache twirling threat to the protagonists while all their arbitrary violence happens offscreen to characters that generally don’t even have screentime.
And I mean media doesn’t have to be deep and thorough or contain harrowing explorations of just why the villains should in fact be considered ontologically evil, but Star Wars is this cultural juggernaut yet is almost entirely just this shallow, light and fluffy slop where aesthetics are everything and the villains’ evil is just implied or kept somewhere in the background. Then this intersects with a broader sort of “villains are cool and have agency while heroes are just dumb nerds fighting to preserve someone else’s status quo” zeitgeist that finds fertile ground in the brain dirt of American treat lads because of how it’s the natural conclusion to draw when looking at how in slop media antagonists are the primary agents of change while heroes must be reluctant and selfless agents of the status quo, not to mention how the powerful and self-actualized villain is an ideal power fantasy for some amoral libertine treat lad.
This is why the best stories have the villains be the status quo.
Tbf, that is the case in star wars. At least the ot
Just to add to this, and to be fair to George, I don’t know what it was like to make commercial movies during the cold war. Seems like they were very careful, especially since the empire was the US in George’s head. They may have had good reason to be as careful with the messaging and symbolism as they were.
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.