Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

Um, no. Democracy ISN'T new. Don't know where that idea comes from. The Greeks had it and lost it millennia ago. So did the Romans. Fact is, up until now Democracy on Earth has been a fleeting transitory step between one Autocracy and another, and, taking history into account, its main purpose has been to shake things to their core and set up for the next round of Hellish rulers.

Now we have technology that makes communications as quick as talking. It can help stabilize things if it's used right, but that requires more time to do than your average citizen really has. All the enemies of Democracy have to do to kill it is tank the economy hard enough to make everyone work themselves to exhaustion, and the majority won't have the energy left to care how bad it is for people who aren't them. Then it falls on the good corporations vs. the bad ones, and we still wind up with a minority winning the day for everyone else.

Ironically for your anti-jingoism stance, the military's a make-or-break element in this. If they uphold the laws over the whims of the rulers, we might still see Democracy live no matter what our corporate overlords do. If they side with the bad guys, it probably won't matter what the good guys do, we'd just be lined up against the wall and shot til we obey.

Yeah, honestly, the Resistance is NOT the bad guy in this scenario.

Human civilization is like only than eight thousand years at this point, and most of that time was spent in tribal systems of governance, warlordism, and monarchy, absolute and much more recently, constitutional. Athenian democracy the Ur-government, not was it the norm. It was practically unique for its time and it also only lasted a couple centuries. Roman Republicanism, the other representative government, only lasted like four hundred in total. That's not even a tenth of the total.

Now, imagine the Old Republic, a thousand generations old, basically unchanged for the vast majority of it, and with most of the core membership static. The same Senate governing your society in your time is the exact same institution as the one that governed the society of the early hunter-gatherers. It would be like Barack Obama and Homer living in the same society, paying taxes to the same government, with the same institutions, the same cities, the same regions, the same language, the same national identity. Continuity like that is immense, and doesn't simply get erased in a generation. That's what I mean by old and new.

As for whether democracy is a transitional step between autocracies — not really. Take Britain, for example. Starts off as a post-Roman British warlord society, transitions to an Anglo-Saxon warlord society, then an Anglo-Danish one, then Anglo-Norman feudalism, then absolute monarchy, through which Magna Carta was signed, Parliament was established, and powers were delineated and curtailed in some cases, then twenty years of Puritan republicanism happened which permanently killed off both religious fundamentalism and the divine right of kings as valid political philosophies. The Bill of Rights was drawn up, Parliament became a truly representative body, Slavery was abolished, women got the vote, the colonies were emancipated, and much more recently, gay people were decriminalized. Now, are you honestly going to tell me that someone living in 1715 had it better than someone living in 2017? Or someone in 1947? Even in the context of America, I mean, come on, segregation in still in living memory, and slavery is only a hundred and fifty years dead. There are people alive today who grew up without social social security existing, if you want an economic example. And for god's sake, the economy is nowhere nearly as dystopian as in the past, where one banking panic could send ten percent of the working population to the poorhouse or worse. I'm sorry, we live in bad times right now, but if you're going to make sweeping statements about human civilization, at least have a little perspective. My general point was that progress and salvation has almost always been through engagement with civilization, not existing apart from it.

edited 20th Feb '17 8:15:38 PM by CrimsonZephyr

The Old Republic was gonna collapse anyway, The Sith once they turned to political manipulation simply sped the process up.

Ironically Peace had defeated the Old Republic, Without the Sith stirring up trouble, most powers were willing to talk things out and with the Jedi at the Republics beck and call Nothing that could threaten the Republic as a whole.

So they fell to the classic enemies of human civilization... decadence, hedonism and the idea that the bad times would never come back.

I just think they wanted to reset things back to A New Hope for a OT fans appeal and didn't have any larger political statement in mind. Once the new series clears the First Order, then they can go ahead with new directions for the Republic and baddies because there won't be a need or desire to soft reboot the continuity again.

It's one revolution thus far, but not a cycle yet.

Pretty much. It's just sad how twisted the story had to become, with a happy ending override that crapped on everything the rebels fought and died to accomplish. Speaking of which, blaming the First Order for the Republic's corruption is all well and good, and likely correct, but in light of it being a matter of international government affairs, it only underscores how weak and incompetent it really was. Si vis pacem para bellum, moisture farmer.

For that matter, democracy has been a staple of societies for far longer periods than just intermittent sparks among various autocracies. If anything, it was only ever limited by communication - medieval towns had elected mayors, but there was no technology in place to allow the same on a national scale, never mind all the cultural differences. Wanting a good king was as far as most people thought about it... which is not all that different from a modern representative system with candidates almost entirely taken from the upper crust. And that's not even going into the medieval form of popular impeachment.

Conversely, modern anti-democratic attitudes are just as often found among the young liberal crowd, the notion being that most people are stupid and it's only the small clique of enlightened anti-establishment rebels that know what's really going on. It is this mentality that's endemic to film writer circles, resulting in numerous stories about a rag tag bunch of misfits taking on the powers that be. It is this mentality that runs in the veins of Star Wars as well, with both prequel and now sequel trilogies showing not a Republic really worth fighting for, but one that has already collapsed, so as to validate the anti-democratic or better said plainly anti-societal attitude of modern film writing. Lucas already had one dystopian film under his belt, so it's not a stretch to imagine Star Wars as fundamentally dystopian as well, with a good government, be it democratic or anything else, always remaining as only a promise that's never fulfilled.

edited 21st Feb '17 12:00:08 AM by indiana404

Said it before, but Star Wars is antigovernment, and I don't think it's even particularly coy about it. It's a rugged individualist power fantasy inspired by a whole century of cowboys, explorers, soldiers, gangsters, private eyes, soldiers, inventors, beatniks, hippies, and more soldiers— people who believe in following orders, but only the orders of their direct superiors. It's not antisociety so much as anticollectivist. It's very pro-a certain kind of society, and it's offset by the desire for peace— albeit peace perceived as a kind of impossible ideal, something you fight for but once you get it, the movie's over, go home.

I don't think that makes the films bad or even a bad example— it just means you have to understand that they only work in context. There's just not enough in the movies to live your life by them, or even to assume you can see the full picture of the filmmaker's worldview through that lens, let alone assemble one of your own.

Government is bad, down with government, says Star Wars— but government is good, it's better than the alternative, we'll do better next time, it adds^note "'No,' says the man in the White House..."

A more concise way to describe it would be that Star Wars is all about fighting against bad government, but with no more than lip-service paid to fighting for good government. As soon as the evil empire is toppled and the good republic banner is waved across the capitol, and the main cast have nothing to do, nothing to define themselves by.

It's kinda like superhero comics, really - in contrast to the metric ton of Tom Clancy-style action books and James Bond films that at least postulate a good side, a whole nation to fight for, these stories present no more than a few good guys, with almost the whole world either ignoring or outright gunning for them... because they can't function any other way.

If you look at it in reverse, from a more Doylist perspective, all those corrupt officials and violent supervillains exist specifically to shill the idea of the lone hero uniquely capable of saving the day... but it also reads like a crackpot conspiracy nut's power fantasy, where everyone else in the world is either stupid or evil. They need simplistic yet extreme crises to exist; supevillains with no redeeming qualities to always be in charge, and society in general to never actually do anything about it. Because anything more complex, any enemy that's not immediately reduced to a straw caricature, might actually make them look within.

You're basically saying that these stories are fairly simplistic at their core— I don't disagree, but I don't necessarily think that's a mark against them. Every story doesn't have to be a microcosm for the world as a whole, after all. If you only consume the fantasy of the Emperor and his various Darths screwing up the universe and the lone hero riding to the rescue with nothing else to balance it, then you'd probably end up being all kinds of screwed up. But that's not the only fantasy Star Wars sells. It needs an absolute evil like Palpatine to point out that not everyone is that irredeemably evil, that sometimes the day is one because you can see the good in someone and offer them redemption. It says that government is flawed— the Senate is complicit in bringing Palpatine to power and is then helpless to curb his reign of terror— but that form of government is still worth restoring, even if the movies aren't going to try and show that (although I wish the sequel trilogy would have). It's simple, sure, but it's still not quite as simplistic as it might have been. It resonates in part because it can be a lot of things to a lot of people.

I wouldn't call it a mark against the story, but that its poor execution made it too blatant. Both TPM and TFA opened with a Republic already in the dumps, which respectively reduced Kenobi's reminiscing to pure rosy nostalgia, and the rebels' efforts to a fundamentally myopic endeavor with no planning beyond killing the bad guy. We're simply not shown any government really worth fighting and dying for. I wouldn't mind that sort of setting if the story is about, say, Han Solo's daring escapes or Boba Fett's greatest hits. But when the title crawls advertise the rebels trying to restore peace and justice, and they never do even after getting the upper hand, it becomes difficult to really root for them... and when you're fighting Space Nazi, that's not exactly a high bar.

It would be nice if at least one of the next two films featured a couple of West Wing scenes showing some reasonable authority figures actually doing something for a change. Or, for that matter, displays of the galaxy at large showing something more than indifference to the whole conflict. As I've said before, if Jon Q. Galactic doesn't distinguish between Jedi and Sith, it's not really his fault... especially considering some Jedi's penchant for chopping off limbs in bar fights.

edited 21st Feb '17 2:41:46 AM by indiana404

That's the best reason why we're gonna get. It's nice to get wall text discussions about in-universe workings, but they don't always trump the simple explanation. Not to say there weren't any other options for a new trilogy, but with VII being a nostalgia fest firstly it was all but impossible to accomplish that.

More text, sorry.

I don't think the whole Republic is all that badly off in Phantom, although we don't get to spend much time in the Golden Age that's hinted at by the scenery. I think that's because at the time, the sense that government could be trusted and was fundamentally well-intentioned in America was still very strong— they didn't feel the need to establish that onscreen, it was just taken for granted that most of the audience would feel something of that. Same goes for The Matrix or The X-Files— they were somewhat countercultural, the default assumption of the time being that most people are comfortable, they trust their government, the world is basically a good place. Nowadays? Not so much.

It's not even the world itself that changed so much as the perception of the world. What was a heightened escapist thing at one time now hits a little too close to the mark. We really do need some fantasies that glamourize the value of a functioning democratic government, that tell us what we can be instead of what we are. Not to be overly trite, but works that elevate us.

Yeah, the meta-level thinking that made TFA a total nostalgia grab bag is understandable, and I even like it up to a point, but that point was Takodana. It would've actually been awesome if the New Republic showed that it had learned something from the previous trilogies, and could actually do something to prevent its destruction by the Super Ultra Mega Death Star.

edited 21st Feb '17 9:06:21 AM by Unsung

My own solution would've been to have the story be a Whole-Plot Reference to ANH, but set in such a way - far from the Republic proper - that it wouldn't have to imply everything going to the dregs, with the rag tag main cast being the only decent group in the whole galaxy.

Speaking of which, I'd say the main problem nowadays is the inability to stand for something - be it a government, a nation or even a specific group - without having to accept its flaws and take the heat for defending it nonetheless. It's much safer to just be a rebel without a cause and criticize everything, without pointing to an existing alternative. It's also not surprising that on such a landscape, with people having cried wolf a few times too many, the most dominant force is the one that's stopped caring for criticism altogether.

I wonder if that could be the backstory for some if not most of the First Order officers - guys who thought the Empire had its flaws but also its benefits, only to get shouted down whenever they tried to revive some actually useful policies like having a standing army. So one day they snapped and said "E chu ta, if we're gonna be called Imperials over everything, might as well blow up a planet or two."

If anything the Phantom Menace doesn't portray it as a Golden Age...more a Gilded Age, where it looks all nice and pretty on the surface but is rotten in the core.

Obi-Wan remembers the Republic for more than just the 13 year span between TPM and the rise of the Empire. Even taking Palpatine's words at face value he implied the decline of the Republic was fairly recent.

x3

Wasn't it already confirmed that vast majority of the First Order leadership were Imperial loyalists who went into exile into the Unknown Regions along with the massive military and scientific infrastructure that Palpatine had already constructed into it to find out what was calling to him from beyond space?

edited 21st Feb '17 11:36:59 AM by TerminusEst

It was, but those men would have to be in their fifties at the very least by now. I was thinking more about the young officers, including Hux and Kylo Ren. There's got to be something More than Mind Control to motivate them.

The thing is Yes the meta/ True reason everything seemingly reset backwards is so JJ didn't have to modify the Empire vs Rebellion Motif/aesthetic 'The X-wing models are how old now?'

It really does come off like a bunch of cop outs though

I mean If they're clever the constant repeated phrase of slaughtering all the padawans, is them being literal Kylo and the Knights killed all of Luke's prospective learners

Luke still should have had time to train a few full fledged ones and pulled a go into hiding gambit ;since The Knights have the First order and the NR is basically useless! ' till He gets whatever he is looking from the first jedi temple.

Strictly cause, If this ends up being Rey gets the baton past to rebuild the Jedi... 'makes odd noises'

As much as I want to like TFA the sheer scope of the Happy Ending Override for ROTJ (which was also my favorite movie in the series) kinda killed interest in the sequel trilogy for me XD;

Eh, just consider it an alternate continuity to the old canon and call it a day. For my part, my inner Imperial fanboy is kinda glad to see the Rebs again being clearly unable to run anything larger than a pop stand, but still, that level of self-destructive incompetence was too much, even when compared to the old books. There's watching your team win the game, and watching the other team get mauled by angry badgers. 's just not right, y'know.

The thing I'm gonna miss the most is the graying cold war between the Rebs and the Remnant, with independent threats providing a third facet to the conflict. The question of whether various crises are better endured by an orderly dictatorship rather than a frequently bureaucracy drowned democracy is relevant to this day, and the perceived flaws and benefits of both may well explain certain modern political leanings. Turning it back into Space Nazi fighting Space Hippies not only willfully ignores multiple in-universe aspects, but - as the franchise is known for allegory and might be used as such today - creates a skewed perspective that does more harm than good.

Same goes for the good guys always being little more than doomed moral victors - at some point, this implies not selfless heroism, but myopic incompetence that's beneficial to nobody. To contrast, the hypercompetent Hard Man making Hard Decisions (while Hard) may be cliched, but at least he (or she, for that matter) makes sense as a leader in-universe, which is more than I can say about Mon "Muumuu" Mothma.

How anyone looks at a cross between samurai films, WWII films, 50's space serials, and classic westerns as anything but the utmost in rugged individualism circlejerking is beyond me. Great men and women doing great things is basically at the core of Star Wars, whether or not you agree with that ideology. Hell it's a big reason why Star Wars is one of the more "American" franchises out there. It's about the fantasy of being one of the cool guys flying out in the stars doing awesome things that plain moisture farmers (which is easily one of the most boring fantasy jobs ever invented) could only dream of doing. If you want a show about the power of communal culture and teamwork and moral relativism, you're looking at Star Trek.

More importantly, the New Republic still likely exists. Again, just because DC gets nuked by terrorists doesn't mean that the USA stops existing. It means that the Resistance is now way more important than it was before, as it likely is now the New Republic's primary fighting force, but it doesn't negate the existence of the New Republic. I am admittedly not familiar with the New Expanded Universe, but nothing from what I can tell implies that absolutely everything was destroyed come TFA. Just that Luke's Jedi academy went to shit, and The First Order became a thing in some parts of the galaxy.

EDIT: I'd also note that Star Wars really is more libertarian than authoritarian. The moral is less "democracy doesn't work" and more "central government should stay out of things and let the common man run things, as the common man has a better understanding of how things work", which in a weird sort of way sort of makes sense with regards to expansive sci-fi settings like this one.

edited 22nd Feb '17 7:06:31 AM by InAnOdderWay

Like I said, there wouldn't be a problem if the story was openly about the adventures of rugged individualists like Han Solo and Boba Fett. However, not only does the lip-service paid to democracy seem hypocritical in light of the actual focus of the franchise, but the evident failure to establish a stable democratic state greatly undermines the rebels' efforts as a whole.

Similarly, the prequels were all about how evil corporations should be restrained by big government... which was unfortunately used to enable said government turning into a tyranny. Mixed messages much?

The way I see it, there is a narrow perspective from which all those inconsistencies actually check out, and this is the view of the college idealist. The guy who believes that government should regulate a whole bunch of issues, but doesn't actually trust said government altogether; and who also waxes poetic about the greatness of democracy... but doesn't trust society to know what's best for itself either. If anything, the common man is the last to be praised by this worldview.

edited 22nd Feb '17 8:06:52 AM by indiana404

Honestly . . . big government SHOULD stay out of the way. Or, more accurately, we need to get our shit together so they can. ALL they should be needed for is to set guidelines and pass information along that we'll need to live our lives as peacefully and productively as possible. Other than that, it mostly should fall to everyone else. Unfortunately, that's not how the real world works. The more power us little guys get, the more we stomp on everyone else.

The Bill Gates's of the world are too few and far between to matter unless they actually get those billions of dollars to invest in the first place.

I don't think it's inconsistent— the idea seems to be that government is a good and necessary thing, but only in small doses, that it becomes inherently unwieldy, corrupt, and/or unstable the larger it gets, and that people are generally better off if they can solve their own problems and resolve their own issues with each other without passing the buck to some large centralized authority. That includes democratic governments, semi-religious mystic monks, corporations, and so on.

Big government =/= corporate government, though. This idea that reducing the state's powers will somehow curb societal abuse is the ultimate conceit. All it does is unburden the already powerful and leave the weak and vulnerable to the wolves. It's criminal negligence on a massive, societal scale, which is why I have a huge problem with outright libertarianism as a deeply immoral philosophy. And Star Wars isn't necessarily libertarian — a series that talks about everything being connected through the Force can be interpreted as a refutation of the "fuck you, I've got mine" and "keep the gubbamint away from my money!" that is at the heart of libertarianism.