Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

Yeah, the franchise basically settled on "the Federation is flawed, yes, but the ideal is worth fighting for, and that means getting rid of the bad actors periodically".

Plus the element of "there's always room to improve and just because utopia might take work and we're not quite there yet, that's no reason to give up on the whole idea."

Especially since, these days, a lot of people seem genuinely incapable of understanding the idea that utopia as a goal can be a good thing even if it's unattainable, because most of the steps needed to get there are also good things. ...even if some people inexplicably go for slippery slope arguments against it.

The franchise has always framed the Federation as flawed but a good thing, even back to the original series once it decided the Federation should be a thing.

Edited by Zendervai on Mar 25th 2024 at 12:05:04 PM

I think that's certainly the goal, but since we see about a million times more of the Federation than any other government and it's most common for non-protagonist federation workers to be given a moderately/massively antagonistic role (for obvious story telling reasons, the most common new character in a long-running TV show is going to be the episode's antagonist and their minions/victims), combined with the absolute love Star Trek has (and has always had, for obvious reasons) of having its senior commanders be evil/antagonistic and it's really, really easy to go 'nah, the Federation is just sorta shit.'

Especially when you get into some of the weirder modern stuff like whatever was going on with Raffi in the first season of Picard.

But more broadly, there's a desire, I think, to continue Trek's long history of message episodes, but rather than have those be Starfleet lecturing some poor outsider on their ignorant ways, they not unreasonably want it to be an internal issue, as that's far more realistic for the audience. But (and hey, this almost connects back to the earlier Can't Argue with Elves point) a lot of those issues don't really line up and are starting to become relevant in the real world.

All the stuff about AI rights and genetic engineering being basically analogues for racism/immigration start to feel a bit different as we start to actually have to deal with those issues. Like, do I think Star Trek is actually arguing for transhumanism? Probably not? But having decided that genetic engineering is just the racism of the future, they're sure not going to present any arguments against it!

Edited by ECD on Mar 25th 2024 at 9:52:52 AM

@Red Hunter 543

Okay, is there any Jedi portrayed positively in Kotor 2? 

The player chararter potentially taking the Light Side doesn't count.

.......................

@Point Maid

I don't think this is a factor; stories about "perfect" groups, still had villains, sometimes cool and intimidating ones.

The Na'vi have the RDC, the Jedi had the Sith, the Elves had Sauron...etc.

What you describe above, will only apply if every character in story is "perfect" which indeed will make for a boring story.

......................

Because as the saying goes "Utopia's newspapers are boring" and all that.

Edited by jawal on Mar 25th 2024 at 5:58:55 PM

It should count.

Why is this necessary? But, as it matters, Vrook, Kavar, and Zez-Kai are depicted positively, in that they want to help the people on the planets they're hiding on. It's just that they're unwilling to let go of their biased view of the Exile, their dependency on the Force, and their paranoia about the machinations of the Sith.

Vrook has the same personality in the first game. It's just that he is one of the five Jedi left now. But he's still fighting the mercenaries on Dantooine, and he's still protecting the settlers. He's just an asshole and is suspicious about the Exile.

(And when it comes to depending on the Force, that applies to virtually every character in the game. Including Kreia. Even the Exile only cut themselves off from the Force because they were afraid of the Force Wound they themselves created, which Kreia herself eventually acknowledges.)

Atris is the only one who outright fell to the Dark Side.

Why not? That the Exile is a better Jedi than the Masters, despite being exiled, all while having Kreia as a teacher (whom they learn from, but usually disagree with) is the entire story of the Light Side path.

Edited by SilentColossus on Mar 25th 2024 at 2:52:06 PM

@Silent Colossus

The discussion is about if Kotor 2 has an anti-Jedi message or not.

In a previous post, I gave multiple examples of both citizens and party members going on and on about how the Jedi are no better than the Sith.

So if you want to show the counterargument to those claims, you need to either give examples of people who praise the Jedi, or show some Jedi characters in a positive light.

And this is why asking if there is any Jedi portrayed positively (they aren't) is necessary.

After all, if you write a story about country X, where multiple characters (including the clearly Author Avatar) go on and on about how the citizens of X are nothing but thieves and liars, with everything bad is their fault,  and then you neither present any character who argues against that point, nor do you present any citizen from X who is not a liar or a thief, then your work is anti-X.

............................

No, they aren't?

Collectively, they are all presented as idiots and misguided, and their role in the story is to validate Kreia's claims about the Jedi being nothing but haughty Know-Nothing Know-It-All who are too focused on their dogma, that they lost contact with reality.

After you save the three of them, and prove that you are a Light Side follower (assuming you don't kill them), they respond by traitorously attacking you and trying to strip you from your Force connection, upon the flimsy belief that you may pose a danger.

They give you zero chance to explain yourself, nor do they try to explain the situation beforehand, or search for a better solution, that doesn't involve betraying the man who saved their ungrateful hides.

And all the while, they are ignoring the Sith's threat and have zero idea how to fight them.

And then Kreia shows up and gives them "The Reason You Suck" Speech, before she disdainfully submits the trio to the same treatment they wanted to put the Exile on, killing them, and allowing them, in their last seconds, to see the error of their silly dogma, and understand that KREIA WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG.

(On a non-related note, this is the moment the game stopped having any sort of coherent story, the rest are just a series of chaotic segments, when you are suddenly transported from place to place without explanation.)

....................................

This is not how the Jedi behave; the Jedi are supposed to act with compassion and understanding; they are not pompous idiotes, and they certainly don't betray the people who saved them.

Now individually only Kavar,come closer to a Jedi in his behavior, and was doing something useful,  Zez-Kai is a coward, hiding in Nar Shadda doing nothing,  Vrook is a Jerkass, and an idiot.

Which remind me:

No, he doesn't?

His character is a case of Flanderization in the second game, in the first Kotor, he was not a unreasonable Jerkass, his point there was that he advised his colleagues, to not be too hasty in training the main character and trusting him with the fate of the order on his shoulders, because haste in that matter can prove disastrous.

And after The Reveal you understand that his fears were more than reasonable.

And even then, if you save Juhani, and solve the Matale-Sandral feud, in a peacful manner, then Vrook will start to show trust in you and wish you good luck in your mission.

Contrast this with the second game version, who is shown to have been always a jerk, and a contrarian, and who is implied to be the one who convinced his two colleagues to betray the man who saved him from a cage in Dantooine.

......................

Other Jedi in game include the pompous and haughty Master Lonna Vash, who we don't meet because she got killed in Korriban, letting only a message saying that Darth Sion is just a brute in need of some addressing, which she will be the one to do it, and the  pompous and haughty Master Atris who want to create the Jedi Order in her own image, while listening to Sith Holocroms, and betraying her collegues to the Sith. (she is an expy of Joruus C'baoth from The Thrawn Trilogy)

So long story short, no, there are no positive portrayal of Jedi in the game.

.........................

The player character doesn't count, because his actions depend on the player choices.

Now you say " I choose the Light Side options, and as such I proved that the Jedi are right, so Kotor 2 is pro-Jedi"

And another respond " I choose the Dark Side options, and as such I proved that the Jedi are wrong, so Kotor 2 is anti-Jedi"

Both statements are equally valid (or non-valid), and as such players setting their anecdotal experience as proof is not a good argument. 

Just as a player of Dragon Age can't go:

"I played as an evil blood mag, ergo the Templars are right; all mages should be killed or imprisoned QED."

No, the PC doesn't count, we need to see the in-story characters.

.............................

In the first Kotor for example:  even if you choose the Dark Side Ending, the Jedi are still the good guys, because you have multiple examples of positively portrayed Jedi, and so the player choice don't change that, it only decided who will win at the end.

Same thing in Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy or in Swtor.

...............................

Another point is that even discarding the above, and pretending that a light side walkthrough is proof of anything (it isn't) we still have another problem.

The Exile is portrayed as special, he is not like those cowardly and ineffective Jedi living in their ebony towers; he is a rebel; he was trained by Avell.....er I mean Kreia herself—and learned the philosophical complexity of the universe, finally being freed from the Jedi-Sith absurd Black-and-White Morality.

And as such, even by wining in the light side "ending" (if you can call that last segment an ending) Kreia is still the winner, because now we are finally rid of that old and decadent order that we saw in the first game, and can finally create a better one, led by Kreai's student and his Ex-Sith torturer friend, and the teaching of the order can be finally changed to be more mature and closer to Avell......I mean Kreia's POV.

Or so it would have been, if the later works in the EU didn't just ignore the game mostly.

.........................

So all in all, no, the Exile is not a good counterargument.

Especially since he never argues against Kreia, she can talk for 15 minutes, and all he does is nod and say "you are right" or " I will meditate in what you said" like in that stupid bigger's scene in Nar Shadda

Kotor 2 does feel like a Hate Fic, to Star Wars in general, not just the Jedi.

Edited by jawal on Mar 25th 2024 at 8:56:50 AM

One of the big problems with Kotor is how it tries to force things into resembling the prequels when it's only a few decades since the Grand Master of the Order was a widow who took her own daughter on as an apprentice.

Interestingly, Bastila was old enough to remember her parents, and even have an antagonistic relationship with her mother, before joining the order, as shown in her personal quest.

Juhani and Yothura Ban were teenagers when they joined, and the latter was a former slave.

So the Jedi don't insist in only having recently born infants yet, child Anakin probably won't have faced any opposition to him joining the order if he lived in this era.

Edited by jawal on Mar 25th 2024 at 9:20:40 AM

Which actually nicely fits my favorite headcanon, that Yoda, despite his wisdom, has actually been sort of a disaster as Grandmaster, because as a sexless ancient being, who's always the most powerful member of the Council and outlives everyone else, he is naturally somewhat disconnected and creates really unfortunate role models and standards for an order made up of non-Yodas.

To be fair, Yoda initial assessment of Anakin turned up to be correct.

Besides, the Galaxy knew 800 years of peace and prosperity while he led the Jedi. Palpatine ruled for only 22 years before being overthrown by Yoda's student.

So all in all, his legacy is mostly positive.

............

Edit:

Now that I think about it, Bastila, Juhani and Yothura Ban all fall to the Dark Side and two of them become Sith.

Though all three can be reedemed by the player if he choose so.

Edited by jawal on Mar 25th 2024 at 9:38:02 AM

Sexless ?

I mean, essentially? We see between 1-2 other members of his species, who he almost never interacts with and never shows any signs of romantic or sexual interest in anyone.

Now I’m thinking of Yoda with a penis.

Thanks a lot assholes.

Well, we do not really know much about Yoda's life, so assuming he is sexless is baseless I would say. Also, I frankly do not think that not having sex makes you "disconnected" from others or anything.

Edited by Risa123 on Mar 25th 2024 at 11:20:49 AM

Jedi are typically forbidden to marry, as I understand the lore, because emotional attachments may impair their judgment and/or neutrality. One would expect that to create difficulty with producing new Jedi, and so they adopt Force-sensitive children instead.

Rejecting love could lead to a lack of understanding of love, hence their inability to understand Anakin's path to the Dark Side. In fact it happens twice, first with filial love (his mother) and then with romantic love (Padme). One reason that Jedi take children very young is to be able to expunge those attachments before they become too ingrained.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 25th 2024 at 6:26:56 AM

Yoda did foresee that path in TPM:

"Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering"

................

Also, technically, Jedi are not forbidden from having sex; they are forbidden from marrying and having families

And the Force is not always hereditary; it is common for it to manifest into people who never had any Force User in the family.

Edited by jawal on Mar 25th 2024 at 10:31:47 AM

Yes, and virtually all of these characters have been traumatized by either the Mandalorian Wars, the Jedi Civil War, or both. That these characters have opinions does not mean that we, the audience, must agree with them. We're even allowed to disagree.

The majority of the characters who hate the Jedi are neither Jedi or Sith, and the only experience they have with either is knowing they're involved with all the major wars (wars so devastating the Republic is about to collapse), wield lightsabers, and have magical Force powers. Some of the party members that hate the Jedi, like Atton, have very complicated relationships with the Jedi that influences this behavior. Half of Atton's hatred is because he feels guilt for torturing, murdering, and forcibly converting Jedi to Sith. You can even help him let go of his hatred of the Jedi, and of his guilt, and help him control his Force sensitivity and become a Jedi himself.

They're not reliable sources. Understanding a character's motivations, backstory, and biases is a key element of understanding their role in the story. You're supposed to analyze and think, not take everything they say at face value.

See above. The characters criticizing the Jedi are not reliable sources themselves. Nobody in this game is presented as a reliable commentator, because everyone is flawed and biased.

Additionally, I'd argue against the idea that you need to have characters turn to the screen and tell you the themes of the work.

The Jedi are not a country, but an organization and religious order that has institutional and philosophical flaws that lead them to make disastrous decisions starting with the Mandalorian Wars, leading to the rise of Revan, and the Jedi Civil War. The majority of them were already dead by the time KOTOR 1 begins, and most of the survivors died when Nihilus ate Katarr. Now all that's left are four Jedi Master, Bastila, Revan (who has disappeared), and the Exile. It's little wonder they're struggling to be their best selves.

I said they're presented positively "in that they want to help the people on the planets they're hiding on." So, yes. The Jedi are presented positively in that they help people, or want to, and Zez-Kai and Kavar are inspired by the Exile doing so.

This makes them very different from the Sith, who do not help people, to put it lightly.

I'm going to these points collectively:

Yes, the Jedi are presented as being flawed and misguided here, and they do not understand what the Exile is or that the Exile is their best option for defeating the Sith. They're frightened of the Exile being a walking, talking Wound in the Force that attracts allies and friends so easily. They're frightened of how easily she forms Force Bonds. Why shouldn't they be? On the surface, the Exile sounds like one of the most dangerous individuals in the galaxy, and they think the Exile is going to lead to the death of the Force and the death of the Jedi.

They're half right, because that's Kreia's plan. She sees the Exile as the best opportunity to kill the Force.

I do not see an issue here. Must the Jedi always be depicted in the best possible light? Why can't they, in this case, take the role of antagonists (not villains!) in a story? They're not depicted as evil villains, but as misguided people stuck in their ways, and this leads to their downfall. Isn't that a more interesting story than having them be right all the time? It's not like the game turns around and makes the Sith suddenly seem right: Nihlus and Sion have drowned in the Dark Side for so long that they might as well be Dark Side abominations, and Kreia is ultimately just an old woman who depends on the Force she's grown to hate.

As for Vrook, my point is that he remains haughty and suspicious, like he was before. The difference is that using an amnesic Revan to help defeat the Sith Empire was a plan concocted by the Jedi Order themselves, even if they didn't plan to turn him back into a Jedi. But more importantly, the Jedi Order is still standing at the time of the first game. He still has hope that things can work out.

So, it makes sense that he was willing to trust the Revan plan, but not the Exile. Who, again, already left them to fight the Mandalorians, and came out deafened to the Force. And unlike Revan, she didn't get her mind wiped and she never healed the Wound in herself.

Yes, they do. The Exile is the protagonist of the story, not merely an avatar of the player. The entire story is built around her, and the Jedi misunderstanding the Exile's existence and motivations is the entire point. I don't think you can argue the game presents the Jedi negatively for how they treat the Exile, and then disregard the Exile as a character.

Additionally, Kreia considers the light sided Exile to be her best student, while she considers a dark sided Exile to be a failure.

You also say that the New Jedi Order will be one influenced by Kreia. It is not. Kreia's philosophy has very little influence, if any at all, on a light-sided player.

You are typically given multiple dialogue options that disagree with Kreia.

I don't agree with "them", this is why I wrote the previous wall of text to show that I disagree with the game's message.

.................

Indeed, they are not; the country example is an analogy " a comparison between one thing and another, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification".

Speaking of that: 

This seem to me a case of Watsonian versus Doylist.

I am saying that:

"The game present me with multiple charcters and scenarios where the Jedi are being insulted mocked and criticized unfairly, and at the same time, there is neither people who argue against those cliams, nor is there any Jedi that is presented positively"

In other words, I am presenting a Doylist perspective.

Your response is that:

"Those characters in-game have reasons why they think so, which are xyz...and as such, it is understandable that they think this way, but they are not necessarily right"

And this is a Watsonian perspective.

......................

Or to go back to my analogy, if I tell you:

" I watched the movie called  Journey to the Sh*thole named Country X and I feel that the movie present the message that every one in X is a thief and a liar, because evey foriegner we meet trash talk the citizens of the country, and everyone of them is depicted as a thief and a liar".

And your answer me with:

" Well, Bob was robed on his first day in X, so of course he will think this, and Alice was insulted by that Xian woman in the market; it is normal for her to hate Xians".

Then this is not a good response, not because you are necessarily wrong, but because you are talking from an in-universe perspective; while I was talking meta.

I was asking, why did the author''' feel the need to write a work where everyone trash talks Xians? Without any counterargument presented, I was not asking why the character Bob hates Xians?

...........................

We already have one such character in this game, though; her name is Kreia, aka Chris Avellon's Author Avatar as the man himself admitted IIRC.

................

Nope.

The Jedi are presented as stupid and condescending Holier Than Thou types, who have lost everything and yet continue to think highly of themselves and look down on others as misguided and unabel to understand their great wisdom.

Their "help" to the galaxy is what left it in ruins and why people in universe hate them, call them a "religious cult," and say that they are no better than the Sith.

This is not a positive portrayal; this is the stereotype of Can't Argue with Elves played painfully straight.

And it is also not how the Jedi were portrayed in the first game, or in Swtor, or in the rest of the Legends continuity, except maybe Republic Commando Series by Karin Traviss.

Also, being better than the Sith, is not as high a praise, as you make it sound (and people in- universe dispute that fact anyway)

.....................

So the Jedi are the antagonists of this story? Antagonists to the (allegedly) "heroic and light sided" protagonist?

And being  " flawed , misguided, and frightened antagonists" of the "good" hero is a positive portrayal of the Jedi?

Those haughty, ineffective and cowardly men, who has lost the galaxy in their arrogance, and are now betraying the man who saved their lives are the heroes of the story? The paragons of justice? The champions of peace? The protectors of the weak? The paladins of freedom and democracy?

Is there anything that can be said in their favor apart from " well they are still better than the Sith"?

........................

Anyway to answer your question: Mr. Avellon has the right to depict the Jedi and the Force anyway he wants. And the audience are free to like it or not, as long as they are not unfair about it.

I simply said what my opinion is (that the Jedi are portrayed negatively in Kotor 2) I did not say that every author is not permited to have his vision, or that he can't make the Jedi " flawed , misguided, and frightened antagonists" or even villains.

........................

He wasn't haughty in the first game, though, he wasn't even particularly rude or hostile, and he certainly didn't try to kill a fellow Jedi who just freed him from a cave. That was a Flanderization from Obsedian's part.

.....................

As you wish, let's count the Exile as a character then:

" My Exile was  a Dark Side character, he killed the three Jedi Masters For the Evulz, he helped Czerca Corp destroy Telos, aided General Vaklu kill the Onderonian queen and install a Sith-allied dectatorship; and he led the mercenaries to slaughter the refugees on Dantooine, and in Nar Shadda,.... well, I don't actually remember what the dark side options in Nar Shadda were, but I am sure that they were nasty, and he did them all"

So going by the above, the game is anti-Jedi, because there were not a single good Jedi character in the dark side playthrough and as such, my point is proven.

There is surely no flaw in my logic, I am referencing the "protagonist" of the game, just as you said I should.

Since we are at it:

" Shepard was antagonistic to every AI he met in the Mass Effect games, so the message of the games is that the Reapers are right, and Organics can't exist in peace with Syntethics"

" My mage Amell, in Dragon Age was dabbling in blood magic long before unlocking that specialization, (which he did by selling a child to a demon) he spent the game killing innocents left and right, and consorting and bargaining with every demon he met and offered something, so moral of the story is that the Templars are right and mages cannot be trusted"

....................

I hope you're seeing the problem here. In a Choose Your Own Adventure type of Role-Playing Game with Story Branching, you can't use the protagonist as a metric, because he is indeed just an Avatar for the player.

I mean, the "Exile" didn't even have a name or gender until later, and by authors who are not from Obsidian.

.....................

Also to be fair, I didn't actually play a Dark Side campaign in Kotor 2, but the choices above were presented in dialogue, and confirmed by watching a video and reading a wiki.

I did a full Light Side playthrough with all TLSR and the M4-78 mods installed.

Edited by jawal on Mar 25th 2024 at 1:46:04 PM

Going back to an earlier point...I don't actually think media as a whole suffers from Accentuate the Negative. There's always been a mix of media that's uplifting and media that's cynical. Just because there are works that have a misanthropic message doesn't mean there's a misanthropy problem. If one thinks there is, that's probably more to do with deliberately focusing on the misanthropic stuff out there.

Though on that note...it's kind of funny that there is a genre that is almost entirely cynical — and that's comedy. Think about it — how many sitcoms and stand up acts and other comedic works rely on a setting where everyone's a selfish and stupid jackass?

Some works also humor to lighten the mood for what would otherwise be harrowingly dark works.

Bojack Horseman comes to mind. It's about Bojack's terrible life choices and Hilariously Abusive Childhood, but we're always reminded that they're a bunch of funny animal people.

The Locked Tomb has themes of love, abuse, codependency, and obsession, all while having the protagonists be from an empire of necromancers. And almost none of the characters are particularly good people. But Muir also has a very sarcastic style of prose that makes everything fun.

The show Kevin Can F**k Himself was a dark comedy that took apart the concept of sitcoms that revolved around jackasses (or one particular jackass). Kevin's only "funny" from his point of view (framed as a typical sitcom with a laugh track). The actual protagonist is his long suffering wife Allison who has had to put up with Kevin's crap for years. And in the series finale, Kevin is shown to be an abusive monster of a man without the "sitcom" filter.

i heard about that one, though i didn't watch it. was it any good? the premise tbh struck me as ... better for a single short film than an entire series

It was at least only a two season long show. I don't think the premise could have dragged on for longer than that.

That show is pretty depressing from what I hear. Cautionary tale, the series basically.

i think it was kind of cool to have a mainstream series remember that "character development" doesn't have to mean "becoming more emotionally healthy and mature". "Getting worse" is character development too!

Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul come to mind as well, on that count— it's not unheard of, but it's definitely the exception rather than the standard.

I wonder if that's part of the intended appeal of the "cynical" works some people have been frustrated with? Like, i do really get the appeal of tragedy and ethical quagmires and characters suffering real consequences for their choices. Esp in reaction to mainstream media saturated with, like, Plot Armour and easy morality and happy endings. Sometimes i do wanna see the hero fail and die. But that's not, y'know, inherently deeper or better. It can still be shallow, and just be less pleasant about it

Edited by Tremmor19 on Mar 25th 2024 at 12:03:23 PM