Bit of a lighthearted question: Do you see the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars as communist? Or another form of leftist?
If so, would that make Star Wars a leftist film series?
Bit of a lighthearted question: Do you see the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars as communist? Or another form of leftist?
If so, would that make Star Wars a leftist film series?
I’d say so, he explicitly modeled the rebels after the Vietnamese communist resistance, so that should give you a good idea of who he thinks the empire represents… He says in the interview below, that hollywood never would have let him make his first movie (THX 1138) if they knew what he was really doing.
He also praised the soviet film industry, and prefers it to the US film industry, criticizing the latter for its narrow commercialism. That’s about as far left as a popular US film-maker could get, and its surprising that he wasn’t exiled from the industry entirely.
Its also worth noting that the imperialized people are the ones that are humanized in the series, obviously a good thing. We unfortunately don’t get much of a look at the empire’s loyal citizens, that would be holding up too much of a mirror to the imperial core countries and their chauvinist outlook.
Sounds like the rebels are a liberal’s interpretation of communists then. Which makes sense that they would end up as socdem reformists as @Farmer_Heck@lemmygrad.ml suggested.
Yeah, Lucas is just a liberal, and basing the Rebels on the Vietcong is more late 70s edginess than anything.
He clearly wanted to artistically highlight the antagonistic nature of American imperialism, but did so from a liberal viewpoint.
If you take a materialist view of the situation from within the fictional universe, core worlders really shouldn’t and wouldn’t support the Rebellion. Realistically, the Alliance would be a primarily outer rim political movement, and a fringe movement within the core. Because, as we’ve seen with IRL imperialist nations, be people who live in them and benefit from them often don’t oppose them without good reason, even when told of the atrocities of that imperialism. If you also fold in clone wars era propaganda, which was intended to condition core worlders to become xenophobic of non-humans and become hyper-nationalistic for the republic and the core worlds, it becomes even more of a headscratcher as to why the rebellion is as popular as it is. But I’m rambling now, so I’ll stop here. Regardless, it’s the result of a western liberal looking at imperialism from their country onto others and going “hmm, if things were different, we’d all revolt, wouldn’t we?”
edit because it just occurred to me: expecting a samurai film about space wizards to be realistic and strictly adhere to materialism is probably silly.
But Tatooine, the main planet of the series, is a periphery world, and its young people did support and join the rebellion. We’d assume from that support, that they hate the empire. We don’t know if the previous republic had any presence there, but if it did, and the rebellion represents them, why would they join up?
Obvi Lucas never really takes any look at the core worlds, the economic system, how the republic is, etc. But I think its as simple as who Lucas paints as the good guys, and bad guys. Good guys = anti-imperialist resistance fighters, bad guys = soulless exploitative expansionist empire.
Contrast this with the black panther movie for instance: where killmonger and the Oakland panthers are the villians, and seen as “ultra-violent killers”, the Black panther is seen as a MLK peace-keeper, and the CIA is the good guys.
Pretty much.
Also, watch The Clone Wars as the Separatists are corporate overlords while the Republic is pretty much the “greater good” but also highly corrupt from corporate influence itself.
I think its as simple as who Lucas paints as the good guys, and bad guys. Good guys = anti-imperialist resistance fighters, bad guys = soulless exploitative expansionist empire. We can’t speculate too much on how the republic treated the outer rim worlds, but if tons of young ppl from the outer worlds are joining the rebellion, it probably was positive or non-existent.