I’ll never stop finding it very funny that the only hugely popular mainstream mass entertainment product that I would possibly call “leftist” without making caveats for copious amounts of lib shit is a massive budget Star Wars show produced by fucking Disney
Eh, I’d argue it’s the same as most media about opposing “evil empires”. It’s not explicitly ideological, just vaguely anti-empire, and allows people to project whatever ideology they want onto it. I would guarantee many liberals will watch it and think “wow the emperor is Trump, Mon Mothma is just like Kamala Harris!”
People were comparing the Gorman massacre to the nasty tankies crushing the Hungarian freedom fighters, saying the empire “did a Tiananmen Square,” big evil empire is pretty easy to apply to the Soviets or China given the average level of historical literacy among the audience
That maintains its plausible deniability. In context, the massacre hits harder because 1.5 seasons have already shown the everyday reality of living within empire in a way that can’t be mistaken as vaguely anti-authoritarian. The realities of imperial maintenance are hard not to correlate with specific empires in history (it evokes alternately the British, Nazi-German, and American empires) and the logic of the anti-imperial struggle is hard not to correlate with real-world counterparts like the Bolsheviks, the Haitian revolution, the Chinese communists, and others.
It doesn’t matter if viewers are ignorant of the specific historical references, as long as they understand and agree with the logic of anti-imperialism.
I feel like Disney is such an enormous content mill of a machine that it might actually sometimes be easier to get the broader leftist messaging through, so long as you don’t say that your project is explicitly about actual politics.
That movie The Creator springs to mind. That might be the most most intensely anti-American-war-machine agitprop movie since Verhoven was killing it in the 80s and the whole thing is basically a Maoist global revolution fantasy.
Sometimes capitalists are so desperate they will sell you an experience that can help you recontextualize how atrocities are committed and how empires are made in ways that are relevant to our contemporary moment. Should we take it as a sign of hope? A turn in certain western minds? Or of crushing cynicism? Another future of revolution bought and sold? I guess it’s up to all of us to make something out of these times if we can.
If you haven’t already, I suggest reading “Capitalist Realism” by Mark Fisher. It was written in 2009 but explores the idea of capitalists “selling” communism in pop culture
Indeed it’s quite relavant. It’s interesting when it happens (selling communism or revolution) and they don’t paint the characters as evil. Like in The Expanse they depict resistance to the inners as justified but then have that resistance largely coming from genocidal maniacs or “backwards,” resentful belters. Andor doesn’t do this to that extent, but it does try to paint the rebellion as a bit more “gray” than good. And there are characters like, Saw, who is radical but is seen as unhinged, problematic, and is hated by the most privileged, liberal coded parts of the rebellion. Further, the SW rebellion is meant to restore the republic–the failed government that basically was fertile ground for fascism. It’s already flawed.
Still, resistance itself is preserved and even if Saw is depicted as problematic he still has a role in making resistance possible.
Basically, Disney feels safe allowing us to imagine resistance right now because we feel scared and are vulnerable to big feels about these things. And it has some extra safety markers just to be sure. It’s predatory, but also we are not powerless to define it for ourselves to the extent we can, and to the extent that it serves us to do so. Capital does not control the world totally or have a cultural monopoly. It must negotiate power and discourse just as labor or anyone does.
Star wars has fascism (even named-dropped) but no equivalent of communism, not even wealth redistribution, the closest things are evul palps nationalizing the banks and megacoperations (which gets retconned and re-canonized every three years) and the seperatist with the whole imperial core and rim (global south), which isnt really consistent since they keep adding rich industrialized worlds into the mid rim and colonies and we barely get to explore core world besides coruscant.
One may dye their hair green and wear their grandma’s coat all they want. Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead…
I’ll never stop finding it very funny that the only hugely popular mainstream mass entertainment product that I would possibly call “leftist” without making caveats for copious amounts of lib shit is a massive budget Star Wars show produced by fucking Disney
what a time to be alive
Just goes to show that people like leftist stuff when they’re given a chance to observe it
Eh, I’d argue it’s the same as most media about opposing “evil empires”. It’s not explicitly ideological, just vaguely anti-empire, and allows people to project whatever ideology they want onto it. I would guarantee many liberals will watch it and think “wow the emperor is Trump, Mon Mothma is just like Kamala Harris!”
People were comparing the Gorman massacre to the nasty tankies crushing the Hungarian freedom fighters, saying the empire “did a Tiananmen Square,” big evil empire is pretty easy to apply to the Soviets or China given the average level of historical literacy among the audience
That maintains its plausible deniability. In context, the massacre hits harder because 1.5 seasons have already shown the everyday reality of living within empire in a way that can’t be mistaken as vaguely anti-authoritarian. The realities of imperial maintenance are hard not to correlate with specific empires in history (it evokes alternately the British, Nazi-German, and American empires) and the logic of the anti-imperial struggle is hard not to correlate with real-world counterparts like the Bolsheviks, the Haitian revolution, the Chinese communists, and others.
It doesn’t matter if viewers are ignorant of the specific historical references, as long as they understand and agree with the logic of anti-imperialism.
I feel like Disney is such an enormous content mill of a machine that it might actually sometimes be easier to get the broader leftist messaging through, so long as you don’t say that your project is explicitly about actual politics.
That movie The Creator springs to mind. That might be the most most intensely anti-American-war-machine agitprop movie since Verhoven was killing it in the 80s and the whole thing is basically a Maoist global revolution fantasy.
Sometimes capitalists are so desperate they will sell you an experience that can help you recontextualize how atrocities are committed and how empires are made in ways that are relevant to our contemporary moment. Should we take it as a sign of hope? A turn in certain western minds? Or of crushing cynicism? Another future of revolution bought and sold? I guess it’s up to all of us to make something out of these times if we can.
If you haven’t already, I suggest reading “Capitalist Realism” by Mark Fisher. It was written in 2009 but explores the idea of capitalists “selling” communism in pop culture
Indeed it’s quite relavant. It’s interesting when it happens (selling communism or revolution) and they don’t paint the characters as evil. Like in The Expanse they depict resistance to the inners as justified but then have that resistance largely coming from genocidal maniacs or “backwards,” resentful belters. Andor doesn’t do this to that extent, but it does try to paint the rebellion as a bit more “gray” than good. And there are characters like, Saw, who is radical but is seen as unhinged, problematic, and is hated by the most privileged, liberal coded parts of the rebellion. Further, the SW rebellion is meant to restore the republic–the failed government that basically was fertile ground for fascism. It’s already flawed.
Still, resistance itself is preserved and even if Saw is depicted as problematic he still has a role in making resistance possible.
Basically, Disney feels safe allowing us to imagine resistance right now because we feel scared and are vulnerable to big feels about these things. And it has some extra safety markers just to be sure. It’s predatory, but also we are not powerless to define it for ourselves to the extent we can, and to the extent that it serves us to do so. Capital does not control the world totally or have a cultural monopoly. It must negotiate power and discourse just as labor or anyone does.
Star wars has fascism (even named-dropped) but no equivalent of communism, not even wealth redistribution, the closest things are evul palps nationalizing the banks and megacoperations (which gets retconned and re-canonized every three years) and the seperatist with the whole imperial core and rim (global south), which isnt really consistent since they keep adding rich industrialized worlds into the mid rim and colonies and we barely get to explore core world besides coruscant.