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It doesn’t matter if viewers are ignorant of the specific historical references, as long as they understand and agree with the logic of anti-imperialism.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.
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…
this is the hook, they invest in a high quality product like Andor, now that they have captured your subscription, they will make dozens low budget AI written shitty products and you will watch every single one hoping its as good as Andor and failing every single time.
Didn't break the BDS boycott for S2, won't start now,
I'm looking forward to the 3 season series about Max Rebo, who singlehandedly turned Mos Eisley from a "hive of scum and villainy" in the grip of the empire, and into the most groovy space sport in the Outer Rim and freed it from the storm troopers and the Hutts with the power of music.
it's going to have it's own line of Funko pops and opportunities to buy into Disney's Story Living Developments.
The total production budget of the original Star Wars trilogy, adjusted for inflation (2024 dollars), is approximately $227 million.
If they start with good writing they don't necessarily need a 650 million dollar budget
But they never do
Bit idea: bankrupting Disney by producing revolutionary agitprop
I chuckled at how much some of the blasters were shaped like real guns: double barell shotgun on Ghor, Kleya's revolver style blaster.
Original blasters were made from prop guns of real firearms. Pretty sure Han Solo's blaster is a Mauser with some attachments.
I also remember seeing rebel troopers on Hoth with some kind of kitbashed STG44
E)
This pretty much. Even in episode One Naboo blasters were just sporting air pistols.
The Aldhani crew just had straight-up AKs
That's just all star wars movie guns since day one
$650million was worth it for Star Wars. Consider that they're already seeing the effects of its success elsewhere in the franchise. Battlefront 2 for example went from being a dead game to having 18k concurrent players, which for an old game is insane.
That's the Andor effect. It happened at the end of Season 2, people wanted more Star Wars. This same effect will have occurred across other parts of the franchise as well.
It's extremely valuable. It will become recommended to new Star Wars fans, potentially as a starting point, or at least after watching the original trilogy. It is as valuable to the franchise as the original trilogy was. Getting a win like this will keep Star Wars alive for them for another 2 decades of sales.
I wonder how bady Andor has hit their Empire merch sales
Well 3 things:
I was having the same thought. My girlfriend was like, "Why would anyone ever dress up as a stormtrooper? They're awful"
If anything it probably caused a bump in sales as people remembered storm troopers etc. There'll probably be a lego TIE prototype for like $600 soon.
Needs CW and nsfw tag, article mentions SV without warning
Back to the regularly scheduled Baby Yoda merch ads
So you're telling me they could have had 30 minute long episodes and twice as many of them?
how many homeless people could have been housed for a year for that much money?
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Here's a list of tons of leftist movies.