389
always has been the empire (lemmy.ml)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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[–] 56 points 3 months ago (2 children)

My favorite example of this.

Hint: George Lucas has stated in the most plain-English unambiguous terms that the empire does in fact represent US imperialism in A New Hope. It's in a director chat interview thing with with James Cameron if you feel like searching it up.

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  • [–] 30 points 3 months ago

    Oh boy now I can add this to my “Americans being so far gone that they don’t realize a movie about US imperialism is a movie about US imperialism”. Almost like MAGA thinking Homelander is a celebration of Trump for 3 whole seasons before realizing it may actually he the opposite.

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  • [–] 16 points 3 months ago

    For people that say "don't make x media political" I think that almost all media is inherently political, your making a statement about something that has real world connotations and people are going to form an opinion from it.

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    • [–] 28 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I was just thinking of the ex-gf who didn’t believe Star Wars was about Vietnam. I should add that to the list of reasons for the break up.

    Never date a centrist. If they’re not a militant leftist, don’t bother kids. 😂

    Not good thoughts, not good thoughts by the way. Thinking about the writing group I dropped because “that’s always been my thing”.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    disagreed. my wife, when we met, was right wing. but also very smart. also very empathetic. not very politically aware.

    we were friends for a decade. dated for a bit. got married. talked politics for a few years. i asked a few pointed questions over the years. in 2015, agent krasnov's response to the attacks in Paris in November of that year were enough for her to leave the republican party, without any of my prompting. dear gods i love that woman. i remember, the responses were all about him being right about some bullshit and nothing about calming and unifying people. nothing what a politician is supposed to do.

    nowadays, yeah, never date anyone more right than Rick Allen.

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    • [–] 26 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    The story goes that George Lucas was supposed to direct Apocalypse Now, but the studio didn't like that he was gonna make it a 35mm black and white documentary instead of a blockbuster movie, so he said he'd make his own Vietnam war movie...with spaceships, and lasers!

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  • [–] 10 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    I'll direct my own movie! With blackjack and hookers!

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  • [–] 19 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    And eventually he really did.

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    • [–] 17 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    And unlike the original Star Wars film, which made the parallels to the Vietnam War paint the US in a bad light, the latest Star Wars film riffs off the helicopter scene from Apocalypse Now!, but instead of presenting napalming the shit out of people as a bad thing, presents it as a good thing.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Which film?

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    TMAG

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    • [–] 15 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    I love this meme with stormtroopers, because instead of the guy in front being about to die he's in the safest possible place.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    There was a bit of fan-lore I read a while back that the stormtroopers intentionally missed because Vader didn't want them to kill his kids.. really its because it would make for bad cinema if the NPCs killed the main characters 30 seconds into their first scenes...

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    It wasn't because of his kids, but as later explained (in expanded material) the Millenium Falcon had a tracking device installed soon after it was detained.

    Otherwise, consider that the Death Star could've blown the freighter out of the sky the moment it exited the hanger with its thousands of Point Defenses.

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    • [–] 13 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Glad to see a new spin on this meme format.

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    • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    LITERALLY

    Watching Star Wars as a kid is LITERALLY one of many reasons I give a fuck as an adult.

    I paid attention to the fucking story.

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    • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    That's so true.

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    [–] 0 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    No. It's literally just space Nazi's.

    Guys... There are STORMTROOPERS in the Empire. It's not subtle lol.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung

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    • [+] -15 points 3 months ago (13 children)

    And what exactly is the difference between Western imperialism and other kinds of imperialism?

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  • [–] 28 points 3 months ago*

    I know your question is rhetorical, because you always, always cape for the imperial core, but: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

    “Western” is inaccurate. The fascist Japanese empire was a monopoly-stage capitalist empire much like the others, and Japan is still a junior partner today’s neocolonialism, but it’s never been “Western.”

    This isn’t about cultures or genetics or location on the map, but about ownership of the means of production, international power dynamics, and sovereignty. It’s about imperialism vs anti-imperialism.

    Star Wars Was A Vietnam War Allegory

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago

    There really isn't anything comparable to western imperialism, and western imperialism is the single largest barrier to human progress around the world. What is it with whataboutism?

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago

    Depending on the context, it could just be who's doing it. Star Wars was originally specifically an allegory for the Vietnam War, which was a war of Western imperialism because the two countries making it a war rather than a country gaining its independence were France (who'd conquered Vietnam as part of their empire and weren't happy that the Vietnamese didn't want to be in their empire) and the US (who wanted to stop communists gaining power anywhere), both of which are Western countries. It was about that war in particular rather than imperialism in general because that war in particular was the one that was a big deal for the target audience at the time - if Lucas had been Japanese and making the film decades earlier, maybe he'd have made it an allegory for something else, but he wasn't, so he made the film he made.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago (7 children)

    One is an actual problem for the world and the other exists as a hypothetical?

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  • [+] -7 points 3 months ago* (6 children)

    So Chinese military presence in Africa is not imperialism?

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  • [–] 11 points 3 months ago*

    Is that what imperialism means to you? Can you show me this Chinese military presence? Because it doesn't fill me with confidence that you can't get any more specific than the name of the continent.

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  • [+] -6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    what do you think etcetera at lemmy dot ml might think about the subject?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    Why would you think .ml users would be uncritical to China? We just like our western imperialism balanced by eastern imperialism, thank you.

    Perfectly balanced. As all things should be. To much to one side... or the other...

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    • [–] -4 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Hot take:

    The Galactic Empire is portrayed as bad mainly due to it's execution of power. The Empire's ideals of order and stability don't actually seem so bad in theory. Even the Mandolorian spin-off show supports this perspective.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago*

    Whose order, stability for who? Order and stability are features of a system, not ideological beliefs. Pretty much everyone wants order and stability in the abstract, the problem is when the order is an extractive fascist police state that devastates planets and wipes out cultures so that the people perpetuating it can enjoy stability at everyone else's expense.

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