#i am not discoursing lads i am contemplating. musing. idly analyzing. rotating thoughts in my brain.

[chamerionwrites]

A thought I have been idly turning over is that the argument can be made - and made pretty compellingly imo - in both directions that the changes from Cassian’s sketchy offscreen backstory in R1 to that presented in Andor serve to portray him as a more/less uncomplicatedly sympathetic hero and/or victim of imperial violence.

On the one hand “traumatized refugee orphan turned hustler, saddled with a juvenile record and nursing a self-protective apathy approach to politics, radicalized by the proverbial straw(s) that broke the camel’s back after a lifetime of survival in a system that wants to kill him” clearly complicates the narrative from “I’ve been in this fight since I was six years old.” And quite frankly, hard NOT to complicate the narrative when you’ve got an entire TV series to stretch your narrative legs in vs a single film with an ensemble cast. I don’t think it’s entirely fair to suggest that a story which has vastly more space to expand on an idea necessarily has smarter things to say so much as more space in which to say them - but I do respect the commitment to complication and interrogation, nonetheless.

On the other hand the implication of R1 - made extremely albeit briefly explicit in the offscreen references to, and I quote, Outer Rim “anarchist movements” and children “tossing rocks and bottles at Republic walkers” (no further comment at this time but like…oof) - is not, imo, a less thoughtful or complicated or potentially subversive story. Some of the complexities certainly lie in different places! But I don’t even think that such questions as “Does a slightly-selfish-on-the-surface grifter ask more from the audience than a dedicated idealist?” are as straightforward as they initially appear, within the broader context of a media landscape that is frequently far more comfortable lauding revolutionary action as a variation on a revenge plot (Everyman Hero just wanted to keep his head down and live his life until Evil Empire killed his girlfriend/family/best pal/etc etc) than as a natural outgrowth of ideological conviction (which is for Scary Radicals*). I also continue to find it UNBELIEVABLY tantalizing that R1!Cassian was explicitly described as, if not a Separatist himself (hard to describe a six year old that way or know how he would describe himself as an adult!), then unquestionably part of that ideological lineage, in that Star Wars as a franchise has never been willing to give more than halfhearted lip service to the idea of Separatists as anything but cartoonishly over the top villains - or, by extension, to the idea that the Republic was the Anakin Skywalker to the Empire’s Darth Vader. Even in highly abridged form, that’s a backstory that’s begging a lot of pointed and fascinating questions (What are the political fault lines within the Rebel Alliance? What does it mean that this franchise’s treatment of the Clone Wars has frequently boiled down to glibly setting up and knocking down arguments about Third World sovereignty and resource extraction? Can you as the audience imagine a political movement that contains both incredibly corrupt bad actors and grassroots liberation movements under the same broad ideological umbrella?)

ANYWAY TL;DR I think there’s a lot that’s spiky and unstraightforward and potentially subversive about both of those backstories, and I don’t think you need to dismiss the complexities of either in order to appreciate the other.

*I am OFC not saying that Andor doesn’t engage with ideological conviction, because it does! I am merely pointing out that - outside the audience demographic of broadly left-leaning people on tumble - a loveable rogue who wants to stay out of politics and survive does not necessarily read as less likable or morally upright than a revolutionary who’s fully prepared to Die For The Cause.

#i do think star wars has done one of these stories far more often but i don’t think either is uninteresting #also why does this feel like such hdu say we piss on the poor discourse bait lol #i am not discoursing lads i am contemplating. musing. idly analyzing. rotating thoughts in my brain. #andor #rogue one #star wars #cassian andor #my posts #my separatist feels