frankly, I think you are mistaken about what it means to be political. It isn’t strictly about one party vs another. you can talk about politics without explicitly supporting or disliking a political party.
being political at the core is about policy.
and this is why star wars was political from the start. it wasn’t just a cool story, it was meant in part to make you sympathise with the rebels, and dislike the empire. And crucially, to link the rebels to Vietnam and the empire with the US and Nixon. it shows a dislike of what the US was doing, what the party in charge was doing, and perhaps to turn people away from that.
saying all that isn’t political is like saying Bob Dylan wasn’t political because he didn’t mention the parties
If you went back to the 1970s and told people you thought Star Wars was a political movie, they would think something was really wrong with your thought process. The themes, characters, and the basic structure of the story (the Hero’s Journey / monomyth) was old when the Greeks invented democracy. It certainly predates anything we could call politics, it predates almost everything about us. It is probably one of humanity’s oldest inventions that’s still in common use.
Bob Dylan was always political, by the definition I would use, because he talked about issues of public policy and society in his songs. A New Hope was never political and still isn’t. If a person wants to define the new and more inclusive Star Wars, and Sesame Street, as “political,” then fine, although I will probably want to probe their definition and probably will try to make the case that the way they’re defining this neologism is part of a toxic propaganda structure they’ve unintentionally absorbed.
I don’t usually like to get into extensive wrangling about what words mean what things, but this one I do think is important because of how it features in a particular type of propaganda structure which is good to call out.
frankly, I think you are mistaken about what it means to be political. It isn’t strictly about one party vs another. you can talk about politics without explicitly supporting or disliking a political party.
being political at the core is about policy.
and this is why star wars was political from the start. it wasn’t just a cool story, it was meant in part to make you sympathise with the rebels, and dislike the empire. And crucially, to link the rebels to Vietnam and the empire with the US and Nixon. it shows a dislike of what the US was doing, what the party in charge was doing, and perhaps to turn people away from that.
saying all that isn’t political is like saying Bob Dylan wasn’t political because he didn’t mention the parties
If you went back to the 1970s and told people you thought Star Wars was a political movie, they would think something was really wrong with your thought process. The themes, characters, and the basic structure of the story (the Hero’s Journey / monomyth) was old when the Greeks invented democracy. It certainly predates anything we could call politics, it predates almost everything about us. It is probably one of humanity’s oldest inventions that’s still in common use.
Bob Dylan was always political, by the definition I would use, because he talked about issues of public policy and society in his songs. A New Hope was never political and still isn’t. If a person wants to define the new and more inclusive Star Wars, and Sesame Street, as “political,” then fine, although I will probably want to probe their definition and probably will try to make the case that the way they’re defining this neologism is part of a toxic propaganda structure they’ve unintentionally absorbed.
I don’t usually like to get into extensive wrangling about what words mean what things, but this one I do think is important because of how it features in a particular type of propaganda structure which is good to call out.