A Geek History of Time - Episode 262 - Andor Went Woke And Or Marxist with Gabriel Gipe Part II

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

See, people when they click on this, they'll see the title, so they'll be like, poor Ed. What does that even fucking mean? However, because it's England, that's largely ignored and unstudied. I really wished for the sake of my sense of moral righteousness that I could get away with saying no. He had a goddamn ancestral home and a noble title until Germany became a republic. You know, none of this highfalutin, you know, critical role stuff. So they chewed through my favorite shit.

No, I'm not helping them. I'm going to say that you're getting into another kind of, you know, Mediterranean, or psyche archetype kind of thing. Makes sense. Also trade winds are a thing. Ha-ha, just serious. Like, no, he really has a mad on him. Yeah, we'll go upon a tangent. As we keep doing.

Like, yeah, this is how we fill time. I'm going to go to the bathroom. This is a Geek History of Time. Where we connect nerdery to the real world. My name is Ed Blaylock. I'm a world history and English teacher here in Northern California. And my, my wife had the opportunity yesterday to have a brief conversation with our son's kindergarten teacher. And we, we discovered that our, our son apparently has been creating a problem in the kindergarten classroom because when

he starts crying, the girls in class fight with each other over who gets to comfort him. Classic. And she said, yeah, I've had to, I've had to separate them and I've started taking him outside because when he doesn't get the attention, he calms down faster. My wife related that story to me and just said we're going to be in trouble. I said going to be? We already are. This is, no, I don't know where he got this from because I never had that kind of, as the kids say, Riz.

That was not a thing that was ever a deal for me. So yeah, that's where I am in parenthood this week. How about you? Well, I'm Damian Harmony. I'm a US history teacher up here in Northern California. And I actually had this kind of a cool moment. As you know, my son loves designing zoos my son loves all the things zoo word Where he like you know tells me animal facts And we'll play a game about guess the animal and shit like that and he'll name animals that I have no idea Did you know there's a shark called a wall be gone? I didn't um and I was like there's no way I could guess that fucking shark

But that was cool, but it'd be a great game show. Oh that shark right but This was pretty cool. He recently met several zoo designers at an open house for the Sacramento Zoo Okay, as they're going to be moving to a bigger site soon. And by soon, I mean, within the decade. But he met with them, talked with them, asked them good questions, impressed them, got their cards. And this last week, he wrote an email to them. And it was a very professional sounding email. And he immediately got responses back within the next day. And so he's, you know, a young man,

not quite at intern age, but he's already making inroads to doing what intern things. And so it might be that my son eventually becomes a landscape architect in terms of his major. Oh, I love that. Okay. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. So that is legitimately awesome. Right? That's cool. So he can design cooler zoos. I'm like, all right, man, do it. Like. So actually that was, that was kind of the follow-up question I was going to ask you was like, is that going to mean a zoology degree or like, what is this, what is this

probably going to be for that? Yeah, yeah, probably landscape architecture. And this is at the age that he's at now, which is really cool. Well, yeah, I mean, yeah. Things will change, but pretty cool. Pretty cool. That's awesome.

That is really cool. Yeah. So, and we hear the voice that we heard from last week, Mr. Gabriel Geip has come back deciding that we needed more than just theory Mr. Gabriel Geip has come back, deciding that we needed more than just theory, but we actually need practice. So, yes, practicum of Star Wars. Gabriel Geip, thank you so much for joining us again.

I really appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule to do this. What's been going on for you? I actually am super excited because I just bought my very first tattoo machine and I've been getting tattooed now for 22 years and have them on almost every surface of my body other than my face and up until next week, my neck. It will be the back though, so not super visible. And I decided to finally, I was like, I have spent a tremendous amount of money on this.

What if I could do them myself? And potentially maybe on other people someday. Wow. So I did a bunch of research online, watched a bunch of YouTube videos, looked through a bunch of Reddit pages and found a recommended machine for beginners that wasn't going to break the bank, bought a bunch of inks, but which I recently became aware of fake skin. You can buy fake skin patches online so that you can practice not on other human beings. Um, transfer paper, um,

all sorts of goodies that I could kind of set up my own at home thing and, and practice and, and try to get better at drawing and improve my artistic skills and then, you know, maybe turn it into a side hustle in five years. Who knows? Nice. Wow. Yeah. That's, that's very cool. That's yeah, I like it. Producer George has been wanting to get the USS Agamemnon tattooed on his penis, because that's the only place he'll have the room Do you think that would be hard for you or I mean hard is it?

I depends if it's gonna be soft Are we are we are we not doing phrasing anymore? There's a vein of thought I didn't think to go down. Oh poor Ed's having a stroke So that's cool. Will you do it for money? I mean, at first I'll do it for baked goods, you know, like a key lime pie. So I'm a simple man. Yeah. Hey, there you go. Barter. OK, so last we left off, you gave us a small sample of Marxist theory differentiating between Leninism, McCartneyism, Harrisonism, Pete Bestism, Stu Sutcliffe ism, speaking of strokes. And the more obscure Sid Barrett ism. bestism, Stu Sutcliffe-ism, speaking of strokes, Ringo-ism.

And the more obscure Syd Barrett-ism. There you go, yeah. Ringo-ism, Jingle-ism, Bag-ism, Dada, no. Now I'm just cutting into the, so this is Christmas. But you gave us all that, and as well as Maoism. I don't know if I actually mentioned that in. So you gave us that and you said last time you promised us some cultural critique kind of lenses that we need to use as well. And I love that we use the word lens for all of this because I have always pictured historiography, which is the study of how history has been studied

for the the folks in the audience who are not history nerds It's a whole subject unto itself. It truly is the history of how history was written. Um, I love the term lens because I've always considered Historiography to be a microscope where you have the infrared lens, the ultraviolet lens, the up to 500 lens, the down to 50 lens, this and that. And I've always considered a way of looking at history, like Marxism, there's a Marxist school of thought because it's critical analysis and stuff like that. There's Marxist history, there's consensus historians, there's the fucking Dunningites if you want to go back and listen to episodes five through nine.

So there's all kinds of schools of thought when it comes to historiography and things like that. So I love that this is the lens that we're bringing to bear on Star Wars. So and you said you were going to bring some critical, some social critique or some cultural critique. So please hit us with that lens. I appreciate your acknowledgement of that because I didn't really start using like the term lens until I read Contending Economic Theories by Richard Wolfe,

who I discussed or I brought up in the last episode when talking about overdetermination. And as a Marxist, there's no such thing as like being a Wolfist or Wolfism, but Richard Wolf as a contemporary Marxist, I think most aligns with my understanding of Marxism. And when using- I gotta say, just real quick, with Richard Wolfe, I really enjoy his pugnacity with things. Because he seems very, he has short king energy. I have no idea how tall or short this man is,

but he has short king energy. He absolutely just digs in his shoulders and goes head first at ya. Oh yeah. It's cool. Now, yeah, it's it's cool Now is he related to Naomi wolf at all? Not that I'm aware. Okay, because I was gonna ask how disappointed he would be in his Fucking gone off the deep end which is a damp like I don't know if anybody here knows who Naomi wolf is

Or was she wrote the the beauty myth. She was a very important beginning of third wave feminist writer. Very much second wave cresting into third wave. And she was really good. She actually she wrote letters to a young patriot I think during the time of Bush. And she was really good. And then they hired her to be the image consultant for Al Gore, which was weird. That's when he started wearing earth and tones. And then when the pandemic hit, she went off the fucking deep end. Like just total batshit.

Yeah. Like completely batshit crazy Liberty, um, you know, over any kind of sensible, we have to take care of each other collectivism like vaccines and shit like that. And, uh, it's, it's, it's a shame. It's a disappointment. Um, so, so I'm glad to hear that he's not related to her. So, yeah, he does. He does have two kids and she is not one of them. Good. Okay. And, and I will also say that a lot of people, you know, unfortunately took the mask off during the pandemic and you got to see a lot of

good metaphor, a lot of heroes. Yeah. Right. Yeah. A lot of people that I, you know, might have looked up to or admired in some respect become absolute pieces of shit. I mean, they always were, but maybe it wasn't evident prior to that. It's really unfortunate. And, you know, I think there was also shifting of, for lack of a better term, shifting of internal Overton windows happened for a lot of people, you know when when faced with the the circumstances that we we had to deal with as a society I think I think I would say the part of people freaked out and and Weird shit happened, you know not not not to use that as an excuse

But I think there there there are some cases in which some of those folks weren't always pieces of shit, but like you know they they got Exposed to Bad bad thinking and were isolated you know and you know Happened I would say also like like if you if you step on Certain surfaces if you step on them when they're wet, you can see the cracks appear. I think the pressure of the pandemic and of Trumpism absolutely did that, which kind of is what I can understand makes third worldism, as per your explanation of it, attractive to some because they're like, see, see, selling

things out. You know, it's like, yeah, that's true. Yeah. Good point. Yeah. I was I was just shocked that Kanye West was were you? Yeah. I would not have picked him as the one who would just go off the deep end with with ill thought out. That's fair. Yeah. I mean, like, Me and Billy would say shit like that with a straight face is one of the things I most admire about you. I mean, really have to say. Honestly, I'm not even mad at that because like, if you're looking back at like Kanye West's trajectory, if you were to say 15 years ago, that that was where I would also be like, no, that's.

Oh, I had it picked. I had it picked. I did. In the same way that I had Roseanne Barr picked. Um, yeah, because both of them made their living in some way being contrarians. Very often, if you make your, your living, if you become famous as a contrarian, you forget that it was the... You forget that the thing you were contrary to was the problem and you think that contrarianism in and of itself is what your moneymaker was. And so as things shift, you then start being contrarian to other things and

then when people react that like, hey, you used to champion our rights, and you're like, oh, you're just too sensitive. And then it just folds in on itself. So the need to be seen as the one standing against things is what leads to me thinking, oh, I know this trajectory well. Like when he did the George Bush doesn't care about black people thing, he was not wrong.

But I also was like, oh, oh, that's that that is a trajectory that is going to be similar to, you know, a few other people that we have seen. And, you know, I hate to say I was right or anything like that, because there's nothing on record of me saying, Oh, by the way, this is going to mean that in, you know, 19 years, he's going to start his own church and have his own fire department at one point, like, you know, Oh, good stuff. Yeah. I mean, wow. Yeah. Anyway, so social critique, speaking of which. So before we get into social creed, just a quick, quick side note, because I did forget to mention it in the last episode is that in most Marxist circles, the utopian socialism that I discussed

very at the beginning is often associated with anarchism. And I believe that I mentioned that like proud, proud hone is, is kind of like embraced by anarchists. And the primary distinction between anarchism and communism in the Marxist sense is, is their understanding of the state and the need to control state power in order to enact a social revolution or a political revolution. They, the anarchists don't see a need for like the political mobilization of the working class, right? It's more about direct action, propaganda by the deed in some circles, clandestine activity that could lead to the upheaval of society, et cetera. And I bring that up because I do think that it's an important

part of, of viewing the various characters within Andor in this analysis. Um, okay. So moving forward to the, the, the kind of practical application of Marxism as a critique on culture and in the sense that we want to use it, popular culture and media. And I'm only going to approach it from two people's perspectives and in the context of history. And I know that I'm leaving a lot of people out and that's actually, it's going to be three people. I lied. It's three people, but one's more of a side note. First one is Antonio Gramsci, which I'm sure that both of you are familiar with, but he's an Italian Marxist. I'm not familiar by name, but perhaps by deed. So continue.

Yeah, no worries. He was born in 1891, died in 1937, spent most of his adult life in a prison, was a huge proponent, I'm sorry, opponent, not proponent, opponent of Mussolini and fascism in Italy, prior to the full unleashing of world war two. Um, and he is probably most famous for his theory on cultural hegemony. So if, if you're familiar with cultural hegemony, that kind of stems from Gramsci. Um, and his, his take on, uh, cultural hegemony is essentially that bourgeois ideology, capitalist ideology is consistently replicated within the culture of capitalism. So this goes back to our base and superstructure conversation in which the economic modes of production are reinforced by culture, which is media, religion, all things outside of the economic sphere, but can include the political.

And they're used to reinforce the dominant ideology so that people come to accept that uh, except that the ruling classes behavior and, um, the, the aspects of culture and society that benefit them are good for everyone. Right. Um, that the, uh, and good to compete for money so that you can eat exactly that, that competition. I mean, I'm sure that you have both heard this many times in your life, that communism looks great on paper, but Marx didn't take into account human nature, that human nature is inherently competitive. It is that we are greedy by nature, that that is not a byproduct of our material conditions. Our competitive nature is not a byproduct of our material conditions that we are innately this way, and it is something that we cannot overcome.

It is not something that is a product of our environment, etc. I've also heard additional to that is, and any attempt to do so not only is a fool's errand, but will always be worse than the current system. Because people pulling the levers will have their own agendas and therefore, and it's right. Yeah, that's, that's typically, those are typically the, the, the beats that get hit along the way. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism because capitalism will lead to it. No, because according to Gramsci, that that culture has reinforced

that ideology so to a degree that it's that we cannot see beyond it. Right. It's the end of history. Right. Right. And that kind of leads to the idea that working class people would only be able to achieve a certain level of consciousness within capitalism, right? That their own level of political and theoretical development is stifled by capitalism because it cannot transcend the cultural implications of capitalism, which reinforce the economic foundations. Okay. And this is kind of articulated in real world sense that working class people constantly contend for crumbs through reforms,

but are always left impotent when it comes to like actually rectifying the source of their conflict, which is capitalism and the class relationships that come and stem out of them. Right. So I'm going to interrupt here for just a little classroom thing that I do. I have kids get into groups. I always tell them put your desk together get into your groups. And very often they won't. They will sit next to each other. I call it parallel play. And I hand out work to them, but I always throw them to the group. And I always throw them to the center most part or I look for the crack between the desks to try to get the paper to slide in there

because then they have to reach down and grab it and stuff and I will go yes after it does so right especially if it's really difficult like and they're like what the fuck and I always tell them I'm like no you guys make it so easy thank you and then some kids are like trying really hard to like catch it and they're like they're like on edge and all that and some Of them do I'm like hey way to rely on your own excellence instead of changing the very structure by which I'm exploiting your labor here And I always say shit like that and then there's some kids who have like they won't put their desks together But they'll stack shit on top of the gaps and I tell them again. I'm like, oh man, that's great You're putting so much effort into doing something instead of just fixing,

fixing the underlying structure that would prevent me from throwing things through the cracks. That's fantastic. Really good use of your energy there. And then there will be inevitably a couple groups that straight up just put them right next to each other and I'll throw it in. I'm like, you guys figured it out. You're no fun. Right. And then I move on to the next group and kids are like almost falling out of their desks,

reaching for it and stuff like that. And I keep saying, I'm like, you know, if you just put minimal effort into fixing the underlying structure so that you could support each other, nothing would fall through the cracks. And some of the kids are like, is that a lesson here? I'm like, only for those paying attention. And that brings up a really good point

that they weren't even aware that that was an option. Right. That fixing the problem was on the table as a possible solution. Yeah. Right. was on the table as a possible solution. And that perfectly fits into this example, right? That the overlying culture, since it's constantly working to reinforce itself, It's telling us that we have reached the pinnacle of cultural, societal, political, economic development that we'll ever reach. And this is as good as it's going to get. And we could always have it worse because look at X, Y, and Z in this situation.

And that's constantly replicated through all forms of media. constantly replicated through all forms of media. And when I was teaching, I had two things that I had written on my whiteboard all year long, cause I taught government. One of them was all media is political and all media is bias. And that is kind of the foundation to hegemony, right? Is that it's creating the fabric of society through cultural repetition, that it is a constant need to reproduce itself, to legitimize itself. And Gramsci saw society kind of in two spheres.

He saw it in the political sphere and then civil society. And for the sake of this analysis, we'll focus on civil society. And he saw civil society as the sphere in which working class people were able to kind of argue for concessions from the ruling class. But they were also consistently being in for

consistently constantly constantly there it is constantly being influenced and shaped by the ideas and of the ruling class. And they were replicating cultural life, you know, by attending universities, by consuming media, by attending religious services. And that was a way for the ruling class to legitimize itself and to manufacture the consent of the people who were living under its hegemony to move forward in the economic realm. Right? So that's the civil life sphere that he saw. And when did he come he come up with these you said this he died in 37, right? 37 yeah, and and he He didn't write any books like most of Antonio Gramsci's writings were compiled in what is like colloquially known as the prison diaries

Because they're just a bunch of like pamphlets and yeah, there we go. Yeah. That sounds like, yeah. Um, but, but hugely influential. Um, and yeah, he's, I think that cultural hegemony and political hegemony and the idea of hegemony in general from Gramsci is as, uh, if, if you're familiar with like Noam Chomsky's work on manufacturing consent, I think that Gramsci's work on hegemony was the foundation to, and Chomsky's an anarchist or he would call

himself like a libertarian socialist, but that still obviously was heavily influenced by Gramsci's understanding of culture. Um, and, uh, okay. So then on, on top of that, so by identifying cultural hegemony under capitalism, Gramsci argued that the proletariat then needed to create its own cultural hegemonic counterpart. So counter propaganda. Exactly. counterpart. Counter propaganda. Exactly. Yeah, counter propaganda. Yeah. Essentially to create its own media, to create its own outlets of cultural reproduction so

that it could essentially put forth its ideas as a counter to capitalist hegemony to vie for domination within the cultural sphere. Because he understood that, and this is kind of where we draw back to Mao and the cultural revolution, that you cannot attack the economic base without attacking the cultural superstructure and be successful. You could change hands of who owns the means of production in a revolution and be still left with a group of people who have been born, raised, and reared in capitalist hegemony and you're going to reach the same problems over and over and over again, because they have, they've been stamped by the old society. Right. So it was important for Gramsci to put forth that we, the working class needed to have our own methods of communication, our own entertainment,

our own mass media, our own styles of communication that reinforced the proletarian ideology of working class revolution, et cetera. Now you said he's in prison for most of this. How much access did he have to seeing what was going on in Germany? Because I'm thinking Nuremberg videos, I'm thinking Reifenstahl, I'm thinking the Munich Olympics.

I mean, he dies a year after that, but like, is he seeing all of this stuff? Is he reading Goebbels? Is he? Yes. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, obviously like the rise of fascism was hugely influential on his writings and he had a lot of political counterparts in Germany, in Russia, um, that were able to, to kind of like propagate his information out and print his pamphlets. Um, you know, he was a huge opponent of Trotsky. So he had a lot of allies in the Soviet union at the

time, um, that were able to kind of like print, print his work and get his information out there and also feed him information because you know, the prison system for what it was, obviously, back then. Right. Kind of porous. Exactly. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Yeah. And so, I mean, was he like on a house arrest, like in a really nice place, like a rightist would have been, say, Hitler?

Or was he actually in a prison because fascists know how to incarcerate people? Yeah, there were definitely different stints of prison and different varying levels of incarceration that he had. But the one that led to him getting sick to him dying was pretty extreme, right? Like there was some starvation, torture. It wasn't like a, I'm exiling you to Vienna. Right, they didn't move him into the house of some half-wit assassin son of a property landowner with a name that's eight words long. Right.

Otto von what's his fucking name? Yeah, that fucking guy. I swear. His name. There. Well, there is a guy who's like August. Like, it's just a long ass name. And we did. We talked about it in the episode. I've since committed it to forgetting because I got so sick of the guy's name.

But I made sure to say the whole name every single time. I feel like it's so goddamn annoying. George might have to get auto bond. What's his fucking name tattooed on his penis instead? Yeah, I we will. Yeah. And you know what? We can record that for this show too. Because there you go. It's a worthwhile endeavor. OK, so that's that's Gramsci, cultural hegemony. And the second person I kind of want to talk about is as Guy de Borde. Familiar? A little bit. No, yes. The name is.

So he's not at all. Also a French Marxist Marxist and started the like situation situationalist movement, which led to the 1968 Paris riots. OK. All right. That gives you some historical content. OK. Punk rock before punk rock. Got it. Very punk rock. The thing that brought us Charles de Gaulle again. Great.

But also led to Jersey Shore. A lot of people don't know that because the situation was on that. So. Right. Fantastic. Ed had another stroke. Yeah. So the boards like famous book, most famous book is, is the society of the spectacle. Um, and he kind of introduced the idea that, uh, that cultural hegemony produces the constant

need for a spectacle to divert the attention of the working classroom revolution. And it's not like, it's not a mind, but he cod of the working class from revolution. And it's not like a mind- It's not new, but he codifies it. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, we can go back to Rome and- Yeah. I was going to say bread and circuses. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And so that it can only, this process of creating a spectacle can only be undone by engineering radically different spectacles. So it kind of takes the idea that Gramsci put forth in that we needed to create our own media,

our own hegemonic response to the capitalist class in that we needed to be almost as preposterous as the capitalists were in producing spectacle for working class consumption. And the situation is like where, you know, some things that they considered to be like a spectacle was like walking around aimlessly in a city, right? Because that is antithetical to productive time. some things that they consider to be like a spectacle was like walking around aimlessly in a city, right? Because that is antithetical to productive time spent in service of the capitalist class. Right? Like if you're-

Grinding down the gears a bit, you're sanding the ointment. Yeah. Yeah. Like if you're doing things that doesn't necessarily serve the interests of the work of the capitalist class, that right, that you can become a sand in the gears. Perfect. Yeah. Kind of perfectly put. Right. Um, and they, the, the, the, the folks who, who kind of built on the boards work put forth the idea that all are, kind of built on the board's work, put forth the idea that all art should be decentralized, right? That it should be of the masses for the masses, reproduced for the masses.

And you see this a lot with like socialist realism that kind of came out of the Soviet union, um, where like all art was meant to, uh, kind of highlight the working class struggle, right? Like it should not be meant for the consumption of bourgeois intellectuals, right? It should be meant for the... It's funny too, because there also was capitalist realism at the same time. Like a lot of people would point to Rockwell as being an offshoot of that. His politics notwithstanding.

But like I'm thinking of like Koch advertisements in the 1950s and 40s. Yeah. Very similar stylistically. I mean, obviously a different ideology behind it. But you know, those movements and what you're saying about that, just moving it away from the patronage model. Right. So kind of picking up where the surrealists and the data is left off. Yeah. On some levels. Yeah. And it's it's interesting that you bring up Rockwell because like, I mean, you said politics, notwithstanding, but like, you know, there was there was a tremendous amount of kind of like

romanticism of working class people in his art, which I think is. Yeah. He had to pay the bills, but he absolutely had to be told many a time, stop putting black people in your art. He he wanted certain things, but he got paid for others like, you know. Yeah. But anyway, so OK. So so socialist realism. I said, yeah, right. Through spectacle, a little more, you know, bombastic, but yeah, essentially a very similar idea. Was he looking at like the Barcelona Olympics in 36?

Cause I know that there was the, the basically the working people's Olympics in Barcelona to compete with the Munich Olympics in Munich in 36. Well, I mean, he was a Marxist, so he probably didn't have a lot of love for Barcelona in 1936. But it was a popular front Olympics. It was like the Working People's Olympics. There's a whole book about it that I've thumbed through a number of times and I still haven't managed to grab it, but it was called the Popular Olympics. It's really interesting. It was the People's Olympiad was another word for it. And it's fascinating because it's like, no, y'all don't get to do your dumbass, like, amateurs only thing.

Like these are working people who have to do these sports. So it's cool. It's worth it. It makes sense. But I was curious if he'd mentioned that or anything. What was the name of the book again? It was the Popular Front and the Olympics, I want to say. And it was after Catalonia was its own region,

if I recall correctly, and after Alfonso went into exile. It's called the Popular Front in the Barcelona 1936 Olympics by J. Stout. Pretty good stuff from what I've read, and I've heard some interviews with him, so I've really enjoyed hearing about him. Definitely will need to check that out. Yeah, so.

But anyway, okay, so, so you need your own propaganda. You need your own imagery. You need your own iconography. You need your own things to combat the status quo that has such a huge advantage over you because of the longevity of how long they've been in power because of how much money they can throw out and so forth. And yeah, just the profound impact that it has on our understanding of how society is supposed to function, right?

Right. At the end of the day, that's the purpose. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And he kind of put forth this idea of, of expression through proxy. And that states that, you know, we live in a, in a spectacular society that is our, our whole life, we're surrounded by an immense accumulation of spectacles. And they,

you know, our, our experience is taken out of the real world and it becomes a commodity to kind of package and be sold back to us. And as a commodity, the spectacle is developed to the detriment of our real experiences and it becomes a substitute for experience. So you're talking social media. Yes. Yeah. So we are constantly living through the experiences that are packaged and sold to us rather than actually engaging in the social experiences.

We're buying Shepard Ferry t-shirts instead of going out and tearing down monuments. We're drinking Sprite, the new taste revolution. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Super thirst quenching with all that sugar. I love it. And he then also put forth the idea that through this kind of proxy development of social interactions, that all media serves

as a guide to social action, right? That culture creates meaning and then guides social action. So through cultural hegemony of the capitalist class, right? They determine the actions that we take within society by giving certain action meaning, right? Or taking meaning away so that if it is meaningful, how often do you hear the phrase, like you vote with your dollar, right? And that holds some logical foundation, but also it is sold to us as the primary example

of how we can rebel, how we can show our individuality, how we can show our complicity. And obviously there is some, obviously boycotts have impact, right? Divestment has impact, how we spend our money has impact, but that is not the only way that our existence has impact, how we spend our money has impact, but that is not the only way that our existence has impact. If I may, there's three thoughts that come to mind with that, and I'll work them backwards. First of all, the reason it has impact is because of the people

who've created the system wherein that becomes the currency of the realm, Right. Literally and figuratively. Number two, the song by the Rage Against the Machine, Godzilla, pure motherfucking filler. Godzilla soundtrack. Right. The Godzilla soundtrack. Right. Well done. And where they say, get you think that Bayan is rebelling. Yep.

And then the third thing is, and Ed, I'm going to let you say the word if you want But this this reminds me very much of the play acting that is necessary for the audience to participate In a certain type of practice where the reality is heightened at the center of the arena for everybody to look and what is that phrase? Are you talking about theater in the round? No, no Kfabe hey, babe. Oh, yeah, like this is all okay. Fabe that uses yes 110% Yeah Do you know Kfabe Gabriel? No now Kfabe is it's Carney speak, but essentially it is the the

the term the accepted term for the False reality that is played to a hyper realistic extent in professional wrestling. So our emotionality that goes into seeing our hero getting beaten down and cheated. We know it's fake. They know it's fake. All of us involved. It's all play acting and yet our emotions about it are real and we cannot

tear ourselves away from that very spectacle and it's called kayfabe. They keep up the pretense that it's real. So in in the 70s, it would be they never break character right in the 70s. It would be if you were around in public and you you fought a guy last night and he kayfabe broke your leg you'd better have a cast on. Is there is there an acronym to that or does it just a kind of it's just carny it's just like yeah it's the carny version of cockney rhyming slang. Yeah. It's the Kearney version of cockney rhyming slang. Yeah, and so if you if you flip it back around k-fabe fake

fake So gotcha, I think that's where it goes Yeah, but the term k-fabe is is incredibly it's k-fabe is Why people let Trump say all the horrible things he does because yeah, that's just his character from the apprentice That's k-fabe. Or, you know, we are, you know, in the name of equity, we are getting rid of these socially progressive teachers because they are so biased. That's kayfabe. Okay. So with your description of what that is, and it's like everyone's in on the act. Yes.

Right. And everybody's play acting and knows that they're playing. But how is that applicable when it's no longer a character? So like your example of Trump, his, his, the excuse of, of him being, you know, like he's playing a character, but then when you see it actually play out and he's not being a character and it has real world impact, then how is it? Is it John Cena, Brett Hart, uh, both have their real names and they both are heightened versions of themselves when they're in the ring, but it's not that different from who

they are. Same with Steve Austin, although his real name is Steve Williams. Hulk Hogan is a different beast with that. Ultimately, it's a very different thing. There's seven episodes we did that are just very depressing. And mind bending. Yes. It's so fucking weird.

The thing is, I think the point is that there's that that within the concept, the KFAB has to do with a constructed reality, a constructed, a constructed participatory reality. And like in its purest sense in in wrestling, it is it's it's like a sort of looking for revival it's it's it's like a revival show talk with him yeah yeah yeah yeah Chautauqua yeah it's it is it is a a mechanism for catharsis mm-hmm but it can be harnessed and moved in other directions. And like the idea that Donald Trump is this kayfabe figure can be used as a kind of cover to, to then use the construct of the constructed reality to convince themselves on some level

that that's what it is. That, well, it's not really like this, not really, you know, that's just, that's, that's, you know, that's K-Fape. But is it really, you know, there's, there's, there's, it turns into the situation that, that, that can, uh, uh, incept upon itself. It gets people stabbed and acid thrown at them. Like, right, right. That really happened at wrestling events in the forties and fifties. And it's not because the guy who stabbed the wrestler was stupid. It's not like he was actually fooled in his deepest heart of hearts. He would have been like, if you'd questioned him and showed him like,

OK, but like, if I ever, you know, let's punch you 10 times in the face. And it turns out you get bloody. Can you see that this is, you know, and he would have been like, OK, yeah. Yeah. But at the same time, he stabbed a wrestler, he carved him, he you know, there were people that brought cups of acid to the wrestling, like as a part of that catharsis. And so there were people who brought kayaks to an arena to throw at people in the ring. Yes. I mean, I got to give it to them for the arm that would require.

You come with your friends, but yeah. But you're absolutely right. I mean, and that's the thing. It's this agreed upon reality that you're all taking part in and you know your part. I mean, it's in many ways it's like when you go to Rocky Horror Picture Show. Same kind of thing. So similar to what you're talking about is like, you know, the media gives us the acceptable avenues by which to express ourselves in the media. And therefore we do. It's TikTok dances. It's, you know, all those things. And that's how you can market a revolution back to people. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the quickest way to sanitize both like, you know, quote unquote working class

heroes and movements is to commodify them. Right. Like how often do you go to any store and see a t-shirt being sold with Che Guevara's face on it for $45. Right. Exactly. The acceptable revolution. Only once they're dead and in black and white focus. Right. Yeah. Really long time ago, guys.

So it's a really long time ago. No one alive now would ever know anything about that. Here's a banana. Yeah. OK, so the last kind of side note person that I wanted to bring up in our cultural analysis and is Bertolt Brecht. I don't know if either of you. Yeah. Yeah. All right. There we go. Yeah. I got that reference. Yeah. So if you were a theater kid, I got that reference.

So if you were a theater kid, you might remember. So he was a German Marxist playwright. And there was a lot of what can be contributed to Brecht is like the alienation effect. And I think that has some kind of practical application to this analysis of Andor, but not really. But the alienation effect is like making sure that your audience cannot identify with characters by making them objectively terrible or making them obtuse or just finding ways to create distance between the people who are on the stage or on the screen and the audience themselves, right? Like that the, um, are, are there's a distance between reality and, and what is being produced on, on the stage or on the screen for entertainment. So, okay. So, so is the emphasis there on artificiality or on,

uh, on, on lack of identification, lack of identification. Okay. Okay. So it's not like expressionism and grotesque. It's, it's an anonymity almost, uh, anonymity and well, I mean, I guess there were, there could definitely be a portion of the grotesque in the sense that like you want to, you want to show the characters that you're trying to identify as, as like the antagonist or the enemies. So like overtly that, that they lack almost, So like overtly that that they lack almost, um, you know, human like qualities and in the sense that like you,

you just cannot figure out a way this is not a Joaquin Phoenix is the Joker, right? Like a character, we are trying to find ways to, to, uh, get your audience to identify someone who's gone off the rails. Right. And you want to make sure that they are so, this is Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, right? Okay. Or Heath Ledger's Joker, who is just like,

I have no idea where this guy came from. I mean, there's a whole bunch of 15-year-old boys on Twitter that would disagree with you. You sure. Yeah, but 15-year-old boys on Twitter is its own genre. I think what you're pointing to is storm troopers. At the end of the day, they have facial features that are permanent and frozen. And the way they act is at odds with that.

And they don't have any facial features at the same time. Yeah. Like, yeah, they're menacing happy faces in white armor. White armor is supposed to be for good guys. Like there's so much going on there, but it's black underneath, so it hides it, you know, hides their deeper, darker intent. And you can also just kill thousands of them. Exactly.

Yeah. And it doesn't mean anything. Yeah. Narratively, they're like their role is their moves. That's like the whole... But also the guys that are pulling the boom on the Death Star, you know, with the black helmet. With those cool black helmets. Yeah, the weird asymmetric kind of unbite. Yeah. The guy who blows up the planet is faceless.

Does some dude? Yeah. Yeah. Right. But the other part of Brecht that I think is, is more relevant is his, his theory of epic theater, which is, um, essentially is, is to consistently make sure that what you are, are showing, um, is not fantastical, right? It's not a spectacle. So this is almost antithetical, uh, to our previous ride aboard spec, you know, society, the spectacle that like, you are, are making sure that your audience sees the world for exactly what it is.

Right. And we're, and we're not pulling any punches. We're not, we're not making metaphors, right? We are, we are showing you exactly. And, and he would often do this in his plays by having his actors break the fourth wall and say exactly what it was that they were doing. Okay. Now we're going to do a scene in which the bad guy tells the good guy that

he's a f*****g loser and he has to work for him, you know, like something as ridiculous as that. So like suspend all disbelief, right? That there's no room for interpretation at all. Okay. It's the way that we need to construct our media going forward is with an understanding that people have been so indoctrinated by cultural hegemony from the capitalist sphere that they need to have these things broken

down and say, Hey, hey, hey, no, no, no, no, we're not making a metaphor. We are telling you exactly what this is supposed to mean. There is no metaphor here. He is the bad guy. Yeah. Yeah. And we don't need that. okay The the Empire is not supposed to be the United States. The Empire is the United States, right? Something is as straightforward as that right right and and that then Finally leads us into Sour's okay. All right All right, so I think First I wanted to just kind of like touch on the history of Star Wars politics just a little bit before diving into Andor specifically. And feel free to jump in on this because I know that Damien for sure loves Star Wars as much as I do, probably more.

And I, and so I think, you know, most Star Wars fans know that George Lucas was inspired by the National Liberation Front in Vietnam as, as the source material for the rebels. But I, George Lucas is not a historian, right? He is, he's a director. He's not a historian. He's not a philosopher. He's not a scholar of comparative religion. He's not a lot of things. He's not a good husband. He cannot write Good dialogue. He's not a good editor.

You could write a big book about what George Lucas is not. We'll leave it there. Yeah. Very true. So I think that that's, you know, it's something that a lot of people like to throw out. Like it was inspired by like the resistance in Vietnam, but like that's inspired is where it ends. Right? Like there wasn't like a really great analogous movie being made about the resistance of anti-colonial,

anti-imperialist. Oh, they can make a really good set piece. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And I think that what's interesting about Andor is that 1977 in New Hope, Star Wars being inspired by the National liberation front in Vietnam. It's a lot of sense, right? But what's interesting about Andor and pulling it to modern

days, obviously the historical context in which it was made, right? And the conflicts that exist within our own society that could then be reflected within Andor. And what's interesting and I think unique about the show is that it definitely takes a decentralized view of rebellion, an over-determinant view of rebellion. And even though there is a central character, I would argue that Cassian is not the only primary character, right?

There are a huge cast of primary characters that are all working simultaneously towards a similar goal. And I wouldn't even say the same goal, and their paths are just consistently getting crossed throughout the experience. Right. It's like they're an alliance of people with the same basic idea. Right. Like a mass party and not necessarily a vanguard party.

Right. Okay. All right. They're not a group of professional revolutionaries. Right. Okay. All right. They're not, they're not a group. They're not a group of professional revolutionaries. Right. There might, there might be some characters that you could identify as professional revolutionaries within them, but overall this, this is a mass party that is fighting multiple tiers of a revolution. Right. You have, you have the, the national struggle and then you have the class struggle that's going on at the same time. Right. We're talking and or not a new hope. Correct. Correct.

Because by the time it's a new hope it's 100% a fucking vanguard like right. Oh for sure. Yes Well, I mean that's the only part that's being shown in a new hope and and I think that that's what makes the show so compelling is that it gives And I think that that's what makes the show so compelling is that it gives it gives insight to the fact that, you know, like I just rewatched, uh, the rise of Skywalker, which is worse than I remembered. Terrible. Okay. So bad. But there, the, the end scene where Poe is like, Oh, there's up, you know, there's uprisings happening

all over the galaxy. Like fucking show it. Show me the uprisings. Right? Because like, just because the first order or the new or the last order is what the emperor calls it so bad, is defeated over Exegol, does not mean that it would not, it would have been successful on some random planet on the outer system. I want to see these uprisings happening. And that I think is what makes so, it makes Andor so compelling is that you have a bunch of micro-Caustic views of

all these things happening at once. It's the simmering bubbles of revolution happening. I dare say it would almost be the Maoist model of revolution happening. The protracted people's war. Right. Because they don't have an overarching thesis statement yet. Well, they only have an overarching thesis statement. They don't have a command structure and all the hierarchical things that we like in a movie because it's then two groups against each other.

But also, if you really want to see the people rising up, then you actually have to take a look at George Lucas's successful attempt to squeeze his ex-wife out of royalties. If you look at this special edition of Return of the Jedi, you actually do see that happen. It's in the last bit, instead of everybody having like the cannibalistic barbecue. Well, it's not capitalistic. The Ewoks are serving up here. Yeah. But, uh, instead of seeing that, uh, it's, it's instead the, the more flutie music and you see a whole bunch of different fucking places, including Coruscant where they topple a statue and you see one, you see one, uh, stormtrooper just.

Absolutely. You know, getting the Gaddafi treatment. Yeah. Yeah. God, except Hillary Clinton wasn't in the background laughing. Jesus Christ. But. So in other words, George Lucas got it right is really what I'm saying there.

Yeah. I mean, didn't he famously like... You Lucas apologist. Jesus Christ. Didn't he just like hang on to like the rights that came with like toy production and that's how he made most of the money for Lucasfilm? Am I getting that wrong? That's how he bankrolled it to start and then he kept backing big time fucking money makers,

right? Yeah. And he kept using SAG people for a while and WGA people for a while and the Directors Guild people for a while. And then he didn't. Like and that's why he stopped getting to collaborate with Spielberg on certain projects. Almost like the monopolization necessity to outsource production to maximize profits. Such as it was, you know, but like he absolutely did that. And then he started doing other people's special effects work. And so people were outsourcing to him.

Because through like THX and like, yeah. Exactly. And so he did all those things and became his own studio. And yeah, but it was the special editions. I used to think that those were his attempt to bankroll the original trilogy or the prequel trilogy. Turns out it was to freeze out his ex-wife because he changed them enough by like 10% or more through special effects that

she no longer got editor credit and therefore no longer got royalties. Which is the reason why you can't find anything but the remastered editions on streaming services or anywhere. Unless you got them on VHS. Yes. Exactly. Unless you have legacy copies. Yeah. Which I agree that the original song at the end of Return of Jedi was so much better.

You've heard the punk version of it, right? I have not. Who did it? Oh my God. I don't know. My friend who got her PhD studying Prairie Vols, she knew it. She knew the band because she was super into like punk rock in the mid 90s. And she would just be like, yeah, yeah, he chopped. And she just like grinded out at lunch in high school. That's what that's hardcore. Yeah. I mean, actually, it's grindcore if she granted it out, which is an actual

subgenre of punk. Okay, so George Lucas, Marxist luminary. Go on. So leading, okay, go on. One day that'll be my boot stamping a man in the face. Yeah. So kind of, kind of going back to like the, the beginning of, of Andor is like a, a, a creation that came out of like Tony, Tony Gilroy and Diego Luna after broke one came out, which we kind of talked about in the last episode, which was the, you know, the, the story about the people that stole the plan from the desk store for the death star one and

how to destroy it. Right. And the backstory of that kind of rebellion. I think it's really interesting to note that that Tony Gilroy has very explicitly said that and or was not meant to be a political statement. Right. That like it wasn't meant to be political at all was actually what he said. You know, famously, famously Tolkien said that the Lord of the Rings wasn't an allegory either, but like, dude, you fall backward. How do you, how do you had a little bit of the halflings leaf when he said that? Cause it might have clouded his mind. Yeah. I, he, he probably had had three or four pints.

So, you know. Well, and that brings us to what we say on this show regularly and religiously. And that is, Ed, you're the one who says it best. Authorial intent means dick. Yes. Yep. Yep. Yep.

But interestingly enough, on top of him saying that it wasn't meant to be political, he also said that Andor, Cassian Andor's character was inspired by none pre 1917 Joseph Stalin, the dashing rogue bank robber that was funding a revolution. Is he just talking like that? Almost sounds like because, you know, a lot of people like, oh, George Lucas didn't write the Empire's America. That's clearly Germany because they're only looking at the aesthetic. Are we talking, here's a guy that backfilled other stuff because he liked the aesthetic?

Possibly. Okay. But I do think that Diego Luna also had a heavy hand in the portrayal of the character and then the story that kind of was produced from it, because for the folks who aren't super familiar with Diego Luna's work, he has a very interesting history being cast in communist roles. So he actually played Renato Gerttart in the HBO direct to TV 2002 production of Fidel, which is an HBO production on Fidel Castro and

kind of vaguely the Cuban revolution, but primarily Fidel. And he plays one of the rebels that Fidel recruits to storm the Moncada Barracks, which I would argue is an inspiration for a big part of Andor. Okay. Okay, right. He also played Alex Last Name Unknown in the movie Frida with Selma Hayek. He's supposed to be Frida Kahlo's previous boyfriend before her kind of almost fatal

bus accident. And he is the person who inspires Frida Kahlo in the movie. I cannot confirm if this really happened in real life or it was dramaticized, to read Karl Marx and, and Hegel, um, and, and says that Frieda reads them out of order and that influences her understanding of Marx because she read Marx first and then Hegel second rather than the other way around. Um, yeah. And so I think that it's on top of Diego Luna's kind of like political activism in the real world. His outspoken opposition to like the border wall, to the immigration policies during the Trump era, his insistence that he raised his children in Mexico and not part of the United

States kind of imperial system was, I think had a lot of influence on how this character is portrayed. And I, I mean, I cannot say for certainty, but I can make an assumption that if you happen to play a lot of roles that are, are Marxists, that like, there's, there's gotta be some some kind of feeling that you have about that, right? Maybe you don't consider yourself a Marxist, but you might clearly identify with some of the ideology, maybe some of the positioning, theoretical. There might be some sympathy going on. Exactly.

Yes. I mean, we've seen this with other actors. Dennis Hopper is clearly nuts, you know. You know, you know, you got other actors, you know, Jack Palance always played ass kickers. Yeah. And he kind of, you know, people begin to believe their own cave. Yeah. I mean, it's like the Duke, you know, he wasn't going to be playing any communists. So right. You know, yeah. I mean, you know, there's again, believing their own hype kind of thing. Yeah. You know, Wesley Snipes constantly playing Wesley Snipes. Jack Black constantly playing Jack Black. There you go.

Ronald Reagan constantly playing Ronald Reagan. Yeah. Even when he's with a monkey. I mean, he's like, I don't know who was more of a primate in the situation, but you know, I digress. Yeah. But you see that and you hear that from actors later and they're like, oh no, I really came to understand who this person was. They will say that on the regular to the point where it's almost tropey.

So I could certainly see that actually being true. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Or, and we could, I mean, shit, we brought up Heath Ledger earlier. We could point out that the things that he went through to get into character ultimately were contributing factors to his demise. Yes, for sure. 100%.

And so, and Michael B. Jordan is another really good example. Thank goodness not dead or anything, but like, he absolutely was a miserable person to be around while he was playing Killmonger because he got so into that character and that's where he needed to go for it. So, it makes sense. For sure. Alright, so I want to kind of do like a... and I think that you guys will enjoy this part. For anyone who's enjoyed the show, I think that it's important to kind of break down the settings that Andor has and, uh, um, like the planets, et cetera. Um, so not where Andor was born, um, but where he primarily grew up is, is Ferrex.

And I think that from Grimy Brick Town basically, right? Grimy Brick Town. Yes. Where I think that from Grimy, Bricktown basically, right? Grimy Bricktown. Yes. Where, where the dead are literally turned into bricks. Sure. Right. And, and become a part of the permanent structure of the city. Um, from, from like an, uh, a Marxist lens is, is the Soviet, right? And I don't mean like the Soviet Union. I mean, the Soviet as like the centralized collective of workers prior to the revolution, right?

And the, probably the more advanced theoretical, theoretically speaking workers, right? But I think some really interesting points about how they film ferrics, that they all the workers are are relatively wearing similar uniforms, but different. Right. They're not all uniform in the same way that the empire is. Right. They have variations of colors They're not all uniform in the same way that the empire is, right? They have variations of colors. Um, and they have a wall where at the end of their shift,

they all put their gloves communally. Yes. And no one's and no one steals them. Right. Yeah. And the expectation is that I will come back and be able to get them because we're all in this together, right? There's that very communal understanding of like our shared prosperity. Um, and when Marva spoiler alert, when, when Marva dies, Marva is Cassie and Andor's adoptive mother. Um, you know, she, she, uh, gets raised up, which is she gets projected for all the surviving members of ferrics and tells kind of her, her like dying soliloquy. Is that the correct? Yeah. Her own self eulogy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Essentially. Um, and, and she

talks about how important it was that during her lifetime, no matter what happened outside of Pherex, they always had each other, right? This idea of this communal spirit, right? That they were always regard and the empire used them, right? The empire utilized their, their position within the galaxy. They would bring their ships to get fixed or whatever it was that they were working on. And then they would leave us and it was fine because we had. Ferrex we had each other. Right. Right. And it did not matter what the empire did, but then, you know, that her,

her speech ends with her a call to rise up, right? Because it is no longer, you can no longer ignore the outside? Because it is no longer, you can no longer ignore the outside world. You can no longer ignore what's going on in the outside system. So you have to, you have to take on the oppression that's happening, even if it's not fully affecting them, but it had started to. And that was when she had committed herself to like, well, I've been ignoring these bastards, but now I got to fight them.

committed herself to like, well, I've been ignoring these bastards, but now I got to fight them. Well, tell me you're going to get to my favorite part of that though. What, the droid getting kicked over? No, no, because she got made into a brick. And getting hit with the brick. Right. I mean, there's two things about that part that I really enjoy. One, the call back to Haymarket Square in 1886 with the bomb being thrown. And then the soldiers firing wildly into the crowd. And then the brick being thrown, which is, I think, a call back to Stonewall. Or what were you going to say? I was going to say 68 in France. Oh yeah.

Cobblestones. Cobblestones. Yeah. No, I was going to say she struck the first blow because she is a brick at that point. It's her brick that they used to strike the first blow. She started it like in thought, word and deed. In body, her very body was the first blow. And I just found that so gratifying because it is a elderly woman who has been

ground down by her work her whole life, who died in early death because of how little care there was, as hardscrabble as they were. And in her call to unity and things like that, her words were such a threat that in many ways, the actual violence done with her body, which again, it was her body, the actual violence done with her body was mere punctuation to it. But she still, you know, an exclamation point is the smallest part of the sentence, but it still makes you yell it. Yeah. Love that. Yeah. But anyway, that's the part that I love,

that it's not just some dashing, perhaps greasy-haired, because he hasn't bathed enough, revolutionary who's doing it. Right. Again, calling back to Stalin. But, Yeah.

But, you know, it's not someone like- Did he have wet toes? You're just. But it's not someone like that doing it. It is the least likely and most effective person. And in many ways, it's kind of a echo forward, or what do we call it, foreshadowing, of Mon Mothma being the leader of the rebellion.

Again, a middle-aged woman. Right. But I have some things to say about Mon Mato. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. The liberal wing has reported in. But like, Marva, she absolutely is the cornerstone, if you will, of the rebellion. Isn't that also what Jesus was called? All right, like he was he was the cornerstone. Yes, I still that has been rejected. It has become the cornerstone. Yes. Wow, okay

My my religious and upbringings coming into play. Yes, and the vice president of the Confederacy can eat a bag of dicks Yes, yes Always always pointed yes, just throwing that out there. So, so there's that. They're all wearing orange, by the way. Muted earth colors it's like orange they got some mustard yellow even like a variation of green. There's, there's. Um, but yeah, I do think that that's really, you know, it, from, from my perspective in contrast to the empire where everyone's wearing exactly the same thing, you know, all the

ranks at least shows, um, you know, community without uniformity. Yes. Which is a really important, I think if we're talking about our own sense of cultural counter hegemonic portrayals, right? Is, is emphasizing the community over uniformity and, and expression over oppression, you know, um, the other, uh, previous planet that, uh, and, or was a part of, um, which is Canary, which is where... This is the jungle planet with the big sinkholes, right? Yes. Yeah.

And what's really interesting about Canary, and I didn't realize this until I had been doing research for this episode. And you can tell me if I was naive to not realize this at first was that the strip mining that was taking place on Canary was happening during the old Republic or during the Republic era, right? Prior to the Empire. Yes. And Marva mentions that there was an Imperial accident that led to a bunch of deaths and poisoning, but the strip mining part was actually taking place

under the Republic. Yeah, the Empire just took over. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that that, you know, if we're talking about the role of imperialism, especially under bourgeois democracy of the Republic era, that the exploitation of the underdeveloped systems, right?

For the support of the more developed systems or the working class and capitalist class of the more developed systems. I think that the, the, um, canary planet is, is a really good example of that, right? That we have, especially now in the United States, like I just saw, you know, there's been a lot of light being shone, shined, shined, shined on like the cobalt mining process of, for smartphones. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that, for smartphones. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think that that, you know, you think about the colonial exploitation of the 18th and 19th century and a lot of folks tend to dismiss how it's applied in the 20th and 21st century, but the examples are very clearly evident. No, no. It was only true under the Belgians and there were black and white photos. It's never happened since then. I mean, there was that one video of that Lumumba guy on top of a thing, but who knows what happened.

It was probably somebody else in Africa that got him. Bo Paul, anyone? The whole, you know, the, the, every time, every time the, the mention of whatever the disaster was that killed everybody on, on Canary, every time that came up, that's what I thought of was Bhopal and, and Union Carbide. That was my, that, that was what, what dinged in my own head. Yeah, which is another perfect example of this Absolutely same same idea. Yeah quite so Yeah, that's canary. So and then you mentioned chorus on I believe in the last episode of primary Maybe this one and and then you have you know chorus on which is is the Imperial Corps? And it is the center

of like the bourgeois Republic. You know, obviously the Republic's done at the time of Andor, but you still have like the Senate and all of the kind of political representatives of all of the systems that exist and still have some kind of political representation, but completely out of touch with completely out of touch and completely separated. Right. Um, and, and that is exemplified in a lot of different ways, um, throughout

the show with their, their clothing, um, with their language, with their entertainment, with their consumption of commodities. All of those things are vastly different. If you took a side by side of Ferrix in particular and Coruscant, you have a very, this bifurcation of the wealthy, well- the wealthy, well-padded, right. Very well off individuals. Um, and then the, the very working class, very proletariat folks that are very communal. Um, and, and they're even that scene, I think it's in the first episode where I don't remember the character's name approaches Cassian, um, about a debt that's owed and like,

nothing happens. There's no, there's no fight, right? There's no physical confrontation. They're just kind of like, ah, all right. Like, well, maybe if you don't pay up, like next time, like there's still that. Yeah. He did bring, he brought muscle with him. Like the violence was threatened. Right. Yeah. He brought muscle with him. The violence was threatened. Right. But you're absolutely right. But then Andor calls out the muscle and says, really, are you really prepared to do this?

And the guy's like, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Not really. Well, you know, he told me to come along. Can we discuss Pherex a little bit more, just real quick? The jobs that they're doing on ferrics are specifically stripping out vehicles. Right?

It's junk yarding. It's taking what capital has built in order to strip other places. Cause that is in many ways what Marva's job was. places because that is in many ways what Marva's job was. So we've established that you use, you know, interstellar flight to go from place to place to take things. And they're stripping them out and making them useful in other ways. They're cannibalizing the very things that are giving Coruscant what it wants. Mm-hmm. I got the sense, talking specifically about Marva and Andor's adoptive father, whose name I don't recall. Yeah.

When they showed up and found him, I distinctly got the idea that what they were doing was semi-legal at best. Like it was, they were- Like, salvage, they were... Salvage unless they get caught? Salvage unless they get caught, like, you know, and, and I wonder, since we're kind of talking about that, would that make them, in that context, part of the, was it lumpen proletariat? Yes. I would say that there's definitely an argument to be made

that they could potentially be classified as Lumpen, but I also think that because the Empire was able to utilize them in a faction that was clearly to their benefit and not a proxy of their benefit, that it would put them more into the proletariat. Okay. Well, are you talking about on ferrics or are you talking about the, the flashback to, um, uh, shit, I forget the name of the place. Casio.

Canary. Canary. Thank you. I was talking about ferrics. Okay. I think Ed was asking about Canary. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. In the context of when they showed up on Canary and found Andor, it was really clear that, you know, yes, yes. Oh shit.

It's the, it's the cops. We've got to, you know, we got to grab the kid and get out of here. Yeah. We can't hang out. A hundred percent. Yeah. Definitely. By the way, it kind of highlights an interesting fact. When they were lumping proletariat under a democratic regime that had lost touch with everything, they were quasi-legal. But once they were legal under an empire whose boot heel was grinding everyone, but hey, at least we're legal, their shit never got fixed. They were still using the same old things and it wasn't shiny anymore.

It was very much, you are going to make do with what you got now. It's an empire of neglect. Yeah. And an interesting metaphor for how fascism is able to utilize clandestine activity in order to propagate itself. Yeah. Yeah. Also, again, it's under the Democratic regime, the quasi, the K-Fabe Democratic regime

of the Republic that gets all those kids killed on Canary. Yes. Yeah. Or leaves them without parents, at least. Right. Whereas, wherein one of them is suspected to have been sold into sex work. Yeah, right. Yeah, his sister. Right. Unnamed. Yeah.

It's under the Empire that things are a lot grimmer and darker than kids getting killed. Right. But the reality is, again, it's under the K-Fabe Republic that the kids get killed. And nobody really, everybody's like, yeah, but the empire is worse. And it's like, yes, they are. And like- Yeah, can we talk about the system

that was here previously? It was just shinier and more colorful in some way. There was a rainbow flag on the bottom of the boat. So, you know, so it's OK. So there you go. Yeah. You had the Jedi who were the guardians of peace, who showed up on a planet to not free slaves. I still have so many problems with that.

Using a child's labor to reach yourself enough to get out of there. It's bringing a slave and then immediately having them call you master. Well, OK, but there's a difference between, you know, economics and cult. That's true. State sponsored cult. State sanctioned at the very least. Oh, OK. Oh, I'm sorry. Sanctioned call. I love it. I'm here for it.

I like what the jobs witnesses are because they're tax exempt. Um, I'm all of them are tax exempt. Yeah, I know. But like Jones, when is this our call in a way that other related design? And I'm saying that as someone who was raised as one. So, OK, well, yeah. But but as the as the catholic in the room you you said what you just said damien and I immediately went Am I now going to have to do an analysis of the yes jedi order in the republic as compared to the church?

Under the roman emperors. Yes, like son of a bitch. Yes. Yeah, damn it. All right fine The the fun thing about your gallon working. Yeah The fun thing about this show is that I actually never do Star Wars episodes Yeah, I hate the fact that I'm the big fan Yeah, yeah, because because I'm the one that like five and that. I'm like, well now I have an axe to grind, right? like like like the whole the whole the whole Jedi Order is just like shitty Buddhism and no understanding of Real world, it's truly based Buddhism. I mean again George Lucas is not a philosopher Yes, like a patchouli-based Buddhism.

Yeah. But okay, so back to... So yes, on Canary, they are the lump and proletariat because they're acting quasi-legally. But when they're on pharix, they're actually more proletariat, which shows that Marxist timeline of like there are phases. Right. And the revolutionary potential. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And also I think a good comparison because you have on the Canary planet, like an indigenous

population, right? That has been exploited by an Imperial center. And then you have also on Aldani, which is where the robbery takes place, right? Where they steal the Imperial bankroll. Also, they have an indigenous society that exists there with the empire in full force. Right. Right. Right. Right. And they do a lot of, uh, you know, like paying credence to like the

indigenous practices and the indigenous holidays of the people that exists there. And, and interestingly enough, their, um, their costume choices are very similar to like Circassian culture, uh, out of, of, uh, like, uh, you said it in the last episode, the Urals, right? Like there are certain sections of what was Imperial Russia. Like these, these cultures that existed outside of, we're not Russian, right? But we're local. Right. But we're local. And kind of the implications of the strategic point that Aldani holds politically and exploiting that from the imperialist center to an underdeveloped culture, right, and exploiting that for the sake and use of, of the empire.

And they're, and they're direct co-opting of the Aldani, uh, uh, cultural, religious cultural practices to, to try to, to try to legitimize, locally legitimize their, their presence and involvement. Absolutely. Yeah. That scene where the Imperial, you know, the officer gives, yeah, that gives the, like, animal skin or whatever it was to one of the indigenous leaders as a show of respect. And it's like, to again, legitimize their role in the system. Yeah. Now I'm going to throw a little bit of sand in the ointment because it helps to exfoliate.

Under the Republic, they exploited people who were darker-hued. They exploited people and took their shit and showed no respect for their culture. And in fact, the only reason that there was any real interaction between Cassian and Marva, I think, was there was a ship that had crashed or something, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, and then under the Empire the objectively more evil Empire The Aldani were at least paid lip service and they were in on it too. They knew what bullshit this was Okay, fab. Okay fab. Yeah, but but at least there was the pretense of respecting their beliefs, which allows them to keep their culture intact a little longer. To a certain degree, yeah.

And they're lighter-hued, too. Just kind of interesting, you go from the tropics to the Urals, it just kind of interesting you go, you know, wider along the gradient, but also under the Empire. I hate this, but they showed more respect to the local culture than did the New Republic. anti corporate, like, like the the, the bourgeois sham democracy of the republic is a corporatist kind of empire. I mean, it's fascist. So yeah, I mean, like what's fascism is the conjoining of corporatism and statism. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, yeah. But that was the of corporatism and statism. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. But that was the Trade Federation trying to break away. Yeah. The separatists. Yeah. I feel like I feel like the the the the the the bad guy that we're being pointed at, you know, fantasy. Fantasy isn't about the past and science fiction isn't about the future. Both of them are about the present right? you know, and I feel like when they depict the bad shit going on under the uh

Under the republic. Yeah It is a very presentist kind of oh, hey look at the bad shit apple is doing As a as an entity separate from the government You know oh By the government, but lights it's United Fruit Company. Yeah Great yeah there you go Where is whereas you know the Empire is wealthy you know these guys are clearly these are not bad guy tyrant Nazis You know, they're they're part of the government their military dictatorship, you know

and I and I feel like that's the the Under letting they're letting the do the policing for them. Yeah, whereas like yeah Yeah, whereas these people are you know strip mining? I mean that's that I mean, that's kind of the feeling I got while I was watching it. Yeah. I just, this is just one of those things that like, I love Star Wars, up, down, left, right, and center. It always shows me where my blind spots are. Like, again, the Republic is objectively better than the Empire, because they're accidentally

and incidentally genociding as opposed to directly genociding. As opposed to doing it on purpose and with a schedule. And up until the Battle of Yavin, they have a Senate that is able to at least speak on behalf of, of some of the systems, right? Until they're, they're dissolved. And it's that kind of facade of democracy wearing away as the trans, you know, the transference from, from a Republic to a complete fascistic dictator to an empire. Right. Yeah.

Well, and it's the same guy who says in episode one, you know, basically that this place is rotting from within. That's why you elect me. Hey, Julius, how are you doing? Right. I mean, it's also Trump. You know, history doesn't rhyme I mean it's Also Trump, you know history doesn't rhyme but it sure or history doesn't repeat itself, but sure sure sure right? I'm the only person that knows how this system works. So elect me. I've been exploiting all of the fucking Loopholes. Yeah Alone

Jimmy fucking Christmas. Yeah. Okay, so that's just back to Ferex. They are again with their hands, with their tools, which are apparently communally held. If not privately owned or personally owned, they're at least

communally held. They are stripping out what is useful of what used to be shiny and new. And there's something to that for me because now the only people with shiny new shit are the Empire. Right. They're the only ones that have new shit. Those TIE fighters look slick, man. Like those floors are polished as fuck. Check out the lines on that mouse droid. But everything else, not new, not new at all. Used future in a big way.

As much as it pains me to say, one of the few accomplishments that I really appreciated about The Last Jedi was the scene where Benicio del Toro's character, I cannot remember his name because it was terrible, showed Beze. Beze, yeah. No, BD. Oh, BD. Okay. That's a little bit better than Beze. Okay. where he showed that when they hijacked the ship that it belonged to a weapons dealer that was supplying both the Republic or the New Republic and the First Order. Because although in the original Star Wars, it was clear that the Empire did have all the shiny

toys and that the rebellion was working off of old public shit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Y wings that didn't make any sense physiologically. That like eventually it got to a point where, you know, weapons manufacturers got a weapons manufacturer. Like, yeah, this is, this is a Lockheed Martin and, uh, what's the other one? Yeah, right racing. Yeah, right the general dynamics Yeah, you know, I will say this there were lines in Return of the Jedi and then later in the EU which is no longer canon

I recognize that but in return of the Jedi one of the rebel fleet amassing near solace solace is where income was was based, and the Incom Corporation is actually the first corporation to legitimize the rebellion by selling them Incom T-65 X-Wings. Those are Incom. That was Incom. And then Salist also jumped on board as well. So they started, again, that rebellion grew and grew and grew once they got a hierarchy, apparently, because then arms manufacturers could sell to them. Okay, yeah, you're right. It was Incom. I, for whatever reason, I was thinking, wait,

Incom, I thought Incom built Tie Fighter. No, Tie Fighter was C&R Fleet Systems. Yeah thought income build tie fighter. No tie fighter was seeing our fleet system Yeah, she's come on. Yeah, I I'm sorry amateur shit. Yeah, okay. Like oh Marison didn't make stun grenades Come on They also Yeah, sorry now I just had a stroke So, okay, so but yeah on ferrics they are they are repurposing The tools by which a generation earlier people were robbed of their families. Mm-hmm. Yeah and and also

At the beginning of the series Mm-hmm at the beginning of the series ferrics and Nearby other systems are not under direct imperial control correct They're under the control of corporations corporate sector. Yep Yep, and the first and the first Cops that that we encounter are not first and the first ops that that we encounter are not imperial soldiers. Right.

Their core sack, aren't they? They're yeah, they're, they're, they're corpse sack security. And, and, and then they are just as bad as every mall cop in the world. Uh, only, only, only, only they're more heavily armed. With the inflated sense of importance. Yeah. That like, so more, more Lana one is the name of the corporate outpost that has jurisdiction over ferrics. Yeah.

Um, and I, yeah, that perfect, perfect segue. You might be the master of segues because I get them. I get them right. Occasionally they, they corporate. I mean, okay. You're both history teachers. We all have that background. When you watched and or for the first time, what I, I'm, I'm really interested if we were all in line with our media association. What did you first think of when you saw the corporate masters on Morlana 1 as a historical parallel? Oh, a historical one.

Because as a Star Wars parallel, I was like, oh shit, Taylor're, they're, Taylor's the same guy as on Bespin. Like, you look at the cloud guards. There's, there's that. Yeah. I mean, historically, it wasn't something, it wasn't an association I made immediately as I was watching it, but you know, upon reflection, it's British East India Company is the first thing I thought of. Historically, in a science fiction sense,

of course, I thought of Choam, but you know. Mm, okay. I'm gonna look up the Dune. But I'm the only one doing that here. God damn Dune. So yeah, you know. I'm gonna look up the outfits again, because I'm not remembering what they look like other than the blue kind

of like red piping, right? Like almost Civil War looking hat. I feel like that's an insult against Civil War. Frankly, they look terrible hats. They're there. They're just the shittiest hats there. They're they're they're just the shittiest hats there it's it is it is very clear like to me The hats are an imitation of the you know staff officer kind of you know peeked caps Uh, but but bad But like wish version of it looked like they look like early police officers in uhca turn of the century New York to me. Yeah.

That button over. Okay. I thought of Pinkerton's. Okay. Yeah, that's that. I think I said that. No. It works. Yeah.

Oh, you're right. Actually, okay. I mean, like, I do see that, yeah. They weren't, you know, put weren't put down a particular like workers uprising or like unionization efforts. So the parallel kind of breaks at the corporate and then cop part. But the fact that the empire was able to come in and pull support once they were, were, were incapable of fulfilling their role of maintaining order was, was kind of that, that feeling that I had of, of the historical parallels where it was just like, you're, you're no longer relevant or useful to us.

Right. So we're, we're going to pull our, our, our support, our finances, our resources, and, and we are taking over jurisdiction. We're taking control of the situation. And that's the point where Ferex becomes anti-imperial, despite having a tremendous amount of contact with the empire prior to that. And they were under corporate control,

but it was kind of this laissez-faire, when Andor kills the two, uh, security officers in the first episode, you, you get the sense that there's this, um, this relationship between him and, and the court, you know, the police on ferrics, um, that like, yeah, they're an oppressive force, but they're not, they don't have total control over the system, right? People are able to still exist and do the things that they want to do. They don't have a curfew, right? They beat cops who realize that they're outnumbered.

Right. Exactly. Right. They they make it. Who realize that they're outnumbered. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they realize they're outnumbered and they're not really very they're just not very highly motivated. Yeah. I mean, he meets them at like a 3D strip club, which is basically very weird. Hell. Yeah.

Yeah. I didn't I didn't see the Pinkerton aesthetic connection, but I can certainly now that you now that you named the Pinkerton aesthetic connection, but I can certainly now that you now that you named the Pinkerton's I'm like, oh yes, private security. Okay. Yeah. Paid for by. Yeah. They're not too different than railway bulls. Yeah. Yeah. So all right. So what's what's the next place? Because we're going settings, right? OK, yes. So the next and I think most important in and or is Narcena five.

OK, which you want to circle back around to Coruscant, though. But OK, yes. Yeah. Narcena five is is the prison planet that Cassian gets sent to after. you know, in straight United States fashion, just being hassled by a cop, which is a stormtrooper. And then, and then being put in front of a judge who has no time or sympathy to listen to anything other than like, this is the new way that we process it. You, you know, you potentially had a public defender. He didn't have any legal representation, but

this is as, as a parallel to our system. He had a public defender coming out, rubber stamped him. You get five years or I think it was- Mandatory minimums. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But by the way, uh, the, the cop who hassled him was played by none other than Sam Witwer the guy behind the voice of Palpatine in the uh, the Clone Wars cartoons as well as um The guy behind the voice or he was also, uh, darth maul in the uh cartoons Uh, but also if you start killer and the Force Awakens, right?

There you go. I was gonna finish up with that, but he was the other... No, it's fine. He was the Dark Side apprentice. Damn, that was my favorite Star Wars video game. It was so fun. I mean, other than Shadow of the Empire on Nintendo 64. Oh, okay.

Which is Dash Rendar, I mean, great character. Sure. Great character. But Narcina V is where he gets sent to prison, essentially a prison camp, which I believe, why am I blanking on his name now? Tony Gilroy said that he was inspired by the Gulag system, which I think is kind of, you know, there's a lot of prison camps.

The prison industrial complex in the United States, I think would have been a more relevant comparison to the way Narcina five is set up. Inspired by doesn't mean educated about. Yes. Yeah. And, and, and, or, you know, gets put into, uh, these, these groups, which they are, are set producing. And we don't find out what they're producing until the end of the season in the

little post credit scene, which I thought was fantastic that they're producing these things, the widgets essentially, right? It doesn't really mean anything what they are. But they are essentially, in my opinion, exemplifying Taylorism in the way that they produce these things, right? Like each person has a very specific set of tasks that they have to accomplish. They do only those things. And then they compete with each other, with other workers to shave off time to produce more than they did than the other workers.

And their prize is like getting taste in their food, which is incredibly morose. like getting taste in their food, which is incredibly morose. And they, uh, what, what I think is interesting about that is, is bringing it back to, to Gramsci that like Gramsci had a pretty, uh, robust criticism of Taylorism as a product of cultural hegemony, that Taylorism was accepted by working class people because of the extensive propaganda campaign that the capitalist class put into play to build normalization around the

usefulness of productivity and the elimination of downtime in work. and the elimination of downtime in work. Right. Like that. The very fame. I worked a lot of retail jobs in my life. And when I worked at Starbucks, I was always told if you have time to lean, you have time to clean. Yeah. Right. I fucking hated that phrase when I was working in those positions.

Like, screw you, man. I was like the you don't get to sit down thing. It's like, dude, fucking have you ever been like overseas? Everybody has stools that like you're largely standing at, but you're a little bit seated at so that you don't get varicose veins. Right. And it's also incredibly ableist to assume that everyone is capable of standing up, even if you don't have a visible disability,

the fact that it just hurts, fucking hurts to stand for eight hours a day. Oh, my favorite was I worked at a place where we had shelves, floor to ceiling shelves. You were not allowed to kneel or sit to take care of the bottom shelves. You had to bend down. You had to get on your haunches.

You could not kneel or sit. You couldn't let the ground do the work of keeping you up. You're only like- I would break that place down. Yeah. It's just, who was that? That was, they had computers. Producer George and I worked there.

And it was just, it was a norm. It was a thing. And it was, I mean, honestly, we only had an inventory of like two or three things per shelf anyway, because it's all computer shit, right? Well, it's not backbreaking work or anything like that, but like fucking hell. And the idea was customers don't want to see people sitting. It looks lazy. And it's like, well, this is Walnut Creek.

This makes sense. Yeah. All right. So, well, I mean, yeah, Walnut Creek, that speaks for itself. It really, really does. The place that wishes it was Orange County of the North. So also a side note on the Orange County. Wait, wait. Orange County of the North. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You like that? Yeah.

I did. Yeah. Took me a second. Needed to like saturate. Yeah. No, that's a massive indictment. I just need to say. Yeah. And it's not wrong.

No. Yeah. No. I have a sister who lives in, or lived in very lived in for a very long time in San Clemente, which is close to Orange County. And according to her, they never had a pandemic. Right. You know, nothing ever shut down. No one ever wore masks. Oh, no. Yeah, no. They're batshit crazy down there.

That's that's one of those I can't be a racist because racism is a crime and that's only for the blacks. Like, it's that same kind of, you know. But. Also, an interesting side note on the Narcena five and I'm not sure if this was the intention, but their prison uniforms are all white with orange kind of piping and stylings. And I thought it was an interesting inflection

of the inversion. Inversion, thank you, of the rebel pilot uniforms. Yes. Yeah. I loved the use of orange amongst all people who were in some way oppressed. Orange is one of my least favorite colors. I think it's an anti-redhead bias thing that I have.

But the use of the color orange to signal immediately, it's just kind of like the use of the color of olive drab is a great way to signal to people, like, oh, these are the empire. And it's the color of orange is always going to be rebels Orange and tan like yeah earth tones that kind of shit. It's interesting cuz I really like olive drab and I dislike orange I don't know what that says about me. I mean, I'm literally wearing kind of an olive drabby kind of shirt Yeah, yeah, but yeah, I just I think it's because I'm a winter. I just don't like orange

Yeah, well, yeah, that would do it But okay, so can we yeah, yeah, you're an arcana. Yeah, so also by the way narcina five You have a planet that has multiple Genomes on it genome. No biomes on it. Genome? No, biomes on it. Mostly water, but it's got a shore. And this is something I noticed with Rogue One, was that in Rogue One, it was the first time we had seen planets that had a,

what I call the transitional environment. Because in the original trilogy, the holy trilogy, you had the sand planet, the snow planet, the swamp planet, the forest planet, right? Technically the forest moon, but you get the idea. And of course you had the cloud planet. The lava planet. Right, you know, and then you get to the prequel trilogy

and you have the Byzantium planet. Right. You know, and then you get to the prequel trilogy and you have the Byzantium planet. You know, oh, you had Yavin, which was the jungle planet you have, you know, everything was the this planet, right? Yeah. And it didn't really change. I guess you could say that on Naboo, you saw a city but then you also saw an underwater city and you saw a field. And like you could argue that those are different. Yeah. Yeah. Kashyyyk it was yeah you had the archipelago but it was basically just the whole thing was seen as an archipelago which bothered me as an EU fan because like I was like where are the fucking giant trees that are 20,000 years old. Yeah.

But OK fine this is the one spot that didn't have those trees all right yeah yeah um but they still just showed you a monolithic planet for Kashyyyk even right yeah and Coruscant was the city planet you know that's what we told Anakin um but then you you get to Rogue One and you actually have a planet that has a shore and you have a transitional topography on some level. You also have that on Jedha. It's high plateau deserts, but you actually have the contrast of that and the city and going into it. Like you have transitional set pieces now.

I think some of it had to do with your ability to do technologically to do these kinds of things. But we again see largely just singular biomes in our planets on episode 7. But then we get to Rogue One and you actually have... Or I'm sorry, you get to Andor and you actually have a planet that is... Oh, and by the way, you had Kamino, which was just all water. But now you've got a whole lot of water, but you can actually swim to a land that will support you physically. And there's something about that. The influence on their dietary structure alone would be huge, huge magnitude.

No more blue milk. You even had Luke on the Ireland planet. But you have, you know, you even had Luke on the, you know, Ireland planet, you know, just... But you have with Narcena 5, you have a transition from, I am drowning, I am all alone, I am isolated, there is no escape from this, it is unending, to, I finally found a place where I can rest. Mm-hmm. Like actually physically. And of course, rest doesn't come because they get captured by the guys.

But I just, kind of interesting, that was the one planet that you saw transitional topography again. Yeah. Mm-hmm. But actually, is it okay if we circle back around to Coruscant or do you have another planet? No, I just want to kind of wrap the part about Narquina that I want to end on before we go into Coruscant is that it is the scene of the workers' rebellion, right? And we can talk more about that

later with the characters that are participating in that workers' rebellion and what they mean from a Marxist standpoint. But yes, to to Coruscant. Yeah, the Imperial Corps, right? The center of bourgeois politics. Right. Um, you know, we, we first, I think first here of Coruscant, which is it in Empire? It's named, it's named in episode one. Prior to that, it had not been the first time trilogy.

Yeah. And it's pulled directly from the EU books, which at that time, we're still under the purview of Lucas and it's first named in the Thrawn trilogy in heir to the empire. It's within the first, uh, first four chapters. Um, so I'm going to quibble. Is it first named in the throng trilogy or is it first named in the West End role playing game materials? Uh, Ooh, I think that it's in the throng trilogy.

Um, okay. Yeah. I think so. I genuinely think so. All right. Um, right. Yeah, I think so. I genuinely think so. All right. Yeah, that's that. You're making me wonder though. I like it. I like it. Cool. Okay, so you have several set pieces set on Coruscant. You have... On Motho's apartment, right. Which is fucking enormous. And, but again, it's an apartment, right? So it's got a very New York

vibe. And, and it's provided to her from the empire, right? Like, or the Senate, like her position in the Senate allows her to live there. Um, and then you also have like Lutheran's shop of antiquities. Yeah. Yeah. And another great spot. And that's clearly in a lower level. Like it is it is set very clearly. The ceilings are lower. Everything is darker. There is shade. She's coming down to it.

There is a lot. I mean, you know, when you have a planet where built, he's the petty bourgeoisie. Yes. I mean, yeah, yeah. And we didn't talk about that in the last episode, but I did say that there are a lot of other sub student class positions within Marxist analysis.

It's not just the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. We talked about the lump in, but within the bourgeoisie, you have that the petty bourgeoisie, the shop owners, right? The mercantile class that aren't, they don't necessarily, I mean, he has a worker, right?

He might be exploiting her labor, but obviously, in the context of the show, she is part of the rebellion and part of the facade that he's putting on. But the, you know, kind of small mom and pop shop owners who exploit labor, right? But they don't, they don't have a tremendous amount of control over the means of production or political power. They might wield it in the sense that politicians are more aligned with paying credence to their needs. Like, oh, we have to think about the middle class, we have to think about business owners, we have to think about entrepreneurs, but they don't really give a shit about them

at the end of the day, right? It's about the corporate people who are paying their fees, who are giving the money that they're going to align with. They'll use them as the scutch in for what they do, but they certainly don't actually, you know, they will speak to their love of the Petite Bourgeoisie while then funding through, you know, tax exemptions for 20 years, giant stores, which will then immediately pull away and go overseas. Yeah. And what I love about Lutheran's shop is the variety of objects that he has in it.

It should just be the fucking British Museum at that point. They're just the things that were stolen from other cultures. And you used- So what were some of your favorite ones that you saw? I mean, I saw the Gungan shield, which was one of my favorites. And then also, oh God, what was...

One of the bludgeoning weapon that he shows Mon Mothma? Yeah. What was that from? It's slipping. Yeah, I know. I know what you're talking about, but I don't remember the description of it. Yeah, it's. Oh, fuck. Yeah, is it a Mandalorian? I was going to say, isn't it a Mandalorian crush gauntlet? Yes. Yeah, I think that it's, um. Oh, fuck. Yeah, is it a Mandalorian? I was going to say, isn't it a Mandalorian crush gauntlet?

Yes. Yeah, I think that's what it is. Yeah, something like that. But yeah, there's also. He has an Amidala headpiece, like when she was pretending to be a refugee, which, yeah, yeah, weirdest cosplay ever. My my favorite, though, was that they had. Oh, God, there are My favorite though was that they had, oh God, there were three things that they had. I was like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.

One was if you played the Star Wars Clone Wars, or if you watched the Star Wars Clone Wars animated series, you saw a Jedi Temple Guard mask. Oh, that's right. Yes. Yeah, and they also show up in Rebels fighting Kanan. Yeah, that's right. That's right. You also, speaking of Starkiller, his helmet,

when he Dark Lords it up, when you can get to the end and you make him the Dark Lord kind of thing, you see that helmet. If you if you scroll past you like and that's what I love. I never got that far in the game. Oh, but also there was there were two holocrons. Yeah, I do think that I recognize the holocron. Yeah. Yeah.

And of course, did you guys notice the the Indiana Jones reference, the the the return back? They had Sankara stones. You did not. Yeah. I did not see that. Yeah. But OK, so Lutheran shop, right? There's. What do you call it?

There's there's this aspect of going into the underground, going ultimately, it's almost hero's journey, but not quite. You're going into the underworld. But there are, on Coruscant, there is so much hierarchical diversity. And the rich can come down to them they can't come up to them you know they can't go up to the rich and then Luthen to leverage the Imperials that he's leveraging to continue doing his thing and to and I'm sure we're gonna talk next time about the speech that he gives but Luthen goes even deeper into the underworld. Like, he deepens his stakes, literally,

by going further and further into, toward the poor sections of Coruscant. And I just, I loved that. Like, I don't really like, I mean, we've talked about this with the Blade Runner episode. I don't like cityscapes at all. But the Coruscant one was so, especially from the Marxist lens, the closer you get to the planet surface, the shittier life is for people because bullshit rolls downhill.

I mean, they even had that in Attack of the Clones, right? When Anakin is chasing Jango Fett before he realizes that he goes down. And then at the bottom is where all the CD things are happening and the death sticks are being sold and etc. And the Senate figures are all essentially in a cloud city, like way above disconnected physically and metaphorically from the people that they're supposed to be representing. Exactly. And there, I don't know, is there a Senator for Coruscant? That's the other thing. It's kind of like Washington, DC. They don't actually get representation. Yeah. So much of a a revolution about that. It's not worth it. I'd rather have three dollars.

Yeah. Well, cool. Well, I kind of hinted at it. I'm hoping you'll come back to us for another episode because we've only gotten into the settings. Yes. I'd love to talk about the characters

and what they do and what happens to them. Yes, definitely. And and how who knows after that, maybe we could talk about Mandalorian from a distributist perspective or Book of Boba Fett from from a libertarian perspective. A Murray Bookchin perspective. Yeah.

Well, I will I will say that Din Djarin is in many ways a perfect distributist protagonist. I will longingly await that analysis. Yes. Well, when I get into what distributism is, you'll... Yeah, anyway, we can have that conversation. Coming up soon Yeah, we're actually for folks that don't know. Uh, we are we are doing and or uh mandalorian and book of boba fed from different

Lenses again and not advocating one over the other. Although you could probably tell my biases Pretty obviously from the last 260 episodes. But I drew the shortest straw. You know, I suffer from the earth. So anyway, cool. Well, Ed, do you have any books that you were recommending this week? Well, I actually do. I'm going to recommend Orthodoxy by GK Chesterton. And the reason I'm going to recommend that is because GK Chesterton is one of the philosophical codifiers of distributism. And he's also a very entertaining and I think very, very clear writer. And orthodoxy doesn't actually have to do with distributism directly, but it is Catholic apologetics, but I think it's worth reading even if you're not a Catholic, just because it's an entertaining read and his way of presenting things is very illuminating.

So it's a window into that kind of thinking. And I'm just a big fan of him anyway. So I highly recommend it. I'm going to recommend another Star Wars book because the EU doesn't get any love anymore. This one, given that we are talking about the New Republic and the Old Republic and such, I'm going to recommend Tales from the New Republic. So another anthology series, very similar to the Tales from the Empire, but this and Borskfela and Leia of Alderaan. It's under them and it's stories of the New Republic, again, out on the margins, out on

the edges, people who are engaged in Quasar-Eagle and other people who are engaged in legitimate things where they're trying to build things up. And I think it's a really nice companion piece to Tales from the Empire. There's a lot of really good short stories in there. Very cool. Gabriel, what are you going to recommend? I'm going to recommend a People's Guide to Capitalism by Hadass Thayer. It's kind of marketed as an introduction to Marxist economics. And what I really enjoyed about this relatively short book, I think it's about 200 pages, is the breakdown of essentially what Marx puts forth in capital volumes one, two and three, which

cumulatively is like 4,000 pages. And no one has time to read or take the time to understand. I've gone through capital volume one, which is longer than'm, is longer than the Bible and, uh, I've read it twice and there are still parts of it that I'm like, need help understanding. And, and I think that, uh, this, this book, um, does a really good, uh, it's not even attempt. They are successful in breaking down all of the theoretical underpinnings, as well as applying it to 21st century models in a really cool and creative way that I think a lot of folks who might want to tackle Marx's economics would Marx's economics would benefit from reading and find accessible in a way that Marx is not.

Cool. Very cool. All right. All right. And is there anywhere that you would like to be found? Just my book page on Instagram, which is, I actually do have a review of that book, which is mr underscore G's underscore book, underscore club on Instagram, where I do reviews of political history and occasionally fiction books. Yeah. And also you can check out my band on any streaming platform. The band that I play in is called Get the Wall.

And we are on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube. All of the things that you could potentially listen to music on, we are on there. Nice. All right. Very cool. Ed, you never want to be found. I do not.

No. But we have a podcast that people could find. We do have a podcast. We're on it right now, as a matter of fact. And it can be found, has been found by whoever's listening to this, either at our website at www.geekhistorytime.com or on Amazon, the Apple podcast app or on Spotify, wherever it is that you have found us, please subscribe. Please give us the five star review that you know we've earned. And

what about you, sir? First Friday of every month, starting in March, but as of this recording starting in April, first Friday of every month at 9pm at the Comedy Spot with capital punishment, C-A-P-I-T-O-L, punishment. Look to the Comedy Spot in Sacramento and you can buy tickets in advance or at the door. I always say buy them in advance, there's no fee. And that way if you don't show up,

we can still have your money. But come on down, it's a show that's been going on for a long time. It's been near and dear to my heart for a long, long time. Probably will be the source of my next tattoo. I'll have an endorsement arm and then I'll have an inspiration arm or something. So come on down and check us out at the Comedy Spot. First Friday of every month at 9 p.m. Other than that, you can find me on threads at duhharmony on threads.

And yeah, that's about it. Drop a fun pun, something nice. Tell us what you think of our podcast on there. So, well, for a geek history of time, I gotta say, Gabriel, thank you so much for holding to the format that we always do of doing way too much and being such a frickin' nerd. I loved it.

And can't wait till the next episode where we get to discuss characters and such. Absolutely. Looking forward to it. Thank you for joining us, Gabriel Geipp. And for Geek History of Time, I'm Damian Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, keep rolling 20s.