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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/292R3ED:
spaceoperafeerie:
bomberqueen17 replied to your post:did I just read a post defending the First Order…
If it’s the post I reblogged, it’s part of a fascinating series about the difference between what the text of the movie actually gives us and what we’re shorthanded to be supposed to think, so– perhaps it’s out of context, but “fascist apologia” is certainly not the intent of the post, and I’m horrified to think it might come across that way.
right, it’s arguing against narrative fiat that the FO is evil. Which is kind of an interesting position to take, if you want to/can ignore textual actions like “kill them all” and the entirety of Hux’s spitflecked speech (and at some point, everything is basically narrative fiat).
But then it’s going further and saying that fans shouldn’t say it, either. It argues that applying the categorical term itself (“evil”) is wrong and othering. It deploys real-world examples like religious bigotry and the murders at Pulse to support its position that all violence is wrong: “No one deserves violence”.
Which is…classic fascist apologia.
The violent oppressors putting themselves in the position of the bullied, the victimized, the marginalized – reversing the terms, claiming victimhood as pretext for further repression – and then hiding behind bromides like “all sides are equal” and “violence is always wrong” is classic fascism.
Well, either you believe that “marked as villain by the narrative” is equivalent to “undeserving of any further consideration” and therefore “deserving of unthinking annihilation”, or you don’t. The OP was marked as villain by the narrative of her childhood environment, and therefore was frequently sweetly told she was deserving of unthinking annihilation. Because the narrative in question used references to historical fascist movements to mark the characters in question as villains, that means that any further consideration of them, and even requests to perhaps not demand instant violence against them, is fascist apologia.
Like, where’s the line?
I both want to know, and don’t; I’m exhausted by a lot of things and not particularly interested in getting into debates. I’m not here to bully anyone or tell them what to think. But on the other hand, I write complicated plotty things, and I need to find motivations for the “villains” in those in order for them to hang together like, at all, and that means I have to devote time to thinking about why the narrative-coded villains do the things they do. It doesn’t work for me to just say “well they’re Nazis”. I want to look at who’s considered the hero and why; I want to compare the heroes’ body count to the villains’, and I want to look at what that does to the heroes’ psyche, and I want to decide how to prove my heroes are heroes after all, and maybe I want to explore an ending for the story that isn’t bloody revenge; maybe I want to see what it’s like to fight a war that actually ends war, instead of just grinding villains into the dust so their sons come back as spittle-flecked zealots hardened by privation to destroy the happily ever after I wrote for my heroes last time.
If I want to give my “villains” motivations, if I want to know why they do the shit they do– and conversely, if I want to give my “heroes” doubts, if I want to explore what it means for them to kill real people instead of cardboard cutouts helpfully marked “foe” by the Narrative– well, then, I have to think about what it means to narratively mark someone as a villain, and I have to think about why.
But.
I don’t want to condone fascism, I genuinely don’t. I have no interest in xenophobic bigotry, I am disgusted by it in all its real-world forms. But the problem is that it’s never completely obvious who’s really the hero in the real world either; we all know the US had concentration camps for certain of its own citizens even as it fought so determinedly against the Nazis and their concentration camps. I mean. It’s never really that clear.
No, I’m not interested in glorifying fascism. I’m terrified of fascism. But reducing it to a two-dimensional cardboard cutout only makes it scarier, to me. Maybe it helps other people, to make it a thing you can throw a ball at to knock down in a sideshow. But I’m shit at sideshow games. And I’m bad at keeping close attention on things like that. I can’t play games well at all. Stories, I understand. So I want a story about why they do what they do. And I desperately, desperately want stories that unpick why they do what they do so that I can come up with a way to stop them from doing it again.
But mostly, I reblogged that post because I, too, hate being told what is The Only Correct Way Of Thinking. I, too, believe that no one is intrinsically deserving of violence. Even the real actual Nazis of real actual lore were tried by a court of law, in the end, because even the people who had survived them believed that their deeds should be examined. (Considerations aside about what justice really ends up being meted out; the point is, there was a trial.)
The “gentle reminders that Space Nazis must die” posts were fucking obnoxious, and i saw loads of them on my dash. I’m not saying that the myriad K*lux woobifiers are not also fucking obnoxious; there are a lot of people on both sides who are not interested in subtlety.
Me, I’m not interested in being controversial. I’m not trying to shock anybody. I’m not trying to piss anybody off, in particular. I’m not even, I don’t think, being particularly extreme in any of my positions. But I don’t think that anyone is intrinsically deserving of violence, and I don’t like stories where the wrongdoers don’t even get a trial.
But I especially don’t like being told that I’m not allowed to think about things. I don’t see how that makes us better.
And insofar as The First Order Are Evil Because They Did A Thing, yes, of course, but– why did they do the thing? That’s the point. Star Wars is a problematic text because there’s so much glossed-over sheer chaos– entire planets starving in the Outer Rim because the Republic was so hung up on serving the Core Worlds primarily– it is not only soldiers that died. The First Order is ascendant largely because there was a power vacuum, because nobody else was out there; the New Republic certainly wasn’t. There are so many fascinating stories to be told.
And if we’re not allowed to ever think about the First Order except to demand that they be unthinkingly slaughtered without trial, then none of those stories can be told either.
Which, okay.
But. Why have such a huge canon if acknowledging so much of it is Strictly Forbidden?
That’s where I’m coming from, that’s where I’m going to. You don’t have to devote this much thought to your fictional worldbuilding; it’s not required. But you also can’t demand that I don’t either.
(You can probably blacklist #millicentthecat if you don’t want to see the posts; it’s probably all me, because I really dig millicent’s meta and find it constructive in trying to figure out the “villains” in my stories. I’m not trying to make anyone angry. I’m just trying to tell a complete story that actually comforts me.)
spaceoperafeerie:
bomberqueen17 replied to your post:did I just read a post defending the First Order…
If it’s the post I reblogged, it’s part of a fascinating series about the difference between what the text of the movie actually gives us and what we’re shorthanded to be supposed to think, so– perhaps it’s out of context, but “fascist apologia” is certainly not the intent of the post, and I’m horrified to think it might come across that way.
right, it’s arguing against narrative fiat that the FO is evil. Which is kind of an interesting position to take, if you want to/can ignore textual actions like “kill them all” and the entirety of Hux’s spitflecked speech (and at some point, everything is basically narrative fiat).
But then it’s going further and saying that fans shouldn’t say it, either. It argues that applying the categorical term itself (“evil”) is wrong and othering. It deploys real-world examples like religious bigotry and the murders at Pulse to support its position that all violence is wrong: “No one deserves violence”.
Which is…classic fascist apologia.
The violent oppressors putting themselves in the position of the bullied, the victimized, the marginalized – reversing the terms, claiming victimhood as pretext for further repression – and then hiding behind bromides like “all sides are equal” and “violence is always wrong” is classic fascism.
Well, either you believe that “marked as villain by the narrative” is equivalent to “undeserving of any further consideration” and therefore “deserving of unthinking annihilation”, or you don’t. The OP was marked as villain by the narrative of her childhood environment, and therefore was frequently sweetly told she was deserving of unthinking annihilation. Because the narrative in question used references to historical fascist movements to mark the characters in question as villains, that means that any further consideration of them, and even requests to perhaps not demand instant violence against them, is fascist apologia.
Like, where’s the line?
I both want to know, and don’t; I’m exhausted by a lot of things and not particularly interested in getting into debates. I’m not here to bully anyone or tell them what to think. But on the other hand, I write complicated plotty things, and I need to find motivations for the “villains” in those in order for them to hang together like, at all, and that means I have to devote time to thinking about why the narrative-coded villains do the things they do. It doesn’t work for me to just say “well they’re Nazis”. I want to look at who’s considered the hero and why; I want to compare the heroes’ body count to the villains’, and I want to look at what that does to the heroes’ psyche, and I want to decide how to prove my heroes are heroes after all, and maybe I want to explore an ending for the story that isn’t bloody revenge; maybe I want to see what it’s like to fight a war that actually ends war, instead of just grinding villains into the dust so their sons come back as spittle-flecked zealots hardened by privation to destroy the happily ever after I wrote for my heroes last time.
If I want to give my “villains” motivations, if I want to know why they do the shit they do– and conversely, if I want to give my “heroes” doubts, if I want to explore what it means for them to kill real people instead of cardboard cutouts helpfully marked “foe” by the Narrative– well, then, I have to think about what it means to narratively mark someone as a villain, and I have to think about why.
But.
I don’t want to condone fascism, I genuinely don’t. I have no interest in xenophobic bigotry, I am disgusted by it in all its real-world forms. But the problem is that it’s never completely obvious who’s really the hero in the real world either; we all know the US had concentration camps for certain of its own citizens even as it fought so determinedly against the Nazis and their concentration camps. I mean. It’s never really that clear.
No, I’m not interested in glorifying fascism. I’m terrified of fascism. But reducing it to a two-dimensional cardboard cutout only makes it scarier, to me. Maybe it helps other people, to make it a thing you can throw a ball at to knock down in a sideshow. But I’m shit at sideshow games. And I’m bad at keeping close attention on things like that. I can’t play games well at all. Stories, I understand. So I want a story about why they do what they do. And I desperately, desperately want stories that unpick why they do what they do so that I can come up with a way to stop them from doing it again.
But mostly, I reblogged that post because I, too, hate being told what is The Only Correct Way Of Thinking. I, too, believe that no one is intrinsically deserving of violence. Even the real actual Nazis of real actual lore were tried by a court of law, in the end, because even the people who had survived them believed that their deeds should be examined. (Considerations aside about what justice really ends up being meted out; the point is, there was a trial.)
The “gentle reminders that Space Nazis must die” posts were fucking obnoxious, and i saw loads of them on my dash. I’m not saying that the myriad K*lux woobifiers are not also fucking obnoxious; there are a lot of people on both sides who are not interested in subtlety.
Me, I’m not interested in being controversial. I’m not trying to shock anybody. I’m not trying to piss anybody off, in particular. I’m not even, I don’t think, being particularly extreme in any of my positions. But I don’t think that anyone is intrinsically deserving of violence, and I don’t like stories where the wrongdoers don’t even get a trial.
But I especially don’t like being told that I’m not allowed to think about things. I don’t see how that makes us better.
And insofar as The First Order Are Evil Because They Did A Thing, yes, of course, but– why did they do the thing? That’s the point. Star Wars is a problematic text because there’s so much glossed-over sheer chaos– entire planets starving in the Outer Rim because the Republic was so hung up on serving the Core Worlds primarily– it is not only soldiers that died. The First Order is ascendant largely because there was a power vacuum, because nobody else was out there; the New Republic certainly wasn’t. There are so many fascinating stories to be told.
And if we’re not allowed to ever think about the First Order except to demand that they be unthinkingly slaughtered without trial, then none of those stories can be told either.
Which, okay.
But. Why have such a huge canon if acknowledging so much of it is Strictly Forbidden?
That’s where I’m coming from, that’s where I’m going to. You don’t have to devote this much thought to your fictional worldbuilding; it’s not required. But you also can’t demand that I don’t either.
(You can probably blacklist #millicentthecat if you don’t want to see the posts; it’s probably all me, because I really dig millicent’s meta and find it constructive in trying to figure out the “villains” in my stories. I’m not trying to make anyone angry. I’m just trying to tell a complete story that actually comforts me.)
