Andor's Finale: An Antifascist Rallying Cry

 The current era is a fraught one. There are things that we took for granted that now seem to be cast in doubt. As the grandson of Holocaust survivors and a World War II Veteran who fought for America against the fascists in Italy, it always seemed obvious to me that fascism, as a system, a worldview, and a political philosophy, were anathema to all things right-headed and good. I still believe that. What shocked me, is that over the better part of a decade, I've seen people embrace it, happy to reject the kind of freedom that liberal democracy strives to provide in exchange for brutality.

In part, I think it's because the fascists were so profoundly evil that they became a shorthand for any system you didn't like. As an example, in the 1990s, critics of feminism accused people who spoke out against sexism as "feminazis," which not only painted feminists as the "bad guys" by ironically associating them with an oppressive political movement steeped in traditionalist nostalgia, but also diluted the meaning of fascism and naziism to ignore the actual far-right ideologies that form their basis, which include a fetishization of violence and the belief in the total dominance of a patriarchal order, among other traditionalist values.

George Lucas chose to code the Galactic Empire as Nazis. Their obsession with greyscale uniforms, the use of "stormtroopers" as their elite troops, and the implication that the upper echelons of its power base were all jockeying for position in a deadly game all contributed to a clear parallel with Naziism.

Spoilers for the season finale of Andor, season one, as well as Mad Max Fury Road.

Andor and the True Cost of Rebellion

 I think it's prudent to be cautious in praising a show too much simply because it is connected to a nostalgic franchise. Andor is not the best show ever made. But it is good. It's good enough not to be graded on the curve of "well, it's not great, but I like being in this world again" - something I'd confess colors my reaction to Rings of Power, which is fine but not superlative.

SPOILER WARNING: There will be spoilers for Rogue One here, as well as spoilers for everything before the season finale of the first season of Andor.

Star Wars has always used fascist imagery to depict the Empire, and its variants like the First Order in the sequel series. But this reading is usually relatively thin - the Nazis were the biggest villains of the 20th Century, and are so synonymous with evil that people who espouse many of the same philosophical conceits behind it will use the term to accuse people they disagree with as being the "real" bad guys.

The Empire as we see in Andor shows its true awfulness by giving us insight into the lives of its supporters. Syril Karn, the corporate rent-a-cop detective, desperately wants to catch Andor for killing two police officers (that he does not seem to know or remotely care that Andor did so in self-defense is something we'll get to,) but when his attempt to take the man in fails spectacularly, getting some of his men killed, along with the added humiliation of being caught and disarmed, he still clings to this case as the only way for him to redeem himself. And he starts basically stalking a member of the ISB (essentially the Empire's Gestapo) in the hopes that he can contribute to the capture of this one man who represents something so crucial to him.

And what is that?

Karn wants the brutality to amount to something. He seems perfectly content for the Empire to bulldoze over him - even when Dedra Meero, the ISB agent, threatens to basically have him disappeared for continuing to butt into her business, he doesn't really relent. He wants the Empire to be the perfect image of efficiency and order that he imagines it to be.

There's a cliche where people will defend fascism and other totalitarian systems by saying "well, it's awful, but at least the trains run on time." The irony here is that, in fact, totalitarian systems are almost always deeply inefficient. The trains did not run on time in Italy under Mussolini. Instead, these regimes simply outlaw the ability to speak up about the trains being late, or any other words that are critical of the state's way of running things.

Of course, what this means is that in a free society, you're hearing the citizenry complain all the time, while in authoritarian societies, they can't, so it makes democracy and liberalism look inefficient, when in fact it's far more efficient (in part, because when you allow people to complain, you know where the problems need fixing).

Star Wars has always had a "Used Future" aesthetic, which gives the world a feeling of realism that many love. But Andor really emphasizes how old and, well, crappy things look. While I hate to say anything praising the prequels, Lucas clearly wanted to show that the Old Republic was something of a golden age - clearly with problems that were allowing a rot to seep in, but you see the slick spaceships and luxurious locales, and you get the sense that, yeah, life is definitely a lot better under that system than the Empire.

When Andor is arrested in some kind of beach resort, even this place looks run down - like, maybe it was really nice 30 years ago, but it's just kind of ugly now.

Mon Mothma, we learn, lives in a government-owned apartment, which is stark and kind of soulless while ostensibly luxurious. It's like a uniform of elitism and style that the regime has forced her to wear. At a fancy dinner party, she has the most inane conversation about how wonderful it is that they have a window, and you can see why she wants this system to die.

The prison on Narkina 5, where Andor spends several episodes in an Orwellian nightmare, is kind of the perfect encapsulation of the totalitarian style. The prisoners are promised freedom if they comply and simply act as good, productive workers, even though that's a lie and every sentence is a life sentence. The workers are also pitted against one another, punishing whoever is in last place on productivity (my theory is that they're making wing struts for TIE Fighters) so that the prisoners will learn animosity for their fellow inmates. But then, it's all kind of a facade - the ominous voice is just some dweeb behinds a desk with a voice modulator, and the Empire is saving money on guards by understaffing. Ultimately, it's not really that hard for the prisoners to revolt and take over the facility, even if it does cost them several lives.

And here, we turn to the rebellion.

When Luke Skywalker is introduced, the Rebellion is in full force. The Rebels are not really something the original movies goes into great detail about - just as the Empire is evil, the Rebels are good, and it's the right team for Luke to join.

But rebelling against a despotic regime is an extremely difficult thing to do, and one that often requires doing some very dirty work. We're introduced to a number of characters who are or will be rebels, and the throughline is that these are people who fight for a future that they will never see.

Let's start with Luthen, a character whose archetype is one I love - the heroically sinister. Luthen is basically the spymaster who is in the proto-Rebellion that has yet to take form. I'm a real sucker for cloak-and-dagger stuff, and Luthen is kind of the perfect example of the kind of hero that such stories require. His goals are noble and heroic - he wants to take down the Empire and allow a free and democratic society to reemerge. But he is also extremely practical. When his agent in the ISB tells him they know about a rebel faction's upcoming raid on an Imperial facility, he decides to let the Empire trap and almost certainly kill the guy and his 30 people in order to protect the source. He is not ready to play that card, and thus he elects to allow these heroic people to go to there certain deaths.

When speaking with his ISB mole, we see what he is willing to sacrifice to see the Empire fall - and that is his own future in whatever better society is to come. There is no happily ever after for Luthen - one way or another, he knows he'll die eventually, or at best live on in obscurity. While the more conventional fighters who win the day will be able to bask in the dawn of a new era, Luthen will always be stuck in the shadows, his only consolation knowing that he allowed others to live free.

We get this same dynamic in microcosm with Kino, the fellow prisoner and floor boss at Narkina 5. Kino believes, when Andor gets there, the lies that they've been told - that if they keep their head down and just keep working, they'll eventually be free. And his gruff demeanor, we learn, is there to protect his fellow prisoners from doing something that could get them killed. But once he finds out the truth, he becomes a leader to his men, inciting them to riot and revolt, and ultimately, he leads the prisoners to victory as they overthrow the guards and make it out of the prison.

But as they reach the final escape - the plunge into the sea below - he reveals that he cannot swim. He had to know that they would need to jump into the water to escape, and that he would never be able to do so. But that's the point: he's fighting a rebellion not for himself, but for others. He won't taste freedom, but because of the efforts he makes and the risks he takes, others will.

Finally, we should reflect on the fact that we know what Andor's eventual fate will be. In Rogue One, he and Jyn Erso lead the assault to capture the blueprints for the Death Star, and while the plans just barely get to Princess Leia and then, via R2-D2, to the Rebel forces on Yavin IV, Andor is killed when the Death Star obliterates the surface of Scarif. His own fight will lead to his death. Cassian Andor never gets to see the New Republic take shape (or fall apart 30 years later thanks to the First Order, but let's just set that aside for the time being).

Andor, the show, is about the high price of rebelling against an oppressive power structure. But it's also about the intolerable cost of leaving it unopposed. The Empire wants people afraid so that it can grind them down. It grinds down those who oppose it, but it even grinds down its supporters. Syril is reduced to a pathetic remnant of the minuscule dignity he once possessed, and still wants to give his very soul to the Empire, like some kind of human sunk-loss fallacy. And even in the elite level of society that Mon Mothma inhabits, there's a sense that it's just empty at the top. There's nothing to really aspire to in this system.

As it stands, I'm most curious to see what becomes of Dedra Meero. She is a true believer in the ISB, and in a position of power. She is the Empire. I want to see what becomes of her.

Andor and a New(ish) Take on Star Wars

 Not to bum everyone out from the get-go, but I didn't know it at the time, but the last movie my mom ever went to see in the theaters was Star Wars: Rogue One. I might assign that greater significance that she would have, as while she was the more artistically-oriented of my parents, I'm probably the biggest cinephile in the family.

Rogue One is an odd movie, but one that I had a great deal of respect for. While canonical within the Star Wars universe, its tone was bleaker - all these movies (7 before it had come out) about wars in the stars, and this was the first that actually felt like a war movie.

I tend to refer to Star Wars as fantasy because, structurally, it's more fantasy than science fiction. It concerns itself with grand notions like the moral battle between good and evil, and tends to focus on the actions of essentially magically-empowered heroes with a grand destiny to fulfill.

The presence of space ships, aliens, and robots of course put it in a science fiction setting, and one should also remember that science fiction has a long tradition of incorporating fantastical elements.

Rogue One only involved Darth Vader tangentially - his actions at the end of the movie show what a profound horror he is, and how he individually makes up about half the Empire's menace. But the movie set its focus on people who had no magic powers, and who still fought despite being mere mortals. And it showed that, when you aren't protected by a heroic destiny, people in wars often die.

Andor is technically a prequel to a prequel (or a prequel to an interquel, if you prefer, or a spinoff to a spinoff.) It takes one of the key characters from Rogue One, the sort of secondary protagonist Cassian Andor, and tells us his story of becoming a spy for the Rebellion.

Much as the film that introduced us to its title character, Andor feels different than other things we've seen Disney do with Star Wars. (I'll confess here that I never watched the Obi-Wan show and only watched the first episode of the Boba Fett one before checking out.) Having been a bit burned out on Star Wars, I didn't get in on this as soon as it came out, but after a somewhat slow first episode (I wish that these shows would at least act like they need to win us over in the pilot) I found myself really appreciating the difference in tone.

I always worry I'll come off as naive when I suggest that some mega-franchise that caters a lot to our childhood nostalgia (45 years' worth at this point in Star Wars' case) is making mature, adult stuff. But Andor... might be that.

And I don't just mean "dark." I think there's a certain genre of audience (typically adult men in their 20s and sometimes 30s) who feel that darkness is synonymous with maturity. Eventually, you hit a point (hopefully) where you realize that unrelenting doom and gloom can be its own version of childish. Andor is dark, in the sense that there are morally complex things that happen - Andor shoots a man who is at his mercy in the first episode, which is probably the best thing for him to do at the time, but still technically murder.

This killing, of a pair of private security officers who try to shake Andor down, ignites a hunt for him. We follow Detective Inspector Syril Karn, who decides that they won't sweep this under the rug so they can give a good report to the actual Imperial authorities, but decides to hunt the killer down.

Karn is interesting because he's clearly the protagonist of his own story. We see him frustrated by the inefficiencies and indignities of being some half-rate rent-a-cop, and puts into practice a desire for what he thinks of as justice.

But he is either blind to the hypocrisies of the system under which he serves or embraces them. Basically, he's a fascist, and the sort of person who likely thought they would thrive under the Empire. But we also see how a system like the Empire grinds away both those who resist it and those who embrace it.

There's a great deal of worldbuilding in just the episodes I've seen, and we get a fuller picture of how the Empire functions. The banality of evil is something that you don't often see in epic narratives like Star Wars, but societal evils require a certain numbness. We get a strong sense here that the reason the Empire was allowed to form was that people in the Old Republic were simply not willing to stand up to it, seeing it too easily as a minor transition, a change of name, but business being business.

This, of course, feels pretty relevant to the current state of things in our own real world, and I can easily see how existing anxieties about the rise and, even more disturbingly, normalization of fascism is here used as inspiration for the story. Star Wars has always borrowed imagery from World War II, using Nazi Germany as the most obvious visual reference for its evil empire - after all, what regime in living memory, and perhaps all of history, better embodied evil? But the original movies were light on delving into the nuances of how a fascistic society winds up that way and how it works. Really, it meant that we could feel no remorse whatsoever when a space station with thousands of people on board got destroyed.

I don't know where this series is going, but I've been impressed with what I've seen so far.