bastardofmelbourne said:
What are you getting at here? That the Empire isn't fascist because it's fictional, or that it's not fascist because it doesn't meet the historical criteria for fascism?
I mean, if it's the first one it's like, "duh, allegory," and if it's the second, I gotta disagree with you - the Empire is pretty fascist. I'm talking in the classic, authoritarian, strength-in-unity, bundle-of-sticks kind of fascism. The Emperor basically said "We're for reals in a big dangerous war that I definitely didn't orchestrate, so we gotta give the authority super emergency powers and all like, band together and not question me when I say to do things." That's pretty fascist.
The Empire isn't "fascist" because it's not a painfully on-the-nose transposition of a particular historical political entity to a Galaxy Far, Far Away, but an independent fictional example of a structure embodying many of the principles arguably (and not incorrectly so, IMO) underlying entities like it. This makes it far more widely applicable as a comparison, should you want to employ it in such a manner, and more importantly helps keep it on the level of universality, rather than having it fall captive to the quotidian grind of political propaganda. By which I mean precisely things like being claimed as fodder by opportunistic parties simply because they claim
their Brownshirting is totally Anti-Fa. As history would seem to suggest, the most bitter enemies of authoritarian movements turn out to be rival authoritarian movements. If you happen to think one of the things fiction can do is honestly develop the implications of various kinds of political principles, you don't want to turn it into a real world partisan bashing implement with all the distortions that will entail.
Also, on an aesthetic level, there is the matter of "suspension of disbelief", that being what makes fiction compelling in the first place. Let's pay a brief visit to the source here:
During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm, which accidents of light and shade, which moon-light or sunset diffused over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested itself?(to which of us I do not recollect)?that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters and incidents were to be such as will be found in every village and its vicinity, where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them, when they present themselves.
In this idea originated the plan of the LYRICAL BALLADS; in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention to the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
Biografia Literaria, Chapter XIV (
bolding of select parts by me)
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6081/6081-h/6081-h.htm#link2HCH0014
It's frankly impossible to
suppose what is happening in the story real on its terms if the committee that authored it keeps bouncing us between the fictional world and the real one with heavily signposted and underlined connections, like some dick sitting next to you constantly yanking on your sleeve and whisper-shouting lame commentary in your ear. Even if that dick happens to be your friend and political ally, it's going to get old real soon. Only there's no movie without him there, he's built into it.
He built himself into it. Because he wants everyone to know how rad he is. And screw "the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of emotions" beyond "LOL@DumbTrump!"
Oh, and as for "allegory", that's what they used to go around performing to the peasants to teach them how to peasant right. "Greetings, illiterate yokels! Our entertainment today is
Always A Dutiful Serf Be, being the pitched struggle between Ye Spirit of Industrie and Ye Spirit of Sloth!" But then dudes like Shakespeare came along and started to peddle Pop Trash like drama with real characters. And some people were like "Prithee sire, please tell us which of the Cardinal Virtues are embodied in this tale of Daneland, so we may know what lesson we may recollect by the spectating thereof!" But others got it and rejoiced.
