Star Wars, Andor, Workers' Rights

Pop culture and the meaning of life. Mini-essays written and illustrated by grimy, human hands.

Warning: Spoilers. Many spoilers.

Al-Qaeda loves Star Wars—not a sentiment Disney are likely to feature in their marketing.

I once heard a CIA interrogator explain how she bonded with a prisoner over the original trilogy. How they got onto the subject is a mystery. Does one engage in polite chit-chat, pre-waterboarding?

I do know why Al-Qaeda loves Star Wars. The operative saw his organisation as the Rebel Alliance: a band of idealists willing to sacrifice everything to defeat an empire.

As far as we know, George Lucas isn't a member of Al-Qaeda. But he did frame A New Hope in similar terms, albeit adjusted for the wars of the time. Lucas' inspiration was Vietnam: “a large technological empire going after a small group of freedom fighters.”

Reagan's space defence system was nicknamed "Star Wars." He also declared "the Force is with us," while Dick Cheney called Al-Qaeda the "dark side." Pop culture allusions in the service of blowing shit up, usefully reducing actual death to 1970s movie pyrotechnics.

Awkward Star Wars references are a bipartisan tradition and include George W, Hillary Clinton, and Trump. There's Obama's famous dad-gaffe about a "Jedi Mind Meld," which confused Star Wars with Star Trek. And there's Biden, who hired Luke Skywalker to help promote his election campaign.

Terrorist or president, the franchise's appeal is its soothing simplicity, one its creator intended from the get-go. Lucas wanted to create "new myths", saying Star Wars was "made for 12-year-olds" and concerned "friendships, honesty, trust, and doing the right thing." Light versus dark, good versus bad; the ethics of bibles and wars as well as kids.

And then you have Andor.

Andor will not be used in an election campaign (not unless your slogan is "A vote for us is a vote for moral ambiguity.")

And Andor is not for kids (not unless your kids are into debating realpolitik on the roundabout).

Andor is a gift for sad grown-ups, especially the kind who should probably worry less about the world.

An excellent New Yorker article points out that creator Tony Gilroy and his team "have set out to dramatize every facet of a broad-based anti-fascist insurgency movement—from recruitment and financing to political infighting and the planning and execution of terrorist attacks—along with the opposing establishment forces." Andor's makers include writers from House of Cards and The Americans, both non-kid shows concerned with charting power in a crumbling empire (which also explains comparisons between Andor and The Wire, another micro examination of America's decaying hegemony).  

There is no Force in Andor (not in the first season, anyway). There are hardly any aliens. Most of all, there is no invitation to see yourself reflected in the galaxy's chosen one ("Wow! You've got a difficult parent too? No shit! So does Galactic Jesus."). In the finest essay I read on Andor, writer Aaron Bady says: "If Luke Skywalker was a mirror for his creator and his audience, wearing his heart on his sleeve, Cassian Andor is an opacity at the centre of the plot, adopting a variety of names and faces, persistently denying any desire beyond escape."

Instead, you get a thrilling mass of historical references dressed up in the best version of that iconic retrofuture aesthetic. Andor's sources include the Haitian slave revolt, the Continental Congress, and the Irgun—a hardline Zionist group Einstein compared to fascists. Sumerians. Etruscans. The Montagnards.

If you squint, you can even spot a little socialism in this most commercial of IPs, and not just because the director thinks his star looks like a young Stalin.

Andor's version of the Empire is explicitly corporate, one that reminds us that imperialism is capitalism taken to extremes. (I wish I'd made that point; sadly, it's lifted from that brilliant Aaron Bady article, who pulls it from Lenin). The capital, Coruscant, is one planet-sized brutalist office block. Meanwhile, the protagonist's home, Ferrix, is inspired by Belfast, a ship-building town.

Andor's revolution comes in the form of a more-or-less leaderless workers' uprising, its final spark an answering machine message from beyond the grave. These scenes reminded me of the miners' strikes in my own country, and the power of unions. My stepdad worked in a brewery lugging barrels; he tells near-legendary tales of workers bringing the whole operation to a halt. His stories choke me up, a reminder that the all-against-all culture of most contemporary workplaces was preceded by moments of actual solidarity.

I get similarly emotional watching Andor's final speech, in which a hologram admonishes Ferrix's workers: "We've been sleeping. We took their money and ignored them." Admittedly, the strikes at my stepdad's brewery didn't often end in shootouts with space Nazis, but this is my projection. Get your own.

Star Wars loves workers' rights—also not a sentiment Disney are likely to feature in their marketing.