Contains spoilers for Andor Season 2, Episodes 1-3

Andor has absolutely been both my favorite production in the Star Wars franchise and favorite TV show ever. Season 2 has not disappointed as it continues to bring not only high quality television but insightful portrayal of human life and interactions in a world dominated by state-backed economic inequality, resource extraction, and surveillance.

I’m sure there will be many pieces out there over the coming weeks analyzing these elements, and I look forward to them, but I’ll offer just a few quick things I’m noticing and thinking through in these first few episodes.

I also particularly enjoyed the discussion of the first season done by the A More Civilized Age podcast a while back and look forward to their weekly episodes covering the second season over the next month. Check it out!

The Familiarity of Fascism

One element that stood out is the show’s portrayal of the normalcy of life for many during time of fascism. The age of the Empire in Star Wars has always been tightly associated with fascism. Our imagination of that, as well as settings like Nazi Germany, is often that all people experiencing the fascist state experience a bleak existence full of washed out colors, fear, and obvious repression.

The much darker reality is that life actually feels not only normal, but prosperous for many people under fascism. Fascist and capitalist systems survive because they have mass support, typically from people whose lives they make more comfortable and secure, while those experiencing repression are out of sight and visible only through distorted caricatures in propaganda, if at all.

Through a few scenes in places like Coruscant and Chandrila, Tony Gilroy and the rest of the show’s team deftly show us that for many, life seems just fine under fascism and typical human dramas play out just as they do elsewhere. Whether the tensions of managing a wedding the chattering about a high-profile marital separation amid the wealth of Chandrila, or of managing a new relationship, mother-in-law dynamics, and workplace frustrations, in a comfortable middle-class existence on Coruscant, life for those who fascism functions on behalf of are full of familiar concerns with little notice for those on the underside of the system.

As fascism rises, what do you imagine your life would look like under a fascist state? Might it actually look much the same as it does now, with everyday concerns, while marginalized others experience oppression and violence hidden away from view? Cyril’s apartment and Cassian’s Narkina 5 prison cell exist in the same Empire.

Nazi Germany was comfortable for many. If that’s the case, at what point do you know dystopia has arrived?

The Contrasts of Capitalism

Similarly, the interweaving of scenes from Chandrila and Mina-Rau in episode three dramatically portrays the contrasts of capitalism. While the wealthy of Chandrila luxuriate in traditionalist excess, the brown and beige color palettes on screen make connections across the galaxy to the peripheral planets whose resource extraction economies support that luxury on the backs of a tenuous, fearful, and surveilled existence both for the documented and undocumented workers gathering the grains that fuel the crazed dances of elite pleasures. Of course, Gilroy’s depiction of migrant experience is particularly timely in the midst of deepening American immigration crackdowns as well.

The Time of Tradwives

Beginning in season 1, Mon Mothma’s daughter Leida developed an interest in Chandrila’s older, more traditional customs, religion, dress, and marital/gender roles. That continues to take shape in season 2, much to the chagrin of characters like her relative Vel who are distinctly out of place in that vision of the world.

This pattern of “everything old is new again”, as Mon Mothma puts it, suggests to me that Gilroy has the rising influence of nostalgic traditionalism for an imagined past, right-wing religion, and hardening gender roles in mind, particularly as they gain popularity among Gen Z and younger Americans.

I’m particularly reminded of the tradwife influencers gaining followings online as they publicly display their performance of polished domesticity, “traditional” femininity, return to a romanticized “natural” life on the land, and docile submission to alpha masculinity. These seem particularly in Gilroy’s mind as the events of Leida’s wedding days are on-screen.

These kinds of patterns are part of a mutually reinforcing with rising fascism. Anxieties about change and “the other” fuel both movements. The dynamics involved with trends like tradwives provide support to hierarchical visions of society as strong male leadership is platformed to combat elements deemed as threats. Efficiently extractive fascist empire provides the security and plenty which is necessary to facilitate the comfortable life of traditional elites at the top of the pyramid: one-income homes, polished aesthetics, and space for trendy time-consuming homemaking videos on social media promoting “natural” lifestyles more about performance rather than survival. Tradwife influencers don’t pop up in situations of poverty and distress, but of empire-fueled plenty.

The question of whether or not to be a tradwife isn’t on Bix’s radar. There’s a reason Leida has that option available.

The Engine of Extraction

From the grains of Mina-Rau to the kalkite of Ghorman, a constant flow of resources is required to sustain the comfortable life and unstoppable military force that keeps a dominant force in power. Efficient resource extraction is essential to empire and always has been throughout history. That always comes at the cost of human life and dignity and the well-being of the environment. We see that impact the lives of Bix, Brasso, and others around them, and I’m sure there’s much more to come on Ghorman. From the oil of Iraq, to the rare minerals of the DRC, the palm oil of the Philippines, the sugarcane of Hawaii, the spices, dyes, silk, and opium of 18th and 19th century south and east Asia, and so many more, the unquenchable hunger of empire’s engine gets a lot of human tissue stuck in its teeth as it guzzles the world’s abundance.

The Duality of Delight

One of the most interesting moments in these early episodes was Perrin’s wedding speech. Perrin, an emblem of wealth and comfort without concern for the evils of empire, speaks of the anxieties of life and the importance of finding pleasure, joy, and delight in the midst of life’s worries. The music and reactions of key characters like Mon and Luthen suggest the viewer is to receive Perrin’s words with at least some kind of positive emotion, but that seems so jarring with how Perrin has been positioned so far and the rest of the show’s perspective. What is happening here? Something seems off.

I think this is fascinating. What is the proper place of delight in a world full of evil and oppression?

How can I go on as normal when everything is wrong? Is it bad for me to experience joy, to celebrate, while others suffer? We’ve seen the jarring contrast of comfortable celebration and oppressive crackdowns, and understandably, we don’t want to be a part of that. At the same time, creatively making space for joy and delight is itself a form of resistance to fascist oppression, declaring that we still have freedom from its clutches, that we still have hope, that we are still humans in the image of God. If we do not grab onto joy in the opportunities we have in a dystopian world, the very delights we are joining in struggle that all people may be able to experience, are we not denying the very experiences we are fighting to access?

Is Perrin right? Is Perrin despicable?

I wonder if what we delight in and how we go about it matter a lot. Do we celebrate moments, values, people, and stories that counter the narratives and values of empire? Is our delight the delight of elites dwelling in luxury at the expense of an invisible class feeling the boot of empire on its neck? Or is it the delight of those appreciating the goodness in God’s world, and the simple pleasures of friendship, family, creativity, creation, sucking dry the tiny morsels of goodness we can scrape off the bones of a world strangled by empire, while we also struggle for its revival? And do we also make space at other times for naming and lamenting the realities of evil and doing what is in our power to resist it?

We recently attended an Easter Vigil service proclaiming and celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. It is always a time of beauty, art, song, celebration, and dance that is full of joy. At the same time, outside those walls, oppression rages. We begin the service in darkness. The light of a single candle is proclaimed to be the Light of Christ. Its light is passed from person to person, as the room is slowly filled with points of warm flame pushing back the darkness of night. The stories of God’s actions of rescue in history begin, and in those moments, we practice resistance to empire, celebrating the story that Death is ultimately defeated by the God in solidarity with the low (the God imprisoned and executed by the state, like those locked away in Narkina for no reason or shot down in the fields), that Empire’s greatest weapons cannot suppress God’s new creation breaking through in small yet unstoppable sprouts across time and place.

As a person is baptized into the congregation in the midst of this outpost of celebration amid empire, a celebration featuring the retelling of the stories of God’s rescues from ancient empires like Egypt and Babylon and the hope of our own rescue from all death and oppression in this world, the newly baptized and the whole church rehearse this identity and story of resistance in these vows, connecting our celebration, history, identity, and resistance:

Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God? - I renounce them.

Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God? - I renounce them.

Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God? - I renounce them.

Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior? - I do.

Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love? - I do.

Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord? - I do.

Will you continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers? - I will, with God’s help.

Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord? - I will, with God’s help.

Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ? - I will, with God’s help.

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? - I will, with God’s help.

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being? - I will, with God’s help.

Historical Heroes: James Cone

I'll regularly highlight historical heroes, often in the week of their birth or death. Today is the anniversary of the death of James Cone, whose works like The Cross and the Lynching Tree highlight the solidarity of Jesus with the types of people seen in Andor getting crushed in the engines of extraction. Here's a bit of his story:

James Cone of Arkansas and New York (5 August 1938- 28 April 2018) was a theologian. He was born in racially segregated Arkansas and was part of an African Methodist Episcopal Church. He attended colleges in Arkansas before studying theology in Illinois. He went back to Arkansas to teach theology and later taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where he spent most of his career. He was one of the key figures for academic Black theology of the 20th and 21st centuries, laying significant groundwork for Black liberation theology. He integrated the life and teaching of Jesus with Black experience and questions and helped to draw attention to the contextual nature of all theology. He taught about God's identification with the marginalized and the impact of that in the church and world today.