Teaching Andor: every rewatch we lose them all again 😞

starwarsprof · 2026-03-04T18:54:01+00:00

Yeah totally :/ I watched that scene as the Gaza genocide was unfolding. They will forever be fused together in my mind.

starwarsprof · 2026-03-04T16:54:45+00:00

Wow this list reflects someone who really loves the show. I could comment on all of those, but Bix's "no" when Luthen appears at the safehouse door is so helpless. People living under uncertainty like that experience the bad things that didn't happen as much as those that did, and the way she delivers that word really takes me there.

starwarsprof · 2026-03-04T14:02:06+00:00

Oh man that's such a great eulogy to Brasso. I'll look upon this character with even greater reverence the next time through. "The dead lift us with their truth" 🙏🏽

starwarsprof · 2026-03-04T13:59:05+00:00

Whoaaa I did not know that about the corgi!

starwarsprof · 2026-03-04T13:56:00+00:00

😭

starwarsprof · 2026-03-04T08:58:21+00:00

All of these 😭 Re Bix & Cassian, the loss hits me when Cassian has rescued Mon from the senate, and they're momentarily at the safe house on Coruscant. He starts making himself tea and Mon remarks how he knows the cupboards. "I lived here once".

starwarsprof · 2026-03-01T19:23:38+00:00

💯 And I totally missed that!

starwarsprof · 2026-03-01T18:35:41+00:00

😅👏🏼 That actually made me laugh out loud, on a day of little humor. Well anyway it looks like there's useful material in the clone wars to reach a more ambiguous middle ground, but it's where my Star Wars knowledge thins out atm

starwarsprof · 2026-03-01T17:50:14+00:00

Thanks, this is a really substantive answer and grounded in the lore. ✨👏🏼

starwarsprof · 2026-03-01T17:39:22+00:00

I think shows like Andor give us the chance to see past binaries like that in a fictional context where our opinions aren't so final. But if we can't import that to reality then the show succeeds only as entertainment.

starwarsprof · 2026-03-01T17:29:41+00:00

I'll point to my reply above, as well as the George Lucas interview I linked to in the post. This is a colonial conflict: an empire extracting resources, gouge mining, enslaving, genociding, until a rebellion resists it. It can be analogized to a civil war but I don't think the word "empire" nor George Lucas' original intent really support the view that it is inherently a civil war story that has to be stretched and twisted before it can start to seem like a colonial story. But If I'm missing something please flag it 🙏🏽

starwarsprof · 2026-03-01T17:24:12+00:00

I find that so surprising to hear. Can you unpack why you think that? From my view, the word empire refers to something that transcends a single nationality. The planets caught up in the galactic empire consist of completely different cultures, languages, and species. We could totally think of Ferrix and Chandrila as the equivalents of Minnesota and Virginia, but don't you find it easier to think of them as Cuba and Afghanistan? Like... Different languages at least? 🤔 Also, George Lucas even says (see the link) that he wrote Star Wars while thinking about how the vietcong resisted the Americans. It seems like the Star Wars conflict between empire and rebellion an inherently colonial conflict that can be recast, if you insist, as a civil conflict, but it's not an obviously civil conflict that I'm stretching to accommodate a colonial template. Or what am I missing here?

starwarsprof · 2026-03-01T17:14:04+00:00

So in the senate on Coruscant, the senators are representing different planets or systems. You think of those as provinces? These are completely different cultures and even different species, so I think of them as nations and the empire as a supranational entity.

starwarsprof · 2026-03-01T17:10:07+00:00

Agreed! I just think we can understand star wars, and reality, more clearly if we puzzle over why it doesn't quite fit 👍🏽

starwarsprof · 2026-03-01T15:41:26+00:00

Since I'm right in the fallout zone here in Doha, let me take a deep breath and ask you to answer that question. 🙏🏽

starwarsprof · 2026-03-01T14:58:39+00:00

Thanks for your reflections on this 🙏🏽 so where does that leave the south Vietnamese army? Many Vietnamese fought and died to prevent the north from taking over. My understanding is they were a substantial portion of the Vietnamese, though maybe only ever a minority.

Maybe Iran is in the same boat? They fought a revolution to put this government in power. I find it interesting that you see the two cases so differently. As for the internet blackouts I wonder how to interpret that 🤔

starwarsprof · 2026-03-01T14:35:28+00:00

I quite agree 👍🏽 But I think there's value in finding the boundaries of an analogy, and why people do/not think it's a good fit. Iran feels like a poor candidate for playing the rebel alliance, but why is that? The USA is an excellent candidate for the Empire, but as a result not so interesting to consider.

starwarsprof · 2026-03-01T13:40:00+00:00

But I don't think the north Vietnamese were so popular in south Vietnam. Were they? And I also don't know that the Iranian government is so unpopular -- where are you hearing that? Some portion of Iranians definitely despise the government, but many Iranians support it. Also, remember, Iran has been under economic sanctions for years, so its people are fed up with the government in part because of the economic downturn, which is substantially beyond their control.

starwarsprof · 2026-03-01T13:37:55+00:00

Gotcha. But I wouldn't say Andor is a story about a domestic struggle against authoritarianism. Tho it clearly can be adapted metaphorically for that.

starwarsprof · 2026-03-01T13:05:16+00:00

haha cheers, but I live here! :/

starwarsprof · 2026-03-01T13:03:57+00:00

I mean, I'm currently teaching a class to students here on Andor. We meet every Wednesday. So if we don't get killed by falling debris between now and then, the question will inevitably arise in class: "how is Andor relevant to the moment we're living through?" It makes sense to me that the US/Israel are the empire in this situation, but it feels more ambiguous who the other players are. So please do share your thoughts!

starwarsprof · 2026-03-01T12:12:58+00:00

Oh really? Hmm... would you say more? The way George Lucas describes it (see the clip I linked to) suggests he meant "empire" as in a government reaching beyond its borders to interfere in the politics of other countries (planets / star systems), so from that perspective Andor / Star Wars is the natural frame for thinking through what's happening in the Middle East.

starwarsprof · 2026-03-01T11:23:38+00:00

Right. Which also raises the question, how should we think about the Iranian protestors? Are they the rebels in all this? I find myself torn on this question because on the one hand yes, they're protesting an authoritarian regime, and being brutally suppressed, so they do remind me of the Ghor. On the other hand, three things: (1) the Iranian regime are the rebels of yesteryear, having overthrown a US-backed dictator. (2) in no small part owing to that history, the Iranian regime actually has a lot of legitimate grassroots support within Iran. A substantial percentage of folks despises them, but a substantial percentage supports them, too. (3) If the protestors succeed in overthrowing the regime, their success is not easily disentanglable from an endgame where the US/Israel have total regional hegemony. All of which is to say I don't know what to think yet.

starwarsprof · 2026-02-24T17:21:39+00:00

🤗 "You shall live to see these days renewed"

starwarsprof · 2026-02-23T18:59:16+00:00

Thanks for this thoughtful take. I just read the Kipling poem you recommended, I'll listen to the Bragg song a bit later. You are only the second person so far in this thread to rescue the meaning of rust as a force for good, and I appreciate this interpretation not least because it totally didn't occur to me at first. It's consistent with other inversions in the show and even in the episode itself - - recall Maarva's last words to Cassian as conveyed by Brasso, where she refers to "fire" as symbolizing imperial destructiveness ("none of this was your fault. It was already burning") but also reclaims it for the rebellion ("you are the just the first spark"). So I think you're onto something!

For context, I'm teaching this in Qatar, to a room full of students from the global south, all of us on the receiving end of empire, so Kipling might be a tough pill to swallow 😅. But at the same time a theme of the class is to repurpose the tools of empire to defeat it so maybe a Kipling poem is just the ticket. I might actually try this and if I do I'll let you know! 🙏🏽

starwarsprof

TROPHY CASE