Dancing through the horrors

why am i watching star wars while 14,000 babies are starving to death

Spoilers for Andor season 2 abound

I can’t stop thinking about the dancing scene in Andor season 2, because I think it captures the horror of attempting to live life normally at the moment, and also it’s where Mon Mothma went from Mon to Mother. Mother Mothma. Mon Mother? Let’s workshop this later.

Life is not normal right now, thanks to the rise of fascism, the genocide of the Palestinian people, the target on trans and queer rights around the world, the psyop of someone named “Benson Boone”: but for a variety of reasons - mostly capitalism - we are forced to pretend that it is normal (if we’re lucky enough to not actively be someone actively persecuted). It’s driving me quietly insane, and I think most people are feeling some version of this - even if it’s just about closing their eyes and trying to ignore it.

Andor is one of the best examples of a fictional engagement with the concept of living through the rise of fascism, up there with The Handmaid’s Tale, and brings a sense of sombreness and stakes to a fictional world that is equally capable of being incredibly goofy. Imagine telling someone you almost cried during a massacre episode of a Star Wars TV show ten years ago, when most people equated the franchise with a character named “Salacious B. Crumb”.

In the original Star Wars trilogy we’re introduced to the galaxy at a moment of fascist ascendency - they have won, they have eroded all the checks and balances designed to keep fascism out of power, and they are now in the process of policing their rule through atrocity and control. The rebellion, small and scrappy, seems an inevitable response - they are incontrovertibly the good guys, and the bad guys are destroying planets and are lead by an evil wizard. However, Andor as a prequel, shows us the terrifying rise of this fascism, and most importantly, the complacency and fear and collaboration of the general populace that allows it to happen. It shows us all the things we’re willing to give up in order to continue living comfortably, before finally the spotlight rests on you.

We’re given windows into communities that struggle to live their lives under this tyranny - and often we’re given the tragedies that lead them into small moments of resistance, or into rebellion itself. But what I found most fascinating and terrifying are the people we’re introduced to who are not directly affected, in the sense that they are not the target of the Empire, they are not the ones suffering - it’s their neighbours, or a neighbouring planet, or another race. It’s elsewhere. And it shows them continuing to try to live normally.

In season 2 this is beautifully shown through the Mon Mothma storyline - a wealthy senator, she’s an example of the elite. Her family, her friends, her peers, are able to not only live “normally” but even flourish - in fact it’s in their best interests to collaborate. And we see Mon Mothma live a double life, standing up for her ethics but also playing the game of conforming with this community. But it’s in this episode where another line is crossed - after she’s blackmailed by a close family friend, who endangers the resistance, and she is forced to tacitly give her approval for this man to be murdered. Much of the danger she’s experienced up to now has been hypothetical, potential - and perhaps she hasn’t been aware of exactly how much she’d have to sacrifice for her beliefs. In this episode, she kills off that comfort.

The dancing is an expression of not only that sacrifice, but the insanity of being forced to pretend that she’s not living in a time of horror and bloodshed, and that all the glitz and glamour of this wedding matters in comparison. She’s playing a double life for a reason - but when fascism rises like this and begins stripping away people’s rights, everyone to a degree is either pretending or wilfully collaborating. And that dance is a scream at how insane it is.

"Yes, it's this extraordinary, wild, free dance movement," said Mon Mothma actor, Genevive O’Reilly. "But it's also because she's writhing in pain because of what she's just done. She's just tacitly agreed to have her friend murdered, so she's dancing to stop herself from screaming."

This scene cuts to the heart of the question Andor asks - how to live ethically in a monstrous world, in a world of fascist supremacy. All our main characters are grappling with that - even the ones who we know are on the side of the Empire. We get to see the ways they justify being a part of the atrocity. But what’s interesting is that across the board, for every single character, we’re shown that there’s no comfort in this question. The heroes are as much damned by their ethics as the villains. We’re not given the triumph of rebellion like in the movies - no heroically blown up Death Stars, no lightsaber battles, no Yavin 4 award ceremonies. Instead we’re shown the gruelling sacrifices it takes on a day-to-day basis.

We get an amazing speech in season 1 from Luthen Rael about what he’s had to “sacrifice” for the rebellion - which really just showcases the idea that living ethically requires discomfort and sacrifice. This is paralleled with our main hero, Cassian, who is devoted and principled, but spends much of season 2 trying to work out how he can prioritise his care and love for his partner with his responsibilities to the rebellion, and to his ethics. It’s shown as almost impossible as a conundrum, but also deeply human. Is the rebellion more important than for his love for his family? Is his family more important than taking a stand? There’s no absolutely correct answer - but it’s also the way that the empire and fascism work, by making sure that you have to sacrifice the things and people you love in order to protest against their atrocities. It’s why people default into collaboration.

At the moment in Australia, we’re seeing a crackdown on people speaking on behalf of Palestine, who are losing their work, their livelihoods. We have the Antoinette Lattouf case where she lost her job at the ABC for sharing factual information about the genocide on her personal account. Recently we have Indigenous author Karen Wyld stripped of a fellowship for her comments. The entire point of this kind of campaign is to make people fearful of speaking up - and the fear works, because it impacts our ability to survive. When I was disciplined by the ABC for an open letter I signed before I even worked there, I was told that I’d had multiple complaints made against me by a lobby group - and while I haven’t stopped speaking out since, I have been more cautious as a result.

Combine this with the whole pesky “death of truth” thing we have going on in the media and it’s a perfect recipe to have those moments of exhaustion at living through the horrors. Hey, exhaustion is still a privileged position in comparison to so many things people are living through or dying from, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, and it isn’t a reality. The way that Andor showed how the media was integral to spinning the Ghorman resistance and massacre into a “complicated” narrative should be immediately recognisable as a parallel. Obviously this is still a fantasy universe - so let’s not go too crazy about dissecting the efficacy of a fictional narrative to comment on real world events - but we can absolutely explore our reality through fiction. Fiction is drawn from real world experience, and is a way that we can retell the lessons we should be learning from history.

There’s even something inherently broken and maddening about using a fictional star wars show as an intro to comment on a real life atrocity that is happening. But it’s also a perfect example of the psychosis of being alive and privileged right now - I’m still, to one extent or another, living my normal life. I am watching Star Wars and comedy shows and going to musicals and promoting my books, and trying to work out how to do that ethically while 14,000 babies are starving to death. There is no real valid frame of reference to make sense of all this.

I have no answer to that, or certainly not one that I can summarise into a Star Wars based article, but I guess the point of this piece is to acknowledge how insane it all feels, and is essentially my equivalent of scream dancing at the wedding like Mon Mothma.

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I’d like to plug Deepcut News in this article - two principled Australian journalists who have decided to report fearlessly on Palestine and other issues - very needed in the climate, and 10,000 times more useful than a star wars article.