And another from drafts - on the evil of the First Order

[potboy]

K, let’s examine how evil the First Order are: 

What have we seen them do, on screen, that looks pretty evil?

• They used a superweapon to blow up a massive civilian target
• They tortured an enemy combatant
• They massacred a non-combatant village
• Their army is composed of soldiers who were taken as infants and trained to combat from childhood onward.

Yeah, that does sound pretty bad. But

Who else has done these things?

• The US/allies used a superweapon in WWII to blow up two massive civilian targets
• Guantanamo Bay: *exists*
• During the Vietnam war, US troops operated on a “kill anything that moves” policy, resulting in many massacres of which The Mai Lai massacre is most well known.
• Who else raised children to combat from infancy? The Jedi - who we are supposed to believe are the good guys. (Also in the Real World, what other empire used a child tax to fill its armies and civil service? The Ottoman Empire, also a grey area when it comes to villainy)
  

What moral grounds have we got to say that any of this is justified when we do it - or when the heroes do it - but pure evil when the villains do it? Before we start throwing around the idea that empathizing with the villains automatically makes a person a fascist themself, maybe we should take a look at our own history and remember that all too often our nations have been the villains. 

Would we ourselves want to be judged with the kind of simplistic good v evil duality with which we talk about SW characters? How well do you think we would stand up under that? 

Now obviously, I’m not saying that torture and mass murder are good things. I’m just saying that it’s hypocritical of us to claim that we could never be citizens of a regime like that. We already are.

When our own nations desperately need to learn how to do better, it’s kind of offensive of us, tbh, to keep insisting we could only be the hero, and that we can’t even make art about the villains without sullying our moral purity.

Comments

[potboy]

My problem is that saying "he's evil" doesn't really tell you much, and doesn't invite you to understand the person's character. In what ways is he evil? Why is he evil like that and how did he become so? You know? And if you're going to be writing about someone, then you really need to understand their character in a more nuanced way than just 'he's bad.'

I fully agree that the First Order is a terrible fascist organization that hurts everyone, those outside itself especially, but also even those inside the order. But that's where I start to find some sympathy for the people in it.

What about the people who were born in the order? How are they to know that it's bad? How are they to know that there's another way? By the time they're old enough to be exposed to other cultures, they've had a lifetime's conditioning and indoctrination.

Someone like Hux, going through the officer core, learned in his infancy that the basic nature of humans is a savagery in which it's kill or be killed and eaten. The places the FO has been hanging out in throughout his youth are terrifying - the people are starving, fighting tooth and nail, cannibalizing each other.

At least in the FO everyone has enough food, and clothes on their backs, and an education of sorts. Of course someone who was raised in the places and by the people Hux was raised by is going to see strength and order as the only thing that can hold back the natural tides of human savagery. They're going to see the First Order as a good thing.

I mean, they'll be wrong, but they'll still be right that it's better than the alternatives they've been exposed to. And the view from where a person lives is the only one you can really judge them from.

They have to be fought and they have to be defeated, but they're still human, so they deserve the respect of being understood.

Also thanks! :)

[piningneedletea]

Sorry for getting back to this so late! You make excellent points (although admittedly I also managed to completely miss this being in reaction to antis, since I joined tumblr only a couple of months before the purge - I have always such a great timing! - and luckily didn't have time to run into them, even if I did hear horror stories from acquitances).

I pretty much agree with everything you have said. I'm also really glad that you have written this meta: it has really given me a lot to think. I really like your point about Hux having very limited undertsanding of what the world is likely as a child and his impression on human nature and the consequent belief that only order will bring good to the galaxy being caused by that.

[potboy]

No problem! I've been out of contact for over a week now over Christmas anyway :) Also, ugh, you were probably lucky to be out of the worst of the Tumblr anti business. There was a point where a genuinely large amount of people were arguing that if you were a fan of Hux it could only be because you were a Nazi (because he was far too minor a character and too unattractive to have gained fans for any other reason.)

I'm glad you enjoyed this take on him. I personally think he hasn't shown an awful lot of genuine villainy in what we've seen of him. Given that he's the child of a child-brainwasher, I feel free to continue to think of him as someone who is trying very hard to be exactly what his society is asking for from him. He really is the opposite and foil for Ren in so many ways :)