Star Wars, from the perspective of C-3PO, is a relentless nightmare
Just before The Force Awakens came out two years ago, Alexandra Petri wrote a piece about how Star Wars looks from the perspective of C-3PO. Spoiler: not good.
Your master goes into a bar, where they refuse to serve you. Instead of leaving the bar in solidarity, he makes you wait outside.
Then you wind up in a giant space station. Your master leaves you behind with your eccentric colleague, who turns out to be carrying Very Important Information. You have no weapons. “What should he and I do if we’re discovered here?” you ask.
“Lock the door,” your new boss says, leaving nonchalantly.
“And hope they don’t have blasters,” adds his new friend, a jerk.
Reminds me of A People’s History of Tattooine, Howard Zinn-like take on Star Wars:
What if Mos Eisley wasn’t really that wretched and it was just Obi Wan being racist again?
What do you mean these blaster marks are too precise to be made by Sand People? Who talks like that?
Also Sand People is not the preferred nomenclature.
Both are good reminders that it matters from whose perspective stories are told. One of my favorite moments in The Last Jedi (spoilers!) is when Finn and Rose are warned that they’re traveling to a dangerous and terrible place — if I recall correctly, the exact wording was a riff on Obi Wan’s opinion of Mos Eisley: a “wretched hive of scum and villainy” — but then they cut to a luxe casino full of ultra-rich people. That felt like an explicit reference to current events as well as a sly nod to A People’s History of Tattooine (which director Rian Johnson may have come across in his internet travels).
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