Caught in the Sad Orbit of a Dead Calamity
Fabio Fernandes
1. Star Wars has always been predominantly a universe of contradictory characteristics. Princesses and emperors coexist with apparently democratic parliaments and congresses, but which more closely resemble a kind of Austro-Hungarian Empire with a galactic scope, with intrigues that are much more feudal than Byzantine.
2. This comparison is not a frivolous one; The bureaucracy seen throughout the films (notably in relation to the Empire) leads to an economy of barter and theft on the outskirts (Tatooine, for example) and smuggling (Corellia and the Kessel Run).
3. Throughout the Skywalker saga films, we see little that may constitute an integrated economy in that universe. We have moisture farmers and spice miners (the latter only mentioned, but that in a way hark back to Dune, one of George Lucas's inspirations for the original trilogy), but the only form of apparently legitimate commerce we see in the first three films is the Mos Eisley tavern, seen as an activity, if not illegal, at least operating under the radar, serving a clientele that is not always “decent”. (We could think of Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back, but we are shown nothing in terms of commerce there).
4. This is mirrored throughout the entire saga – for example, in Maz Kanata's tavern in The Force Awakens. Described as a “watering hole” by J. J. Abrams, the tavern is located in a castle on the planet Takodana, a forest planet which is neutral territory between First Order and Resistance. Kanata is a former pirate and smuggler; although we know nothing about the owner of the Mos Eisley tavern, we clearly see that the two taverns differ in virtually no way to an outside observer.67
5. There are, of course, other scenarios. Coruscant, for example: because it is the political center of the galaxy (both in the times of the Republic, the Empire and the New Republic) it has a peculiar configuration. As far as we know, it is the only planet in the galaxy that is an ecumenopolis, namely, a world that has its entire surface covered by cities.68 It's a direct reference to Trantor, from Foundation, with echoes of Metropolis and maybe Thanagar (from the DC universe), as there are in fact two cities in one: a city high above and another, totally different, down there, among the canyons of the buildings. But Coruscant was never well-explored in the movies or in Andor for that matter (even though the Expanded Universe - now Legends - novels, along with the animated series The Clone Wars, covered a lot of territory in that sense) We know much more about what happens at the top of the apartment towers and in the Senate than below. Because it doesn't matter, perhaps?
6. (By the way, who cleans the latrines? Who takes out the trash? Robots? And why are robots always treated with disdain in the saga, even by holier-than-thou Luke? Why has there never been a robot uprising in SW? Because of their restraining bolts? Questions for another article).
7. It would be interesting (and important) to see more non-human forms of economy, like that of the Wookies. But (as far as audiovisual media is concerned) Kashyyyk only appears briefly at the end of the prequel trilogy and in the ill-fated Christmas special (about which we won't talk here). We don't know much about Chewbacca's home planet, other than that it's a tropical forest world, but whose inhabitants have knowledge of weaponry and advanced technology (although they don't seem to use it often). (As an aside, it’s our understanding that such things constitute merely a matter of convenience for the screenwriters throughout the series).
8. There don't seem to be many examples of legal or even decent work in Star Wars. Or there seemed to be none – until Andor. This series offers us other points of view regarding the Star Wars universe. If not contradictory to what we have seen to date, they are certainly complementary, adding to and enriching what has been seen before.
9. In the first scene of the series, we see a bar in the industrial world of Morlana One – and maybe the first really explicit mention of prostitution in Star Wars (important in a universe originally a bit puritan, so to speak, where references had always been veiled before). A man, Cassian Andor, looks for his sister there – and ends up killing two local security guards.
10. Shortly afterwards we also see Cassian Andor's adopted planet, Ferrix, where we see miners and an honest life of citizens subject to the Empire without necessarily being afraid of it, but also not endorsing its presence on their world.
11. A curiosity: Andor, in terms of writing, seems to be fruit of a certain British culture and not an American one, in the sense of showing (albeit not very closely) the life and hard work of the miners. When we see the village where Andor's adoptive mother, Maarva, lives, we become well-aware of the poverty of the citizens of Ferrix, a poverty not unlike that which existed in the villages of Wales at the beginning of the 20th century, for example. Since the late 1800, Wales was home of the leading ironworks in Europe, the Wrexham area coal production totalling over 2.5 million tonnes annually. (Maybe it’s important to note that the social effects of industrialisation led to bitter social conflict between the Welsh workers and English mine owners. During the 1830s there were two armed uprisings, in Merthyr Tydfil in 1831, and the Chartist uprising in Newport in 1839).
12. Andor carries this poverty with him even before Ferrix. Native to Kenari, a world completely devastated by Imperial mining, which killed his parents and those of several other children who manage to survive in a precarious and feral way on the planet, Andor is separated from his sister and taken by Maarva to Ferrix. When we meet him, he is an adult (about twenty years have passed since then) and carries a deep sorrow with him. He doesn't believe in anything, and he has plenty of reasons to do so.
13. Unlike Luke Skywalker, who is a simple, cornfed (or blue milk-fed) moisture farmer in the desert outreaches of Tatooine, Cassian Andor knew pain and suffering from an early age. Luke is white, blond, blue-eyed and well-fed. Andor has darker skin, black hair and eyes, and is very thin. Any comparative analogy between an American from the Corn Belt and a Latino from the periphery of capitalism is not a mere coincidence. If Skywalker is oppressed by the Empire (and he is), Andor is doubly so; in the geopolitics (or should we say cosmopolitics?) of the Star Wars universe, he not only has to strive as a person without many resources, but, instead of living in a desert planet since he was a baby, like Luke, Cassian Andor witnessed the slow destruction of a world, survived it by sheer luck when he was adopted and went to live in a poor mining colony. But the violence never lets his side: he still manages to sink deeper into misery by murdering the two security guards.
14. (An important distinction: he kills the first man by accident. Not the second, though).
15. But, even so, he was “caught in the sad orbit of a dead calamity”, as the head of the corporate security in Morlana One said regarding the killing of the two guards. He is more than willing to conjure an accident because of the huge bureaucracy that the investigation would bring, with no reasonable chance of getting the culprit. (This is the blindspot – one of many blindspots – of the Empire, which ultimately will allow the rebels to win. This does not mean they have an atom of good in them, just that they became lazy).
16. Meanwhile, on the planet where Andor lives, Ferrix, people fight as best they can. Unlike space smugglers like Han Solo, for whom (let’s be honest) the daily struggle seems but a game, here the thing gets serious: people are fighting for their lives every day. They can starve or die, and this is what makes Andor more convincing than any Star Wars story that has come before What may seem like shady business in other films of the franchise is seen here in another light: as a fight for survival.
17. Cassian Andor, on the other hand, is a hustler and a thief: someone who is after gain, not necessarily illegal or easy. He just wants to survive, but his mother wants him to be in peace, which is another story.
18. "Kenari. Mid Rim. Abandoned after a mining disaster." It's so insignificant that almost no one has heard of it. Mid Rim is also something quite in the middle of the galaxy in terms of importance: mediocre. "Abandoned and considered toxic. Imperial prohibition.” “Not the Empire - corporate authority,” says the sergeant to the crowd on Ferrix. Meaning: not important enough. Kenari and Ferrix are good enough to be exploited and that’s all.
19. When Andor kills the men, he goes briefly to Ferrix but prepares to flee that world forever. But he is forced to run away with Luthen Rael, who sees in the young man the makings of a great resistance fighter. Luthen tells Cassian that they will hang him “for a bobbin thread or 20 million credits, it makes no difference.” But he can do something important against the Empire. Cassian isn't particularly interested. Luthen offers to give him what he wants most.
20.Andor, reluctant at first, but ends up joining the Aldhani a rebel group . A spy himself (and also a merchant, but one of Coruscant's elite, specialising in antiquities), Luthen bets that Andor will eventually understand the importance of fighting the Empire.
21. It's not that Andor doesn't understand this importance; but hungry people with few resources often need to focus on surviving first. (The Skywalker saga, in contrast, smartly focuses on Jedi mysticism and mostly ignores the needs of the galaxy’s people. This is a smart move, of course, only in the sense of storytelling).
22. The importance of the struggle, in any case, will be hammered into his head little by little, partly also with the help of the young Nemik, an ideologue who writes a manifesto aligned in a certain way with the Manifesto of the Communist Party, by Marx and Engels, with undertones of Mao and Lenin. In a nutshell, we could say that Nemik could have been a Lenin in the beginning of his education, asking the fundamental question: “what is to be done?” and trying to find a practical answer to it.
23. Also, Maarva herself, upon learning of the attack on the garrison in Aldhani, will be excited to participate in the Rebellion. She doesn't know about Andor's participation in the attack, and Andor can't understand it (yet), but deep down it's just a matter of time. Maarva's radicalization, due in part to Cassian's actions, will turn full circle, helping radicalise Cassian in turn.
25. Finally, Andor's arrest and incarceration at to Narkina 5, where he will be forced to labor under penalty of torture and death, will be the final straw that will make him become a rebel once and for all.
26. Another difference: although the Skywalker saga is evidently told with a sympathetic eye towards the rebels, at the same time it seems to show the rebels and other non-aligned parties as people who act on the fringes of illegality and that this is pretty much immoral, a view usually espoused by right-wing parties in our reality.
27. Another curiosity: the word villain, meaning thief, bandit (and huckster, smuggler, and other illegal occupations), used to mean just villager, the inhabitant of a village. Who created this deleterious meaning? According to Merriam-Webster: “The landed aristocracy (those at home in villas in the classical Latin sense of the word) dominating medieval society in the days of Middle English had all the power, politically and linguistically, and under their use of the word, the Middle English descendant of villanus meaning "villager" - a word styled as vilain or vilein - developed the meaning "a person of uncouth mind and manners").69
28. In our case, the inhabitants of the city where Andor lives are the quintessential villains: uncouth (to Empire’s standards) miners and mechanics against the system from outside, unable at first to come out against it but always against it as a matter of principle. Therefore, not only uncouth but dangerous to the system.
29. In Andor, the focus is on humans. Other species are not important, even though many of them are also against the Empire. In other films of the franchise we see inter-species trade, but what matters most of the time are humans. Everything revolves around them, including forms of commerce and supposedly payment. (as seen before with the example of Kashyyyk). Why, exactly, this xenophobic behavior of sorts – among humans in general, not only in the Empire
30. An interesting example would be the supposed origin of the entire Star Wars universe, proposed by Robert J. Sawyer for a trilogy called Alien Exodus70 but which was not accepted and ended up becoming fanfiction.71 This would go some way to explaining, at least in part, if it had actually been developed. But it was not.
31. So where do we stand? Just as, in the prequel trilogy, we see that Padme Amidala is queen by election (a system that was not invented by Lucas, as it existed in our world at different times, such as in the Holy Roman Empire72), the creation of that universe sometimes seems to be done by conveniently adding contradictory pieces of information to cater to everyone’s tastes. The financial issue, for instance, is never well explained.
32. And Andor doesn't give us all the answers. But it helps to create a more consistent, adult picture, let's say, of the Star Wars universe. But still far from satisfactory.
33. We remember here the joke about the Death Star workers in the film Clerks, by Kevin Smith. In that film, Dante Hicks and Randall Graves, two slacker friends who work unbearably bland jobs at a New Jersey convenience store and video rental store sitting next to one another, shoot the breeze talking nerd trivia – among which is the now-infamous tirade about how the rebels killed a lot of innocent contractors aboard the second Death Star. (In Season One of The Mandalorian, Cara Dune is questioned by an Imperial officer about the many millions of people the Rebels killed on both battle stations combined, though he gets a bit carried away near the end of his speech, deeming Alderaan's destruction "a small price to pay to rid the galaxy of terrorism." Then Cara Dune shoots him dead, which is also a small price to pay as well).73
34. This running joke gets an even darker twist with the situation that Andor is subjected to when he is imprisoned – and he himself becomes part of the building team of the first Death Star. Andor manages to escape, but only when he enlists his companions in misfortune, showing that unity is strength – something that the Imperial regime knows very well and always seeks to dismantle.
35. In fact, this is Andor's moral – at least what we can glean from its first season, which also features a showdown in its last episode: strength in numbers. It does not necessarily mean that unity brings victory, however.
36. We know where the series is going in relation to the character Cassian Andor, as it is the Star Wars version of the novel Crônica de uma Morte Anunciada, by Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Andor is Santiago Nasar (again, perhaps it's no surprise that a Latino actor was chosen for the role), the man who goes to another town in Colombia to see the woman he loves even though he knows the girl’s brothers will kill him, a fact that has already happened when the story (told in retrospect) begins.
37. Could Andor also be a kind of Che Guevara (although the reference is already very explicitly coded in the name of the leader Saw Gerrera, played by Forest Whitaker)? Andor's motivation is different (and closer to Che’s than Saw Gerrera, who’s an anarchist, unlike Che, who was a self-avowed communist) – but in the end everything will lead to a state of revolt. We know, because there will be another season (apparently, from what we know, only in 2025), that Cassian Andor will survive – and that together with Jyn Erso he will gather a ragtag army of sorts to get the plans for the Death Star, a mission from which none will come out alive.
38. Andor dies apparently sad, although knowing that his efforts finally led to something, namely, the effective beginning of the end of the Empire with the destruction of its greatest weapon. It's not a consolation, but it's the closest to real life, with its disappointments and disillusionments, that Star Wars has brought us to date. This is the possible realpolitik in this fantasy world. And that’s okay. Because the struggle goes on. Always.
67. James White, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens - learn more about Maz Kanata and Supreme Leader Snoke”, Empire Online, 2015: empireonline.com/movies/news/star-wars-force-awakens-learn-maz-kanata-supreme-leader-snoke.
68. This is not entirely true, since there is at least one other ecumenopolis in the Star Wars universe. Hosnian Prime appears only in The Force Awakens (2015), just to be destroyed by Starkiller Base. Initially, Bad Robot Productions wanted the planet destroyed in the film to be Coruscant. But, according to Lucasfilm Story Group member Pablo Hidalgo, representatives of Lucasfilm were reticent to this idea, since Coruscant was planned to appear in other projects besides The Force Awakens. As a compromise, Hosnian Prime was created to fill its role. Not to mention the 22 other ecumenopolis previously created in the Expanded Universe but relegated today to the status of Legends. So, for all intents and purposes, Coruscant is the only ecumenopolis in Star Wars universe.
69. Merriam-Webster, “The History of the Word “Villain”’, Merriam-Webster: merriam-webster.com/wordplay/the-villain-in-the-history-of-the-word-villain-isnt-the-villain.
70. Robert J. Sawyer, “George Lucas's Monsters and Aliens, Volume 1: Alien Exodus”, SF Writer: sfwriter.com/alienout.htm.
71. Wookiepedia, “Alien Exodus”, Wookiepedia: starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Alien_Exodus.
72. However in this case the position of the monarch was for life, unlike Naboo, where the queen is replaced every few years.
73. Ben Wasserman, “The Mandalorian Just Made Clerks' Best Argument Star Wars Canon”, CBR, 2020: cbr.com/mandalorian-clerks-death-star-wars-canon.