Smacking Neoliberalism Over the Head with a Brick: Andor’s Revolution

Py Writ

I stayed up until midnight to watch Andor’s three-episode premiere, like I do with all Star Wars shows, expecting anything ranging from disappointment to mild enjoyment. Despite being a Star Wars fan, my pessimism came from Disney’s handling of mainstream Star Wars. Aside from Rogue One, which I thought was genuinely great — the best Disney Star Wars movie — I was only holding out a bit of hope. But the trailers for Andor looked far different from the other shows. “Help me Cassian Andor, you’re my only hope!”

The main thing I was excited for was the tone: it looked serious, ready to reckon properly with a character whose introduction in Rogue One included the murder of an ally to protect Rebel secrets. And then I watched Andor’s first episode, and I was awed by the absolute mastery of the craft of storytelling in the first scenes: the significance of a person with a conspicuous Mexican accent getting harassed, asked if he swam there, by police, and then killing them, was not lost on me. With Season 1’s conclusion, I want to explore the politics behind most mainstream neoliberal media, contrast it with the abolitionism that makes Andor uniquely radical, and reconcile that with Disney’s ownership of the show. Don’t make me regret this, Season 2.

Now, you’re probably aware that Star Wars is and always has been political. The originals began with several real-world political allegories: “Stormtroopers” and Nazi Brownshirts, the Empire as America, etc.¹⁶⁴ The prequels have more prominent politics, much to audiences’ dislike (but I think they sucked for reasons other than being about politics and much hate is misplaced). Politics were also present in The Clone Wars (two-thirds Lucas): trade, humanitarian aid, etc. More generally, all art is political; an artist necessarily must incorporate something of themselves and their beliefs into their work. Even labeling something “apolitical” is a political statement. Creators of a work determine whether their politics is accidentally or intentionally reflected in their art.

Lucas clearly started by trying to inject anti-imperial ideas into Star Wars, but he eventually sold out to Disney, which is not interested in anti-anything. For example, when one rogue writer for Rogue One tweeted anti-Trump sentiments and related the Empire and the US, Disney CEO Bob Iger reacted with “I have no reaction to [this] story at all” and asserted that Rogue One was not “in any way, a political film. There are no political statements in it, at all.”¹⁶⁵ I don’t entirely blame Lucas for selling, especially if he felt out of things to say, but, predictably, megacorporation ownership began the era of “apolitical” Star Wars.

Disney’s control of Star Wars affects the Star Wars franchise just like Disney’s control over other “intellectual property” affects other franchises, such as Marvel. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is the driving force behind creating the “superhero” film genre, a genre that largely refuses to engage with the political process, instead featuring unrealistic existential threats and superhuman powers with no real-world parallels. Sure, gods should not be restricted by our political process when defending half of all existence, I guess. But “defending” is the key: superheroes defend the status quo; rarely, if ever, fighting the actual Western power structures perpetuating injustices they should theoretically oppose. There’s more to be said about character power creep mirroring real militarism, baked-in American military propaganda, cultural appropriation vs. appreciation vs. representation, etc., but for length reasons I’ll only discuss one more Marvel-specific thing: the Marvel villain problem.

The saying goes that a hero is only as good as their villain, and many Marvel stories suffer from a particularly bad archetype of villain that I’ll call the “Hungry Terrorist.” These villains are products of an unjust system, which should highlight the system, not the person, as the main problem to be beaten. However, Disney makes the Hungry Terrorist irrationally vengeful to re-center the story on their individual defeat, instead of systemic elimination of conditions for their existence. Example from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: answer to starvation due to inequitable distribution of resources across borders? Explode people. From the Black Panther movies: answer to the effects of systemic, historical racism? White genocide. (My flippancy reflects the depth of thought put into these crappy stories.) The heroes’ solutions (give senators a stern talking-to and Bay Area real estate investment, respectively) are not equally radical in a different/opposite direction, especially compared to the heroes’ powers. Marvel/Disney, intentionally or not, highlights that it is the villains’ radicality that makes them inherently villainous.

Disney is not unique in this; all major corporations don’t want radical change because they sit atop the neoliberal status quo. So let’s talk about what neoliberalism is and how it manifests in storytelling.

Economic liberalism (for my fellow Americans, I’m talking “liberal” as in “free market,” not as in “Democratic Party”) was a major factor in the Great Depression (1929 to 1939), shaking faith in late-19th-century laissez-faire economics.¹⁶⁶ Extremely over-simplified, “stop economic downturns from killing millions via government policy” was a common sentiment. In America, for example, we got some (extremely) diet socialism under President Roosevelt (1933 to 1945). Among other things, he created jobs by investing heavily in public works (New Deal) and somewhat prevented banks from directly gambling with people’s money (Glass-Steagall). But a notable non-left-wing response to the Great Depression was Nazism, supported by wealthy capitalists in early attempts to co-opt or stem the rising tide of leftist thought via scapegoating various groups like Jewish people for capitalism’s failings.

The bloody end to Nazi Germany indicated that the bourgeoisie would need a different counter-revolutionary response to leftism, and thus neoliberalism was born in the late 20th century. A bunch of white men had gotten together to found the Chicago school of economics in the mid-1940s, funded via think-tank by another rich white guy scared by government economic oversight. This early Chicago school was not yet the neoliberal powerhouse it would become; for example, one of its members believed in some industries’ nationalizations and elimination of corporate monopolies, blaming them for the Depression (he was almost… based).¹⁶⁷ But eventually noted/hated economist Milton Friedman would pull monetarism out of his ass, blaming monetary supply contraction for the Depression (and not, y’know, capitalism’s inherent boom-bust cycle) and finally settling on a not-explicitly-racist explanation that could allow capitalism to persist.

Friedman’s shit was so shiny that Reagan and Thatcher both wanted him as an advisor. The primary faces of neoliberalism in the 1980s and 90s, both were known for what would come to characterize Western neoliberal economic policy: privatization, deregulation, and austerity, seasoned to suit their respective constituents’ palates with racism, homophobia, illegal arms dealing, etc. Thatcher’s TINA (“there is no alternative”)¹⁶⁸ outlines what Mark Fisher would call capitalist realism¹⁶⁹ succinctly: the sense that capitalism is the only viable system and the impossibility of imagining alternatives. Fisher claims neoliberals have established capitalist realism, and Thatcher’s apocryphal declaration that her greatest achievement was New Labour (the neoliberal reinvention of the main British left-wing party)¹⁷⁰ supports this, for example.

Here is where we should shift away from “neoliberalism” as only meaning the specific economic policies and toward “neoliberalism” as a general refusal to consider the possibility of broken systems and only a focus on individuals within existing systems. (Again, Thatcher provides an illustrative example of such refusal: “...there’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families.”)¹⁷¹ This distinction between economic policy and generic political thought pattern is necessary because modern neoliberals may not call themselves “neoliberal” or have strong feelings about, say, the privatization of railroads, but are still neoliberal in attitude/action.¹⁷²

Not caring about railroad privatization doesn’t mean that neoliberals ignore everything; most acknowledge systemic problems like racism or sexism.¹⁷³ But the lack of political imagination means that Reagan’s trickle-down economics is copied into non-systemic “solutions” like neoliberal ”anti”-racism and feminism: racism is solved by black presidents and sexism is solved by female prime ministers (or female ISB agents, as Andor critiques¹⁷⁴). Personnel change at the top will trickle down into social progress for the bottom. Societal problems arise from staffing, not system.

Such political small-mindedness is a major factor in other neoliberal characteristics that are not immediately linkable to specific neoliberal economic policies. Proposing non-systemic solutions to systemic problems often flattens activism/agitation into just its optics as respectability politics and electoralism become important ways of silencing/ridiculing radicals who advocate for real systemic change. In the US, working within the two-party system means trying to marshall leftists behind milquetoast candidates like the Clintons or Biden because if the Republicans are team bad guys, the Dems must be team good guys. “The risk of doing nothing becomes the greatest risk of all” (Syril Karn) only when it comes to voting/campaign donations, not protesting/boycotting/etc.

This explains the neoliberal fixation on convenient political opponents like Trump in the US, criticized as much for his policies as for his presentation. He’s a fantastic bad guy, the face of everything wrong with the bad team. Neoliberal critique of Trump’s policies will often disappear when such policies are a Democratic president’s policies, and neoliberal critique of Trump’s presentation will include his hateful words and sexual abuse, yes, but also often takes the form of body-shaming or fat jokes.

With all this in mind, the neoliberalism in the MCU is fairly evident owing to its setting in the real world, but we can see it in Star Wars if we apply some critical thought. The prequels’ (and The Clone Wars) stories are often about special superhumans waging a counter-revolutionary war, ignoring the Separatist citizens’ General Grievance, so to speak: the corrupt Republic’s marginalization of the poorer Outer Rim. Jedi enforce the neoliberal status quo as police and military, a role questioned mostly in the context of pragmatism vs. idealism and not establishment vs. anti-establishment. Lucas’s trilogy is at least trying to be radical, keeping neoliberal elements like individualized “Hero’s Journey” storytelling conventions but telling a story about positive revolution instead.

With the exception of Andor (and arguably Rogue One), the spin-off shows, Solo, and the sequels are largely obsessed with Star Wars’ aesthetic/small details over Star Wars’ anti-fascist DNA (see Dooley’s essay on fetishism and materiality). Don’t get me wrong, there are very bright spots throughout, but as larger stories they often fall short of any specific messaging. This is most apparent in the sequels, a trilogy substituting copy-pasted story beats, hastily farted-out Star Destroyers from a Fortnite tie-in event, and noncommittal diversity for originality, themes, and principles. (The Last Jedi is mostly spared from being shit on by having intentional messaging and fresh ideas, and any criticisms I have are more about execution. That’s a whole different essay though.)

Neoliberal stories will necessarily feel similar and unimaginative. Stories that feature only one systemic outcome will be repetitive, but repetition is seen as good. Deviation is unwanted risk. Disney’s massive wealth from its market dominance could finance whatever it wanted, but the institutional shareholders to which Disney is ultimately beholden do not want anything but consistent stock growth. So instead of using their vast resources to take artistic risks, megacorporations pump out massive quantities of content, leading to the corporate inception of the multiverse. Franchise enjoyment has been made nigh-impossible without the required reading, and stories can’t end because there must be spin-off or sequel potential. Disney weaves charismatic/popular/talented/attractive actors, profit-proven story beats, neoliberal “diversity,” and abused VFX teams¹⁷⁵ into their messy webs of neverending half-stories with generic, watered-down messages designed to cause minimal offense.

Minimizing offense to maximize shallow appeal ridicules radicalism while praising something like the shitty representation of a half-second, easily-censored¹⁷⁶ gay kiss in The Rise of Skywalker. But this is one of many places where Andor refuses to play by neoliberal rules: Vel and Cinta’s sapphic relationship is treated as seriously as any other; a relationship that happens to be queer rather than a tokenized marketing opportunity. Andor doesn’t flatten eroticism into objectification, like most other Star Wars visual media, or sanitize it. For example, early in the show Bix shows up late at Timm’s place because she wants to fuck, not for post-marital only-implied-by-a-pregnancy sex. This is a realistic portrayal of normal human relationships. And these moments aren’t used for pornographic shock value either; kid’s-show canonically-14-year-old Ahsoka Tano shows more skin than any character in Andor.

There is so much more that is so refreshingly un-neoliberal about Andor that I would love to rave about, but for the sake of length I’ll set most of it aside (and you can find most of it in the other essays). Instead, I’ll remind you of Andor’s story with some abolitionist editorializing as I see fit, so that we can finally get to my main points.

Immediately, Cassian accidentally kills a cop harassing him in a scene paralleling the harassment people of color face at the hands of real cops. He’s left with a dilemma: will cops be honest when honesty reflects their abuse of power and absolves a disenfranchised person? Cassian answers no, prompting Syril Karn’s pursuit, a storyline straight out of a cop show that would portray Syril as its hard-working, responsible, determined, bureaucracy-restrained protagonist. Syril’s pursuit is foiled by corporate incompetence and Ferrix’s communal solidarity in the face of the cops. But Cassian’s no radical yet, and following his escape he works for someone who just so happens to be a committed revolutionary stealing money from an Imperial payroll. This storyline is straight out of a history book this time: showrunner Gilroy explained the arc’s inspiration was Stalin/Lenin’s organization of a bank heist to fund the Russian revolution.¹⁷⁷ At the same time, the Imperial military replaces the corporate security force, serving the same role of law enforcement but with more men and better funding.

Spending time with Marx-like theorist Nemik has clearly changed Cassian, demonstrated when he immediately guns down a previous version of himself (Skeen) that would’ve stolen the Rebellion’s funds, then accepts Nemik’s manifesto. He’s disturbed he would’ve once taken Skeen’s deal but still isn’t a committed revolutionary, choosing instead to vacation in space Florida after failing to convince his mother, who he inadvertently helped radicalize, to follow him. He’s clearly not happy though, especially when he gets arrested and sentenced in a plot contrivance that actually mirrors the many arbitrary sentencings of real people of color.

The prison guards introduce him and us to a sci-fi imagination of the technological surveillance inmates experience as part of the prison panopticon. We watch him slave away building what is revealed to be military equipment while he tries to radicalize Kino Loy, the fellow prisoner-turned-slavemaster. He finally succeeds when Kino learns of the perpetual incarceration that parallels the high rates of recidivism of real punitive carceral systems, leading to Kino’s iconic “never more than twelve.” In death, elderly inmate Ulaf enables the prison break, not simply of the individual main characters but the entire prison collectively. This theme of collective rebellion continues to the season’s end as Maarva briefly becomes the titular “Andor” in the show’s last episode, calling for radical action against the Empire. Brasso takes this to heart, smacking a soldier over the head with Maarva’s brick. But it’s not just Brasso; Ferrix collectively rises up, and Cassian himself heeds Maarva’s call, eliciting Luthen’s widest genuine smile by officially joining the Rebellion.

The prison abolition movement starts from most of the same facts depicted in Andor. Both understand how people end up in prison: the corporate control over life that forces people into extra-legal subsistence, the unevenly enforced “law and order” and the unfair sentencing that actually results in incarceration, and the by-design infinite carcerality that manifests in real life as passed-down¹⁷⁸ criminality. The movement seeks to fight the actual horrors of prison not by making conditions better or more equal but instead by abolishing prison entirely.¹⁷⁹

Cassian’s journey demonstrates the importance and horror of prison labor, which depends on policing to grow its labor force. For example, my American readers are probably familiar with the 13th Amendment, which prohibited slavery, “except as punishment for crime,”¹⁸⁰ reflecting the ways the institution of our “justice” system evolved from the institution of chattel slavery. This explicit exception allows a prison to reduce operating costs by using its slave labor force to administer itself,¹⁸¹ as in Andor. A government-owned corporation called Unicor uses prison labor to produce (among other things) military equipment or missile components on contracts for Raytheon and the US Army.¹⁸² I could go on but I trust you’ve got the point: prison labor is a special brand of inhumane and exploitative.

The show also highlights something crucial to abolition: prison, police, and military are not discrete and not exclusive to the state. All three branches in various countries buy from the same companies¹⁸³ and exchange tactics and information,¹⁸⁴ depending on each other for continued existence. And corporations trade force to and from each other and governments.¹⁸⁵ Andor highlights that on a basic level, it doesn’t matter much to someone if the gun in their face is state- or privately owned. Abolitionism isn’t a public/private issue (in fact, 93% of US prisoners aren’t held in private prisons¹⁸⁶) or a uniquely American issue;¹⁸⁷ nationalizing our prison industry or banning private armed forces won’t lead to meaningful change. Recent chants of “NYPD, KKK, IDF, they’re all the same”¹⁸⁸ and stickers equating the KKK, IDF, and Atlanta Police Department (APD)¹⁸⁹ are real-life examples of this understanding of such blending and inter-dependence.

Obviously, some of what I’ve described isn’t present in Andor. For example, it doesn’t depict a prison-less utopia where robust welfare, paid for not by oil or centuries of good relations with the imperial West, makes crime unnecessary. But Andor presents the majority of the foundations of abolitionism, followed by calling for action against both prisons and the system they serve. Well-known radical Angela Davis, in her seminal work Are Prisons Obsolete?, describes “the ideological work the prison performs:” it lets neoliberals disengage with “the problems of our society… [it is] a black hole into which the detritus of contemporary capitalism is deposited.”¹⁹⁰ Andor refuses to use prison as a mere setting where crooks go that our heroes, who are not crooks, rightfully escape. The show instead delves directly into the black hole and yanks the “detritus” from the Empire’s grasp. And this is why I am calling Andor abolitionist media.

Hmm, can I just do that? Like, why not say The Birth of a Nation is anti-racist media? Well, bad-faith strawman I made up to transition my essay, the obvious answer is that Andor has many elements of abolitionism in it already, as I’ve explained. But it’s true that I put my own spin on describing the show’s events and drew from many other sources. Disney itself certainly isn’t putting out supplemental material calling for real-life revolutionary action and connecting it to Andor, unless I’ve been missing out. And hey wait, didn’t I mention in one of my overly long footnotes that neoliberals “separate the art from the artist?” Isn’t that basically what I’m doing? Does Andor get to be special simply by being that fucking good?

So I think a couple distinctions are necessary here: a distinction between “artist” and “owner” and one between “separate art from artist” and “death of the author,” which are often used interchangeably. This is my last and perhaps most easily actionable point.

I won’t summarize too heavily basic Marxist critique of alienated labor, but essentially Gilroy, Luna, etc. are the artists, while Disney, the faceless megacorporate pseudo-monopoly, is the owner of Andor/Star Wars. This is very much a hierarchical relationship that necessitates artistic compromise, either directly via studio feedback¹⁹¹ or indirectly via mere studio existence guiding creative choices.¹⁹² This means that while the artist is not the owner, the owner may be an artist to some degree. Also, it’s likely Disney, not Gilroy, who would sue my ass if I told you to pirate Andor,¹⁹³ since the owner, not the artist, controls the intellectual property.

So in examining “owner” vs. “artist” I want to separate Andor’s proprietary and artistic existences, which means going against the neoliberal idea that consumer choice is the only choice we have, that all we can do is vote with our wallets. My positive review of the art is not also an endorsement of the product. I can (uh, theoretically) enjoy Andor while not giving Disney money.

The common rebuttal to piracy¹⁹⁴ is “don’t creatives deserve to get paid?” In my ideal world, if monetary compensation existed at all it would be nearly irrelevant, but I recognize that’s not where we live today. Artists can’t eat fantasies of socialism. But Disney, the owner that would receive the vast majority of my payment to watch Andor, doesn’t need to eat.¹⁹⁵ It was in fact an active participant in trying to starve out the very artists that do need to eat (see Bagger’s essay for a longer discussion of the most recent Hollywood strike). So paying Disney for Andor is at best unhelpful to its artists and at worst actively counterproductive. (If I could directly pay the creators, I would [and do, when possible!])

Now, onto the next distinction. Often, “separate the art from the artist” is a moral palliative justifying excessively unethical/unthinking consumption. It usually means “I like the art, so I’ll buy the product. End of story.” No thought is given to who or what you’re funding, good or bad.

“Death of the author” is a more intentional, explicitly revolutionary separation of art from artist. It’s relevant because we can’t ignore Disney’s creative influence on the show, even if we can avoid giving it money. “Death of the author” as a phrase comes from an essay by French philosopher Roland Barthes, and the subsequent conflation of the phrase with the consumptive absolution in the previous paragraph could be an interesting example of the death of the author. But Barthes’s essay was not originally about excusing purchases: he writes of the “tyrannical cent[ering]” of the author in literature, which limits critique to mere discovery and explanation of authorial intent. He describes the refusal to assign ultimate (authorial) meaning to a text as “revolutionary,” concluding his essay with “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author.”¹⁹⁶

And indeed I intend for my reading of Andor to be revolutionary. Andor’s abolitionism hasn’t only been handed to me; I’m making it myself in the way I engage with the show and take the messaging I’ve gathered out into the world. In much the same way Andor centers the Star Wars story on the common people, the birth of the reader/death of the author centers meaning-making on the common people. Dead authors include Gilroy, Luna, etc., as much as Disney: I’m not trying to argue that Gilroy himself is an abolitionist, and it doesn’t matter much (to be clear, I’m also not saying he’s a capitalist shill). We, the audience, can draw abolitionist conclusions from Andor easily (more easily than most mainstream media) whether Disney, Gilroy, etc. want us to or not.

So I hope that as many Star Wars fans, and non-fans, as possible watch Andor. Then, let the leftism flow through you! Connect what you see on screen to what you see in the news, in the workplace, in the streets, in apartments. Abolition is not just a Marxist cause, it is a feminist, race, disability rights, education, environmental, anti-imperial, mental health, etc. issue. It isn’t only about resisting prisons, it’s about resisting neoliberal violence and coercion, its power and control. Get out there and join a tenant union, start a copwatch program, something even slightly transgressive. Hell, even sharing copyrighted media for free is a start! (No one in my college classes ever paid for a textbook.) Take Barthes’s work a little further: we can’t passively wait for the death of megacorporations as authors of our fictional and real stories, we must get out there and kill them together.

164. Christopher Klein, “The Real History That Inspired ‘Star Wars’”, History.com, 2015: history.com/news/the-real-history-that-inspired-star-wars.
165. Mia Galuppo, “Disney’s Bob Iger on ‘Rogue One’”, The Hollywood Reporter, 2016: hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/disneys-bob-iger-rogue-one-are-no-political-statements-955047.
166. Britannica, “The Modern Liberal Program”, Brittanica: britannica.com/topic/liberalism/The-modern-liberal-program.
167. Philip Mirowski and Rob Van Horn, “The Rise of the Chicago School of Economics and the Birth of Neoliberalism”, in Philip Mirowksi and Dieter Plehwe, The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), pp. 142–149.
168. Laura Flanders, “At Thatchers Funeral, Bury TINA, Too”, The Nation, 2013: thenation.com/article/archive/thatchers-funeral-bury-tina-too/.
169. Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Winchester: Zer0 Books, 2022), p. 1.
170. Andy McSmith, Ben Chu, and Richard Garner, “Margaret Thatcher’s Legacy”, Independent, 2013: independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/margaret-thatcher-s-legacy-spilt-milk-new-labour-and-the-big-bang-she-changed-everything-8564541.html.
171. Margaret Thatcher, “Margaret Thatcher: A Life in Quotes”, The Guardian, 2013: theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/08/margaret-thatcher-quotes.
172. Labeling someone “neoliberal,” like labeling Andor “Star Wars,” is not really relevant. What matters is one’s actions/the show’s content. And just like the originals have neoliberal elements, while trying to fight the imperialist status quo, someone can do or think neoliberal and non-neoliberal things.
173. “Neoliberal” is distinct from “apolitical” but the two are closely linked. Neoliberals are often apolitical or only aesthetically political in daily life. Imagine buying Harry Potter merchandise because they can “separate the art from the artist” (apolitical) while driving a hybrid Prius with an “I’m With Her” bumper sticker (aesthetically political).
174. Max Miller, “Andor’s Denise Gough Highlights The Complications Of Cheering For Her Character, Looper, 2022: looper.com/969670/andors-denise-gough-highlights-the-complications-of-cheering-for-her-character/.
175. Brian Welk, “Marvel Is Just The Beginning”, IndieWire, 2023: indiewire.com/news/business/iatse-marvel-vfx-union-interview-1234906171.
176. Ethan Alter, “Historic same-sex kiss in 'The Rise of Skywalker' polarizes 'Star Wars' fans”, Yahoo!Entertainment, 2019: yahoo.com/entertainment/star-wars-rise-of-skywalker-same-sex-kiss-lgbtq-controversy-censorship-172057510.html.
177. Joshua Meyer, “The Real Life Robbery That Inspired Andor’s Big Heist Storyline”, SlashFilm, 2022: slashfilm.com/1097109/the-real-life-robbery-that-inspired-andors-big-heist-storyline.
178. Daniel P. Mears and Sonja E. Siennick, “Young Adult Outcomes and the Life-Course Penalties of Parental Incarceration”, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 53.1 (2015) pp. 3–35.
179. This is not to say abolition is opposed to reform, just that reform is not the end goal. For example, Nordic prison (and welfare, which is how you actually reduce crime) systems are far better than the rest of the world, but even they still have a way to go. They also exist in the context of oil, NATO, etc.
180. Constitution of the United States, “Thirteenth Amendment”, Constitution of the United States: constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-13/.
181. ACLU, “Captive Labor”, ACLU, 2022: aclu.org/publications/captive-labor-exploitation-incarcerated-workers.
182. Noah Shachtman, “Army Recruits Prisoners to Make Body Armor”, Wired, 2011: wired.com/2011/03/prisoners-body-armor.
183. See Microsoft’s Domain Awareness System for the NYPD, its “Offender 360” for prisons, and its Integrated Visual Augmentation System for the US military. Microsoft is only one example, in no way unique among tech companies or companies in general.
184. See Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange and its connection to Cop City. Cop City is discussed in Belles’s essay.
185. Companies buying from states: banana company overthrows Guatemalan government using CIA. States buying from companies: CIA pays for mercenaries in Afghanistan. Companies buying from companies: oil company hires mercenaries to protect Dakota Access Pipeline. And these are only American examples!
186. Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner, “Mass Incarceration”, Prison Policy Iniative, 2023: prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html.
187. Although America in particular blurs lines between prison, police, and military with its jingoistic self-declaration as the world’s police combined with its uniquely outsized defense budget. Its globally located military works internationally as its police work domestically: take flimsy excuses to wreak violent havoc at great financial and human expense and claim improvement, usually in service to the status quo. Its torture and illegal holding of prisoners of its “War on Terror,” or its border patrols and immigrant detention centers, are more examples that tie the three together.
188. Shannon Stapleton, “Hundreds of Pro-Palestinian protestors arrested after blocking NYC bridges, tunnel”, AOL, 2024: aol.com/news/pro-palestinian-protesters-block-york-171009306.html.
189. Fergie Chambers, “From comrades back in Atlanta”, X, 2024: x.com/jccfergie/status/1745548576896299459.
190. Angela Y. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003), p. 16.
191.Originally Maarva said “fuck.” Release the special edition “fuck” cut!
192. Although Gilroy didn’t feel much pressure, which is why the show fucks so hard.
193. Which I would never endorse. Somehow these random links snuck in here though: uBlock Origin, MullvadVPN, qBitTorrent, and 1337x.to. DM me @py_writ if you’ve got questions.
194. Note here I’m talking about pirating from large companies.
195. Dominic Patten, “Hollywood Studios’ WGA Strike Endgame Is To Let Writers Go Broke Before Resuming Talks In Fall”, Deadline, 2023: deadline.com/2023/07/writers-strike-hollywood-studios-deal-fight-wga-actors-1235434335.
196. Roland Barthes and Stephen Heath, The Death of the Author (London: Fontana, 1977), pp. 142–148.