Workers’ Playtime: Andor, Nostalgia and Admonitory Retrofuturism
Fiona Moore
Andor has frequently been identified by reviewers as an example of retrofuturism.87 That is to say, it is a series which, aesthetically and/or thematically, evokes past imaginings of the future rather than contemporary ones.88 Most of the literature on retrofuturism categorises it as either conservative, looking to the SF of past ages as examples of what could have been but which can now not come to pass, as hopeful, using the optimism of past SF to construct a positive imagined future, or as critical, exposing the problematic attitudes reflected in past images of the future and reinterpreting them for later audiences. I would argue that, considered as a retrofuturist text, Andor represents another category of retrofuturism: an admonitory genre, which uses its evocation of the past as a warning about the present.
I am Manborg: Retrofuturism and Nostalgia in the Media
Retrofuturism can be broadly defined as the use of past concepts of the future in SF: as Sharp says, it is “a fascination with past visions of the future.”89 Within that, it can take a variety of forms. This includes satires of the past such as 1980s-style SF-horror movie Manborg.90 However, there are also more serious pastiches such as William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s seminal steampunk novel The Difference Engine,91 a novel about a Victorian era with advanced computing written partly in the style of period novels, or the Duffer Brothers’ streaming series Stranger Things (2016-present), a non-satirical evocation of 1980s horror series. In all cases, the point is to use the aesthetic of a future which can not now come to pass. As Davidson puts it, “this paradoxical coming together of the future and the past is at the core of the retrofuturist impulse, or the conscious reprisal of disappointed visions of yesterday’s tomorrows.”92
Most critics agree that three distinct trends can be found within retrofuturism, which Davidson summarizes as “conservative, critical and hopeful.”93 Wilson, omitting the critical aspect, notes that retrofuturism can be an inward-looking obsession with the past, or it can be an attempt to remake that past in service to a hopeful future94 considering both as having particular relevance to Afrofuturism and other reinterpretations of colonial pasts in service to a more positive, decolonised future. The conservative trend is to look to past images of a White, technophilic, middle-class image of the future as a never-realised utopia, a vision of what ought to have been.95 The critical trend is exemplified by Davidson through William Gibson’s short story “The Gernsback Continuum”, in which the abovementioned White, technophilic and middle-class utopia is presented as a nightmarish glimpse of a parallel world from which the narrator must dissociate himself to retain his sanity,96 and in which the utopian dreams of the past are explicitly linked to the dystopia of the 1980s:
The Thirties dreamed white marble and slipstream chrome… but the rockets on the back of the Gernsback pulps had fallen on London in the dead of night, screaming. After the war, everyone had a car… and the promised superhighway to drive it down, so that the sky itself darkened, and the fumes ate at the marble and pitted the miracle crystal.97
Finally, the hopeful trend represents a disappointed hope, but one which is nonetheless positive: “the return to past images of the future has a potentially hopeful function, playing a role in rejuvenating and renewing utopian desire in the contemporary world.”98 An example can be seen in the film Tomorrowland99 in which the happy utopianism of Walt Disney’s imagined futures is argued to be still within humanity’s grasp if we overcome our worse impulses.
Andor is situated within the genre of nostalgic television. Historically, television calling on the imagery of past eras tends either to be in the form of period pieces, parodies, or evocations. Period pieces, such as GLOW (2017-2020) or The Marvelous Mrs Maisel (2017-2023), are series explicitly set in past eras, and are telling a story within that context but generally using modern conceits, structures and filming techniques rather than attempting to imitate the media of the time in which the story is set. There may be exceptions: for instance GLOW, a comedy-drama about a women’s professional wrestling television series in the mid-1980s, has one episode, “The Good Twin”, which is explicitly staged as an episode of the wrestling series in question.100 Parodies, such as Manborg or Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace (2004), may be forensic in their detailed use of period tropes, but do so in order to send up or satirise these tropes for an audience familiar with the source material. Finally, evocations use the imagery of the past to construct an imagined society which conveys both strangeness and familiarity to the audience: reimagined Battlestar Galactica (2004-2010), for instance, used 1970s and 1980s-style technology on its futuristic spaceships to this effect.
More recently, however, a new nostalgic trend has developed, whose most famous exemplar is the Netflix series Stranger Things: a series set in the past, using the techniques, imagery, and tropes of the media of that era, but for dramatic storytelling rather than parody. Other examples include Ben Wheatley’s film adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s 1975 novel High-Rise,101 which is explicitly shot in the style of 1970s art films, and the same director’s folk horror A Field in England,102 again shot in the style of 1970s British folk horror films such as Witchfinder General103 or The Blood on Satan’s Claw,104 while being neither a parody nor a period piece (beyond that it is set in the imagined English Civil War common to the genre). One significant trope is that these nostalgic series frequently also address aspects of the original subject matter which later audiences find problematic: improving representation of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ characters, for instance, or Stranger Things’ deliberate subversion of the misogyny of 1980s teen romance movies through emphasising the female characters’ ownership of their sexualities and right to choose and refuse partners according to their preferences.
Dances with Banthas: The Star Wars Franchise, Retrofuturism and Nostalgia
The film Rogue One and its spinoff series Andor are clearly an example of the nostalgic media exemplified by Stranger Things in that they make a clear, deliberate attempt not just to situate themselves within the Star Wars universe, but to do so through consciously creating the visual text that could have been made in the late 1970s/early 1980s, at the time of the original Star Wars trilogy’s genesis. Rogue One draws less on the Star Wars movies themselves than it does on the film genres which informed them: Hong Kong martial arts movies, British (and, to a lesser extent American) World War II movies and Westerns. As with 1970s SF movies, there is a clear visual indebtedness to the Middle East; there is an evocation of David Lynch’s body horror in the appearance of Saw Gerrera, wheezing into an oxygen mask like a rebel version of Frank Booth from Blue Velvet.105 The same imagery also suggests WWII-era fighter pilots, films of which were an inspiration for the space combat scenes of A New Hope. There is leisurewear and formalwear following the 1970s trends for bright but natural colours and flowing gowns. Felicity Jones, cast as protagonist Jyn Erso, is a medium-sized woman with dark hair and pale skin, an appearance much more fashionable in the 1970s than in the 2010s (evoking the likes of Anne Lockhart, Jane Seymour and, indeed, Carrie Fisher), and the hairstyles and costuming of other characters also evoke 1970s styles.
Andor, visually and conceptually, follows Rogue One’s lead in drawing on 1970s and early 1980s visual and narrative trends, whether consciously or through osmosis. The early sequences on Kenari evoke the trope of a (relatively) low-technology person or group drawn into a world of spaceships; there is a particular, presumably coincidential, visual resemblance to the Doctor Who serial Full Circle.106 The Ferrix storyline, through its evocation of the Irish Troubles, recalls British films such as The Long Good Friday, a story involving gangsters, corruption and Irish terrorism,107 or Pink Floyd-- The Wall, a British rock opera about fascism and the tyranny of everyday life.108 Maarva does literally wind up as, in the words of the title song, another brick in the wall, and the fact that her doing so is an act of rebellion rather than conformity is a clever subversion of a famous line. The Aldhani heist also shows clear references to British 1970s resistance drama Blake’s 7 (1977-81), with its group of seven individuals with complex and contradictory motivations and backgrounds planning, and successfully accomplishing, a terrorist attack on the facilities of a colonising spacefaring Empire, while also giving us a not-unsympathetic look at the individuals on the other side who are caught up in the action. The prison sequences on Narkina 5 evoke George Lucas’ own THX 1138109 and male-led institutional dramas such as One Flew Over The Cuckoos’ Nest,110 and the imagery of Syril’s life as an office drudge in the Bureau of Standards on Coruscant is clearly drawn from the films of Jacques Tati, principally Playtime.111 While one can make the case that media of other periods are also evoked in the series, there is an evident centering of Andor’s retrofuturistic aesthetic on the later 20th century and particularly the 1970s.
It should be underlined that this kind of nostalgia is not inherently an aspect of Star Wars prequel series. While it is certainly also true for The Mandalorian and, more problematically, The Book of Boba Fett (of which more below), both of which draw visually and thematically on the Westerns of the 1960s and 1970s as well as other media of the period such as the manga series Lone Wolf and Cub112 and its cinematic adaptation Shogun Assassin,113 it is less true for Obi-Wan (2021) and Solo: A Star Wars Story.114 Ahsoka (2023), furthermore, is only nostalgic inasmuch as it forms part of the Star Wars universe and visual style; otherwise, it is very much a series of the 2020s. It is difficult, for instance, to identify earlier visual and thematic references in Ahsoka that have not previously appeared in The Clone Wars or The Rebels in the same way that it is possible to identify visual and thematic references in The Book of Boba Fett that did not appear in the Original Trilogy. This is therefore a conscious artistic choice on the part of the makers of Andor, and not something they were obliged to do to fit in with the overall series aesthetic.
Furthermore, the use of nostalgia in Star Wars series does not always successfully develop a unified visual and conceptual theme. The Book of Boba Fett, a spinoff of space Western The Mandalorian, has attracted more criticism than its parent series, despite the fact that both reference similar 1970s Western texts. In particular, one element which has come in for a lot of criticism, the inclusion of the “mods”, scooter-riding teenagers who sport robotic body modifications as a kind of futuristic take on tattoos, is in fact a very clear reference to the 1970s subgenre of movies about 1950s teen gangs, including Quadrophenia,115 which focused on more metaphorical Mods riding more conventional scooters. The other 1970s trend which particularly influences this series is the exploration of Native American culture from the point of view of non-Indigenous people connected with Indigenous communities, such as revisionist Western Soldier Blue116 or biker film Billy Jack,117 and yet, despite the series being led by an Indigenous actor, this has also come in for criticism.118
However, the reason why The Book of Boba Fett’s evocation of 1970s media failed to appeal in the same way as it did in The Mandalorian is that the chosen genres are ones which do not have resonance for contemporary audiences, or else which have a disconnect with the wider political and social themes of the series. The Western taken from the point of view of Indigenous characters is a less well-known genre today than the “spaghetti Westerns” referenced in The Mandalorian, and arguably it is a genre that would be more problematic in the modern context of discussion of Native and settler identities. It is also a fair point that, whatever its casting, The Book of Boba Fett features a non-Indigenous character becoming “adopted” into Indigenous culture and becoming one of its leaders, along the lines of the influential but much-criticised Western Dances with Wolves,119 which is again a message that is less likely to resonate with audiences in the 2020s. While the Mods may be firmly based in a known 1970s film subgenre, it’s not one with particular connections to the Western genre, and so, even though stories about vehicle-based youth subcultures are a staple of Star Wars, they fail to connect with the audiences.
If Andor is a retrofuturistic Star Wars series where the retrofuturism does work, the question then becomes, why does it work, and does it connect more with the nostalgic, critical or optimistic forms of retrofuturism?
Another Brick In The Wall: Andor as Admonitory Retrofuture
In terms of where Andor fits the typology of retrofuturistic texts discussed above, I would note that it has elements, or could be interpreted within, all three of the paradigms discussed in the literature review. While the story is certainly not looking to an imagined utopian past in and of itself, it is worth noting that there is a reactionary cadre of Star Wars fans for whom the appeal of prequel-era series is to evoke the straight-White-male-led, patriarchal sensibilities of the original. Although Andor’s protagonist is Mexican, it’s perhaps not insignificant that the spinoff of a female-led adventure story, Rogue One, focuses on a conventionally handsome male secondary character rather than on Jyn Erso herself. Andor’s initial story arc is male-centred, containing only two named female characters, Bix and Maarva, who are seen through the lens of their relationship with Andor more than as individuals. Maarva herself could be initially seen as a white-saviour figure, rescuing young Kassa from his “primitive” original planet. Later, Syril’s mother very much fits the “nagging older woman” stereotype, and Mon Mothma could be seen as a reactionary criticism of liberal politicians, feebly trying to “do good” while fearing to act with genuine conviction.
However, as the series goes on, the stories of female, to say nothing of non-White and queer characters, become centred. Maarva becomes the driver of the rebellion on Ferrix, and Mon Mothma uses her do-gooder image as a blind for her material support of the Rebellion. The storylines involving Dedra Meero’s struggle to be taken seriously as a rare female officer in the Imperial Security Bureau, and Mon Mothma’s troubled relationship with her daughter, also subtly critique the patriarchal ideology of the Empire and, in Mon Mothma’s case, its constituent parts (since her Chandrilan culture predates the Empire). The prison storyline is an explicit parallel to the US “prison-industrial complex”, in which prisoners, frequently serving disproportionately harsh sentences, are used as cheap labour, a situation which, in reality, affects African-American men significantly more than other groups;120 by having the same thing happen to Andor, the series encourages its viewers into sympathy with, rather than “othering,” the victims of this system. The portrayal of the resistance in Andor also subverts the conservative trope whereby a good (usually White, usually male) hero arises to defeat an unambiguously evil figure, with characters’ motives for participation often being complicated or less-than-pure, and with the morally questionable figure of Luthen at its centre. All of this makes it difficult to see Andor entirely as a conservative text.
While the hopeful paradigm is more subtextual, given that happy endings are clearly not forthcoming for many (if indeed any) of the characters, the fact that the series is a prequel to the Original Trilogy means that most viewers know that the characters’ actions will ultimately lead to the destruction of the Empire and the establishment of the new Republic for which they are working. However, the fact that Andor is also a prequel to Rogue One means the audience knows the price the protagonist will eventually pay to bring about a hope he will never himself enjoy; the fact that we know the later fates of only three of the characters in the series (Andor, Mon Mothma and Melshi), does not give us much optimism about what will happen to the rest of them. Andor is also thus a problematic hopeful text.
Andor’s best fit is therefore, arguably, the “critical” paradigm more than the “reactionary” or “hopeful” ones. The time period it evokes, the late 1970s, is one when a lot of SF media were engaged in critiques of the status quo. Furthermore, the series it evokes are all, to a greater or lesser extent, critical ones: Blake’s 7, 1990, THX 1148, and the others discussed above are the most obvious, but even the comedic Playtime is a satire on the loss of humanity under conditions of modernity,121 in which, unlike his earlier work, Tati situates salvation not in a nostalgic past but in a gleeful future of happy anarchy. Doctor Who: Full Circle gives us a relatively blissful primitive society who are led to the world-shattering discovery that the origin story they believe about themselves is a lie. Andor itself, therefore, is using its retrofuturist elements as a way of criticising the time period in which it was made—the 2020s-- using the visual and narrative tools of a similarly critical era—the 1970s.
Furthermore, there is a narrative fit between the retro-future being evoked, and the critique of the present. The recent revival in popularity in Blake’s 7 on its release on the streaming service BritBox shows that a narrative of a doomed rebellion against a conformist, implicitly far-right and certainly xenophobic and colonialist, government have resonance with British audiences in the 2020s. The dystopian visions of Britain as portrayed in The Wall and The Long Good Friday are again relevant, as the country endures economic hardship and a far-right government whose actions in triggering Brexit threaten to revive the Irish Troubles. The contrast between the Mothma family’s luxurious lifestyle on Coruscant and the labourers living in dusty prefabs and broken spaceships on Ferrix also evokes the gap between rich and poor in the present day, and, as noted, the prison drama sequence is also in line with American critiques of the so-called “prison-industrial complex.”122 Andor succeeds where The Book of Boba Fett fails, because of the links between the retrofuture being evoked, its ideological concerns, and those of the present-day viewing audience.
I would argue, however, that Andor goes beyond the critical into a slightly different type of retrofuture, which I will call the admonitory retrofuture. This is retrofuturism not simply as criticism, but as warning. In this case, by evoking a past period with resonances to the present, the document holds a mirror up to the present and warns current viewers to consider their own behaviour and choices in light of the story being told.
We can see this admonitory role most clearly in the episode “One Way Out,” in which Kino Loy’s faith in the system is finally broken: his belief that, once he has served his sentence, he will be able to return to society, is shattered, and instead he heads up a violent prison revolt. While the storyline, as noted, is an obvious critique of the forced use of imprisoned labour—with the revelation that the Empire is randomly imprisoning vulnerable citizens simply because it needs a source of cheap labour—it has wider implications, which are echoed in the climactic sequence on Ferrix. Throughout Andor, we are shown a political and economic system with uncomfortable echoes of our own: far-right governments, opaque bureaucracies, huge wealth gaps, patriarchal social systems and unchallenged colonial exploitation, with a resistance whose members’ motives may be less than honourable and whose leaders are not particularly likeable. Andor’s protagonist is not a Jedi warrior or even a farmboy dreaming of a call to adventure: he is an ordinary working-class man living in a broken-down vehicle who is radicalised due to his experiences of poverty and oppression, and also through simple bad luck. The message is clearly not to encourage viewers to look nostalgically to the past or hopefully to an imagined future, but to their own situation.
Through evoking a familiar past, Andor encourages viewers to criticise themselves and their own circumstances and actions. Rather than imagining ourselves as heroic Jedi fighting evil Emperors and their minions, instead we are asked to imagine ourselves as the people of that very Empire itself: people who are, willingly or not, knowingly or not, complicit in the Empire’s crimes, and whose resistance, even for relatively privileged individuals like Mon Mothma and Vel Sartha, is inherently limited. Andor encourages us to question the very system we are in, and also to ask if our own acts of resistance against oppression are really effective, while at the same time offering us the reassurance that small acts of resistance do eventually add up to lasting social change.
Conclusion
In sum, then, Andor is noteworthy as a retrofuturistic text in two ways. Firstly, it is a key example of an emerging new type of retrofuturistic telefantasy: a series which tries not only to evoke the past but to produce new media in the style of earlier generations, without parody or imitation. Secondly, and more crucially, it illustrates another aspect of retrofuturism: as well as being reactionary, hopeful and critical, retrofuturism can also be admonitory: to encourage its audiences to draw parallels between their own eras and past eras, and to draw uncomfortable conclusions as to where this might lead. By evoking a period of chaos and criticism which led to the destructive neoliberal order in which we presently find ourselves, Andor encourages us to make better choices this time around.
87. For instance, Darren Mooney, “Andor Takes Star Wars Back to Its 1970s Future”, Escapist Magazine, 31 2022; Josh Weiss, “First reactions hail 'Andor' as most mature 'Star Wars' series: 'Akin to a dark Ridley Scott sci-fi joint'”, SYFY Wire, 2022: syfy.com/syfy-wire/andor-star-wars-early-reactions-to-rogue-one-prequel-series.
88. Sharon Sharp, “Nostalgia for the future: Retrofuturism in Enterprise”, Science Fiction Film and Television, 4.1 (2011): pp. 25-40; Joe P. L. Davidson, “Blast from the past: hopeful retrofuturism in science fiction film”, Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 33.6 (2019): p. 729-743.
89. Sharp, “Nostalgia for the future”, p.25.
90. Steven Kostanski, dir. Manborg (Canada: Astron 6, 2011).
91. William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. The Difference Engine (New York: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1990).
92. Davidson, “Blast from the past”, p729.
93. Davidson, “Blast from the past”, p729.
94. Paul Wilson, “The Afronaut and retrofuturism in Africa”, ASAP Journal, 4.1 (2019): pp.139-166.
95. Wilson, “The Afronaut and retrofuturism in Africa”.
96. Davidson, “Blast from the past”, p729.
97. William Gibson, “The Gernsback continuum”, In Bruce Sterlin (ed.) Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (London: Arbor House, 1986 [1981]), p. 42.
98. Davidson, “Blast from the past”, p729.
99. Brad Bird, dir. Tomorrowland (USA: Walt Disney Pictures, 2015).
100. Meera Menon, dir. “The Good Twin”, GLOW 2.8 (USA: Netflix, 2018).
101. Ben Wheatley, High-Rise (UK: Recorded Picture Company, HanWay Films, Film4, 2015).
102. Ben Wheatley, dir. A Field in England (UK: Film4, 2013).
103. Michael Reeves, dir. Witchfinder General (UK: Tigon British Film Productions, 1968).
104. Peter Haggard, dir. The Blood on Satan’s Claw (UK: Tigon British Film Productions, Chilton Film and Television Enterprises, 1971).
105. David Lynch, dir. Blue Velvet (USA: De Laurentiis Entertainment, 1986).
106. Peter Grimwade, dir. “Full Circle”, Doctor Who 5R (UK: BBC, 1980).
107. John Mackenzie, The Long Good Friday (UK: Black Lion Films, HandMade Films, Calendar Productions, 1980).
108. Alan Parker, dir. Pink Floyd— The Wall (UK: Metro Goldwyn Mayer, 1982).
109. George Lucas, dir. THX 1138 (USA: American Zoetrope, Lucasfilm, 1971).
110. Miloš Forman, dir., One Flew Over the Cuckoos’ Nest (USA: Fantasy Films, 1975).
111. Jacques Tati, dir. Playtime (France: Specta Films, Jolly Films, 1967).
112. Kazui Koike, Lone Wolf and Cub (Tokyo: Futabasha Publishers Ltd, 1970-1976).
113. Kenji Misumi and Robert Houston, dir. Shogun Assassin (Japan and USA: Tohu, Katsu, Baby Cart Productions, 1980).
114. Ron Howard, dir. Solo: A Star Wars Story (USA: Lucasfilm Ltd, 2018).
115. Franc Roddam, dir. Quadrophenia (UK: The Who Films Limited., Polytel Films, Curbishley-Baird Enterprises, 1979); Cora Buhler, “The Book of Boba Fett takes to ‘The Streets of Mos Espa’”, Cora Buhlert, 2022, : .
115. Franc Roddam, dir. Quadrophenia (UK: The Who Films Limited., Polytel Films, Curbishley-Baird Enterprises, 1979); Cora Buhler, “The Book of Boba Fett takes to ‘The Streets of Mos Espa’”, Cora Buhlert, 2022: corabuhlert.com/2022/01/21/the-book-of-boba-fett-takes-to-the-streets-of-mos-espa.
116. Ralph Nelson, dir. Soldier Blue (USA: Katzka-Loeb, 1970).
117. T.C. Frank, dir. Billy Jack (USA: National Student Film Corporation, 1971); Cora Buhlert, “The Book of Boba Fett meets ‘The Tribes of Tatooine’ and gets lost in interminable flashbacks again”, Cora Buhlert, 2022corabuhlert.com/2022/01/10/the-book-of-boba-fett-meets-the-tribes-of-tatooine-and-gets-lost-in-interminable-flashbacks-again.
118. Buhler, “The Book of Boba Fett takes to ‘The Streets of Mos Espa’”.
119. Kevin Costner, dir. Dances With Wolves (USA: Tig Productions, Majestic Films International, 1990).
120. Ronald P. Hill, Anti-Service and the Prison Industrial Complex (London: Sage Publications, 2018).
121. Saša Milić, “Jacques Tati and Modern Times”, In Medias Res, 4.7 (2015): pp. 1048-1059.
122. Hill, Anti-Service and the Prison Industrial Complex.