[Andor showed the growing discontent and anger that gives rise to
heroes. In many different ways, for their own individual reasons, the
characters of Andor decide to rise up and fight, because
totalitarianism is an unnatural state; it breeds resistance.]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE
‘ANDOR’ SOARED — IT WAS ABOUT THE FORCE, NOT THE FORCE, OF THE
STAR WARS UNIVERSE
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Glen Weldon
November 23, 2022
NPR [[link removed]]
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_ Andor showed the growing discontent and anger that gives rise to
heroes. In many different ways, for their own individual reasons, the
characters of Andor decide to rise up and fight, because
totalitarianism is an unnatural state; it breeds resistance. _
Piping? Hot! (L-R): ISB Supervisor Blevin (Ben Bailey Smith), Chief
Inspector Hyne (Rupert Vansittart) and Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) in
Andor., Lucasfilm Ltd.
THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS ABOUT THE SEASON FINALE OF _ANDOR_.
In one corner of the _Star Wars_ galaxy, you've got the eeeeevil
Sith Lord, Emperor Sheev Palpatine, crackling with Force-lighting as
he fries Jedi Master Mace Windu to a crisp, screaming "POWAH!
UNLIMITED POWAAAAAH!"
And over in another corner — the much grubbier and lower-profile one
depicted on season one of Disney+'s _Andor _— you've got the
bootlicking, low-level, fascist toady Syril Karn, standing at
attention while he nervously answers his supervisor's question about
whether he's modified his uniform.
"Perhaps slightly," he says. "Pockets, piping. Some light tailoring."
Several years separate those two events, and they exist on different
order of magnitude. The Emperor and all his cackling and crackling
belong to the mythic, the macro _Star War_s — the
Joseph-Campbell-hero's-quest of George Lucas' original vision, which
combined sprawling space-opera with the high adventure of Saturday
movie serials — narrow escapes, thrilling stunts and hiss-worthy
villains.
But over on _Andor_, you've got villains like Syril Karn. They're not
exactly hiss-worthy, these pathetic, feckless strivers. Their constant
angling for recognition and advancement, to say nothing of their
obsession with the aesthetics of fascism (Piping! Light tailoring!),
makes them more eyeroll-worthy.
Which is exactly why _Andor _works as freshly, singularly and
powerfully as it does.
Force with a lowercase "f"
Karn and his colleagues are dedicated to the cause of fascist
oppression (which they're careful to refer to only as "order") with a
zeal that isn't remotely macro. It isn't mythic, religious or even
passionate. Instead, they're driven by institutional imperatives that
scour their souls free of empathy, compassion and understanding, and
reward them for ruthlessness, cruelty and — above all —
efficiency.
Who's the showrunner here, Hannah Arendt? Because as we watched season
one of _Andor _play out in a series of mini-arcs across its 12
episodes, we saw the inner workings of the Empire. It's _The Banality
of Evil: The Series_.
The _Star War_s films showed us an Empire that was Evil because it
destroyed planets and chased down our doughty heroes. Sure, there were
always gray-uniformed Space Nazis milling around in the background,
and the few who got speaking roles — Peter Cushing's Grand Moff
Tarkin, for example — were possessed of the cold cunning of a
Saturday serial villain, to contrast with the implacable menace of
Vader and the over-the-top mustache-twirling of the Emperor. They were
all of a piece, larger than life.
But the fascistic functionaries of _Andor _-- Syril Karn, Dedra
Mero, Major Partagaz, Lieutenant Supervisor Blevins, and others —
are cogs. Willing, dedicated cogs who relish the machine they're a
part of, even if they each believe they could be of more use somewhere
else in it.
There is The Force, and there is force — blunt, brutal and
dehumanizing. In _Andor_, again and again, we watched the latter
variety exert its dispassionate influence, not on entire planets, but
on individual lives. The public display of Andor's father's corpse.
Andor's arrest, and six-year-no-but-really-forever sentence for
loitering. The exploitive, endless labor of Narkina 5. The appallingly
chipper, matter-of-fact torture of Bix. The cumulative result was
wrenching and personal and inevitably, eerily, relevant.
As was the season's portrait of resistance.
_Andor _walked so Luke could Skywalk
The _Star Wars_ films argue that a galaxy can be saved from tyranny
by a handful of heroes — and, yes, a succession of easily exploited
design flaws in space stations.
_Andor _showed the growing discontent and anger that gives rise to
heroes. In many different ways, for their own individual reasons, the
characters of _Andor _decide to rise up and fight, because
totalitarianism is an unnatural state; it breeds resistance.
"The more you tighten your grip," Princess Leia told Tarkin in _Star
Wars: A New Hope,_ "the more star systems are going to slip through
your fingers."
On _Andor_, we watch as that grip tightens around places like Ferrix
and Aldhani and Narkina 5 and Coruscant. We watch people we care about
get crushed. But we also watch others slip through. Yes, lives get
lost, and compromises get made — that's what Luthen's monologue in
episode 10 is all about, the harrowing loneliness of the freedom
fighter.
But _Andor _shows us that the Empire's downfall is and always was
inevitable, Skywalker or no Skywalker. It's baked in, the inescapable
result of the system's utter disregard for the humanity of the people
it seeks to exploit and control.
Anakin was right about sand
Let's be real, though.
There's another reason, besides the satisfying clarity of its focus on
the individual, that _Andor's _first season_ _set itself apart.
Back in 1977, on his aunt and uncle's Tatooine moisture farm, we all
watched Luke Skywalker inform C-3PO, "If there's a bright center of
the universe, you're on the planet it's farthest from."
This turned out to be a lie. For several reasons — most especially
the unhealthy infatuation with nostalgia/fan service that continues to
dog the franchise — the _Star Wars _powers-that-be keep booking us
passage back to that same, damn featureless sand-planet. Even the
otherwise excellent _The Mandalorian_, which mostly traffics in the
same interplanetary ground-level action _Andor _does, couldn't
resist the siren song of Tatooine's Krayt dragons and Tusken Raiders.
(And despite a first season that managed to step out of the shadow of
what had gone before, the gravitational pull of Jedi temples and
lightsabers also proved too strong for _The Mandalorian_ to escape.)
Looking forward to the second and final season of _Andor_, we know a
few things. Mon Mothma is gonna get exposed and go on the run (look
for her daughter to betray her). Cassian has to meet K-2SO. Karn and
Mero's wildly dysfunctional, jackbooted _folie-a-deux_ will maybe
see them _a-deuxing_ each other. (Personally, Karn's infatuation
with Mero seems more wrapped up with his demented obsession with
authority than anything purely sexual; see above, in re: "Pockets.
Piping. Some light tailoring.")
And at least some of our favorite gray- or white-suited Imperial
apparatchiks are gonna end up on the Death Star as it meets its
fateful finish.
That much we know. This much we can only hope:
That it all will take place as far away from %##*&! Tatooine as
possible.
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