Andor: Fascism is a self-destructive machine

Ach ja, after having heard the highest of praises from people online, whose opinions I actually respect and getting recommended by several of my real-life friends for some time now, I finally got around to watch Andor. Now, to paraphrase probably every second person that ever wrote or will write about this series, my exposure to Star Wars, as a franchise, is fairly limited: I watched and enjoyed the original and prequel trilogies, as well as some random episodes of Clone Wars, but that was also around 15 years ago when I was a literal child. I know next to nothing about the sequel trilogy, have not read any of the novels or comics, barely heard anything about the other television series beyond whatever “Baby Yoda” is supposed to be and the only Star Wars game I played was the Lego one for the Nintendo DS. For what it is worth, it had around the same influence on me as every other big franchise that popped up in the mid 2000s, except it is also probably the only one I had experienced more or less in its most minimal entirety.

I did watch and enjoy Rogue One around two years ago, though its flaws were a lot more apparent on a rewatch and it is hard to argue to describe it as anything else but having spawned a prequel to a prequel, whose primary existence is justifying a minor plot contrivance in A New Hope. On the other hand, Andor is simply great, at times even whatever the television equivalent of “Absolute Cinema” is and a genuine miracle that it exists in the first place. Take this as yet another guy on the internet recommending it. You need to know next to nothing about Star Wars and even the stuff you know through cultural osmosis goes almost deliberately unmentioned. The only prerequisite to watching Andor is not having lived under a rock for the last decade and being able to recognize that if something looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck… you know… Spoilers ahead.

This post isn’t even meant to be a thorough analysis of the themes of Andor, in part because I am sure other people have already done a better job than I ever could, but despite setting out to simply write about the aspects I really enjoyed, it all comes down to the same idea: The Empire, as portrayed by Andor, is a paradox. In a sense, by the time the series begins, it has already won and despite the resistance to it, it keeps winning. And yet, it is at war with itself and falls apart at the bursting seams of its ambition that simply can not be upheld in the face of… for the lack of a better word, human nature. There is a scene in the final episode of season one that expresses this idea far more poetically than I will ever be able to put into words myself.

Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. […] And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.

- Karis Nemik

Honestly, the entire excerpt is very much worth a listen and it is almost funny (Read: Genuinely concerning, actually) how you can pinpoint certain political events every time there is a spike in comment activity. The second part especially resonates so much with what I immediately fell in love with in Andor. The series may be named after the titular protagonist, but there is another character that constantly stole the show for me.

Syril Karn is a truly pathetic man. Born into a controlling system, there is something almost sad to see someone succumb to not being able to wield any control himself and continues to be slowly broken down until there is nothing left. In the beginning, Syril works as a simple officer in law enforcement and it is there his belief in the Empire is on full display. When tasked to essentially just frame the death of two other officers in a slightly better light so as to not reflect badly on themselves, he goes out of his way to search for the culprit and even puts together a small task force to apprehend him. After all, it is how things are supposed to be and the reason why order is not upheld with an iron fist is because other people lack the willingness to commit and dedicate themselves with all their being. And yet, his idealism clashes with the simple reality in front of him: His coworkers hate him for his eagerness and lack of understanding how “things work around in these parts of the galaxy”. He doesn’t have the charisma that makes others want to follow him and proceeds to absolutely flub his little speech in front of even the men that support him. And when finally confronted head to head with Cassian, he fails in arresting him, as the banging of the metal in the background makes it ever so clear that while they may have guns and are technically in charge, even the people of Ferrix are able to resist in the eye of a guy just cosplaying the veneer of power.

The brashness and resolve to go above and beyond in the name of the Empire will only be rewarded if successful, as seen by supervisor Meero, but when the only result is failure, Syril was discarded and forced to go back home. This is where the contradiction of the entire system shines through. The empire is built on the thankless work of people like Syril, yet it also can’t help but inspire a certain individualism or even exceptionalism. Someone has to stand at the top, or at least no one wants to be at the bottom. If Syril really ever was just a cog in the machine, convinced by the self-evident existence of the Empire and pleased with just doing his part, he would have been content creating new norms and regulations for fuel purity at the Bureau of Standards. Instead, he either feels a sense of satisfaction for himself by the work he accomplishes or, maybe even more bluntly, has a need for approval. The first thing he asks, after having been part of the big boy club, is if he was useful, not how successful he was. This is not a man confident in his own life achievements and needs the system of the Empire to give him any meaning, to affirm his existence.

Unfortunately, Syril turned out to be quite useful. I wouldn’t necessarily call him a “useful idiot”, but he did play the part until the last moment. It took some time into his stay in Ghorman that he came to the realization that it is always in the name of the Empire, but this doesn’t necessarily include him. The Empire requires Syril, until it doesn’t need him anymore. As a fundamentally uncaring system, it could consider Syril dead minutes before he was actually shot in the head. The tragedy of his character is that, in his last moments, he did realize the evil in which he was involved and could have done good if given the chance of not being nurtured the way he was. Instead, his lasting legacy will be instigating the events that caused a full-on genocide and protecting the person responsible for it. He died the way he lived, without control over himself.

Supervisor Dedra Meero is the other side of the coin. Groomed the second the system got its hand on her into a pure product of the Empire, she is what Syril aspired to be. Despite being arguably the main antagonist for the majority of the series, the way she is introduced and portrayed almost makes you want to cheer for her. You love to see a woman succeed in a male-dominated field. Yet it is always obvious that she is also just a full-blown fascist, no two ways around this. She seems like the model idea of what the Empire is supposed to look like. However, once the cracks start to show, not even she herself is spared from the monster she partook in creating. When there was suspicion that the plans for the Death Star were leaked, she and Partagaz were to take the fall for it. From the perspective of the Empire, they didn’t do anything wrong, we as viewers know there is no point to it, but at the same time, it is impossible the Empire could be bested by a couple of rebels, so the system works as intended and tosses the coin away regardless, further cannibalizing itself in its endless struggle to stay alive.

Maybe the biggest irony of Andor is that the rebellion is spearheaded by people who have nothing to gain from it. When Luthen was confronted by the question of what he sacrifices, he does not only respond with an “everything”, but that he will help create a world that he himself will never be able to look upon, senator Mothma could have kept quiet and enjoyed a peaceful life and Cassian was about to quit several times, before always being reeled back in, simply because the mere thought of the Empire succeeding in its ever growing expansion effort could not be accepted, either as an idea or as the very real harm it causes. And as Karis Nemik wrote in his manifesto, there will come a time where it will be one too many and along its way, the Empire has sown the seeds for its own downfall.

The not so quite last thing I want to write about is Narkina 5, the prison arc. One thing that makes these three episodes so great is that they serve as a microcosm of the way the Empire operates not just as a collective of individuals whose political views align, but as a machine which makes their operation possible in the first place by forcing everyone else to comply. The prison complex, more of a labor camp, really, is structured in a way that incentivizes compliance by pitching the inmates against another, rather than through standard external force. The prison itself is clean and tidy, there is no sadistic warden and the inmates are provided with proper shelter and food, because the actual agenda is efficiency, not rehabilitation or punishment. Kino describes it as “Seven levels of factory, seven rooms per level, seven tables per room, seven men, each table”. Each lowest-performing table in each room gets shocked at the end of the shift, while the best-performing table gets flavor in their food. The manager of the lowest-performing room of a level gets shocked. Outside the exchange from day shift and night shift of the same room, there is no communication possible between the other rooms and levels.

This creates a simple environment, which hinders both collaboration and individual action. Beyond the psychological nightmare of actually pulling it off with other inmates, playing the prisoner’s dilemma “optimally” doesn’t really apply. The sentence time goes down one day at a time for everyone equally, at the end, someone will get shocked and everyone wants some flavor in their food. At best, the collective workload could be decreased, but who is willing to risk that? Similarly, individual action comes with its own set of problems. Functionally, breaking out of prison alone is impossible. Additionally, you will punish not just yourself, but your table, as they will be missing one person. Lastly, the manager of each room will make sure they run a tight ship, because they are completely dependent on the output of their fellow inmates. This is the psychological pressure of the system. The inmates don’t have a good life, but it is passable and rebellion poses too much a risk. The only winning condition is to collectively play another game.

This is the crux of the arc. How do you form a united front when the only incentive is linked to participating in an at first impossible fight that is based on just trust and the slim chance of a potentially better life? Compared to that, the actual logistics of the prison break is almost laughable. Combining both the day and night shift, there are close to 5.000 inmates against only a few dozen wardens. Once everyone was on board, they blitzed through the facility almost effortlessly, but getting there was the actual hurdle. Each room is made up of people, that are in the same team, but still made to compete against another at the same time and once everything was set into motion, each newly reached room needed to make a split-second decision to partake in the prison break, based on essentially nothing but hope, compared to just continue working until their sentence is up. This was never a game theory problem with a winning strategy, but a human one.

This gets further made clear by Kino Loy, the manager of the same room Cassian was sent to. He is the lynchpin of the entire operation and de facto the guy to convince, as he not only has the intel of the wardens, etc., but also the trust of every inmate of the room. Without his word, nothing gets set in motion in the first place. It took until the rumor that even when their sentence was up, they would only be transferred to another facility, that he chose to trust Cassian. The irony in his character is that Kino essentially had the biggest incentive to do nothing. If the rumor were false, Kino would have been out in a couple of months and if it were true, well, nothing would have changed compared to his current position. However, by setting the prison break in motion, he basically chose death, because even if the prison break succeeds and even after a potentially literal leap of faith, he himself could never reach the shore to freedom. The “I can’t swim” line is almost haunting.

While we are already on the topic, let me praise the entire character of Mon Mothma. Maybe my most favorite singular moment in the series is her realization, that while her effort for the rebellion was successful, her own life is basically in ruins, she had to throw her friend under the bus and marry off her own daughter just to do so, so in the moment, she simply drowns herself in alcohol and starts dancing. Also her senate speech has potential to be an all-timer. I know it seems a bit silly to take any real-life ramifications so seriously, when they are ultimately based in fiction. I mean, it is not like an actual cabal of oligarchs is running the world behind everyone’s back. It is not like, even if they were caught doing so, they don’t even bother to lie badly anymore about their crimes. It is not like every aspect of our life is partially controlled by someone, because it makes money. It is not like so many people have come to accept this reality, that they can’t imagine it being different. It is not like pointing out evil has become its own kind of risk. Yes, I do quite enjoy my rock.

Andor is available on Disney+.