(no subject)

[kradeelav]

Anonymous: How do you feel about clones? Especially how they were humanized in spin off material both Legends as well as TCW?

[deleted]:

That’s an interesting question! I think the clones are one of the reasons people should lay off George Lucas— they add a real layer of depth to the prequels that wasn’t exactly stated in the movie but I think was easy enough to read into all the same. 

For one thing, the clones, Jedi, and Chancellor make and interesting counterpart to the droid army, Sith apprentices and Sith Lord. Out of those six forces, who actually has real agency? Sidous/Palpatine, who is the same terrible fucking guy (you could make a case for Dooku, I guess, but given how badly he gets screwed in ROTS…)

First: clones and droids. Canon can be kind of erratic with how droid sentience is treated— mostly its for laughs, like that deleted scene where Anakin and Obi-Wan have a hearty lol after destroying a room full of them. The thing is, we know droids have enough self-awareness to be cognizant of their own mortality (is it mortality when they’re robots? Is that the right word? What I mean is, they know their consciousness can be destroyed). Given that all the battle droids are the same model and seem to have the same personality core, no one really cares when they’re killed

The thing is, I’m pretty sure people are thinking the exact same thing about the clones themselves. 

Clones are manufactured, given artificial life, programmed, and set out for one task. They’re the droids of TPM clothed in flesh, and that flesh causes revulsion in us. Suddenly all the same ethical nightmares inherent in a droid army become so much realer and closer when its actual organic beings being thoroughly dehumanized. 

The most interesting example of clone characterization/possible window into their views on droids sentience is that one arc that I can’t remember where a clone is caught taking droid fingers as trophies and stringing them on a necklace. The other clones find this repulsive— which doesn’t make so much sense, in a universe where droids are regularly destroyed, scrapped, and cannibalized for parts, until you realize its almost assuredly a reference to American war crimes committed during the Vietnam War. The original trilogy was written in response to the war and similar themes play out in the prequels— a legislative body incapable of providing any real oversight or action (alright, that could be any time in American history), a charismatic but manipulative and amoral head of government, a war that takes children who never understand what it is they’re fighting for and grinds them into so much meat. The clones are children— artificially aged but still only a few years old at best. They have no context of the Galaxy outside of what they learned (or were fed, rather) on Kamino. They have only their programming and Republic jingoism (what would actually happen if the CIS aligned planets were allowed to leave the Republic? Would it be…bad?). No one cares about their lives, and none of them actually understands what it is they are supposed to die for. 

Which makes them an interesting foil to the Jedi, as well— Jedi are similarly indoctrinated since birth, trained to be lethal just out of toddlerhood, whose entire identity is composed of being peacekeepers who preserve the Republic. I don’t doubt that the Jedi have an extensive knowledge of cultures and politics spanning the Galaxy, but given they they are never allowed to act on anything but “the will of the Force” (which, as the war drags on, becomes “Things the Chancellor says” or “whatever is expedient”), does it actually matter? An army of drones lead by living weapons. Fucking yikes.  

I don’t feel like that’s what you were asking at all— uhhh tl;dr TCW is fucking great, George Lucas is really great at metaphors