Legend of The Galactic Heroes and WWI

I wish more Space Operas and other Sci-Fi antiwar War stories would take inspiration from WWI rather then WWII, since their desire to equally condemn and sympathize with both sides is going to be completely disregarded by much of the audience once you've made them see one side as "Space Nazis" even if only aesthetically.

The Anime Legend of The Galactic Heroes. which I'm still only watching via the newer more faithful to the books reboot New Thesis, is a perfect example of a WWI inspired Space War.  But the best context to understand how it draws that inspiration is the sense in which WWI is in part a rematch of the Franco-Prussian War, especially in how many in France initially looked at it.

It's not a 1 to 1 allegory, for one thing in LOTGH this is a conflict that's been going on for centuries.  So all the inspiration is applied somewhat creatively, maybe sometimes mixed around.  The first Emperor of this Germanic Empire is referred to as having been a Democratically elected leader who then made himself an Emperor, and that is why some analyzing this show may want to see that as being Hitler inspired, but during WWI there was already precedent for someone doing that however it was on the French Side, Napoleon III.

Most important to the not a 1 to 1 allegory part however is that the two topics I'm about to discus for how the Free Planets Alliance resembles The Third French Republic before and during WWI are in their real history analogues not as directly connected to each other as they are in the show, they were both Anti-German War Mongers but still represented overall completely different ideologies.

First is the Patriotic Knights Corps. when an American watches this show for the first time the first thing they're likely to compare them to are the KKK and then various Fascist/Nazi paramilitary street gangs many of whom were named after the color shirt they wore.  I however have familiarized myself with some of the more obscure groups who operated this way and in terms of both what they call themselves and the focus on being anti-German war mongers I think the Patriotic Knights Corps most resemble The Chamelots Du Roi who were active in early 20th century France, they were initially the Youth Wing of Action Francaise, a French far right organization.

Second is Job Trunicht the corrupt war mongering President of the Free Planets Alliance who I think can very easily be argued to be based on Raymond Poincare the President of France leading up to and during WWI .  He gets referred to sometimes as a Liberal or a Centrist but that's in the context of how actual Royalism was still a factor in France's political spectrum, in a political compass like modern Americans are used to he'd absolutely be considered Right Wing and maybe even Far Right.

[Update: I've since learned there were other Revanchist groups in France during the period in question, the original as the Lique des Patriotes.  But none of them wore Klan like Hoods, the first French group to do that seems to La Caqoule during the 30s]

There is this popular mythology that WWI was a war no one wanted to fight but sort of blundered into because of complicated political alliances.  This is the premise of the series Extra Credits did on YouTube about the how the war started, and is also a part of the premise of the short story Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier wrote to be an epilogue to their translation of 813.  However studying historical figures like Poincare has shown me what a lie that is.  The common people may not have wanted war, but all the major players in how it started were lead by powerful people who had been itching for it well before Ferdinand was shot.

In France people like Ponicare wanted another war with Germany to restore France's dignity from it's loss in the Franco-Prussian War.  In Germany the Kaiser wanted war with Brittan because of his weird inferiority complex about them, while the Prussian Junkers who dominated the military already supported the Lebensraum policy that we today mostly associate with the Nazis.  And in all nations there was a growing capitalist military-industrial complex.  And those alliance treaties people talk about were not left completely unaltered from how they were when Bismarck retired, they had absolutely been altered to increase Military obligations by Politicians who were hoping getting a war out of it is exactly what would happen.  Also Italy wound up getting involved on the opposite side of what their prior treaty obligations were.

Even in the case of my country who came into the War late, leaving aside the endless debates about how genuine Wilson's reluctance to enter the War was, there were powerful voices in Congress from both parties who wanted to get involved even before the Lusitania sank, Henry Cabot Lodge on the Republican side and then Southern Democrats like Benjamin Tillman and Ellison D. Smith.  Even the beloved Teddy Roosevelt proved to be a viscous Nativist War Monger during this period.

I hope a Fantastical Alternate History version of WWI or WWII is a staple of every Anime season now

Last season we had Izetta The Last Witch, which gave us basically WWII, but with a lot of cosmetic influence from WWI.

This season we have Tanya The Evil.  People have had a lot fun calling it a show about a "Loli Nazi", but really the War we're currently watching is more of a delayed WWI.

But.... a theory I've seen presented in the comments section of the site I've been streaming the Dub on is that basically Tanya will be the Hitler of this alternate history.

Imagine it, this season ends with the Empire being defeated, lots of climatic stuff happens.  Then the final after credits scene is a jump several years in the future, an teen Tanya gives a rousing speech to disillusioned veterans.  And it ends with them raising their hands saying "Hail Tanya".

That would be chilling.

Star Wars is about Fascism, but is it so in a way that is actually useful in opposing Fascism?

So my fellow SJWs at TheMarySue and LadyGeekGirl and on Tumblr have been going on and on about how Star Wars is obviously political.  What they mainly mean by that is it's obviously on their side, and want to use that George Lucas and the new directors are all mostly on the Left side of modern American politics as proof of that.  But the Author Is Dead and George Lucas especially was like Tolkien in that he wanted his stories to have a universal appeal beyond his own personal views or context.

But I'm not making this to talk about any intentional room for interpretation.  But rather a far deeper issue of how society responds to the fiction they watch.  And to start with you should watch this video from KyleKallgrenBHH on YouTube.

From Caligari to Hitler: Imagining the Tyrant - Between the Lines

This premise goes back decades. But this particular video on it was made in November of 2016, after the U.S. presidential Election of that month but before Rogue One came out.  I had watched it when it was still pretty new and bookmarked it on YouTube.

Rogue One is a movie I loved and enjoyed.  But as I looked at a certain segment of Star Wars fans not so impressed with it, expressing how bothered they were by people in their theater openly cheering on Darth Vader at the end.  I was reminded of the above video.

Because this thesis was not mainly about heroes of German cinema who could be viewed as unintentional proto-Nazis, though that was a small factor.  It mostly came down to the tendency of the masses to be fascinated by Villains.  Star Wars has always had that factor, it is the TVTropes Trope Namer for Rooting For The Empire.  And recently The Fanboy Perspective did an editorial about how annoyed he is by movies who's villains are not sufficiently charismatic and Bad@$$ enough to satisfy him.

Now don't get me wrong.  That Vader scene is one you are supposed to "enjoy".  You are supposed to "enjoy" it the same way you "enjoy" a Slasher film.  But of course the fandom of Slasher films has this same problem, I keep seeing people try to say the Final Girl archetype is Feminist, but they don't sell action figures of Laurie Strode, they sell action figures of Michael Myers.

Now I was planning on making this post and saying what I am about to say before Carrie Fisher was even hospitalized.  But naturally I now find it even more important to say that the character people should have been standing up and cheering at the end of Rogue One was Princess Leia.

And of course I can't help but notice the clear correlation between this kind of Star Wars fan, and the Prequel Haters.  People who resent the Prequels for emasculating Darth Vader, and are oh so thankful now to Rogue One for restoring his Manhood, quite literally symbolized by the extending of his Lightsaber.

And we see that in the new Trilogy's haters also to an extent, not liking how whiny and pathetic Kylo Ren seems, they wanted a new Vader, not a Vader wannabe.

Now before you go "great Job invoking Godwin's Law in your ongoing Crusade against Prequel Haters".  I want to say, don't oversimplify my premise.  I'm not saying you can identify Trump voters by tallying who cheered on Darth Vader, or who hated the Prequels.  On Tumblr I certainly know many Prequel haters who are Anti-Trump, and the most Conservative Star Wars fan I know is a relative who's pretty okay with the Prequels.  My point is that there is a basic cultural overlap between the mentality that leads to thinking the Villains are the best parts of Comic Book films, and finding Trump's style appealing.

And I know full well The Prequels also give us a Villain to be fascinated by, as they finally gave The Emperor an actual character.  Yet at the same time so much Prequel hate is tied to feeling Darth Maul and Count Dooku were under utilized.  And complaining about Anakin killing the Younglings.

Yes, that is an important comparison to the Rogue One scene.  Undeniably that should show the character's Evilness far more.  In Rogue One he's killing enemy combatants, not even a War Crime much less one against civilians, it's wrong only to the extent he is on the wrong side.  But it's not so easy to cheer on Vader massacring Younglings, which Lucas kept off-screen anyway.  More importantly then that though, is how it doesn't make him seem Bad@$$, it makes him seem Pathetic.  Sidious had basically just told him he needed to do some Evil for the Evuls to grow more powerful with The Dark Side, and so he did just that.  Reminds me of how Utena fans who hate the movie are so upset by Akio now being made to look pathetic, Ikuhara did that deliberately.

The massacre of the Seperatists leaders could have been far easier to cheer on.  But the way it's scored and shot, and how it's inter-cut with Palpatine's speech (Lucas cited this as his one Godfather Baptism moment) discourages the audience from doing so.  Topped off by seeing how even this killing of people who narratively had it coming had Anakin crying, showing he still has further to fall, and is certainly as Yoda predicted "Suffering".

I also noticed recently a problem in how all the universally praised Star Wars films, are ones where the "War" in question is unquestioningly a just one, for our Heroes side at least.  And in TFA and Rogue One even more so then the Original Trilogy, hesitancy to go all in on fighting it is presented as weakness.  While The Prequels which send the message that fighting an unjust war, one where our Heroes were the aggressors, is what created The Empire in the first place, get decried for not being simple enough.

2002 saw the release of both Attack of The Clones and The Two Towers.  That was also the year the Bush Administration was beating the War Drums on Iraq, so much so my mind still affiliates that War with 2002 more so then 2003.   Both films happen to have a theme of a War about to break out, which it does at the end.  Bizarre coincidence since it couldn't have been pre-planned.

The sad Irony is that Tolkien would certainly despise the Bush Doctrine as someone traumatized by WWI.  Yet the timing of when the Two Towers movie came out allowed many Bush voters in the theater to take Aragorn's "Open War is upon you, whether you would have it or not" as a take that to Anti-War liberals.  I know this because way back then I was one, a fact I'm deeply ashamed of.  Meanwhile AOTC clearly presents the decision to go to War as a mistake.  The Empire was truly Born in Episode II, and the score beautifully tells you that at the end.  It was just formalized in Episode III.  I wonder to what extent the Prequels are a factor in my ceasing to be Pro-War by 2006.

Going back to Lucas intent, yes he wanted to cosmetically reference the Nazis like everyone was doing at that time.  But in the Audio Commentaries the real meat when he's talking about Historical influences lie in his talking about Ancient Rome and of all people Napoleon III.  Julius and Augustus Caesar, and both Napoleons presented themselves as the Left Wing of the politics of their times, however odd that may seem to us looking at it now.  Lucas message in the prequels was about how Democracy can be subverted, regardless of the ideology of the one subverting it.

That he cited Napoleon III is interesting to me.  Years after I'd first enjoyed those Audio Commentaries, I started developing an interest in 19th Century French Popular fiction, the genesis of which was discovering Paul Feval and BlackCoatPress.  Brain Stableford talks much about the historical contexts of all these novels in his Introductions, Afterwards and Footnotes of his Translations, (interestingly in The Invisible Weapon he theorized Feval become personally disturbed by his own ability to write such compelling villains, that he became like Mliton, unknowingly of The Devil's Party).  And there too Napoleon III is unavoidable.  He may be a nearly forgotten figure today, but to his contemporaries he was very important.

And of course the shadow of Napoleon Classic Version is vital to that.  Especially since censorship meant any negative commentary on him had to veiled.  And he had critics from both progressives and old fashioned conservatives.  Seemingly any novel mentioning the original Napoleon in the 1850s, 60s or even to an extent 70s had Napoleon III in mind.  But not using OG Napoleon himself as the allegory, no they didn't want to grant him that.

The thing about the real Napoleon was that he managed to earn the respect even of those who most harshly opposed him Politically, from both the Royalists and Republicans, from Alexandre Dumas to Paul Feval.  Napoleon III couldn't do that.  And thus the contemporary fictional allegories for him lie in the Napoleon wannabes.  Like Henri Belcamp of Paul Feval's John Devil, or The Blackcoats: Companions of The Treasure, where Julian Bozzo-Corona disguised himself as his far more iconic Corsican Grandfather, Colonel Bozzo-Corona.

Of course it is this failed wannabe nature of how Napoleon III was fictionalized by his contemporaries that makes someone in the know like me a little disappointed in Palapatine as a character partly inspired by him.  And this informs what I in-spite of my issues with TFA love about Kylo Ren.  It is Kylo Ren's failure to be Darth Vader that reminds me of Napleon III's failure to be Napoleon.  And I now kinda hope Snoke is equally a wannabe Sidious, overcompensating in his hologram so no one questions the size of his.... hands.

I realize I kinda left the original topic a bit there.  But I wanted to show I'm not just being a hater who's now completely cynical to seeing useful Politics in Star Wars.  Because Donald Trump also wants to be something he is not.  The Alt-Right sees this as a second American Revolution, but Trump is no George Washington.

Some people might find it offensive to see any French Figure as a proto-Fascist when France was a nation victimized by 1940s Fascists.  But in their current Political Climate they should know they're no more immune to it then America is.

June 20th 2017 Update: Triumph of The Will

I just watched a YouTube video by Folding Ideas about Triumph of The Will. It didn't exist yet when I first made this post.

It was informative on a few levels, the key thing is the closing, that this film that defines how we think of the Nazis, is how the Nazis wanted people to think of them.  It really makes you rethink things.

Because the imagery of that infamous Propaganda film is also core to how fictional evil Empires and Tyrants are compared to the Nazis to demonize them.  Including in Star Wars.  And yet paradoxically I've also seen it observed that it influenced the Rebellion's award ceremony at the end of ANH.  You know, the one where the Blond White Male heroes get Medals but the hairy alien who can't talk properly doesn't.

Here is my real problem with the Wonder Woman movie being set during WWI rather then WWII

Others talk about how it seems like an obvious ploy to not seem like it's ripping off Captain America.  Others talk about how WWII is such an important part of this genre's history so it's a shame to miss out on the opportunity.  Others talk about how it might be a choice made because it overlaps with the Suffragettes, and whether that is good or bad.  But while I have moderate opinions on those things, my real issue is something far more real.

WWII is the ONLY War of the 20th Century where you can make a reasonable argument that one side was good and the other bad.  And the 21st Century has been even worse.  Now I've spent some time talking about how I question the traditional simplistic view of WWII, like my last Captain America post.  But at the end of the day there is no questioning that the Nazis were horrible and some good came from stopping them.

WWI is the Polar Opposite, WWII helped inspire the War of the Ring, but WWI inspired the Kinslayings of the Silmarilion.

No side has any real moral superiority in how WWI started, it was basically a rematch of the Franco-Prussian war.  It was something that many saw as an inevitable outcome of the irrational hatred European nations had of each other for decades before it started.  Not to mention the exact same Japan that was an Axis power was an Ally in WWI, the Emperor did change but it was the same Imperialist policy.  And this war factored into them expanding their Empire including their subjugation of Korea.  From the Pacific Theater's POV you could argue both were the same war.

My fellow Americans have convinced themselves that at least we had a just cause for entering that war, by painting the Lusitania the same as Pearl Harbor or 9/11.  But I view the Lusitania's sinking the same as I do the Main or the Gulf of Tonkin.

So the Wonder Woman movie will do 1 of 3 things.

1. WWI is just a framing device and not really what the conflict Diana is resolving is about at all.  Which will just make the decision seem pointless.

2. It will be a morally complicated story.  But I don't want that for the origin story, especially for the first big Screen Wonder Woman, since she's such a Feminist Icon I simply want to see her defeating the patriarchy.  The villains I want to have depth and maybe be redeemable like her Golden Age stories, but I don't want to question that Diana is on the right side.  Save the more ambiguous stories for the Sequels.

3. Or they will treat it the same as a WWII Superhero story anyway, German accents equal bad guys, ect.  And I simply won't be able to buy that.  When reading fiction written at the time in allied countries I can accept it, (Sherlock Holmes and Arsene Lupin both served as spies in fictional versions of that war,) because I get being caught up in a patriotic fervor at the time.  I remember how a younger more naive me reacted to 9/11.

But looking back on it now with a century of hindsight.  Part of me honestly thinks the world might have been better off if the Central Powers had won.  Hitler could never have risen without the trauma of Germany's defeat.  Britain and France wouldn't have redrawn the Map of the Middle East the horrible way they did.  And maybe Japan's imperialism would have been thwarted sooner.  But I suppose being an American saying that might inspire some to accuse me of treason.

Of course preventing the War from happening altogether would be best.  

About Captain America being Hydra and the fan reaction

I'm pretty sure this story-line is going to be stupid, like what they did to Cassandra Cain during One Year Later.  And will not at all be a serious thoughtful exploration of what I'm going to discus below.  And it's particularly insulting they did this the day after Marvel said it'd be inherently out of character for him to ever have a male lover.

The thing is the argument has always existed that what Captain America is unwittingly reinforces Fascist and Aryan ideology.  This was mentioned like a decade or more ago in the History Channel documentary Comic Book Superheros Unmasked.

And the argument I keep seeing even from liberals when this is acknowledged is "but that's the point, it's the Irony of Hitler's ideal Aryan punching him in the face".  And hearing it expressed that way only makes me more uncomfortable with it, defeating Fascism with Fascism is actually a victory for Fascism.  (And yes Fascists can be in conflict with each other, Mussolini actually hated Hitler, under slightly different conditions they'd have been on opposite sides.)

And it kind of is an unintentional SciFi analogy to my more cynical outlook on the real history of WWII.  The Allies did commit virtually all the same offenses the Axis did, especially in our treatment of Japanese Americans, and then one upped them with dropping the Bomb.  (And the concentration camp was actually invented in America under the Andrew Jackson administration to deal with the Cherokee.) but History is written by the winners.  Nazism lost, but Fascism merely changed it's face.

Oliver Stone's Secret History of the United States critiques the conventional view of WWII from a liberal perspective.  Pat Buchanan's The Unnecessary War does so from a Conservative perspective.  I as a truly Bi-Partison Libertarian-Communist see value in both their takes so I recommend both, though I ultimately agree with neither on everything.

Acknowledging this about Captain America has become less popular since his movies became big hits.  My fellow SJWs currently love MCU Steve Rogers, so the idea of condemning his basic archetype as inherently problematic the way the same websites do James Bond and Indian Jones is currently unthinkable to them.

I'm not saying the character should be rejected, the movies are a lot of fun, I personally took on Winter Soldier's harshest critic on this blog.

But an Elseworlds kind of story exploring the logical conclusion that perhaps the Aryan who punched Hitler in the face actually believes a similar Nationalism just for a different nation, I think is a very valid concept.   The founders of the CIA fought Nazism during WWII but then worked with Fascist groups to oppose the USSR during the Cold War, like the whole P2 scandal in Italy, Hydra could easily be used as an allegory for that inconvenient truth.  Again I don't think that's what this current twist is actually doing.

But I keep seeing the meme repeated that this is especially gross because Captain America's creators were Jewish.  As if Jewish writers couldn't possibly write something problematic.  A lot of American Jews are on the Trump bandwagon right now, so they are not inherently immune to the appeal of Fascism.  And many Palestinians Arabs feel for very valid reasons that the Israeli Government is no better then Nazi Germany.

But I'm not going to suggest Jack Kirby was a Fascist.  Just that it's valid to criticize him.  And that Death of the Author applies to all Authors not just privileged ones.

The Golden Age comics never addressed the Holocaust or other real War Crimes of the War.  They just depicted Germans as mustache twirling villains and the Japanese as demons.  Cap punching Hitler was always designed to appeal to American Tribal Patriotism, whatever deep down motivated the authors, on the page it was never about the real reason that war is now considered a just one.

Modernizing Arthurian Legend

With all the different takes on Arthurian legend in modern media, I'm surprised adapting the legend to a modern or futuristic setting isn't more popular.  Plenty of stories with more modern settings have Arthurian themes, but not really proper adaptations of the legends.

All the standard takes on Arthurian legend that define it for modern readers are done in a more (then) modern setting then the 5th/6th century setting of the original Welsh poems and the history that Arthur would have lived in.  The Grail romances are based on the world of the Crusades, and Malory's tale I've read before was largely done with the War of the Roses in mind (making it the Game of Thrones or Final Fantasy Tactics of it's time).

Of course admittedly those were not completely contemporary stories, there is still a sense of an age gone by in them.  Not unlike how people today often call the Second World War the "Greatest Generation".

Then it hit me as I was thinking of that, why not a version of Arthurian legend that is a Diesel Punk alternate history version of WWII.?  And it can draw inspiration from Indiana Jones type movies with the Nazis seeking the Holy Grail and the Ark and other relics, but I'd go with the theory of the Ark being in Ethiopia, and the Grail more directly modeled after the old Grail romances.  [Update, and you could maybe now take inspiration from the Anime Izetta The Last Witch].

I've created a list of Arthurian characters with roles they could play in this setting.  In order to make this work I had to ignore the Pacific Theater, this is focused on Europe, Africa and the Middle East.  And don't jump to too many conclusions about these identifications, it is an alternate history.

[Update March 31st 2020: I've made a lot of changes to this list over the years that includes many made today.  And more may be made in the future]

King Arthur = King George VI of England (Arthur did happen to be part of his full name)
Anna = Mary Princess Royal
Igerne = Mary of Teck
Gwenivere = Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon
Soredamore =  Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary
Tortolina = Princess Margaret
Budic of Brittany = Henry Lascelles, 6th Earl of Harewood

Hoel of Brittany = Geroge Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood
Prince Madoc = Prince Henry Duke of Gloucester
Emrys = Prince George Duke of Kent, Grand Master of United Grand Lodge of English Freemasonry
Vortigern = Duke of Windsor
Rowena = Wallie Simpson
Aurelius Ambrosious = Winston Churchill

Mark = J. M. Andrews

Sir Ector = Sir Hugh Sinclair

Sir Kay = Sir Stewart Menzies

Sir Bedivere = John Alexander Sinclair

Sir Gawain = Sir Richard White
Merlin = Aleister Crowley
Ninue = Dione Fortune
Vivian = Margaret Murray
Bishop Dubricus = Cosmo Gordon Lang
Bishop Pyramus = William Temple

Bishop Vodinus = Geoffrey Fisher

Mordred = Archibald Ramasy

Morgause = Anna Wolkoff

Guillamurius = 5th Duke of Wellington

Cheldric = Henry Hamilton Beamish

Elasius = Arnold Leese

Egbrict = Barry Domvile

Bunignus = Boney Fuller

Accolon = Oswald Mosley

Morgana = Diana Mitford

Gorlois =Baron Redesdale

Gormant = Tom Mitford

Percival = Bonaparte Pretender
Dindrane = Sister of Percival

Blanchefleur = Marie-Madeleine Fourcade
Gurnumanz = Georges Loustaunau-Lacau
King Feirefiz of Zazamanc = Emperor Halie Selassie of Ethiopia
Lancelot = Charles de Gaulle
Galahad = Philippe de Gaulle
Sir Bors = Oleanist Pretender
Lionel = Henri Count of Paris
Beowulf = King of Denmark
Emperor Alexander = King of Greece
Prince Alexander =  Prince Philip
Micipsa = Stalin
Pompeius = Lenin
Ipomidon = Trotsky
Titurel = Hussein bin Ali
Firmutel = Abdullah I of Jordan
Anfortas = Talal
Baruc = Faisal
Bandes = Abd al-llah
Laamez = Rashi Ali al-Gaylani
Estorause = Ibn Saud
Corrsabrin = Amim al-Husseini
Gormundus = Reza Shah
Itarc = Ismet Inonu

King Pellam = FDR
Pellas = Henry A. Wallace
Garlon = Truman
Elaine = Eleanor Roosevelt
Pellinore = Eisenhower

Lamorak = Walter Bedell Smith

Rivalen = William J Donovan

Melliodes = Allen Dulles
Tristam = James Jesus Angleton

Lucius Tiberius = Benito Mussolini
Claudas = Hitler

Malduc = Karl Maria Wiligut
Maleagant = Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia
Bademagu = Deposed Wilhelm II
Hengist = Ernest Augustus Duke of Brunswick
Horsa = Charles Edward Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

Characters Without (solid) real life analogues

Palamedes = Codename of an Arab who spies for the OSS
Iseult = Princess of Ireland