An uncomfortable parallel emerges
It came as something of a surprise to me, but I've actually found myself really enjoying the Clone Wars cartoon. Not the old one, of course, the one put out between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith; of course I enjoyed that one, it was drawn by Genndy Tartakovsky! He of Dexter and Samurai Jack! There was no way not to love it!
No, it's the new Clone Wars cartoon that I've been watching and enjoying, the CGI one where everyone sort of looks like a woodblock sculpture. Amazingly enough, it's managed to make Anakin a likeable and sympathetic character, and it's really helped flesh out the clone troopers, similar to the work done by Karen Traviss (MANDALORIANS!), but without the obsessive focus on the Mandalorians that mamzel Traviss brings to everything Star Wars she touches. Really, it's been especially interesting getting a deeper look at how the slave-soldiers of this war were treated, thrown away as cannon fodder, ignored, ridiculed, and faced with summary execution from both their enemies and their commanders...
You think I'm still talking about the clones, don't you?
In fact, it's the droid armies of the Confederacy of Independent Systems that have been most tragically fleshed out by the Clone Wars cartoon. The clones may be slaves in that they can't leave the army or pursue any other life, but they're treated with respect by their Jedi generals, non-clone officers, politicians and even private citizens. They're slaves in the same slightly awkward, ill-defined way the Jedi seem to be slaves during the Old Republic period; their freedom curtailed, but still provided with all manner of necessities and even some pleasures, and with no apparent understanding of the way they're constrained. The clones seem no different from any other soldiers, volunteer or conscript, human cinema has produced.
The droids are an entirely different matter. The more I watch this cartoon, the less comfortable I am with the way the droid armies are treated. The droids are clearly self-aware; they comment on their own terrible aiming abilities, they worry about Jedi attacks, they congratulate each other on particuilarly impressive victories, and at one point they even stop and have a quick discussion amongst themselves, trying to figure out what they should do with a wounded clone trooper; do they, essentially, take prisoners? But the droids are gunned down without mercy, even when they try to surrender; they're cavalierly thrown at Jedi to buy non-droid leaders even just a little time; at one point General Grievous himself decapitates a droid with a backhand, an action that would immediately paint him as irredeemably evil if he did it to an organic species. But because they droids are, well, droids, it seems that it's perfectly alright to use, abuse and even kill them in a fit of pique.
The social standing of droids in the Star Wars galaxy has always been rather uncomfortable; the moment that bartender in Mos Eisley declared that the "we don't serve their kind here" all sorts of historical-racial tension crept into the film universe. But while the droids were limited to R2 and C-3PO, and a bunch of background, non-speaking props/characters wandering around without rhyme or reason, it could be brushed off fairly easily. The longer the Clone Wars goes on, however, the more I find myself rooting for the droids to gun down the Neimodians, leave General Grievous on his own, make peace with the Republic and bugger off to try and get their own civilisation going. They're clearly sentient life-forms, after all, and everything else in a galaxy far, far away gets to make the same attempt.
No, it's the new Clone Wars cartoon that I've been watching and enjoying, the CGI one where everyone sort of looks like a woodblock sculpture. Amazingly enough, it's managed to make Anakin a likeable and sympathetic character, and it's really helped flesh out the clone troopers, similar to the work done by Karen Traviss (MANDALORIANS!), but without the obsessive focus on the Mandalorians that mamzel Traviss brings to everything Star Wars she touches. Really, it's been especially interesting getting a deeper look at how the slave-soldiers of this war were treated, thrown away as cannon fodder, ignored, ridiculed, and faced with summary execution from both their enemies and their commanders...
You think I'm still talking about the clones, don't you?
In fact, it's the droid armies of the Confederacy of Independent Systems that have been most tragically fleshed out by the Clone Wars cartoon. The clones may be slaves in that they can't leave the army or pursue any other life, but they're treated with respect by their Jedi generals, non-clone officers, politicians and even private citizens. They're slaves in the same slightly awkward, ill-defined way the Jedi seem to be slaves during the Old Republic period; their freedom curtailed, but still provided with all manner of necessities and even some pleasures, and with no apparent understanding of the way they're constrained. The clones seem no different from any other soldiers, volunteer or conscript, human cinema has produced.
The droids are an entirely different matter. The more I watch this cartoon, the less comfortable I am with the way the droid armies are treated. The droids are clearly self-aware; they comment on their own terrible aiming abilities, they worry about Jedi attacks, they congratulate each other on particuilarly impressive victories, and at one point they even stop and have a quick discussion amongst themselves, trying to figure out what they should do with a wounded clone trooper; do they, essentially, take prisoners? But the droids are gunned down without mercy, even when they try to surrender; they're cavalierly thrown at Jedi to buy non-droid leaders even just a little time; at one point General Grievous himself decapitates a droid with a backhand, an action that would immediately paint him as irredeemably evil if he did it to an organic species. But because they droids are, well, droids, it seems that it's perfectly alright to use, abuse and even kill them in a fit of pique.
The social standing of droids in the Star Wars galaxy has always been rather uncomfortable; the moment that bartender in Mos Eisley declared that the "we don't serve their kind here" all sorts of historical-racial tension crept into the film universe. But while the droids were limited to R2 and C-3PO, and a bunch of background, non-speaking props/characters wandering around without rhyme or reason, it could be brushed off fairly easily. The longer the Clone Wars goes on, however, the more I find myself rooting for the droids to gun down the Neimodians, leave General Grievous on his own, make peace with the Republic and bugger off to try and get their own civilisation going. They're clearly sentient life-forms, after all, and everything else in a galaxy far, far away gets to make the same attempt.