Andor Is a Star Wars Show About the Brutality of Bureaucracy
Since the dawn of Star Wars, there’s never been any confusion about whether the Empire is good or bad: The Empire is, and has always been, evil, committing acts of planetary genocide while attempting to put down the forces of the Rebellion. But the type of evil the Empire engages in has long been mired in fantasy trappings: The Empire is on the Dark Side of the Force—evil magic, more or less, wielded by what are essentially evil wizards, in service of mystical darkness.Â
This makes it easy to forget that the Empire is a government, a ruling authority with military and governing bodies, populated mostly by rule-following and rule-making humans rather than wizards. Those humans operate as government functionaries often do—as bureaucrats, tasked with overseeing staff and systems in order to achieve the Empire’s governing objectives, whatever they might be.Â
It’s easy to forget that those bureaucrats and functionaries are not only just as bad as any of the dark magic-wielding wizards slaying innocents with laser swords—they are the chief implementers and supervisors of the Empire’s evil intentions.Â
That’s the genius of Andor, the excellent two-season Star Wars prequel series that just wrapped up on Disney+. It’s an extended examination of the Empire’s ruthless bureaucracy, the vast, uncaring machine of misery and repression that gave rise to the Rebellion. Andor is the story of a once-democratic
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