cavehags
cavehags
“The closer rebel characters come to a definable ideology, the more likely they are to be written as villains. At the same time, the emotive aspects of rebellion - the heroism of the underdog, the thrill of fighting the power - are rendered safe for public consumption by taking out any explicit political ideology. … The effect of all this is to suggest that violence is somehow more sympathetic the less its perpetrators believe - that heroism decreases the more detailed your policy proposals get. If Luke Skywalker was fighting for galactic communism, or Daenerys intended to create a series of peasants’ councils to govern Westeros, or Harry Potter wanted to smash the Ministry of Magic and overturn wizard supremacy, we would have to confront serious and difficult questions about when political violence is appropriate, for whose benefit, and for what purposes. I don’t believe those are questions pop culture is incapable of asking. They are questions we do not want to ask.”
— Alister MacQuarrie, Outlaw Kings and Rebellion Chic (via secularbakedgoods)
