⭐️ FEATURED
Humor is essential in culture. A good laugh helps anything. Of course, the result of a laugh sometimes doesn’t do justice to the full intentions of the comedian. Before we get into that, however, here’s a meme I made.
You like it? Maybe I should’ve omitted the quotation from the scene. I made this in a low mood, using an image from the wiki to compare life right now to the Battle of Atollon and open up a frighteningly on-point analogy.
Thrawn is front and center, openly presenting himself as the confident victor of the battle and the single problem the various heroes commonly face.
Let’s start with our dramatis personae of rebel characters and my chosen analogies for them.
General Dodonna—Australian wildlife, and the environment in general. His fleet is the first to be destroyed, just as the environment is the first to suffer in 2020 under the catastrophic wildfires.
Commander Sato—medical workers. You may already see where this goes.
Hera—the economy. As the rebels are dependent on Hera’s strength in battle, money is pretty important to, y’know, everyone.
Chopper—voters, for any democracy in the world. Figures I’d give such a role to the grumpiest character. For extra political commentary, he's Hera's droid; likewise, many voters follow the money.
Kanan—representing college graduates. Wise people, but like how Kanan stays on Atollon, they’ve been practically left to fend for themselves.
Ezra—world governments. The main character in each respective story, with the mission to find aid for the desperate people.
Let’s get into the plot of the battle. Thrawn’s fleet represents everything terrible going on right now, but his most important assets are the Interdictor cruisers. They trap the rebels, just as COVID-19 has trapped us.
Sato orders his crew (people vulnerable to the virus) to evacuate their carrier, before he joins the two who chose to stay (other essential workers and responsible citizens) on a suicide run, destroying Konstantine’s cruiser (the first wave of the virus). Ezra escapes, representing the world’s chance to gain an edge.
Meanwhile, Kanan consults Bendu for help. As a stout and resistant force, Bendu is a perfect analogy for the United States and its staggered stance on the state of the world. Understandably, he’s just upset that the chaos had to bother him. He transforms into a violent storm (hits a bit too close to home, I feel).
Ezra seeks help from Mon Mothma; her rebel forces are the World Health Organization, simply too distant and poorly supported to help. He turns to Mandalorian forces, but I’m still unsure of whom they compare to.
I think we’ve caught up to real time in the analogy, just after Thrawn bombards the base from orbit. Bendu is in a storm, and there’s still a second Interdictor (a second virus wave) in the fleet.
Meme culture has a ridiculous duality between sheer absurd idiocy and calculated creative effort. Hopefully this is a good insight to the latter and why we should strive for it—and hopefully we’ll get through this rough patch of life quite all right. The Force is with us!
What’s next in the analogy? By my guess, a hopeful ending, and I think we can use what started as a joke as a real tool to guide us moving forward.
