While researching a post I promised on why France collapsed so quickly in World War Two I came across this video on the Russo-German Reinsurance Treaty. Do yourself a favor and watch it. It will give you a much more balanced view of the man Bismarck–you’ll not be looking at him through the lens of World War Two or World War One for that matter.
Finally, I think all of us can agree that Disney Star Wars has been 90% joke. All except for Rogue One and the recently completed season two of Andor. As the Critical Drinker says, season two is “the kind of TV your sitting on the edge of your seat in complete silence knowing this is the kind of TV that comes along once every 5-10 years.”
I’ve re-evaluated my favorite Star Wars movies–not a single TV show, not even the silly Mandalorian makes the top five, except Andor. Obviously A New Hope is number one. Rogue One is number two, Empire Strikes Back is number three, Andor both seasons are number 4 and number five is a toss up between Return of the Jedi or Revenge of the Sith. What say you people?
bruce wilder
ah, if only Germans had had more of an opportunity to know Bismarck the cautious yet flexible diplomat and statesman! instead, they “knew” and admired Bismarck the Legend.
Bismarck the diplomat feared French revanchism. But, Bismarck the Legend created French revanchism and did more than a little to make the Prussian military occupation along the border exacerbate the grievance and resentments of the locals.
Oakchair
The original Star Wars was made for a general audience.
Andor and Rogue one were made for people wanting something gritty, dark and serious.
Everything else was made for adults wanting to get nostalgic with their children.
A similar trend and pattern though not as extreme has occurred with superhero movies and the Disney remakes.
marku52
Murderbot, (Apple TV) based on the series by Martha Wells, has been great fun 3 episodes in. I loved the books, and the TV show is doing a decent job of recreating them.
In the future corporate rim, a human/bot cyborg manages to delete the software controlling it’s actions, (punishing by death significant deviations). It calls itself “Murderbot”, although it points out “7300 hours of watching serials, not so much murdering.” It offers very dry wit, thinks humans are “icky”, but still protects them anyway.
Soredemos
Star Wars is for children. And I don’t mean that as an insult: it’s a very black and white hero’s journey morality tale that is fantastic for ten year olds. But that’s all it is, by design. It was never intended to be more the an that, and is a poor foundation for trying a more mature expansion.
In fact I think that the impulse to make it grow up with its audience is itself an elaborate form of childishness. Some things should be left alone as what they are. You can still go back and enjoy them on their own level, but as you grow up they are no longer intended for you. Star Wars shouldn’t we dragged kicking and screaming into ‘maturity’; the end result becomes a more than fanlintly ridiculous spectacle.
Rogue One was absurd. Half of it was awful, unlikeable characters who were intended to be flawed protaganists who are actually just kind of boring (and also the implied collective effort of ‘many Bothans died’ is retconned into ‘girl with deep personal connective to the Death Star), culminating in a CGI fest of fanservice action sequences that are attempting to be some sort of gritty Vietnam thing, but in the context of Star Wars just looks very silly.
As for Andor, same creators and basically all fo the same inherent problems, just very stretched out. My impression of it was that if it didn’t have the Star Wars label it would have been lost in the sea of TV as yet another mediocre sci-fi outing.
It’s an entire show built around what the writers believe to be iconic ‘movie moments’ strung together with weak connecting filler, but a lot of those moments themselves are just kind of…stupid. Like, man rides an elevator way up to some in the sky top floor so Stellan Skarsgard can monologue an epic speech at him and then pushes a button closing him back into the elevator….and then what? He just slowly rides it all the way back to the ground? Why did this meeting have to take place hundreds of floors up? Because it was ‘dramatic ‘. A prison revolt happens and the prisoners climb floor by floor, chanting ‘one way out’. Very rousing, very iconic. What to they do when they get to the top? Uh…I don’t know, the writers didn’t think it through. Just jump in the ocean and swim to shore I guess. Why is there a shore nearby? Shouldn’t this mega prison by in a remote arctic zone or something? There is because the writers need there to be because they have no other way for their characters to escape. The entire show is that, over and over again. ‘Epic moments’ that are actually at least slightly stupid upon reflection.
If Critical Drinker genuinely thinks it’s one of the best things he’s seen in a decade, well, yeah, that pretty much tracks with what I’ve come to expect from that particular YouTuber.
If Stars Wars must be endlessly mined and expanded on, The silly Mandalorian is the proper way to do it. At its best anyway; the show overstayed its welcome and you eventually had things like CGI Luke Skywalker start showing up as embarrassing fanservice. But at its best, expand the world sideways, explore obscure things, and keep the tone broadly family friendly. What is the rest of Tatooine like, outside of the cities? Well apparently it’s a wild west world, the Empire has hover trains and there’s a train heist, and Timothy Oliphant is a small town sheriff, and you know what? This all works. This actually feels both appropriate enough for Star Wars and is actually pretty fun.
Can we as a society please go back to reading books, like adults? This phenomenon of adults who grew up with childish fiction attempting to adultify their childhood favorites must be some form of arrested development.
Soredemos
@Oakchair
No, I disagree. Rogue One and Andor are also exercises in desperate nostalgia, only with the twist of instead of simply rehashing the original, they’re foolishly attempting to force the source material to grow up with the now middle age writers.
Stephen Johnson
Most interesting piece on Bismarck, thanks for that.
As to Star Wars, I stopped paying attention around – what was it the Phantom menace ? Anyhow, I’d Score Star Wars as
1) Empire strikes back
2) A new Hope
3) Return of the Jedi
4+ Uninteresting junk
If I get a chance, I’ll check out Andor
Ian Welsh
Bismarck didn’t want to take Alsace and Lorraine and if he’d been in charge, WWI would never have happened, nor WWII. He had to defeat Austria and France to fully establish Germany and its place in Europe, but oddly, he wasn’t a warmonger.
Sean Paul Kelley
Stephen, I’ll make you, and you alone a deal. I guarantee you will like Andor, but you have to watch Rogue One first If you do not like Andor, I will pay for your one month Disney subscription. It is that good. Some of the best TV since Game of Thrones, up to the Battle of the Bastards. So, I’ve laid down the challenge. But, you have to watch Rogue One first.
PS—Glad you liked the Bismarck–Reinsurance Treaty stuff. If you really want to understand European diplomatic history from the end of the Napoeonic Wars up to World War One, read AJP Taylors masterpiece, “The Struggle for Mastery in Europe.” I read this book the semester after I got my bachelors in history and it tied everything together.
shagggz
Soredemos, thank you. I hate to yuck someone’s yum, but I hold Star Wars in very low regard indeed and your politely conveying the basic point that it’s stupid and for children relieves me of the tension of holding back my bile. Children’s programming swelling to such a scale is cringeworthy enough, but I take particular offence whenever I hear its name mentioned in the same breath as sci-fi. Setting aside the blurriness of boundaries between genres, it speaks to the infantilization of the culture that this franchise has wrought.
Soredemos
@shagggz
That’s actually not my problem with it. I genuinely like Star Wars for what it is. My issue is the concept of taking what is inherently childish and attempting to use it as a foundation for more sophisticated storytelling. At some point it becomes an exercise in absurdity.
Warvigilent
geeze keeping in with the ever so high minded better than you attitudes. These things i dont like are dumb and stupid but the things i like are totally smart and better!!
what really do you got that is so great? breaking bad? sopranos? more criminal worship more copaganda? delirious legal drama? reality tv? sitcoms?
know why sci fi / fantasy are good? they actually criticize and reflect what is happening in reality. they examine and think critically about philosophy and politics and they also have actual historic knowledge and basis. (eg game of thrones is based on english history ) the rest unless an actual historic documentary or drama exist in a disconnected liminial void with no history or politics just perfectly sanitary family approved. sure walter white turns into a murderous monster but lets not question the us health care system or the failed drug war. Its funny but the boys brings up the cia coke scheme with inner city kids. Does Csi miami bring up how often cops plant drugs or “drop guns” . are any “real” shows gonna dramatize ice raids that are happening right now? are any going to mention how the trump admin has literally deported toddlers, children who came to court hearings with a stuffed animals.. but nahhh none of your shit will ever even mention genocide.
star wars sure will, star wars will even talk about how people will literally poison children for money. star wars will talk about how empires will use prison labor , will criminalize minorities, continue pointless drug wars that empower criminals . It will talk about how bankers want deregulation to make more money even if it threatens economic stability. it talks about how facsists will lie and cheat and do anything for power It can do that and more but it really is a vessel for stories. it is originally a hero cycle but there is a lot more there than just lucas.
For those who could deign to sink themselves low enough to watch the live action, you really should see all of it or at least go over some decent synopsys of the animated works. from clone wars to rebels and bad batch. they all compliment the movies they are chronologically near and add much more back ground to characters that appear in the live action shows. if you ever wanted to know who saw gurrera was or who the blue bounty hunter in mandalorian was .
so what is so much better? at least some hitchhikers guide or maybe some discworld? or wait more sci fi and fantasy…
bruce wilder
if he’d been in charge, WWI would never have happened, nor WWII.
By the time WWI broke out, Bismarck had been out of power for over twenty years and dead for most of that time. But, he had contributed several seeds and much fertilizer to the growth of the harvests of both World Wars. Personally, he may not have wanted war, but his example of “blood and iron” in the three wars of German unification — not incidentally at the expense of the evolution of responsibility to the legislature rather than the monarch — cultivated unfortunate expectations in Germany’s domestic polity.
The determination to create a German Empire dominated by Prussia required excluding German-speaking Austria from the German nation-state, which left the Hapsburg dual monarchy to become an unavoidable, dependent and supremely problematic ally. Germany’s alliance with Austria essentially precluded close alliance with Russia or Italy. Instead, the best Bismarck could do were the secret Reinsurance treaty with Russia and the secret terms of the Triple Alliance with Italy. The Congress of Berlin demonstrated how problematic the inescapable alliance with Austria was, as Bismarck had to carry Britain’s water in containing Russia, a thankless task. Russia could (quite cynically) earn credit as the champion of Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and even Greece, but Austria was constrained to reactionary responses to Balkan unrest and conflict and grabbing territory from the Ottomans. And, Germany was constrained to support Austria — which as we know proved fatal to peace.
Maybe, a counterfactual and hypothetical Bismarck could find a way to slip the noose, escape the trap that the actual Bismarck had set, but color me doubtful.
Ian Welsh
Well, to be specific, Bismack was against taking Alsace/Lorraine, and their possession was a massive problem in German/French relations. He didn’t want them because he saw just that.
Neither did he think that building a massive fleet to piss of Britain was a good idea.