Star Wars takes Iβm sick of seeing:
1. When a Jedi chooses to no longer follow the path of a Jedi, they are automatically a Sith. Thatβs like saying if you are no longer a practicing Jew, youβre automatically a Catholic. Being a Sith has a specific set of beliefs and doctrines that must be followed, the same as being a Jedi. One can choose to no longer be a Jedi and *not* be evil or Fallen in any way, shape, or form, and this does not make them a bad person.
2. That if the Jedi were just a bit more Mandalorian, it would have Solved All Their Problems and prevented Anakin from Falling. Usually this means that ifΒ the Jedi just showed more emotion/werenβt emotionally repressed/if Obi-Wan just told Anakin he loved him/was proud of him, Anakin wouldnβt have made the decision on multiple occasions to slaughter children. There are so manyΒ βfix itβ fics where this is the underlying theme.
3. Likewise, the Jedi repress their emotions. The Jedi teach their students to be *mindful* of their emotions, to not react based on a personβs first initial knee jerk response. They asked Anakin to have the same level of emotional control as a kindergartenerβyou donβt get to punch someone because they took your favorite toy and broke it.
3. When Mandalorians adopt children (with or without parental permission) and indoctrinate them into their culture of weaponry and violence, itβs cute; when the Jedi adopt children (usually with parental permission) and teach them to control their emotions and their psychic powers based on those emotions, theyβre an evil child-snatching cult. Only the Mandalorians are capable of forming a family bond and despite being communally raised, the Jedi are incapable of forming those same bonds, probably because of all that emotional repression. But if you violate the rules of the Mandalorians, you are cast out of saidΒ βfamilyβ, whereas even someone like Darth Vader was offered a way home.
4. Love = Attachment. Attachment is about greed and possession. We are told *and* shown on multiple occasions that you can love someone and let them go. Obi-Wan does it multiple times. But when you go beyond love, when you refuse to accept loss, whether itβs external like death or internal like someone choosing to leave you, thatβs when you move into Attachment, and *that* is what leads to the Dark side.
This post is brought to you in part by fandom as well as interacting with members of the Star Wars costuming groups.
I agree with most everything here but Iβd like to take a moment to deconstruct #3, especially with the anti-indigenous undertones.
Weaponry is also part of Jedi culture. We are told multiple times that a Jediβs weapon is their life.
Violence is not a part of Mandalorian culture, self-defense is. (βEducation and armor, self-defense and our clan, our language and our leader, all help us survive.β) Death Watch is an extremist terrorist group and does not speak for all Mandalorians, just as ISIS does not speak for all West Asians. Do not homogenize a culture (or several) based on the actions of a select few, read up on the core cultural values and principles instead.
Mandalorians adopting children without parental permission - assuming the parents are alive to give it - has never happened outside of fic.
The violating the rules of the Mandalorians resulting in you being cast out is only a thing with Din Djarinβs specific sect - The Children of the Watch. We are told this on-screen and the fact so many people forget it irks me to no end. Again, this is homogenization of a culture, assuming one thing that is true about a select few is true for all.
There are many different groups of Mandalorians. In addition to the Children of the Watch and Death Watch, there are the New Mandalorians, the True Mandalorians, the Journeymen Protectors, the clones, and plenty of people just living their lives. (See here for my explanation on why the clones are most definitely canonically Mandalorian.)
And, speaking of the clones and Jango and Boba Fett, the first Mandalorians we ever see on screen or on page and by and large the most well known are portrayed by or have features based on those of MΔori men - Temuera Morrison, Bodie Taylor, and Daniel Logan. Do not make the mistake of thinking for a second that the paintbrushing of the culture their characters belong to as exceedingly and needlessly violent on a whole isnβt rooted in just more of the Star Wars fandomβs typical racism.
Based on two contracts presented in Jango Fett: Open Seasons, it seems like the main work of the True Mandalorians is assisting colonial-adventurers with the suppression of uppity natives (Korda VI) and putting down popular uprisings on behalf of despots (Galidraan). The are more like the Freikorps than anything else. The biggest difference between the True Mandalorians and the Death Watch in the Open Seasons comic seems to be that the Death Watch get drunk and rape women, while the True Mandalorians are straight-edged and avoid unnecessary cruelty (though, if Vau and Skirata are any indication, they have no qualms about torture, even if they derive no sadistic pleasure from it the way Death Watch types might).
I would also note that if one accepts that the Mandalorian Protectors adhered to the same moral code as the True Mandalorians, which certainly seems to be the implication, then Tobbi Dala's scalp-braid suggests they are perfectly happy wearing trophies made from the body-parts of sapient beings, even were one to reject Boba Fett's braid as evidence thereof.
Regarding the latter-most point: the first depiction of an unhelmed Mandalorian in any publication was Fenn Shysa in Marvel Star Wars #68 from February of 1983, and he was blond and blue-eyed. Jango Fett was portrayed by a MΔori actor, but that does not mean the Mandalorians are implicitly Polynesians and thus any framing of the Mandalorians as culturally violent meant as a comment on the MΔori. Jango Fett is not written as "natively" Mandalorian, he was born on Concord Dawn, and the only other Mandalorian who possibly looks MΔori in Jango Fett: Open Seasons is Jaster Mereel, who is also from Concord Dawn. All the other Mandalorians in that comic are white, as are the two most notable True Mandalorians created after that comic: Kal Skirata and Walon Vau.
The idea that the Mandalorians are a violent people is not derived from some prejudice against the MΔori, but instead had roots in notions of Boba Fett hailing from a cadre of nefarious warriors, something which was floating around as rumours in fanzines as early as 1979 before he had even debuted in a film and when he was being portrayed under the helm by Jeremy Bulloch, who is about as white as a non-albino can be.
There is probably a conversation to be had about how certain corners of the fandom exoticise the Mandalorians in insensitive ways due to the MΔori identity of Temuera Morrison, but that is wholly separate from the fact that the Mandalorians generally embody a "warrior culture" trope, something which is applied to white societies in fiction as often as any other (e.g. Conan the Cimmerian, the Dunlendings, pretty much every fictionalised depiction of vikings).













