reading this fic where the new mando schools don't teach classical mando art anymore, and. idk. it's kinda fucked up and it kinda got me thinking. maybe it's because i'm an american who leans pacifist and strongly supports gun regulations, but the whole fanon where the new mandos can't possibly be real mandos simply because they're pacifists bothers me. because i think that's part of why satine exists in the first place--to draw attention to the fact that in a lot of the canon, Mando and Pacifist are contradictions. she exists to deconstruct some realistic implications of a "warrior culture," such as, well. sometimes people get tired of fighting.
the fact that mando fans make satine out to be an enemy of her culture--write her as someone leading what is essentially a cultural genocide--is very... meta, to me. satine represents an opportunity for nuance in a fictional culture that is primarily known for the cool armor and the badass fight scenes, but the fans like the armor and the fighting. and satine does not. so satine as a character/what she represents in-universe has become an enemy of what makes mandos interesting to the fans. and she is an enemy they can punish by stripping her culture from her, by taking away her history and her art and her context and making her out as a wannabe republic senator with fascist leanings.
satine exists to ask the question: is violence a necessary component of this culture? does being a mandalorian mean being a killer? and the fans by and large answered, yes.
i don’t think it’s possible to consider satine and new mandalorians in general from watsonian perspective only because of how big a role the doylist point of view plays in it.
the mandalorian culture as a whole was influenced by māori culture with heavy input from temuera morrison. pretty much the only poc mandalorians we see on screen are jango and boba. they’re bounty hunters, they’re violent and dangerous, as opposed to later introduced pacifist new mandalorians, who are Decidedly White. the clones are mercilessly washed out too, peaking at tbb, in which "the smart one" is the lightest and "the brute force one" is the darkest. and it’s a Problem. it’s a problem in the real world, with how haka is still too often perceived as frightening and uncivilised, with how the notion that poc in general are more prone to violence is still ingrained in a lot of people’s points of view.
can pacifist mandalorians exist? of course, sky’s the limit. they’re a culture, they’re a people, not a monolith. but i don’t think it’s possible to discuss that without overhauling how new mandalorians are portrayed and addressing the very real problem of just blatant racism.
my issues with this line of thinking are many and complex.
1: the character of boba fett--the OG mando--was originally played by a white actor. there are about 20 years of EU mando lore before temuera morrison was even considering auditioning for lucas’ new movies, and honestly my assessment of that casting choice is that lucas wanted an indigenous man to be the face of the mandalorians because their culture was established in the lore as violent and warmongering.
2: boba and jango are not the only poc mandos we see on screen. and they are all very different from each other. din djarin is not the same kind of mando as jango was. sabine wren is not the same kind of mando as either of them. which leads me to--
3: which mando culture are you talking about when you say "mando culture" ? because it's pretty firmly established in canon that mando culture is very splintered.
4: i personally think it's just a bad literary analyst practice to equate a fictional culture with a real world culture, even if that inspiration/intention exists, because of exactly this situation. mando culture is not maaori culture. it's mando culture. it's fictional. there is no such thing as a "warrior culture" hence the quote marks, because, as you acknowledged yourself, real world cultures do not operate on planet of hats rules.
i think there can be value in exploring a fictional culture through the lens of it's real world inspirations, but... temuera morrison did not have complete creative control over how mandalorian culture was depicted even in the movies and shows he was in, let alone the rest of the massive world of mando media that exists before and after and apart from him. maaori culture was an inspiration, yes, but not the only inspiration. and i take issue with the suggestion that martial traditions are essential to any culture, real or fictional, and i'm not saying that's what you suggested but that's kinda what you suggested. and i take issue with the real world atrocities committed against maaori people being equated to the policies of a fictional pacifist who again, as was my point, is a member of the same people group. is it racist that the violent mandos are usually poc and the pacifist is white? yeah, yeah it is. i'm not saying it's not. but that leads me to--
5: death watch is also white. like. in TCW it's not satine vs. jango fett + the true mandalorian movement started by jaster mereel (and only ever depicted in the comics/books). it's sative vs. her own sister, who funny enough happens to be white, and also happens to be a member of a majority white and "traditionally mandalorian" terrorist organization, whose goal is to make mandalore great again via galactic conquest, ala mandalorian empires of old. i personally would hesitate to suggest that imperialism and colonialism and cultural supremacy and domestic terrorism are cornerstones of maaori culture, accurately represented and due our respect.
it's like... nobody has to like satine as a character. that's not what i'm saying. i am saying that satine is a mandalorian. trying to say that she is not, trying to say that she is erasing her own culture because she thinks violence and war are bad actually, and because she is enacting policies you personally may or may not agree with in an effort to stop the violence and war, is not a good take. it's just not.
literally this.
#the whole thing about satine was about how being defined by violence was not a way to live#a way to define your culture and your identity#and how that will eventually will lead to their destruction#AND SHE IS PROVEN RIGHT#also on the racism point that wasn’t brought up in the original post and wasn’t what was being discussed originally
#Sabine is right there#she is the bridge of this discussion#the middle between pacifism and violence as culture#she doesn’t define her culture by violence but by art and creativity#she fights not because she is mandalorian but because the empire is Bad and she can do something about it#when she talks about her armor isn’t as a piece of weapon but a heirloom#how the way it’s painted means something#the only point she associates her culture with violence (that I recall)#is when she points out that mandalorians were at war with the jedi as she trains with Kanan#and Kanan puts a stop to that pretty quick#anyways Satine is cool and her episodes are insane#how did they put that#did they know how impactful it was
tags via @/swonkohwenoeht and THANK YOU FOR BRINGING SABINE INTO THIS!!!
wanna chime in a bit re: doylists vs watsonian
because I just so happened to get this article in my feed today (16 Years Ago Today, George Lucas Broke Star Wars Canon & Made Disney’s Reboot Inevitable) about TCW introducing Satine and the New Mandalorians, and it's just so blatantly wrong about a lot of things, which I think also come into play here.
George Lucas didn't break canon, bc at that time everything outside of the films was considered separate quasi-canon anyway. From the beginning, Lucas was always very clear and upfront about this. He didn't directly oversee everything in the Expanded Universe (novels, comics, games, etc) so those authors could do whatever they wanted and he would not be beholden to any of it when making his own creative decisions for his canon (the movies and TCW series). That was the established policy under which the Star Wars Universe operated before Disney.
My understanding is that this particular "retcon" was controversial bc Karen Traviss left Star Wars over it and didn't finish the Republic Commando series. She and her fans complained about the "change in canon" but her series was never fully canon to begin with, and Lucasfilm addressed this when it happened.
All this to say, I just think it's interesting. As someone who watched TCW a while ago then came to the fandom more recently without rewatching much of it, I had no idea where all the Satine hate was coming from since I don't remember it being a part of the actual story in TCW at all.
My kinda theory is that it's (in part) an overly Doylist outlook trying to bring this retcon situation into the in-universe narrative for some reason. I.e. "White guy whitewashes what was supposed to be a brown fictional culture so therefore Satine is doing racist cultural genocide." Which does not make sense narratively, and is based on a lot of misconceptions:
1 there was no "supposed to" bc Lucas was establishing his own canon. Like yes decisions were made, which weren't made in a vacuum and are open to discussion and criticism. All I'm saying is that this wasn't new or targeted. Lucas's projects overriding EU 'C-Canon' happened all the time, just like when the release of AotC changed Boba Fett's backstory
2 Mando =/= Maaori (like you went over above). Mando's were never a one-to-one stand in. Karen Traviss (a white British woman who is not beyond criticism of her own) took influence from multiple places, including I believe Celtic culture? And also she literally had white Mando characters too (at least going off the art for Kal Skirata, her main macho Mando guy) so Mandos weren't all brown in Legends either
3 I cannot find any sources that indicate Traviss ever actually worked with Temuera Morrison to get his input. So unless I'm just missing something, idk where that idea came from, and yet it seems to be the main arguing point. (All I can find is about how he incorporated Maaori culture into his performance for Boba in The Mandalorian and TBOBF, which was years after TCW and also established that Boba doesn't really consider himself Mandalorian)
And yeah, it's weird how often fanon makes it out as Satine vs Jango, when it was actually New Mandos vs Death Watch. Seems to me like it's actually coming from Lucas vs Traviss and resentment over that whole situation (and it kinda starts to feel like people tend to bring in Temuera Morrison and the Maaori people just to prop that up)
all of which is tangential to the great analysis above, but yeah another way that the fanon fight is very meta and divorced from the actual characters, ideologies, and conflict presented in the show
