The origins of what made the original concepts for Star Wars are well known, but somewhat buried in a way. The aesthetics are all there, but the key parts stem from common genre films of the 1950's and 1960's (namely Sergio Leone "Spaghetti Western" and Akira Kurosawa Samurai films), and 1940's serials and Second World War dogfights from George Lucas's childhood. Each of these elements are featured prominently in The Mandalorian. The show features an armored bounty hunter with a mysterious past travelling backwater outer rim planets and hunting down criminals, several homages to Kurosawa samurai duels, and a clear statement of the Empire's inspirations.
The Galactic Empire is not nearly as cartoonishly villainous as we'd fool ourselves into believing, it is based entirely in human inspiration. The Nazi uniforms and consistent black, white, and red darkness to their monochrome color schemes may look on the nose, but it's entirely believable. The Empire dresses themselves as Nazi officers and their army is made up of Stormtroopers (Sturmtruppen/Sturmabteilung), but their direct inspiration (as stated by George Lucas, saying that "Well, when I did it [the rebellion], they were Viet Cong") was the United States of America in a new wave of post-Civil War imperialism, under the Wilsonian guise of fostering and protecting democracy. The fall of the republic in the prequel trilogy mirrors the fall of the Roman and Weimar republics, and all content from the Clone Wars era comes from a post-9/11 world. George Lucas spoke about the historical falls of democracies and republics, "Democracies aren't overthrown, they're given away". The quote "So this is how liberty dies; with thunderous applause" after the issuing of Order 66 reflects the near unanimous and bipartisan passing of the Patriot Act shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center. The Empire's most consistent crimes (excluding the genocide of the entire population of Alderaan in an instant, and the purging of even loyal planets during Operation: Cinder, both of which easily read as a representation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) are rarely even described in the films. Emperor Palpatine is a human-supremacist, and implements horrid discriminatory policy against alien species within his control. The Wookiees and other strong species are placed in concentration camps and enslaved for manual labor, deemed unintelligent brutes by the humano-centric xenophobia of the Empire. Few nonhuman imperial officers ever get recruited, for their supposed superiority. Only the Chiss Grand Admiral Thrawn seemed to exceed this for his sheer brilliance as a commander. The fascism of the Empire doesn't stop with racial supremacy, The Imperial March was made as a march to evoke the modern glorification of militarism that has been common since the days of European, American and later Japanese colonialism. The white armor of the Republic's clones was stripped of all battalion colors, and any personalization they had made to leave a stark, spotless, white finish that is stripped of all identity to form one single identity (one bound to the nation, the state, and its military). Each stormtrooper armor variant features a piercing glare in the helmet, with a low-hanging black brow accentuating it. The only message present in this imagery is one of fear, fear that manifests itself in terror in the victims, and unyielding, aestheticized worship of authority in the loyal. The Empire operates without mercy for any who do not glorify the state and the Emperor, behind faceless white helmets that only remind the peasants which species' boot they lie under.
The most overt statement of the Empire's fascist inspiration came in an episode of The Mandalorian, entitled "The Believer". An ex-imperial soldier meets Valin Hess, officer that ruthlessly sacrificed thousands of his fellow men during Operation: Cinder, at Burnin Konn. When confronted with this blatant disregard for the lives of his loyal men, he pushes it aside, calling them "All heroes of the Empire" without a single change in tone. As a remnant of the fallen Empire, he regards the forming New Republic with a clear statement of Imperial philosophy. "You see, boys, everybody thinks they want freedom, but what they really want...is order".
Now, how many times has a protest for human rights been quelled by the jackboot of the state lately in the name of law and order? What is order, if not a coded gesture towards the categorization of people into their inferior groups and classes, ever incapable of rising to the level of the rulers that codified it? In the recent year of protests, each likely met with resistance from militarized police forces clad all in black, facelessly advancing to beat their own citizens, it is difficult for me to see nothing less than a wall of Stormtroopers. The oppressive arm of the state, marching forth to quell the voice of the people with batons and kevlar.
So it then came to pass that TK-1488, lovingly nicknamed Hans, was born. Constructed as a white stone bust, echoing the Greco-Roman appropriations used to spread fascism (explored in previous pieces), and given a red armband of his Empire on his left shoulder, he was then defaced with an almost graffiti-esque phrase of CT-5385 "Tup", the haunting "Good soldiers follow orders" mantra he chanted before murdering his Jedi commander in a trance. The incident occurred because of a malfunction in his inhibitor chip--installed in every clone soldier for the purpose of overthrowing the Republic and creating the Empire. Being a good soldier meant killing a defender of peace when ordered to. The clones were only ever a slave army built in service to the creation of a fascist state. The mantra is a reflection of the justification the Nazis at the Nuremburg trials gave right up until their execution; they were just following orders. This piece targets the nationalism, militarism, and authoritarianism inherent to police and military institutions, and how they connect to fascism.
The piece was built hollow, with raku clay layered over a rudimentary paper and tape armature, laboriously layered over, sprayed with atomized LF-06 slip, fired, and painted over with surprising success. The words, haphazardly written over the glistening yet weathered armor, were meant to evoke an act of protest, with jagged stippled edges, a lack of form, and running drips evocative of what spray paint would look like in this scenario of defaced memorial.