- Droids in Star Wars are sentient beings with hopes and personalities
- Droids are slaves to be inspected and traded and owned
- Jedis and Rebels see no issue with this
- Droids are used solely for work and then scrapped.
Alice and Phil take the respective sides:
WHY DOES NO ONE CARE THAT DROIDS ARE SLAVES IN STAR WARS?
Alice writes:
It’s all very well when we talk about Blade Runner and Her and Humans and Ex Machina and the slew of recent interpretations of the whole Turing issue of whether a sentient AI has any rights. But this question has been around since we were kids, watching our favourite films. You see, Droids are slaves and Droids are sentient. If you were speaking to C-3PO behind a wall you’d be hard pressed to tell him from a human, bar the tinny voice (I’ve known people with tinny voices less bright than C-3PO). But he actually calls Luke his ‘Master’, yeah as in this isn’t even a remotely veiled reference. This starts to seem pretty like slavery in America. The droids, when taken by the Jawas, are kept in a nightmarish state, bound in the darkness while they travel, pretty much like the old slave ships, until they’re hauled out for display and inspection by potential buyers.
Not convinced. In the cantina in Mos Eisley, the Droids are refused service, because ‘we don’t serve their kind in here’. Maybe the director David Fincher said it best when explaining why he turned down an opportunity to direct an episode:
“I always thought of ‘Star Wars’ as the story of two slaves [C-3PO and R2-D2] who go from owner to owner, witnessing their masters’ folly, the ultimate folly of man… I thought it was an interesting idea in the first two, but it’s kind of gone by ‘Return Of The Jedi.'”
In every scene they feature, Droids are property, second class, routinely mocked and treated like trash. Roy Batty would go crazy watching.
And who are the only group who don’t treat the droids like slaves? The Empire. The Empire doesn’t use droids in Tie Fighters, droids aren’t used anywhere really. The only time the Empire uses droids, 4-Lom and IG-88, is as paid contractors, bounty hunters, to capture Han Solo. Now think how the supposed heroes treat the Droids. Han Solo hates 3PO, Luke tolerates 3PO and R2-D2, there are dozens more examples.
There’s an entire argument to be waged (and we probably will here at some later point ) about how the whole Star Wars saga is on its head and the good guys are actually the Empire, but Droid rights are never brought up once. What this does is raise that question. Nobody seems to pick up on the droid are slaves thing, but it can’t have been an accident. Is George Lucas waiting for the rest of us to cotton on to his real intention?
WHY DOES it matter THAT DROIDS ARE SLAVES IN STAR WARS?
Phil writes:
A New Hope came out in 1977. The fact is the whole question of the rights of a sentient AI didn’t really feel as pressing as now, when AIs are beating players at GO and winning at Jeopardy. When discussions on kill decisions being handed over to data analytics machines are widespread. This was back when Philip K Dick, Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke were still speculating, but they were by no means in the majority. Robots were decidedly second class citizens then. Maybe we can retcon all this now and try and make a claim for R2-D2’s inalienable right to vote and fall in love and practice religion, but lets not ever try and start to read serious philosophical or political themes into the Star Wars films, because they’re repurposed comic book level ‘adventure stories’ designed solely to turn a buck.
Was chewie a second class citizen? Was the USS Enterprise in any way a sentient being? What about ED 209 from Robocop? (I think Futurama covered all of this pretty sweetly actually and yes, I would give Bender the vote every day of the week). I fail to see how I’m supposed to be moved to any serious kind of reaction that fictional machines are oppressed when actual humans are being oppressed every day right next to me?
Does it make the Jedi the bad guys? No. Does it make the Empire the good guys? Only if you’re so politically correct that you’re blinded to the minor detail of their destroying Alderaan with the Death Star. I mean, what kind of good guys would call their space station the Death Star to begin with. It’s like that old Mitchell and Webb routine .
Images courtesy of Andreal90, Sam Howzit and William Tung