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purplemoonfox · 1 month ago

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Ramblings on the Senate Building in Clone Wars vs Andor and aesthetics IRL...and a tiny aside about the security presence there

Some spoilers for the end of s2 of Andor

I might be late to the party with this (I've never been super involved in fandom, I'm a lurker, so I'm usually on the outs) but oh well.

I cannot watch any scene in the Senate Building in Andor without wincing—and not because the show is bad.

Andor is so good it beggars my ability to describe how much it's what I've been begging for for years and knew Star Wars could potentially be. I cry a lot while watching it though. I’ve got my issues with Bix’s ending (what exactly did the generic baby ending add to the story or to her already crippled agency) but I can deal.

One of these days I'm going to get off my ass and think about the juxtaposition of culture as an active source of community and strength vis a vis Luthen Rael selling other peoples' provenance to rich consumers who keep things on sterile podiums. Maybe tie in that he doesn’t get along with the wider Rebellion somehow idk.

This is going to meander a little, please bear with me. Summary at the very end because I absolutely like to go on.

It’s not that the portrayal of the Senate building in Andor is in any way bad; it’s that it's so white it’s blinding. It's sterile, like a hospital room. And like everything else in Andor, that must be a deeply intentional choice apologies to Valencia, Spain for this entire post, your building seems like it would be very nice when it's not the home base of a shit ton of complacent fat cats content to do nothing until it affects them directly.

Coruscant in general also reflects this...cleansing, as we see in season one when Syril Karn goes back to live with his mother (is this purely a Topside thing?). In the prequels we see so many non-humans, whereas in Andor, 90% of everyone we see are human. Coruscant (and we only see Topside, tbf) is more colorful at a ground level in the prequels and TCW than it ever is in Andor. Hell, it even seemed to me like Coruscant's air traffic had been cut down by at least half, as well.

For comparison, here is a still from TCW of a concourse:

Note the dark, rich colors. Other areas are similar in theme and illumination.

Here's one from AOTC, and I believe this one is in the Senate building, not the Executive building:

Now here's Andor:

That is excruciating. I need sunglasses, my eyes are shit enough. Also, blue, like the Madonna, Mon? Fucking classic <3. Yes i know blue and orange are the Rebellion's colors but my limited familiarity with art history won't be ignored lol.

The thing about conservative bends is that conservatives tend to prefer "clean," modest aesthetics because they tend to look towards a mythical past where people "did an honest day's labor" and humbly didn't have even the desire for fancy stuff (haha so very false people have always liked nice things you just literally can't get nice shit if you're a subsistence laborer unable to go anywhere else because you're legally bound to the land and are one bad harvest away from starving to death while your God-ordained feudal landlord is a dick who deserves more because God said he's a better breed of person...no seriously the Brits still deal with class issues this many centuries later for a reason, and there's also a reason that in some shows somebody has the ONE somewhat pretty hair pin they pull out of an otherwise destitute hovel...although that being said the image of impoverished peasantry was definitely a tax evasion scheme in some cases so like...it's complicated LOL).

Famously, Shitler didn't like women wearing red lipstick, or any makeup really. These days, the "clean girl" aesthetic is apparently popular because men can't tell the difference between a sick person and a woman not wearing any makeup, so no makeup isn't an option.

It also plays into something I like to call "light is not always good, dark is not always bad." Light can be piercing, even blinding; dark can evoke rich and fertile soil. I'd be more inclined to describe the Clone Wars-era Senate building as less fertile and more antediluvian and decomposing, and really lived in like an old house, but there is meaning in gutting it and making it all bright white and almost airy, with no shadows.

Makes it a lot easier to keep an eye on everyone, for instance.

It's in the same vein that "clean aesthetics" creates a narrower definition of what constitutes an acceptable appearance, and makes it a lot easier to catch out and target any divergence from the expected norm. It makes even something as mundane as being sick that day stand out.

The Senate complex etc.

I tried very hard to find some pictures of anything outside the Senate building in Clone Wars, but it seems like that's relatively limited to establishing shots. But note the difference between these two; the below being in Andor:

This is what's between the two in Andor:

This area is, I believe, where Kloris waited for Mon Mothma, and Cassian took off from--and the landing pad images I can find from the prequels are located in the Executive building/Senate office building (when Anakin saw Padme after getting off the shuttle post battle of Coruscant in ROTS, and earlier where Cad Bane landed in TCW).

With architecture like in Andor, it's easy to keep people out in the open on predictable, observable paths (can't walk on water, you'll walk on the pathways around it, and the Empire’s apparent love of reflection pools as a repeated choice of external decoration, as seen outside the ISB too, deserves its own post), and elevated in a way that the amount of stuff between the two buildings does not make possible in the prequels; this is the Executive building in AOTC (also known as the Senate Office building, where Palpatine and the Senators have their offices, and I believe based on building placement that this is not from the side that faces the Senate building, so the Senate building would be hidden behind it):

I looked hard for landing bays for Senators/visitors to use attached to the Senate building itself but it seems like the Executive building is where the landing pad is (which, how the fuck they get between the two in the prequels, I'm still not sure, but in Andor it looks like they can walk). Mon Mothma mentions the loading bay in Andor when they're making their escape, which is in the Senate building, but that's it. If I am wrong, please correct me.

I'm reminded of the difference between Medieval cities and those that came after (and before, really, if we're being honest, as the Romans loved urban planning...they also loved conquest and control): Medieval cities were close, organic, warren-like, and hard to navigate for anyone but those from that area or very familiar with it. Later cities would be constructed with wide, grid plans because...well, aside from being a lot more navigable to an outsider, it's a lot easier to move around on wide avenues and keep your population under control. There is a lot less local knowledge and a lot more power politics in play.

And then irl there's the whole diminishing of the Commons and the ceding of the road to automobiles (it was not a given that cars should take precedent), and...anyway. I digress. I do that a lot.

The ultimate point is, the Empire seems to have done a thorough job of making it impossible for anyone to be out of sight in the Senate. There are no more shadows or warm colors, or columns to talk to your secret wife behind, just stark white to contrast against, on an elevated walkway. The architecture is structural, whereas in the prequels there are organic-looking statues and a lot less of a bottleneck (although I can't easily tell which side this plaza is supposed to be on, to be fair):

Apparently, this, the above Senate Plaza contained an Avenue of the Core Founders which was by the time of the Clone Wars subject to criticism for not being representative of the multi-species Republic, as it was basically of all humanoid peoples, who formed the Republic in the Core Worlds way back when--I think this place still exists during the Empire but as of 5 years into the Empire they were planning to put a statue of Palpatine in it instead, so maybe by the time Andor happens the multitude of statues in this area have been replaced by a statue of the Emperor.

In a rather literal sense by the time the events of Andor happen it seems the Senate has been put on a pedestal in a way that keeps them in the open, observable, and also effectively cut off from the rest of the populace of Coruscant, and differentiated and deprioritized rel. the Emperor can't imagine he wants too many visitors, he wants them squabbling on the floor.

Side note

Also where the abject fuck are my goddamn Corries. Last known sighting of Corries in red paint besides seeing how they held on to the red in TBB is of shock troopers in the comics in 14BBY. Mon Mothma's speech in the Senate happened like twelve years after the comic appearance, and the Stormtroopers we see pursuing Mon Mothma and Cassian aren't wearing any red paint.

There's also no Senate Guards in their Roman-esque armor. The blue-uniformed fuckers with shitty breastplates are probably what's meant to have become of them. Shitty riot gear (also seen when they stormed the safe house) seems to be a mainstay in any security force that isn't the Imperial military itself. In my mind, if the Coruscant Guard still exists at all, it was probably just stripped of of its paint and had its ranks filled with conscripts, even though the Guard evidently managed to hold on to theirs longer than most.

That is very much a choice as well; by stripping the Senate Guard itself of effective armor and stripping the troopers assigned to the Senate (they showed up hella fast if they weren't) of any distinguishing marks, and not even having the Guards on the floor as visibly as they were shown in TCW or the prequels, it essentially keeps all the aesthetic...uniqueness? On the Emperor, and keeps the main source of any actually effective security in the hands of an indistinguishable Imperial military.

In short the flattening of aesthetics is likely meant to emphasize the Emperor's position and importance and erases the diversity of the species within the Empire.

Summary:

The Senate building and attendant security forces' aesthetic changes between the prequel era and Andor could reflect a desire to expose and control the Senate, and emphasize the preeminence of the Emperor while also downplaying individual elements of the Empire.

Oh shit I actually managed to make that a short one

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