[Helena]

There is no intrinsic reason why a 14 year old elected queen of a planet would be completely out of the question. Consider just one possibilty: Not everyone can run for ruler, only select royal families are eligible (in fact, a civil war between these families is the reason ultimately elections as a solution were arrived at in the first place. Term limits too.) Queen Amidala is young but the other families have done a poor job and are viewed as corrupt. Further, it is well understood that when you vote for a ruler you get more than just that one person, you get all the advisors and bureacrats associated with that family just like with the Kennedy and Bush dynasies. She may just be 14, but don't worry, the thinking goes: older steadier hands will be at the reins.
  No, the problem is not that the political system is inexplicable. It's that George Lucas is too stupid to realize it needs an explanation.

This idea suffers from precisely the same intrinsic flaw as Lucas', namely: Why the hell would anyone set up such a ridiculous electoral system? If you're going to elect a leader, particularly one who's actually going to have actual political power, why restrict the choice to a few families - especially when it doesn't appear to fix any of the problems inherent in an unelected monarchy? Like HK-47 says, it's all about suspension of disbelief - Naboo's political system doesn't have to be patterned exactly on any real-life example, but it's got to be credible and plausible enough that people are willing to believe it could exist within the context of the movie.

The Jedi are a good example of this. They're not really 'knights' in the traditional sense; they're more like a religious order. However, they act as soldiers and peacekeepers - a sort of intergalactic police - because they have special powers which give them advantages in combat. Yes, you have to suspend disbelief a little to encompass the Force and lightsabers and things like that, but there's a saying: 'People will more readily accept the impossible than the implausible.' As long as you accept that Star Wars takes place in a sort of alternate universe where such things exist, the idea of the Jedi is not that implausible.

[HK 47]

Naboo's political system doesn't have to be patterned exactly on any real-life example, but it's got to be credible and plausible enough that people are willing to believe it could exist within the context of the movie.

Helena, eloquent and to the point, thankyou. You beat me to it, but I'll post my reply anyway since I wrote it while you posted.

---------------------------------

You do make an interesting point Xombie, the thing that George doesn't feel it needs to be explained. But I think it's worse than that, he simply didn't give it much thought. If it is the complex and highly improbable system you describe, it would certainly need a lengthy explanation. But I still wouldn't buy it, it's too far-fetched.

More importantly, do you think George actually had any underlying plan for his Naboo politics? Or is it simply fans trying to justify his ham-fisted take on the prequels? George needed Amidala to be more "free", so he made her a senator in ep II and came up with this lame-ass idea of elected queens and terms of office without any afterthought. The individual basic concepts, like njamilla argues, are not that bad. It is the stupid, sloppy and illogical way George handles them.

[Xombie]

Helena,

It may indeed be a rediculous sytem, but so what? The electoral college is absurd as well. What real problem does it solve? Its set up to assure that some people retain power, in this case the small states whose approval was needed to pass any type of constitutional system?
Who would set up a system where only a few families are eligible to put up nominees for rulers? How about the families themselves if they originally held all the power and were forced to make painful compromises to hold onto power against the threat of larger egalitarian reform.
Unlikely? Sure. But not unthinkable. The problem with Lucas's system is not that it is too exotic. It is that it is not exotic enough. The references to Supreme Courts and constitutions and term limits is distracting and draws attention to all the questions a 14 year old elected queen raises. Did she run at the age of 12 for the rulership of a planet? What was her platform? By not putting the political situation into its own singular context, Lucas makes it ludicrous.
And, hey, maybe the answer is just that on Naboo 12 year olds can vote. If they could vote here, does anyone deny that Britney Speers would be president today?

And HK,
Do I believe Lucas put ANY planning or thought whatsoever into any of this? Of course not. Lucas is a hack. I am NOT defending what Lucas has put out here. I'm just saying that the fault lies not in the basic concept (which can be rationalized ESPECIALLY within a Star Wars framework) but rather in its lazy and haphazard presentation.

[HK 47]

It may indeed be a rediculous sytem, but so what?

Star Wars doesn't need a ridiculous and complex political system. Keep it simple and straight forward.

Do I believe Lucas put ANY planning or thought whatsoever into any of this? Of course not. Lucas is a hack. I am NOT defending what Lucas has put out here. I'm just saying that the fault lies not in the basic concept (which can be rationalized ESPECIALLY within a Star Wars framework) but rather in its lazy and haphazard presentation.

I think the fault does lie in the basic concept. Not in the individual concepts themselves, but in the combination. Let me clarify:
Is it ok to have a Queen? Yes, absolutely.
Is it ok to have a democratically elected Queen? Doubtful, is it really necessary? (edit: the only reason why is cause George had painted himself into a corner once ep II came up...)
Is it ok to have a democratically elected child-queen who quotes the US constitution? No! And no matter what the explanation is, it is unthinkable, even within a Star Wars framework.

The 12-year old vote was a joke right

This post has been edited by HK 47: 19 July 2004 - 02:48 AM

[Helena]

  Who would set up a system where only a few families are eligible to put up nominees for rulers? How about the families themselves if they originally held all the power and were forced to make painful compromises to hold onto power against the threat of larger egalitarian reform.

Well, I can think of all sorts of problems with this. For a start it's difficult to imagine these powerful families being willing to share power in the first place - wouldn't you inevitably end up with a power struggle, from which one family would emerge victorious? This is what always seems to happen in real life. And then there's the question of why a restless populace would accept 'reform' that doesn't have any obvious advantages over the previous system. As for the Britney Spears thing, that's precisely why no one would ever give 12-year-olds the vote!

But in any case, all of this is beside the point. When you're trying to come up with a political system - or any other kind of system - for a fantasy world, you shouldn't dream up some wildly unlikely scenario and then come up with a convoluted explanation for it (which would only bore people anyway). You should start with something familiar and realistic and make subtle changes to it. Terry Pratchett is a master of this - for instance, take the city of Ankh-Morpork in the Discworld series. Its system of government is different from any you'll see in real life, yet close enough to reality that you can still see how it would work (with some minor suspension of disbelief - it is a parody, after all).

I don't see any need for the Star Wars galaxy to have a particularly 'exotic' political system. When you think about it, apart from the Jedi and all the aliens and technology, virtually nothing else in the Galaxy is all that different from present-day Earth - which I think is part of the attraction of Star Wars. We know that it's a Republic - fine, so have a Senate, just don't talk about Supreme Courts and term limits and thing like that. We know Leia is a princess - fine, so make Bail Organa a constitutional monarch who represents the planet in the Senate. This is simple enough that you don't have to bother with complicated explanations, and anyone who wants to can fill in the details for themselves.

This post has been edited by Helena: 19 July 2004 - 06:27 AM

[Just your average movie goer]

I absolutely agree. And at the end of the day, Lucas needs to be paying more attention to THE STORY (which seems to be 197th on his list of considerations for the movies) than how the political system works. We're not interested in how the political system works. We came to see a epic adventure. Spare us the details, George.

[Jordan]

While you're add it JYAMG. Knock out the following after the politics:


1 Naboo and everyone on it

2 Qui Gonn (let OB1 build a relationship with anakin not somebody who dies in 50 mins)

3 Mace Windu

4 Jango Fett

5 C3PO Artoo Deetoo

6 Anaikins mom (start him off as a teen)

7 Dex

8 termite aliens

9 Count Dooku

10 Elano Sleazbaggano


Take out the following and the movie is already 50% better than before.

This post has been edited by Jordan: 19 July 2004 - 06:35 AM

[Just your average movie goer]

That'd be a good start, for sure.

[Mike Mac from NYU]

While you're add it JYAMG. Knock out the following after the politics:


1 Naboo and everyone on it

2 Qui Gonn (let OB1 build a relationship with anakin not somebody who dies in 50 mins)

3 Mace Windu

4 Jango Fett

5 C3PO Artoo Deetoo

6 Anaikins mom (start him off as a teen)

7 Dex

8 termite aliens

9 Count Dooku

10 Elano Sleazbaggano

Good thoughts

Let me elaborate a little though

1. Naboo should be Alderaan. Pure and simple

2,4 7, 9, are all unecessary characters. Need to be removed

7,8, 10 are all STUPID charcters that NEED to be removed

5- Sorry, jordan. I beleive that C3PO and R2 are important to the PT films as is Emperor Palpatine in that they both connect the trilogies. The Droids are kind of to Star Wars what Gandalf is to the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. They are the charbingers s that interact and combine the generations of the two cast of characters.

6.I think you need some sort of parents for Anakin somehow. Whether it be a father or uncle or whatever. We kind of need to see where Anakin is coming form and what his motive are.

[Xombie]

This all reminds me of a debate I had with a friend of mine a couple years back. Jerry Lewis always wanted to make this movie called The Day the Clown Cried or something. The premise of the movie would be that Jerry Lewis was this clown at Auschwitz who entertained children before they were sent into the gas chambers to be killed. We both thought it was a horrible idea. My friend thought the mere concept of a clown in Auschwitz was beyond tasteless. I thought that there was nothing intrinsically wrong with the idea, I just knew that Jerry Lewis would be incapable of handling it correctly. Both of us agreed: The movie should not be made.
The same here. Of course, for a movie such as this, things should not be made needlessly obtuse or complicated. There seems to be not the slightest reason for Amidala to go from elected 12 year old queen to term-limited senator via a supreme court challenge. But I hold my position: if Lucas felt this was needed, this COULD have been packaged and sold to the audience by a competent writer and director. I don't know if Lucas would have been up to it, since he didn't even bother to try.