"F*** the Empire!": Would the First Amendment Protect Maarva Andor?
You don’t need a reminder from me that I’m a Star Wars fan. The latest live-action Star Wars series, Andor, concluded its first season with its twelfth episode last month in an emotional and dramatic finale that left me wanting to join the Rebellion.
Obviously, if you haven’t yet watched Episode 12, titled “Rix Road,” there are some minor spoilers ahead. But, again, the final episode aired prior to Thanksgiving, so any statute of limitations to avoid spoilers for those who haven’t watched Andor has already lapsed. (Entertainment-and-culture website Vulture recommends that the unofficial spoiler-free time period continues for three days after a show airs in its normal time slot.)
“Rix Road” is named for the main road that cuts through the business district in Ferrix, an Imperial-controlled planet where protagonist Cassian Andor returns to attend the funeral of his mother, Maarva, and rescue those being held by the Empire.
On Ferrix, at least, the funeral procession includes a lengthy funeral march along Rix Road and ends with a haunting hologram of the deceased, projected from a droid for all onlookers to see.
Maarva used her final words to build support among the people of Ferrix to join the Rebellion: “There is a wound that won’t heal at the center of the galaxy. There is a darkness reaching like rust into everything around us. We let it grow and now it’s here. It’s here, and it’s not visiting anymore. It wants to stay. The Empire is a disease that thrives in darkness, it is never more alive than when we sleep.”
She concludes her holo-monologue with the words, “Fight the Empire!” This leads to an all-out street riot on Rix Road between the Imperial troops and the Ferrix citizens.
But the words “Fight the Empire!” weren’t the original call to action that was filmed for the show. Maarva actually yelled “Fuck the Empire!”
“Fight the Empire!” - Maarva Andor
The F-bomb has never been used in the Star Wars universe. After all, the Disney “House of Mouse” still needs to cater to a certain audience—although regular viewers of Andor always knew the show was going to skew towards an older audience with the first episode’s opening scene at a brothel.
“Fuck the Empire” reminds me of one of the most famous First Amendment cases ever decided by the United States Supreme Court.
In 1968, Paul Robert Cohen showed up in a Los Angeles County courthouse wearing a jacket emblazoned with the words “Fuck the Draft.” Cohen said he wore the jacket as a means of informing the public of the depth of his feelings against the Vietnam War and the draft. The police arrested Cohen, who was later convicted of disturbing the peace and sentenced to 30 days imprisonment. Cohen challenged his conviction on constitutional grounds all the way to the United States Supreme Court.
In Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971), the Supreme Court concluded that “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric.” The Court held that the state wasn’t allowed to punish the defendant for wearing a jacket bearing the words “Fuck the Draft,” pointing out that “while the four-letter word displayed by Cohen in relation to the draft is commonly employed in a personally provocative fashion, in this instance, it was clearly not directed to the person of the hearer.”
In the United States, the First Amendment can protect profane, offensive, obnoxious, and repugnant speech. But it doesn’t always. There are limitations. Certain categories of speech aren’t entitled to First Amendment protection.
The First Amendment doesn’t protect speech that is directed to producing or inciting imminent lawless action (like a street riot), and that is likely to produce or incite such action.
Nor does the First Amendment protect “true threats”—statements meant to communicate an intent to place an individual or group in fear of bodily harm.
Nor does the First Amendment protect “fighting words”—statements so personally abusive that, when addressed to the ordinary citizen, they are inherently likely to incite immediate physical retaliation. While this classification of punishable speech continues to exist in theory, courts rarely uphold punishments for the use of fighting words. Statutes that attempt to punish fighting words tend to be overbroad or vague, as they usually prohibit “opprobrious words,” “annoying conduct,” or “abusive language.” As a result, these statutes will fail because their imprecise terms could be applied to protected (e.g., nonfighting words) speech.
Of course, the U.S. Constitution doesn’t apply in the fictional world of Ferrix, but it would be interesting to examine how the words of Maarva, if she were alive, would be examined by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Should the words “Fuck the Empire” be similarly protected as Cohen’s use of “Fuck the Draft”?
