#captain cassian andor
Post-colonial deconstruction of the word ‘selfish’ in the context of Cassian Andor’s character
“You’re not going to be able to recognise Cassian at first. He’s very selfish”
No no no. This makes so much sense, and it’s soclear in his behaviour in Rogue One.
Because Cassian is not your conventional hero. By every standard of civil morality (and I use this knowing full well the colonial history of the word) Cassian is a bad guy.
He’s an assassin, a saboteur, a spy. He’ll lie by telling the truth or shoot a person who trusts him in the back, even after they’ve helped him.
He uses basic rhetoric to justify his actions. For the Cause isn’t much different than for the greater good. They’re empty concepts, like patriotism and nationalism, a dedication to an idea or an illusion that has nothing to do with humanity (the way that racism, sexism, etc. have), which will justify any action because it can be re-defined to suit any purpose.
And you don’t get to be that kind of person without being someone who’s fought primarily for themselves, to survive in a world that wishes you and everyone else like you dead in the most god-awful manner possible.
But even if that’s the case that doesn’t mean Cassian is meant to be read as inherently evil.
Quite the contrary: his cinematic existence is a challenge to civil morality, to the idea that in a world waged by war (read: war and violence in this sense being any means meant to cleanse a society, whether that be through epistemological and linguistic strategies, the rule of law, implementation of institutions, or actual bloodshed), there is only good and evil, black and white.
Cassian’s violence is a violence of resistance, and that is not the same as violence of oppression.
And his selfishness is similar.
It’s not bad. It’s not evil. It’s not even white (though white individualism is an actual ideological phenomena).
It’s survival.
And in some cases it can be kindness - kindness to himself and to those he cares about.
