Capitalism requires indoctrination to perpetuate itself. Objective analysis of capitalism shows it to be an ultimately destructive force, and so to survive it must avoid analysis by the laboring class, who sacrifice their happiness so that capitalists might enjoy ever greater profit. As David Foster Wallace pointed out, fish don’t know they’re in water, so indoctrinating laborers into taking the systems and beliefs that support capitalism for granted is a great way to keep them from asking what the hell kind of muck they’re swimming through day after day.

“The Travelling Jindas,” the fifth episode of the Ewoks cartoon, puts Latara in the spotlight. She’s part of Wicket’s gang of friends, and all we know of her so far is that she plays the flute and flirts with Teebo. It’s her flute-playing, not her flirting, that’s important to this story, as she’s frustrated that nobody wants to listen to the new song she’s written. (Her song is identical to the music that plays over the closing credits, so maybe nobody wants to tell her it’s a little derivative.) As if her friends’ rude avoidance wasn’t bad enough, her father wants her to clean the hut, and her mother wants her to babysit her younger siblings. Latara’s had enough! Does no Ewok appreciate true artistry?

Fortunately for her, the Jindas, a travelling troupe of performers, have passed through the village, and she runs away with them, making her friends promise not to tell. Hilariously they immediately break this promise, telling shaman Logray where she’s gone off to. Sadly, the Jindas are notorious on Endor for always being lost and never being able to find their way back to a place once they’ve left it, so Latara is in danger of never being seen again. Her friends set out to rescue her.

The Jindas being perpetually lost is a pretty good summation of how this episode presents them. They’re nice enough folk, but a little dim, a bit irresponsible, and very egotistical. They live off of the charity of others, or at least that’s how we’re meant to see them. Freeloaders, Aunt Bozzie calls them; never mind that they’re skilled artists and the Ewoks universally love their show. They can be allowed to provide a night’s distraction, but Chief Chirpa makes it clear that this is a one-night-only event, and these vagabonds need to be on their way in the morning.

To Latara, the Jindas’ life is initially an attractive one, but she quickly finds it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Travelling with them, she has to do even more drudge work than she did at home, and she never gets a chance to practice her music, let alone perform it. After the Jindas help her friends rescue her from the Duloks, she bids them a fond farewell, having learned an important lesson. The life of a performer is okay for some people, but responsible little Ewoks know that chores come first, art second.

The other Ewoks don’t learn any lesson at all, and will presumably continue to dismiss Latara’s artistic talent and passion.

If you want to perpetuate generational capitalism, you must indoctrinate not just current laborers, but future laborers as well.

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Next: Droids S1E5 – “The Lost Prince” (1985)

For a Saturday morning cartoon from 1985, Droids was surprisingly ahead of its time. For one thing, it’s serialized. There are a lot more Saturdays in a year than there were new episodes of any given show, which means animated series were going to be repeated quite a bit. This often meant that episodes were made to be shown in any order, for ease of scheduling. That meant episodes had to be self-contained, with the reset button hit at the end of each. (Kids’ cartoons were far from the only shows made this way – plenty of live-action sit-coms and dramas were made with no strict episode order, to make syndication easier.)

But the first four episodes of Droids form a neat little arc, telling the story of C-3PO and R2-D2 meeting new friends Thall, Jord, and Kea, helping them take down the Fromm crime family and win the Boonta speeder race. Both the gangster and the race plot strands come to a head in this episode; in the end, the droids choose to leave their friends so that they won’t have to pass up an exciting job opportunity (space capitalism!) that doesn’t allow droids. The episode ends with our mechanical heroes drifting through space in an escape pod, ready for a new adventure. 80s aesthetics abound, but the structure is recognizably modern.

And of course, there’s another aspect of Droids that’s much more common now than it was then – continuity! A very key element of the Star Wars mythos makes a surprise appearance in this episode: 3PO being a complete and utter dick to R2.

No, wait. That’s a key element of the Star Wars mythos, yes, but not very surprising. No, actually, it’s everyone’s favorite badass bounty hunter, Boba Fett! The makers of Droids knew their audience – kids obsessed with Star Wars – and they made good use of that audience’s knowledge of the films, and how that knowledge can be utilized to build anticipation. I imagine many a 1985 child staring in disbelief at their TV when the shadowed figure stepped out into the light, then screaming in delight when that trademark armor was revealed in all its glory. I mean, that’s what I would have done, if I hadn’t been so stupid as to pass up this cartoon the first time around for being kids’ stuff.

And of course, Boba’s appearance, apart from being oh-my-god-so-awesome, brings with it a cornucopia of continuity to sate the hungriest of geek appetites. We already knew this show took place pre-A New Hope from references to the Empire, but Boba – last seen being slowly digested over a thousand years in Return of the Jedi – showing up alive and well clinches it. And what’s more, the show trusts its audience enough not to spoon-feed them the timeline. Adults might need to think it through, but the kids get it.

And he references Jabba the Hutt! Oh my god so awesome!

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