The Mandalorian, Children's Literature and Boring Adults

draft

 

So now here we are in the third season of the Mandalorian, episode 6, and what do we find?  Boring so-called adults judging what is essentially fun-loving children's literature.  That's what.  

 

Instead of enjoying this episode for what it is, a goofy serial episode leading inexorably towards its climax, we have nattering nabobs of negativity complaining about sub-plots that no 12 year old would condemn.  Perhaps these old grouches should go away and watch their 70's sitcoms that they all adore and leave the current children's literature to those of us who can appreciate it.

 

 

 

Andor and the Explanation Triumphant

draft

As we have discussed, it is "the explanation" that is the better part of filmmaking.  Forget and leave behind the pathetic necessity to "show something" to "demonstrate something on the screen".  Some pointless visual effects.  Some ridiculous action sequence.  No, the most important part of the film, the play, the whatever, is when a character explains to another character what is going on, what they believe, what they are thinking, what they have been hiding.

I dont know where the series Andor is going and whether it can maintain its momentum to transcend, to rise above the pathetic Star Wars mythology with its emphasis on giant cosmic eggs / death stars and its Joseph Campbell-esque "hero's journey" so simple, so overused. 

No, what we need is two adults, desperate and alone, who reveal their plans, their hopes, their dreams, their failures, their secrets.  To reveal, at least in part, what is going on.  

 

Forget your battles between giant robots, that is for children.  

Episode 10 of Andor has a classic in the explanation genre.  It even has a little craft from the intelligence world.  It seems the rebellion has planted an agent in the empire security service.  This agent requests a meeting with his handler to warn him and to resign.  And the handler, in classic intelligence fashion, tells his agent that he can not resign, that he is trapped.  And then the handler explains his sacrifice, his motivations, his fears as a way of reminding the agent that he is not alone in regretting, in part, the price he has paid.

They did a really good job.

 

 

 

 

Finally Saw Last Jedi

draft

Finally saw Last Jedi. The art direction & visual effects are certainly very good. Lots of good things to say about Snoke. I could see Luke going mad on that island and being apostate, maybe. But ultimately, no, it felt cynical. I did not believe that their heart was pure, I think it was all about making a buck. I look at the marketing in which the stooge, I mean the director,talked about what a fan he was. Yeah, well, maybe, whatever. I dont buy it. The diversity stuff felt cynical to me. If they donated the money to charity, I would go with it. otherwise forget about it. The dream is dead and died long ago.

In contrast, I felt Black Panther was far more sincere. What is the point of doing movies of this type if their heart isnt into it? I mean, why bother?

The Last Jedi and Nihilism (SPOILERS)

draft

This post is definitely a spoiler for a movie I have not seen, The Last Jedi (2017).

I normally dont mind spoilers for a variety of reasons but I tried to avoid them for this movie at the request of Mark Hamill. He suggested that everyone go see this movie knowing as little as possible. I respected that until I started to hear some of the controversy and being a curious person I looked further. And what I found out annoyed me so much that I wrote some nasty emails and this post.

It goes something like this. Rian Johnson comes into something that has been going on for 30 years and decides to shake things up. Show a new point of view. Maybe be a little bit of a hipster. A new direction! Something like that.

A little controversy can be good. It can refresh and empower a franchise that has been around for a while. If you just keep doing the same old thing, blowing up that damn Death Star again, for example, that would be boring.

Its spoiler time, kids.

So this guy Rian Johnson comes in and here is what we get. Rey hands Luke his lightsaber and Luke throws it away. Who are Rey's parents? No one. Trash. What about Snoke, who is he, where does he come from? It doesnt matter, we just killed him. How about that secret mission that so many risk their lives on? It goes south and many people die who might not have died otherwise. It would have been better if they had just followed orders and done nothing at all. As for Luke, well he is dead for no particular reason it seems, too bad.

Star Wars was never about "no meaning".  It was all about "meaning", it was all about "our lives have meaning", there is a purpose to all this, you can make a difference.  This was your father's light saber.  He wanted you to have it when you were old enough.

Darth Vader was never just a bad guy in black with asthma.  He had a history, he had betrayal and murder in his past.  We did not know it at first, but the emperor was not just any old emperor, he was a Sith. 

A light saber was not just a weapon.  It was personally created by each Jedi as part of what made them a Jedi.  It had meaning.  It had purpose.

It was never about "stay home and die, you might fuck things up".  It was about "go out there and fight for what you believe in and you can make a difference".

It was never about "evil has no meaning", it was about "evil has a purpose and you can stand up and thwart their plans and help people".

Well not to Rian Johnson.  His message is that you dont matter, nothing matters, its all random, dont give a fuck.  Just sit there and die.

And they wonder why people are pissed off.

Is Princess Leia Channeling Hillary Clinton?

Carrie Fisher, a sex symbol of the cinema from an earlier era, has received some mighty unpleasant criticism about how she has matured since the original film came out in 1977. Well that is 40 years with a lot of mileage for Ms. Fisher who was after all a more intellectual, spunky kind of sex object.

But I have noticed that in her role as General Leia in the latest Star Wars film, she reminded me of another senior woman of politics. Yes, Hillary Clinton.

Is this coincidence, my own fantasy, the Force, the lattice of causality that underlies the apparent coincidences of the material world, or is it just saying something about the fashion of being a woman in power in early twenty-first century America?

Folklore Motifs and "Mary Sue" in The Force Awakens

draft

NB Of course there are spoilers for The Force Awakens (2016) below.

[Add V. Propp Russian folklore motifs.]

[This post is still being written and may appear somewhat incoherent at times until it settles down]

When the original Star Wars (1977) came out there were a variety of reasons proposed for its amazing success, most of which focused, unfortunately, on the visual effects and the space locale. Those who knew their science fiction, or their comparative religion, knew at once that this was wrong. The real reason for the success was, Gods forbid, the story. The folklore motifs were obvious to even the most dim, which sadly did not include most Hollywood executives who can not read the comics without assistance.

Now that the “The Force Awakes” has done so well and is considered the first real sequel of the series since perhaps Empire Strikes Back (1980), it is reasonable to ask what folklore motifs may exist in the plot. There are at least two obvious motifs that reach out and whack one over the head with a broadsword, if I may say so, and one other motif that is more modern.

[Insert references to Propp's compartive folklore.... ]

The three motifs are “the sword in the stone”, “the kind in the mountain” and the more modern Mary Sue character.

Please excuse the bad image quality.

The light saber is embedded in the snow.  Ren tries to get it using the Force but fails, but suddenly the saber jumps out of the snow and into the hand of Rey who also seems a bit surprised.

In the Sword in the Stone, a pretender to the throne attempts to withdraw a magic sword from a stone in which it has been embedded which will confer the legitimacy of the kingship. It is said that no one will rule the land until the true king appears and withdraws this sword from the stone. In the film, our Darth wannabe, Ren, the very spoiled only child of Han and Leia, in a fight with Finn and Rey in the snow knocks Finn unconscious and the lightsaber embeds in the snow. He uses his force powers to try and withdraw the sword from the snow, but he can not. Then suddenly the sword leaps from the snow and nearly knocks Ren down as it travels to Rey who looks a bit surprised. The sword has chosen Rey. It must be noted here that “rey” is Spanish for “king”. There are of course some links of this motif to the Arthurian legends.

The King on his Mountain?

In the "King in the Mountain" motif, a great king from the past who has disappeared is secretly hidden in a mountain, often with a retinue of armed warriors, and he will return one day to save the country from destruction. Of course at the end of the film, Rey uses the map to travel to an island world where Luke Skywalker has retreated and hands him his old light saber. Will the King return to lead his people to freedom?

But what about modern fiction whether written or broadcast? Are there new classifications? Should we start having a regular addendum to the classic Propp folklore classifications?

If so, one of those classifications might be called "the Mary Sue character".

In fan literature, that is, stories written by non-professionals who are fans of a story or story universe, there is a type of character called a “Mary Sue”.  This character is generally the author of the story him or herself who has inserted herself in the story and exhibits fabulous wish fulfillment characteristics such as, in the classic case, fixing the warp drive, defeating the Klingons and Romulans, and sleeping with either Kirk or Spock or both (hopefully not at the same time, but I could not guarantee that)

It is alledged by some that Rey in The Force Awakens is a Mary Sue character. She comes out of nowhere, she can fly the Millenium Falcon, saves Finn from the monsters, defeats Ren, saves the map, finds Luke Skywalker who is probably her father, and so forth.

I think that Rey is certainly a Mary Sue character although it is not clear if she gets to sleep with Spock.  This topic (whether Rey is a Mary Sue) is very controversial on the Internet.

Of course, being a Mary Sue is not a classic folkloric motif, at least not yet.

But perhaps she will be one day. Perhaps academic folkloric analysis should elevate the Mary Sue motif to the level of "the evil villain stops to describe his vile plot to take over the world" and other standards of the current cinema, such as the fight between giant robots, and recognize that a whole new set of motifs has been created to serve the collective unconsciousness of our folk.

________________________________________

Folklore on Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folklore

Excalibur in the Sword in the Stone on Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excalibur#Excalibur_and_the_Sword_in_the_Stone

The King in the Mountain motif on Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_in_the_mountain

Here is an article in Forbes Magazine about the Mary Sue controversy.

For Helen Donahue, "The Force Awakens" is All About Who She Wants to Fuck

draft

You may notice that the formatting of this post changes in mid stream on occasion.  This is a feature with Blogspot, and it is very hard to get rid of.  Sorry.

It is a sign of our strange civilization that it has no greater cultural event, no more momentous historical moment, than the release of a Star Wars movie. A million refugees in Europe, the insanity of the ongoing presidential campaign or the very strange weather which may indicate our doom through global climate change, all of these must yield to Star Wars.

But if Star Wars is our preferred form of denial it may also be a form of cultural Rorschach test which reveals our innermost desires and fears. But do we really want to know what is in the mind of the great unwashed? If they are shallow or deranged, how can we preserve our illusion that these other biped mammals are in fact conscious and intelligent actors on the stage that requires their enlightened self-interest?

So many religious faiths, like belief in the free-market system, require it. And so if western society and civilization requires rational actors, it is our responsibility to look with interest and concern to see what our little psychological experiment reveals. So much is riding on it.

Consider the case of a prominent Social Editor for Vice.com (www.vice.com) a leading web site of all that is trendy in our ever-changing society. Our social editor, by the name of Helen Donahue, has written a review of “Force Awakens” from the point of view of someone who is 25 years old, a leading member of her society, and who has never seen a Star Wars film before.

Lets have Ms. Donahue introduce herself in her own words while you can read the entire review

here where you must scroll to the end of the page.  The end of the page, the bottom of the barrel, as it were.

She introduces herself by saying

So first we learn that she is shallow as a piece of paper as she dismisses the entire pre-color cinema as beneath her contempt and unworthy of her time. Next she tells us that she was not interested in seeing the earlier movies because Mark Hamill is a blonde and she was not interested in blondes. We might call this self-deprecation or Ms. Donahue may be signaling here who she really is and that would be unfortunate.

Next we have a little overt ageism as she comments on Han Solo's introduction and his moment when reunited with Leia.

"Next old-ass Harrison Ford walks in as Han Solo and, while he's a total dick, the crowd goes apeshit over his dad jokes."  

and

"Leia shows up with something called the Resistance -- people and creatures opposing the First Order -- and she and Han exchange a lot of banter and old-person sexual tension. They apparently have a child together, but he's gone rogue. I realize their son is the dude the film had panned onto in the first few scenes.  He looks like Darth Vader, with the same weird asthma inducing helmet, except he's wearing Hood by Air."

But her favorite topic is sex, in particular sex between people who hate each other. So now she goes into introducing us to Rey, Ren and Finn and who should fuck who and who she would fuck.

"About an hour in we meet some dude (spoiler) with an overwhelming Scottish accent. While its pretty hot, I'm left wondering how a Scotsman got to whatever galaxy they're on.  I guess the Force really is awakening."

and

"When he kidnaps Rey I initially couldn't tell if they were going to get it on or not, but her ability to harness his power when he attempts mind control should have been a clear and instant turn-on. This says a lot about my relationships, as I clearly envision unbridled hatred sparking an immediate sexual connection between two people easier than love between Rey and the dude who's working his ass off to save her." 

and

"The movie ends with Rey fighting Driver (instead of fucking him .... booooring), and running up a hill, where she finds a disgruntled old man in a hooded burlap sack that is, of course, a super run-down Mark Hamill. I cant say I expected much else after 30 years, but he looks kind of like Yoda." 

A more narcissistic, arrogant, vulgar, shallow and sex-obsessed creature would be hard to imagine. She could easily be a character from one of the works of acclaimed fiction that people like so much these days.

But we must be positive about something and so here is one positive point. Given what we have to work with here, and if the old adage that those who talk about sex do not do it is false in this case, then we can only hope that Ms. Donahue is sharing with the world the best of what she has to offer, at least with men who abuse her or whom she hates.  At least for a while.

Perhaps this review does elicit Ms. Donahue's better nature but if so that would be bad for the “intelligent actor”model of rational decision making that is so prominent in justifications of our unfair and deeply fucked up society.

Thus we must act like any economist or political scientist and reject data that does not fit our model and hope that no one notices.

________________________________________________

The Wikipedia page on the Rorschach Test is at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test

Is "The Force Awakens" A Film About White People?

draft

This film contains a very modest spoiler for The Force Awakens.

You could hardly not notice the John Boyega character in the first trailer of Star Wars. His Black skin was set against the white of storm trooper uniform, the sand and the sky. The implication was that this was the first time a Black man would be a leading character of the Star Wars films and not merely a token character chosen to appeal to a Black audience (i.e. the Billy Dee Williams and Samuel Jackson characters).

The character played by Mr. Boyega is certainly one of the main characters of the film, or so someone as naive about race relations such as myself might have thought.  But maybe not.

Hey I'm in a Star Wars movie!

In this editorial by Andre Seewood of the “Shadow and Act” blog of Indiewire, “Hyper-Tokenism: The “Force Awakens” While the Black Man Sleeps”, see here, he makes the argument that the Finn character is just a new style of token Black character and that in reality nothing has changed.

He makes the following points. First, that because Finn is knocked unconscious near the end of the movie, he does not actually participate in the climax of the film. Second, that Finn is a second class character in that he does not have the Force, does not speak Droid, and so forth. Third, that he fits the model of the “Hyper Token” Black person which amounts to giving the Black character much more screen time but depriving him or her of the dramatic potential of how the film is resolved: that ultimately the film is by White people about White people. And fourth, that he finds some sort of connection between this type of character and the final year of the Obama Administration.

He goes on to further describe how annoyed he is at the Black community for supporting a film like this that so crassly exploits Black people.  

I was a little surprised by this discussion, I had not really thought about it.  I did interpret the casting of Boyega in a cynical manner, assuming that the filmmakers had cast him as a way of marketing the film.  As a person who often passes as White it is easy for me to overlook the racial implications.  

It is implicit to Seewood's argument that nothing about such a character would be accidental and that therefore it is fair to look for motive and, being a little sensitive to the larger issues, to be looking for limitations in the range of the character, as Mr. Seewood certainly is.  

I think his editorial is worth reading and thinking about.

My knee jerk opinion is that probably, and in the absence of any other evidence, that any racism is accidental.  A fair rejoinder to that argument might be that by 2015 nothing on the topic could possibly be accidental.

Two final points that are far less interesting. I did not understand his Obama argument at all. President Obama seems about as White as a Black person could be. And second, apparently the correct way to spell Black is to capitalize it.

Star Wars Production Stills Circa 1976

Someone has posted over 1,000 production stills from the first Star Wars film on imgur.

http://imgur.com/a/0RmF7#58

They are great. It is fabulous to see photography from the late 70s visual effects production process, back when we had cameras and models and not just a bunch of computer weirdos.

The model photography would probably have been shot at the original ILM, on Valjean in Van Nuys, where Apogee was later located.  There are also photographs from the shoot in England and Tunisia.

This would have been about 1976 for the most part.

All Six Star Wars Episodes Simultaneously

[Update: As of 3/27/2013 this film has been taken down by Youtube ....]

Someone has taken all six Star Wars and put them side by side and playing simultaneously. There are several things about it that are interesting.

Obviously we have all noticed a parallel structure in the Star Wars movie, involving events that lead up to two types of battles that form the climax of the film. One of the battles is on a macro scale and involves hundreds, usually thousands of people, and the other battle is a personal battle involving two or only a few people. There may be more than one of these two-people conflicts in a single film. Revenge of the Sith, for example, features the climactic battle between the Emperor and Yoda and the battle between Obiwan and Anakin.

I think it is also interesting that there is a Star Wars color palette that changes over the films and that it is usually possible to guess which movie it is from that alone.

Here are some screenshots from the six Star Wars at various times in the film. Unfortunately, I forgot to note the time of each, but at least they are sequentially in order relative to each other.

See the complete version with all six films here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smdMh3Ew6IU&feature=player_embedded

There seems to be a bug in blogger that keeps me from adding more pictures to this post, but you get the idea.   At the bottom, the shorter movies are ending and the longer ones continue for a time.

Of course there are many more things we could say here, we could compare the films and discuss which ones were satisfying and which were not, and how much George knew about them when he was doing the first one.   Or maybe the question should be "When did George know".    There are different stories here and different theories.   I am in a minority in that I believe that George did know certain things from very nearly the beginning.  He may not have known most of what was to happen, but I think he did have an idea of who Darth Vader was relative to at least Luke, and probably also to Leia.   Beyond that, I am not sure.