I'm sure I've said this before, but...

What, no Golden Ewok??

Anywho, I think that Shadeleader makes some good points... All too often, I percieve the official canon policy as being an often amazingly narrowminded way of letting somebody say, 'I'm right, you're wrong, and stop thinking for yourself because I don't like what you have to say.'

There's a fine line between saying, 'well, the official interpretation of events differs from yours' and 'STFU,' methinks. And all too often, the official canon policy--or at least the way some small handful of individuals at TF.N decide to apply it, anyway--just turns into an excuse to tell somebody to shut up.

*exhales*

Anywho, let's return to absolutes and what they might or might not have to do with the topic at hand, shall we?

Personally, I pretty much don't believe in absolutes as a general principle. The old adage that there is an exception to the rule and all. Is it okay to kill someone? I don't believe that a person can be reasonably expected to make an absolute statement in answer to that question, and I think that that trickles down into my own thoughts on 'canon' and the like.

Officially, the movies are 'absolute canon'. Fair enough, if that's how the Lucasfilm people want to look at it. But I cannot share their opinion. The movies themselves have been altered a not insignificant number of times (Han shot first back in the day). Therefore, in my book, they are self-evidently only as 'absolute' as Mr. Lucas & Co. choose to make them. In my limited opinion, to state otherwise is a rather amusing paradox.

On top of that, even in the original, unaltered state, the Star Wars Trilogy contains any number of internal inconsistancies that--in my eyes--preclude the use of the term 'absolute' from applying to the movies (TIE fighter cockpits being different from inside and out, paralax quirks in Return of the Jedi, et cetera). I, personally, see no reason to hold the films up on a pedastal of arbitrary perfection.

All that said, do I try and state that my views are superior to the official stance on such things? No. My views are my own. If you agree, that's fine. If you don't, power to you. The trick that I see is that frequently, I get the vibe that people who stalwartly ascribe to the official canon policy are totally unwilling to have the same degree of respect. This real or simply percieved 'take no prisioners' attitude is probably the biggest turn-off I associate with the official canon interpretation, which I find frustrating and ironically entertaining at the same time...

How long's the Executor again? I guess that depends on how rigidly you ascribe to the canon policy as you percieve it.

To quote George Lucas' own characters from his own movies, a great many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. This is a brilliant and entirely realistic statement 'from the horse's mouth' as it were, that, sadly, I think has been trampelled upon by the weight of momentum that the official canon policy has accumulated. From a certain point of view, anyway.


I'm reminded of when my sister was asking for help on a high school history paper she was writing. She asked me, "the Cold War was a bad thing, right?" I answered, "what do you think?" As I percieve it, an overdependence on the official canon policy could lead to an automatic, knee-jerk response with little analasys, little critical thought.

Well, that's my spiel. Carry on.

 

Personally, I have very little trouble belonging some to each side. For example, is it a canon fact about whether some characters were evil or not? Yes. Do I still like debating over who/what is evil? Yes.

I think there's merit in both sides; I try to separate them somewhat, so if I'm in a list or continuity fix thread, I don't really want to debate the finer points of who or what is evil or good. On the flip side, I have no trouble in a discussion or morality thread with arguing about things that probably are pretty much absolute. For example, in a discussion thread, I have no problem with arguing about whether the Rebels were evil. In a thread that's not about that, I just say they weren't and get back to the topic.

 

Thank you, Brett and PF, for extrapolating intelligently on my parade of acid sarcasm.

I agree with PF, that there is a time and a place to wave the canon policy around like some hydraulic laser fusion death hammer. And yes, I, too, interpret the appearance of the 'I AM RIGHT' macro, as I have come to call the canon policy, as an invitation to STFU.

Brett, you make exactly my point with the anecdote about your sister. When I first started my student teaching, the first question I was asked by a student on my first day of class was, "Why do we have to read this?" And my response, after a few seconds of mulling, was, "Explain why we shouldn't have to, and I cancel the lesson." And I made that my standing policy. Never once did it happen, and on the whole it was attempted maybe 3 times. But it made at least some of them read more carefully. I know it did. And it also made them think critically, which is, after all, the point of literature in education.

I read literature to think, even pulp escapist literature, and I talk about literature with my friends to discuss symbolism, thematics, characterization, and then of course we speculate. I think it's healthy.

 

It gets a little more complicated when something is seen on-screen but not named. So the "shuura fruit" mentioned in the AOTC novel would be G because you see it in the film, although the author came up with the name.

...so Muuns are G-canon now? Sweet!

 

Exactly, Shadeleader, exactly! Reading--in my opinion, anyway--should be a reason to think and analyze things and situations critically, to make new connections, to expand one's horizons. Unfortunately, there is altogether too little of that encouraged when someone reads Star Wars thouroughly, finds a problem, and tires to work out a reasonable solution to that problem, only to be immediately pounced upon by a pack of users here that don't even have the common courtesy to examine that theory or idea on its own merits.

"Hey, I think I can explain what happened to the Empire of the Hand! It'd make a lot of sense if fill-in-the-blank occurred!"

"Shut up, you, the official explanation is an arbitrarily established and largely nonesensical fill-in-the-blank from Lucasbooks! Your unwillingness to just do what Big Brother says offends me!"

Sadly, I often see this sourt of attitude in upper-level academia, which frustrates me (often to write better papers with more thorough research than the 'absolute' word of the neigh-biblical textbooks some of these 'professors' preach) for a lot of reasons. I don't accept mindless obedience there, and I don't here, either. It's just my opinion, but that's the whole point, isn't it?

 

I'm always amused when Prestigious Author X 'sets something in stone' in his autobiography of Author Dude, and then has his statement proven wrong.

The way that I've come to think of canon, is as a body of common text. Certainly, from an education standpoint, that's true, and I admit, somewhat apologist. Canon works may not be the best or the most comprehensive, but they create a common touchstone for pretty much everybody. I mean, we can assume that your average high school grad has at least a passing familiarity with MacBeth, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet, but not Timon of Athens. Why? ToA is not in the accepted 'literary canon' that is taught in schools.

Does that mean that it is not 'real'? Of course not.

 

A Golden Ewok? apiece to Brett, P-F and Shade!

I like this thread.

Anyone want to answer in defence of the LFL canon policy?

Val? Bueller? German Bight?



- The Imperial Ewok

 

Shadeleader:
See, coming from the Peoples' Republik of Kalifornia, I don't know about that last piece you mentioned. At all. Never heard of it. And, in a terrible, perverse, kind of way, I think that proves your point.

T McE:
*cue Jeopardy gameshow music*

 

Brett: Exactly.