Random Symbols (Ivory Tower: Episode 2)

oooo, missed the fire.

I was thinking that the *bottomless pits* which abound in SW seem to be the connection point between the inside and outside? Luke falls out of the structure in ESB? The tube through which they deliver the charge at the end of ANH is a ventilation shaft -- connecting inside to outside.

 

To elaborate on the above --

perhaps those long drops are the points of contact which people are resisting. The forgotten shaft of the death star is it's vulnerablity. Those pits are all about vulnerability -- vulnerable to what is beyond.

Obi Wan in ANH is so close to his move into becoming one with the force that he is skirting the pit sucessfully until his meeting with Vader, and then his body disappears as if it fell into a bottomless pit.

Yoda however is living at the bottom of the pit on Dagobah? All of the swamp counts as the bottom of a pit? So no pits appear to mark his near passing, but he passes none the less.

So does living by a pit, the way Theed does on the waterfall, indicate that they there are comfortable with change or resisting it?

Finally, this resistance to touching the earth shows up in the Nemodian's walking throne and the use of droids. The walking throne has the pin point feet, as if even that is too much a commitment to being on the ground. The droids go into the environments which the humans can not -- they walk about the desert without thirst in ANH, R2 travels about on the outside of ships in the movies, TC 14 (?) from the opening of TPM is sent to serve drinks to the Jedi, destroyer droids and battle droids are sent to do the work of the Nemodians / Sidious. That rejection of droids at the opening of ANH in the cantina may also be a rejection of the need for droids, the need to stay at arm's distance.

 

The parallel journeys of Han and Anakin.

1 -- We meet both on Tatooine, both are beholden to the culture of money there.

2 -- Han will betray that culture and save his friends. Anakin leaves, brought out by Qui-gon who doesn't betray as much as kind of cheat the system on Tatooine.

3 -- Han and Anakin both build relationships outside of Tatooine. Leia & Luke v. Amidala & Obi Wan. Han and Anakin will both be sore tempted to betray those friends.

4 -- Both spend time "encased" -- Han in the carbomite and Anakin in the Vader out fit.

5 -- Both will be freed from that encasment and stare up into the eyes, sharing a tender moment, in somewhat parallel moments. Both are collapsed and cradled by the twin who loves them, Luke or Leia.

6 -- Both have a final transformation at the end of RotJ. Anakin becomes one with the force and Han has some solidification of his bond to Leia. Shakespeare plays, except for one, end in a death or a marriage. In the journeys of Han and Anakin, Han gets the marriage and Anakin gets the death -- both having their final moment at the moon of Endor.

I wonder what the difference will be in movies 2/3. In that glorious moment when Han returns at the end of ANH, yay! Goosebumpsville! Anakin at the end of TPM didn't chose to return like Han did -- the auto pilot brought him to the scene.

I assume Anakin will woo Amidala, parallel to how Han woos Leia. When caught by the empire at Cloud City -- Han resists in his soul though his body is tortured and imprisoned. Frozen in carbonite and turned over to Boba Fett. I wonder if Anakin will be different in this moment of the prequels -- failing to resist in his soul.

Perhaps the difference can be summed up that Han looses nothing by leaving Tatooine but Anakin looses his purpose as a Jedi. Anakin dreams of the Jedi as people who will come free the slaves. When/if Tatooine and slave freedom is no long a hope for Anakin, will the house of cards, his Jedi commitment, crumble?

[This message has been edited by Jedi Eowyn (edited 05-26-2000).]

 

Hmmm...interesting points, Eowyn.

 

Eowyn: Hi there!! First off, -- check your e-mail girl, I've been trying to contact you!!

Second, -- wow, cool parallels! I never have the energy to search them out myself but I love getting it spoon fed to me. Then I can quote you (more likely misquote you) at social gatherings and sound much more deep than I actually am. I especially loved the "encased" correlation between the two.

I hope GL also chooses to give Anakin some of Solo's rougish charm. That's sorely needed in the prequels.

 

Ol'val, Sasha Sawyer.

Re Eowyn -- e-mail me.

Kida

 

Holy wow! It's been half a month since last post! Sad to say, but this thread's really gone to crap.

 

1) hey! I remembered my password!

2) Thanks, Sasha. Look in your email, and fyi, I do check cmem3 fairly regularly.

3) Spoony! What do you think the SW version of "there is no spoon" is? "There is no light sabre"? "There is no material universe"? "There is no death"?

4) "up"

5) Bottomless pits -- Light sabres share form and function of pits. They are that which seperates the combatents. They are cylindrical. They appear portentiously around Jedi and Sith. Ben dissappears into one as if falling into a pit.

 

In the new Indiana Jones films, in one of the interviews after the film (can't remember which sorry), Spielberg says something like 'George and I always have this joke about how into the pit go the greedy', or something lke that.
The pit, to my mind, doesn't represent anything more sophisticated than some pseudo-Christian idea of hell and damnation. All the characters that go into the pit are bad guys with the exception of Luke, but he is the only one to come out of the other side, forshadowing his ultimate refusal of the dark side in ROTJ. I think it is probably stretching it a bit to say that Yoda lives in a pit, and as far as Obi-Wan goes, couldn't the scenes with him skirting round the edges of the tractor beam chasm just show that he is true of heart and able to negotiate the moral boundries of the force. That goes for Luke and Leia as well when they make the swing across on the DS (relying more on instinct than Obi-Wan's cunning and skill).

Its probably worth looking at the pit scenes in Indiana Jones also. There are two i can think of;

a) Crusade's straight forward Alison Doody's morally corrupt character overstretching herself and as she is not pure of heart, failing to obtain the Grail (?Kalibur Cristal?) and eating rock. Eventually.

b) Doom's pit of lava. (Indy gone bad. Wille about to get fried, but finally negotiating the pit.) Hmmm? Pits of lava? Hero gone bad? Anyone else got Deja-Vu?

Throw me a fricking bone here!!

 

<<just trying to pull up previous post>>

<<Comparing Matrix & ANH: swinging on a rope is a confirmation point. Parallel in RotJ rope bridge for Leia and Han.>>

 

<<once again, trying to get other posts to show>>

LUCK in Star Wars. Han believes in it, Ben implies that it is a lazy way of accounting for the Force without actually thinking about the Force, and Leia kisses Luke "for Luck." "Luck" is a cover for the will of the Force.

And regarding ropes and suspensions -- in those moments people are enacting the hanged man. Those who hang are at the mercy of the mechanics of the hanging, but also their own intention can carry them to a landing. Luke is carried to the Millennium Falcon from the bottom of the Cloud City. Luke and Leia make it to the other side of the gulf in the Death Star. Obi Wan emerges from the pit to cut Maul in half. Leia and Han make secure their intentions toward one another in RotJ.

 

Funkwalker -- don't forget the holy rocks of the second movie. The ones fell in the hands of the unworthy, burnt the hands and were released, and the one rock which Indy was meant to take back to the village did not burn Indy's hand, and he could take it. Hot rocks are an indication of the will of the deity (the rock in this case being a deity).

I'm kind of curious about greed going into the volcano. Does that mean that all desire goes into the volcano, or just some desire?

There is a Hawaiian story of the Volcano goddess. She is someone who's back is never seen -- people only see the front/face of the Volcano goddess. For final moments of inescapable danger, unnegotiable nature -- volcanos are it. I'll be happy to see one in the forth coming Star Wars.

As a side note, I wonder what the space equivalent of a volcano is. Pulsar? nova?

 

Anakin, Sebulba & Vader.

As an adult, Vader is living out the morality & troubles of his youth. His force pinch method of killing is so reminiscent of Sebulba's pointing fingers in little Anakin's face. Sebulba does not kill because he doesn't want to pay. Vader doesn't have to pay for his murders, and kills in ways Sebulba probably dreamed of. Vader is reliving that nightmare moment of Anakin's.

In the final battle with the emperor, the vision of the pointing finger has moved from Sebulba's pointing to Vader's pinch and now to full hand lightning. Has the emperor developed this as a particular way to keep Vader in line? Could be. And lends new horrific dimensions to Palp's line to little Anakin that he (Palp) will keep an eye on Anakin's career. eeek. To keep track of his nightmares?

Until the end of RotJ, Vader doesn't imagine up any new way to handle things, differently than little Anakin did. In the scene on Tatooine the young Anakin doesn't defend himself -- he lets his slave status save him. The child is not actively defended because he has a life, but rather the legal system which makes him vulnerable is cleverly employed to defend that life. Anakin doesn't defeat the culture of slavery in the face of Sebulba, and he'll spend the rest of his life proceeding in the same way. Vader surrenders himself to the role of the culture he is in, and when that role is sith apprentice, Anakin manages that, too, but the Sebulba echoes still persist as he uses the force pinch to kill where once he himself was the victim.

It isn't until the emperor is killing Luke that Anakin changes the script. Instead of accepting the role which culture gives him, or cleverly referencing that role in order to escape, Anakin goes, picks up the emperor, still pointing, and throws him into the pit. The memory of Sebulba, the lack of respect for life, the lack of value for life, the acceptance of slavery, they all go down that pit.

 

After reflection, done while I should have been doing other things, it seems to me that Vader is paralleling Sebulba in a few ways.

Vader's mask is reminiscent of Sebulba's face, in particular the jaw & teeth. Also, the trench run on the death star in ANH is reminiscent of the race, esp in beggars canyon, in TPM. But Vader is duplicating _Sebulba_ and not his own young self, Anakin. Vader directs his craft much as Sebulba did with knobs that twist, set up horizontal to the floor. Vader spins out at the end, loosing the contest, as Sebulba spun out in the race. Vader attempts to hit his targets and remove them from the race, as does Sebulba.

I can't understand this focus of the adult fallen Anakin on Sebulba unless something more happens which emphasizes Sebulba's significance in Anakin's life. I find myself theorizing that this is a rejection of Amidala. Amidala was the person served in the race on Tatooine, Amidala is the direct opposite of Sebulba, though both have entourages. Amidala is an angel, and Anakin goes as far from that as he can get.

Interesting that after his fall, Anakin is not learning to be a better Sith, but rather repeating a pattern from his own youth.

 

back to an old topic. COLOR.

The black of Vader against the white of the storm troopers shows how he and the empire are a black and white world of certanties. Those colors, like masks, define role and identity. That Vader & the empire (the two victims of Sid's) don't show a hint of red shows how divorced they are from that color. Amidala's color. An aggresive color -- a dangerous color -- a color strong, and very deffitely neither black nor white. I bet that somewhere in the next two movies we will see Anakin give up on understanding the "perspective" stuff and retreat into black/white simplisitc logic.

If anyone's reading this, I was thinking of going over to non spoilers soon & restarting this there. Thoughts?

 

Ol'val, Eowyn.

Reading. Slow on the contributing, though.

If you do restart this thread, you may wish to ask for this one to be archived after you start the new thread and post the link url here.

Kida

 

Thanks Kida. No other opinions regarding restarting this over in ep 2/3 no spoilers? none?

And regarding pits: space & those holes in the floor are the same. Both are the passage which can not become a home itself. Both are about moving from one place to another. The Jedi make careers out of urging the people of the universe to use these passages & go where they need to go & do what they need to do. Recognize justice. Realize you are symbiots. Embrace your destiny.

"Do or do not, there is no try" says our green friend. Like a switch (on/off) the do/do not thing is very like stand at the pit or jump in, there is no dithering between. When Obi-wan finds the wherewithall within himself to be a Jedi and not just a padawan, it is when he ceases to dither at the edge. He chooses not to fall in that pit and it works. Years later he allows himself to fall in the pit, and even though there is no pit, Obi-wan is sucked into the beyond just as effectively.

 

I'm out of it for a little while...everybody gets delusions of grandeur...

Good to see this back up, so to speak. I thought it was over. First things first: ThereIsNoSpoon. I've not really thought about it in depth. The phrase's counterpart is 'Unlearn what you have learned'. Or perhaps, 'Luminous beings are we. Not this crude matter.'
Hmmm...I find the Annie/Sebulba piece quite intriguing. And the colors...note that Vader has red lights...perhaps meaningful, perhaps not. And that the emperor wears black (or dark blue and gold if you want to be technical), but his guards wear the red. Thought...Vader's RED lights are LIFE SUPPORT systems. Love for Amidala keeping him alive?

Up, Up, and Away

 

Dissecting through this intelligent and insightful thread one can come up with so many possibilities for what we will be seeing in Episode 2.

Drawing on what others have written, I would like to contribute a very important symbol in the whole saga: that from its inception, Star Wars has hinged on the play of doubles, doppelgangers, mirror images, the ying and yang, the light and dark, the before and after, man and machine, and science and religion.

It is a play on the number 2.

Brief examples

The OT- Tatooine is a binary star system, two suns. Major battles in the OT take place at the 2 Death Stars. We have the twins Luke and Leia. We have 2 droids. And, in my opinion, the most enigmatic and poignant scene of the trilogy - Luke's vison of dueling Vader in the cave on Dagobah. When he slays Vader the face behind the mask turns out to be Luke's.

The prequel TPM: We have the Queen and her decoy. We also have Amidala and Padme (same person, different identities). There is also Palaptine and Sidious (same person? based on just the TPM, can't really tell, but in retrospect there's a good chance that they are).

All of this put together makes you wonder what the Clone Wars are all about. After all, the word "clone" is sometimes used synonymous to twin, doppelganger, and double.

That's my 2 cents worth
Won Ton Soupy

 

(Continued from above)

Anyway, here's an episode comparison based on the "double theory": (to make this post relevant to this forum of Episode 2 speculations

Starting at the beginning and working backwards...

A New Hope versus The Phatom Menace

ANH: Establishes that Truths long held will turn out to be Lies (Lars lying about Obi-Wan being dead and Luke's father being nothing but a navigator on a spice freighter then Obi-Wan's story that Vader killed Anakin)

TPM: Establishes that Seeing is not always Believing (The Queen and her decoy; The Queen and her outings as Padme; Palpatine and Sidious)

ANH: Darth Vader the VILLAIN
TPM: Darth Maul the VILLAIN

ANH: Religion takes precedence over science (Kenobi insisting that Luke trust his feelings over the machine when blowing up the Death Star)

TPM: Science takes precedence over Religion (midichlorians anyone? and the Jedi Council's skepticism toward Anakin fulfilling the Prophecy"

ANH:
Obi-Wan Kenobi disappears and has a ghost (a surprise to Vader...hrm...interesting)

TPM:
Qui-Gon Jinn disappears but has no ghost (not a suprise to Kenobi...hrm...strange)
Episode II vs. ESB (speculative, of course)


Now for the good part:

Empire Strikes back versus Episode II


ESB: Bounty Hunters replace Storm Troopers in the search for Luke Skywalker, part of Vader's personal vendetta and bid for dominion to oust the Emperor and take his place.

EP II: Does this mean that Battle Droids will be replaced by Storm troopers in II part of Sidious' bid for dominion?

ESB: Leia falls in love with Han.
EP II: We KNOW that Anakin will fall in love with Padmé in Ep II (Lucas said so).

ESB: Vader's "Luke, I am your father", the secret revealed
EP II: The Secret of the Sith revealed? just as Mace Windu promised we would?

ESB: The Dagobah Cave scene when Behind the Mask: underneath Vader's mask is Luke's face. What does this mean? Artsy clone symbolism for the fun of it? A Freudian thing? Foreshadowing? or an enigmatic glimpse into what happened in the past to Anakin/Vader?

EP II: Perhaps we will see behind the cowl and confirm that Palaptine and Darth Sidious are indeed the same person or perhaps that they are clones. Or maybe, maybe, Vader is Anakin's clone, and we just don't know it.

Comments, anyone?

 

Oops. I meant to say, Qui-Gon dies, not disappears. Typo

 

Maybe Lucas is cross-eyed, that would explain your first theory as well!

And just like you, I will come back later to comment on your second post...interesting, but I spot a few initial flaws!

I think!

 

Hrm...Lucas cross-eyed? I have yet to see him wearing glasses or contacts, but still a compelling explanation

Anyway, please, don't let this thread be bogged down deep within the forum. It's one of the few good ones out there.

-WonTon Soupy-

 

So is mine!

Check it out, it's about movies George has to see:

http://boards.theforce.net/message.asp?topic=552605&replies=18

Thanks!

 

Yes...up. Hmmm...I liked your noticing of Vader's surprise at Obi-Wan's disappearance. I hadn't digested it before, but that means that either Obi-Wan hadn't taught Anakin this technique or that he had forgotten it. Interesting...
I believe that EII will be more similar to ROJ than ESB. And that EIII will be more ESBish. Think about it...the main points will be similar. ROJ is currently, the love episode. Han & Leia go full fledged, Luke & Leia come to a new plateau of natural love, Vader and Luke overcome the dark side with love for each other (and for Vader, possibly Amidala), and the galaxy is freed. EII is rumored to be the lovey episode of the prequels. And with a reunion/wedding planned, it looks to live up to its reputation. ESB is the abyss, the bottom of the hero's journey cycle. Everything about it is a downer. EIII doesn't look to be too dissimilar with mass genocide, betrayal, and emotional devastation planned.
Your thoughts...