Criticisms of Star Wars

It seems to me that discussion here is frequently taken up by arguments over the merits of the "OT" vs the "PT" vs "the Saga" and what all this means and whether one is better, or worthy of greater praise, or whether the PT stylistically works etc etc etc.

I think much more damning, and much more interesting, are the criticisms levelled at the ideas and perceived flaws of Star Wars by sci-fi writers like David Brin and Rober Sawyer. Sawyer, for example, argues that the good/evil dichotomy represented in the first film masks the actual flawed morality of the film. He lends us the example of the Lars' purchase of droids, making the point that this is analagous to slavery.

This sort of deconstruction is highly impressionable, but does it really expose some unhealthy "truths" about the saga, or is it all extrapolation and misdirected conjecture?

Thoughts?

 

Nice topic.

Even before the release of the PT, many of the critiques seemed to delve into a perceived anti-populist leaning, what with the ever-widening annointed, salvic Skywalker brood, the indifference to the plight of civilians (e.g., Leia's peculiar reaction to Alderaan's destruction, the beclouded fate of the Cloud City denizens), and the heart-warming redemption of the patriarch cum war criminal--which one essayist likened to "the Nonjudgment at Nuremberg".

Of course, the chronicle-of-the-elites charge could be leveled against everyone from the Biblical scribes to Shakespeare, but given the long-standing struggles between authoritarianism and republicanism, the sympathies held by artists demands our attention.

 

Yea the whole 'elite' criticism seems to me incredibly crude and rather ill thought out. Who counts as an 'elite', and what, in 'social reality' does this mean? Technocrat libertarians like Brin seem to assume that 'democracy' will afford 'voice' or 'capacity' to formerly 'repressed' and 'silenced' individuals. To them this is an end in itself; the greatest evil, according to them, seems to be the antipostmodern suspicion of the libertarian ideology that fetishises and worships "democracy", "hybridity", "plasticity" and other forms of cultural and political organisation while repressing and discrediting the notion of "essentiality" (essences by no means necessarily have to be unchangeful; nor are they definitive or universalising) without engaging with these critiques in any socially meaningful way.

A favourite philosopher of mine, Slavoj Zizek, wrote an article entitled "Revenge of the Global Finance"; a piece written in response to the release of ROTS. It is not 'critical' of the film in the traditional sense: it does not repeat the mantra that it is incoherent or stylistically inferior (it does not mention the "prequals" in the vein of so many media outlets, as if to intimate that it forms a distinct, somehow less legitimate version of the oh so good ol' original "Star Wars", and instead treats the "saga" as a contemporaneously relevant item of popular culture) lacks or that its politics are elitist etc etc, rather it engages with the political messages of the film with regards to the personal journey of Anakin. It does, however, critique the plot of Anakin's fall in the context of contemporary global politics and the in-universe transformation of the Republic (Zizek calls it Reagenesque) into the "evil" Empire, and suggests an interesting alternative. This is NOT about whether the fall was 'realistic', and my mentioning of this example is not an invitation to discuss the "turn" scene; rather Zizek's article is an interesting political counterpoint to the discourse of the technocratic sci fi writers, who, it seems to me, too often assume they know better what "SF" signifies than anyone else.

Google the article; should'nt be hard to find

 

Interesting. I'll be sure to google it soon.

Many years ago, I read a provocative Peter Biskind essay, in which the critic averred that the iconography and motifs provided by Lucas and Spielberg were elemental to nurturing the mythology of the Reagan Revolution. Although both filmmakers are quite progressive, their emphasis on tidy, redemptive violence and father/son amelioration may very well have complimented the ultra-conservative movement that took hold in the '80s. (Essentially, Luke's embrace of Vader constitutes an act of betrayal against the '60s counterculture. Idealistic rebel and establishment war criminal hug and kiss, while below, the horrors of Vietnam are flushed down the memory hole to the fanfare of a teddy bear jamboree.)

 

Facinating. Yes, the paradoxical, even frightening, parallels between the Battle of Endor and the Second Indochina War are indeed striking. In both cases, a "Reaganesque" (although of course the SIW was over by the time Reagan came to power) 'democratic' military powers singularly launch an attack on a perceived "evil" empire, ostensibly in order to destroy it and bring it to justice. In the case of Vietnam, Truman's doctrine of containment was justified by Eisenhower's domino theory, which was in turn used by Johnson and others in his administration as the rational for launching Operation Rolling Thunder-essentially the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incidence was the last catalyst; an event, either real or orchestrated, that rubber stamped the belief of McNamara and others that communism in South Asia should be contained and that it should be resisted with military force. In that regard the similarities to the Battle of Endor are striking: in both cases, supposedly benign powers seek to overthrow "evil". In the case of Endor, however, the ugly facts of the war; the My Lai Massacre, the rampant government corruption and mismanagement as illustrated in the Pentagon Papers, are repressed and the conflict is gentrified, domesticated; its morality and righteousness assured. As you impute, no one can argue with cute teddy bears.

The prequals, on the other hand, avered from this blatant gentrification. Republic vs. Seppies does not compute to Good vs Evil, and all is smoke and mirrors anyway. The true evil is revealed to be far more diabolical than communism ever was; its sole object is domination and annihilation of all that it perceives as Other. It is nihilistic and believes only in the capacity for power to organise and dictate all social relations.

As Zizek perhaps alludes to, the political 'message' or 'meaning; of the hybrid form we call Star Wars fails to form a whole; it is often determined and reliant upon the social circumstances of the era, but I think as the films have gone on the politics has become less certain and the ambiguinies have grown.

 

Return of the Jedi...

farce |färs|
noun
a comic dramatic work using buffoonery and horseplay and typically including crude characterization and ludicrously improbable situations.
? the genre of such works.
? an absurd event : the debate turned into a drunken farce.
ORIGIN early 16th cent.: from French, literally ?stuffing,? from farcir ?to stuff,? from Latin farcire. An earlier sense of [forcemeat stuffing] became used metaphorically for comic interludes ?stuffed? into the texts of religious plays, whence current usage.

The intricately woven "Tragedy of Darth Vader" comes within a hair's breadth of actualization...and then miraculously explodes into its opposite. I challenge anyone to name one character, event, or idea in Return of the Jedi that is not beautifully illuminated by a jubilant surrender to the preposterous.

For crying out loud, the whole saga ends with the spectral images of Hayden Christensen, Alec Guinness, and a puppet performed by the director of The Stepford Wives remake smiling together at the sight of a sasquatch, two robots, and a squad of ragtag heroes gleefully surrounded by a tribe of dancing teddy bears. If you are frustrated by the travesty of this situation in any way, i.e., if you can't appreciate the beauty of the comic spirit at work, then you are missing the point. Alas, it seems that most people are missing the point.

It is interesting to note that Stanley Kubrick ended his directing career in a similar fashion. Stuffed animals are a wonderful metaphor for...oh, what's the point?

 

Sounds like the last five minutes of the Holy Grail.

Episodes 1-5 would be Arthur and Co. charging Castle Aaargh, and ROTJ would be the part where the cops pull in and arrest the whole lot.

It worked for Monty Python, but...

 

Brin insists that Yoda lied, which never happened. Case closed. When someone's willing to call the truth a "lie", I think it's safe to say that their own relationship with truth can be called into question ( see: debates about Palpatine and Poor Widdle Anakin ). [Of course, it's significantly more surreal than that: Brin's so-called "critique" devolves into an attempted rewrite of the story in which Yoda is the Sith lord.]

 

Hey I was lured here by following 20 hits to our site. Thanks to Cryogenic for the post.

Reading the above posts leads me to say that looking at the surface plot or motivations of any character in Star Wars is essentially futile. Hate, love or like, you are mirroring with characters. Searching for whether the Droids are enslaved or not is attempting to add one's own morality to another (though clearly Star Wars is about enslavement at all scales). The pivot between self-deception and lying is only one of the endlessly debatable character traits/elements Lucas codes into Star Wars. The plot gestured through spoken word is essentially a cover story for the real one. Lucas in interviews claims both that there is much more to the films than anyone notices (in this quote he labels the film a 'clock' directly) and that his films are silent, the music and the visuals tell you the real story. Just watch the Blockade Runner and Destroyer sweep overhead towards a centerpoint almost precisely like the opening crawl, and their orientations, upper and lower, offer crucial sub-labels in our minds. This is a vast language 99.9999% of viewers are definitely unaware of and it is a neurophenomenological one. Lucas is much more interested in how these visuals interact, watch how Jar-Jar stands into shot after a Droid Trooper is crushed into a gully, they are obviously the same form split into bio and mechanized identities.

Star Wars, like all masterpiece art, employs a multi-layered storytelling system, no one character possesses total awareness, and in fact deception and self-deception are employed endlessly by Lucas to guarantee many levels of paradox are sifted throughout characters' behaviors. Just basically, the Jedi are a male dominated cult, practitioners of a bio-genetic symbiotic relationship that creates warriors that can see the future as they fight, if only milliseconds away. And they are forbidden to procreate. If this ain't state-level paradox, I don't know what is. Even more ingeniously, Star Wars is dualled endlessly, it is the evolution of Kubrick into pulp, it acts both and firstly as sweeping adventure then and as grand satire (he plays marching music over the text-crawl and peaceful music when the stars are alone on screen).

Ingeniously he creates two trilogies with entirely different states of mind in contrast. Clearly he could have made Episodes I-III breathless (watch Anakin slow himself down in ROTS), instead he deadens the joy and lampoons the other emotional weirdnesses (Amidala wears a provocative black-leather halter top and rejects Anakin's advances). The first one is nostalgic the second one is golden-age, and the 'first' begins in a monochrome corridor where Black rules over White and battles that follow become more and more colorful as the trio of films continue (just look at how many shots are mirror-reversed between Star Wars and Empire). Why is Luke upside down three times in Empire? Think about it. The second trilogy is the opposite of nostalgic: Lucas is telling us the fantasy of how good the Jedi were is false, they were complicit in their downfall: like memories of the past it is coated in a desire humans endlessly spread in lieu of thinking about the future. The central visual metaphor for human narrative is the uroboros, a self-consuming snake that eats its tail. As far as Lucas is concerned we have yet to evolve out of our 'past-eating' loop.

Cryogenic, I applaud your awareness. I'm not sure I would describe it as a visual palindrome, this seems too pat, a palindrome is nonsensical as a visual aim (we didn't design the language for this we discovered it as an afterthought), since the palindrome is a visual form that is exacting and linear before it is an orthographic one, so there's a bit of oxymoronic-ness there. The ability to collapse a story with scaled-mirrors (two of hundreds of examples: R2 and the Lars Homestead entrance/The Destroyers and the Maya Temples of Tikal peaking above the forest) at every stage is clearly a 'buried-in-plain-sight' system of messag

 

This hits the cosmic nail right on the head!

To borrow from the philosophy of Andy and Larry Wachowski, the only way to "escape" this vortex is to perform an act of surrender. In a comic sense, this is embodied in the Matrix movies as well as Star Wars with the plethora of shots that are, through the commonly misunderstood miracle of CGI, super-rendered.

I find it interesting that you've included Tarantino in your analyses. Inglourious Basterds struck me mainly in its "exploration" of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Also note how music used in Kill Bill re-emerges the moment our cinema-owning heroine is confronted outside by "the crazy 88."

 

Yes, DEF: the uroboros is integral in the matrix, Reloaded is a loop that eats itself, the time is mechanical, the master Agent Smith is the circulated A.I., disunified, who goes from few to many (almost total). The Clock God almost won.

The Matrix Reloaded

sorry i botched the link to Crystal Skull above

Crystal Skull

Strange, I never see Tarantino as that surface of a commentary about socio-political concerns. It's clearly a male-female contrast, a comedy-drama, what is remembered, what is important yet erased. His thematic contrasts are austere in every film (like in PF: Jack Rabbit Slims versus The Diner that opens and closes the film) he doesn't explicitly value one over the other, but he IS a genius at separating values of each contrast specifically.

As for the music cue DEF he equates Beatrix and Shosanna. That is fluid. Except this case only Shosanna's screen persona witnesses the revenge, her body doesn't. That's why this is the wildest of all Tarantino's films.

 

Having read through Cryogenic's post, and having returned to Zizek's article and given it a thorough reread, yes, I can certainly agree that his object, if not his tone, is to disparage and then ameliorate Lucus' particular moral vision.

It seems to me that many of the attacks on Star Wars, and particularly on the prequals, center around moral expectations. As Cryogenic observes, it was a kind of moral expectation that Anakin would "turn to the darkside" through a process of violent catharsis, and in an effort to do good would become evil-"twised", as Yoda says. Yet this is not what we see. Instead Anakin "turns" in many ways for purely selfish reasons. There is no one moment when he simply becomes evil, having previously fought on the side of good. Lucus is at pains to stress Anakin's "attachment", and this trait can take on both epic and banal proportions. In comparison to Zizek's suggestion that Anakin be attached so vehemently to defeat the forces of evil that he himself ends up becoming so, his attachment to Padme and his overwhelming desire to protect her from harm seems banal and infantile. In short, unworthy of a story in which anakin's betrayal is "meant" to mimic the turn from
"democratic" Republic to "evil" Empire, and do so in terms of its " hubristic" weight. Rather, it contravenes our expectation and pprovides a vision of a moral universe not dissimilar to our own in which actions are taken based upon persoanal and often base needs, feelings and desires. Yes, Anakin's fall is the moral equivelant of the Republic's, but by no means is it, or should it be, identical in terms of cathartic, epic or ideological conerns. Anakin did not "fall" because he was unimpeachably righteous. He fell becasue he was a human being who was obsessed by his own needfull attachements.

 

I am not literary astute as many of the posters, but I do know molecular biology and genetics sciences very well. The stories of Star Wars lack a scientific foundations enough to build reasons why the Light/Dark Sides of The Force exist in the manner it does. The closest the movies get to scientific dogma is the concept of "midi-chlorians". It was thought that Midi-Chlorians = Mitochondria. The full literary development of Midi-Chlorians, I don't completely understand in that all I know is it is all forms of life, but also rocks and The Force moves it and some beings can manipulate its power. Okay. As a scientist, I know A LOT about Mitochondria, in fact I have published scientific articles on Mitochondrial diseases. What aggravates me about the "midi-chlorian" concept is it failed to be fully fleshed out as it actually does relate to Force perception and use. It frustrates me when because so much is known about Mitochondria, where the concept could have at least been more than a 10th graders new learning task of naming all the organelles. The fact is the Glycolysis, Kreb's Cycle and Electron Transport occurs in the mitochondria in all cells. There are several 1000 mitos per cell and it is thought that mitos are primitive symbiotes of eukaryotic cells. Any college level biology course would have indicated this fact.

How does the "Midi-Chlorian" = "Mitochondria" helped the PT? Overproduction of "power" in mitos are given off as heat and can be a mutator effect. Apparently Force-Sensitives evolved either through mutations, etc. to circumvent that power. IMHO, The Force is what it is, light or dark, training to use it for one's own devices is what is at stake here. Not the fact one has it. Then what is the nature of Force-Sensitivity at the molecular biological/genetic level and can it be fully suppressed? I think having a better grasp on the science IRL would embolden why someone, like Anakin, would switch from Light Sided to Dark Sided other than what is shown. Moreover, I do not think it was his "attachments" and/or "fear of loss" initially that caused Anakin to flip. IMHO, something truly biological disparate was sensed by the senior Jedi Council, especially in PM. Whereas, as he got older, in my opinion, he hit "puberty head on" and how do Jedi deal with puberty, especially estrus in the female? Again, knowing some scientific facts would have helped.

Mental/emotional instability have something to do with some biology. However there are many social determinants of health. So...

~~Dr. Ariafya

 

Here is Zizek extrapolating on some of the points he made in the article "Revenge of the Global Finance". He explores in greater depth his contention that "Sith" "failed" due to its depiction of Anakin's fall as being contingent upon Padme rather than his "attachment to Goodness"

Take a look:

In the search bar, type in "Revenge of the Sith"

http://books.google.com/books?id=je702bo2Pl8C&dq=the+parallax+view+zizek&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=yPcRS9u2DYXisQOlzsiSBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false

 

~Stellar Parallax: The Traps of Ontological Differences

Okey,

1st: I am sick of bashing the woman and love as the reason for a man's choice to have a nervous melt/breakdown, rampage temper tantrum! Sorry you don't have a can of "WHOOP ASS" and "ACK RITE"! It squarely says in the novelization that Anakin made a choice. Whether that was accurately captured in ROTS the movie, who knows?

2nd: Professionally, I would say that Anakin as a character is severely unbalanced mentally. If I were to read his story as a case report, I would give a differential diagnosis of borderline personality disorder with psychotic tendencies and a mild schizophrenia. The personality disorder cannot be treated with meds, only be CBT, so, in essence it is assumed that Jedi training would help him with that, specifically the mindfulness. Anakin was stuck into combat that caused him to act out more--a superlative PTSD trauma... C'mon, he's an accident waiting to happen!!! Jedi Med probably knew this but overlooked it due to his being the "Chosen One"... And who in general would be equipped to psychologically tend the wounds of wayward Jedi? Masters. Anakin's first real Master was Qui-Gon--he died and Qui-Gon made Kenobi take on the duty--who had not completed ALL his training to become a Master Jedi in PM. Then had not had experience with a previous Padawan.

So Kenobi takes all that he knows and Anakin still is subordinate, and then he must be admonished by both Kenobi and Padme publicly? Um, narcissistic dissociative disorder--perhaps? Then he acts out on Padme, goading her along, losing his mind when she falls out of the carrier, etc., etc., etc. - Padme become cloistered up as a classical case of domestic violence--Anakin MUST know where she is at ALL times! Hayle he made sure Padme became pregnant so that she would not leave his punk ass in the dust!!! I have opinions about Padme, so I'll leave that alone. Let's just say Padme is like Hillary Clinton, she ain't gonna leave Bill because it was good to her. What would Padme do with power? Or her power was the "hand that rocks the cradle"? Undeveloped.

So when ROTS rolls around, Anakin has seen enough chit and done some chit, that really think he can rationally manage to handle his impending "fatherhood", his desire to leave the war, and his desire for something more in his life? Then guess who is right there to give him his crack pipe? Palpatine/Darth Sidious... And he has the good stuff.

I would not say, it was Anakin's excessive attachment to love... I would say he was dayum near addicted to a delusional type of freedom by the time Darth Sidious rolled up on him... A classic cracky tales in you ask me...

~~Dr. Ariafya

 

Both of you are simply falling into the trap of filmmakers like Lucas. The "why" of key decisions is always left unsaid to make you question their motive (and your own in reflection) ENDLESSLY. Lucas knows this and employs this and this keeps the films continuously watchable, and if you are searching for motive, does that not make this a Speculation Thread? You are never allowed to know the complex rationale for Anakin's decisions. What you ARE allowed to see is a vast war and three keyed relationships, one that borders between father-son and older man-younger man, another is secret love (which if exposed removes his access to the first), another is brother-brother (which if the second is exposed also terminates this one). Zizek has absolutely no idea what he is speculating about, he is simply doing what critical theorists do: mapping his program onto his subjects and hoping a map emerges to what Lucas is clearly keeping hidden from us: MOTIVATION. It's a trick politician's use.

What he DOES show you is a romantic interlude in which Palpatine seduces Anakin with the power to restore life while watching a space opera/water ballet in which sperm-like 'dancers' appear to ritually germinate a massive gamete. This is a completely opposite mirror, a type of inversion, of the Last Battle of Episode IV, while somewhat secretly Palpatine tells Anakin who is father really is. It's that simple, all progressions of meaning in the Star Wars saga emerge from its visuals.

"My films operate like silent films, the music and visuals are where the story's being told." -George Lucas, Wired

 

One further thing -- several, in fact -- about that expanded Zizek essay (per the "Google Books" link):

Zizek hasn't even got the incidental story details straight. Anakin isn't "knocked off balance" and thrown into a "molten pit", nor does Anakin "lift" Padmé "right off her feet" and fling her "against a wall", "where she hits her head badly". Further, Anakin isn't rescued by "Palpatine's henchman" (but by Palpatine/Sidious who arrives with clone troopers), he's not "submerged in healing liquid", and he doesn't throw such a rage that Palpatine/Sidious "must shield himself from the onslaught". What film was Zizek watching? Getting these details right is important, especially when you can fall into the trap, as Zizek does, of using incorrect details to claim that Anakin "oscillates" between "good" and "bad" (or, if he does, more than he does). Also, Zizek is guilty of reification: he describes Anakin's journey into Darth Vader as a "reversal"; obviously, Anakin's slide into Vader-dom has manifest symbolic overtones (and undertones, throughtones etc.), but Zizek's wording is clumsy, misleading and wrong (similarly, he says that "Vader breathes evilly"; I think he just breathes). Lastly, Zizek's weird capitalization of certain words has a distinctly religious air about it; but maybe that's not surprising, given his obvious Christian leanings (or pantheism tinged with Christianity); conspicuously, the last comment of his is truly naïve and false: "theists no longer despise atheists" (!!) -> what world is Zizek living in?

Anyway, this is a strong thread. Great stuff from Ten_Mills and Charles_Grady. Mister Grady, in retrospect, you're right about my poor word choice. Thanks for the erudition (and Ten_Mills's). It's rare around these parts (and truly satisfying to see in here). I'm really looking forward to the book. The only thing that could rock my world more than your existing interpretations is you adding another one for "Star Trek: The Motion Picture". Hell, why don't you dissect "Lost In Translation", too? Well, I'm teasing, but those are two of my favourite films, so I'd jump at the chance of your intellect tackling them, one day. Perhaps it's incumbent upon me to have a bash at them? I'm sure your book will inspire some people to look at film more holistically and thoroughly -- and, that aside, your book will simply be a ripping good yarn. It's about time that the tables were turned on the idea that cinema is literature's concubine, and the deeply-held prejudice that popular cinema can't be more than cheap thrills with only superficial hints of depth uprooted! Yes, yes: exciting stuff ahead!

 

That's an interesting point. Did disenchanted viewers feel Lucas strayed too far from the heroic ideal with the PT? I recall my own story expectations, once the TPM credits rolled: that Anakin would fall due to a malignant idealism (?I had a dream I came back and freed all the slaves?); that Padme would serve as the bulwark against Palpatine; that Obi-Wan would transcend his limitations. Imagine my surprise that Anakin would acquire a distinctly Freudian character, that Padme would relinquish her will to a parasitic relationship, that Kenobi would vacillate between spiritual obtuseness (?Dreams pass in time?) and misguided indulgence/penitence (awareness of the secret marriage). The PT was mired in human frailty?-far removed from the pleasing renderings offered up in the original trilogy, where even the shadier characters prove more rogue than mercenary. In retrospect, the divergence was a brave move on Lucas's part. More perversion than prequel.

 

A friend of mine made the film Zizek! and I cringed everytime I heard his connecting of two ideas. I hope she doesn't find me in here, she knows I'm not his fan, but dissing him isn't my favorite pastime. I think he is simply a gutsy oraculator that never shows fear and is consistently driven to organize our current with ideologies that HE perceives. Talk about a failed dictator. His vanity means he's certain about both his narratives and his language use, no doubt there's a poetic sensibility and several, pivotal key words that orchestrate levels, but it's a con job as far as I'm concerned.

The REAL thinker is a dead guy named Ernst Cassirer, this guy altered the state of consciousness in such a way that it appears that Kubrick, Lucas et al are employing narrative methods around his targeting. He basically states that language is devolving, and his proof is the simplification of word use (the structure of language), while an endless survey of nouns, adjectives and averbs are added to make up for buckshot dictionary definitions. Add the fact that our language is mostly mythical, ie labels stem from usually a male name that was revered into a task or a tool or an ability then translated across cultures. He begins The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms III with an ancient Greek word that is untranslatable into our culture, it means: between myth and 'reality'. An Essay on Man is his basic Intro.

I never thought about STTMP or Lost in Translation, the latter seems like a phasic film, she gets to stay up way late and get her moon on, but I DID think Marie Antoinette was very very controlled. Those long lenses, making things seem MUCH larger than they were or MUCH smaller with careful adjustments in topography. whoa. and the idea that you make a national villain of france experience frivolity and sensual identity as a result of becoming french, that is very smart. its a form of Barry Lyndon from the upper levels. I gotta think about STTMP again, I saw it only twice and both times I thought it was the most beautiful TV film I had ever seen, but the VGER plaza, the film's last 20 minutes (and the spock walk), are VERY wild. Talk about 2001 merging in Roddenberry.

Robert Wise, the butcher of Magnificent Ambersons.

This is my first time in here and I'm curious, do most users discuss/speculate on character motivation? That seems antithetical to what Lucas is actually achieving. If it is then isn't a majority of this a form of Hamster wheel? Or maybe a Jungian therapy room, where people chose archetypes and then project outcomes along sliding morality scales ("are the Droids enslaved?"). Once you enter the cold, dark tunnel of projecting how do you come out.

In lieu of 'visual palindrome' is there another possible phrase?

Key to have met here. Both of you.

 

Charles_Grady, you are providing more and more evidence that we are truly living in a farce and that Lucas' "wacky plot coincidences" are, in a deeply philosophical sense, reflecting the serendipitous profundity of the world of symbols we have created (and just how thoroughly cut off most of the world is from their *obvious* meanings). I have met Astra Taylor. I must check out Ernst Cassirer. I'll also rethink Tarantino and whether or not killing Hitler was actually in the best interest of cinema.

But in all seriousness, this thread is amazing.

My impression of Zizek is similar: He rigorously utilizes a superficially Lacanian frame, but he doesn't use it to cut to the roots of anything. The main oversight of his approach is that, when analyzing an *artwork*, one ought to utilize the artwork's frame. Zizek failed in the cave. He saw only what he took with him. What is the specific nature of the Real in Star Wars? The Symbolic? The Imaginary? These are fruitful questions. That which cannot be symbolized in the saga (but which is essentially the source of everything it depicts) is just beyond the threshold of the philosopher's stone/"petit objet a"--projecting the illusory system of signification that we're trying to comprehend. The Great Mystery. You need to cycle around the uroboros quite a bit in order to understand the history immanently sedimented within the work (before you can come to any sublime conclusions about its core, governing nature).

The overriding problem with this forum is that many users immediately stop at the surface, dispute anything that cannot be proven to be intended by Lucas (everything), and offer little to no creative insight into details. The endless waves of traffic on Coruscant are a symptom of an indifferent populace more than anything. The question of "what is really going on here--in our world and the one Lucas has created?" is rarely addressed.

It seems as though we can never escape the bounds imposed on us by language. It's silly to be bitter about this, which is something I think that all great artists know. Let language pour through you and wield it with sincerity. Reify accurately--with fidelity. If language is the center, save consciousness in the form of memory, then let us use language.

I propose that it is, on one level, an emergent visual/aural anagram. This is the Echo Base.

 

Right. "The mythic blockbuster paradigm" is one of vicarious self-actualization. No matter the film or the circumstances of its narrative, a blockbuster movie almost always depicts characters who do things and believe things that viewers wish or believe to be true in themselves, and that they can live out at a safe distance, in the shared company of other human beings who implicitly feel and are geared to respond the same way. This is the safe way of making money: selling people the same old magic drink (i.e. tap water) in a different bottle, by appealing to their (willful) ignorance. Consider contemporary blockbuster offerings widely held to be "darker", "grittier" and more "adult" than SW, like "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight", or "The Lord of the Rings" movie series. In these insanely-popular films, main characters are presented as paragons of righteousness, who, paradoxically, use violence to assert their cause and the strength of their convictions, and if they suffer adverse consequences, the consequences are unambiguously shown to be necessary and perfectly ennobling. Ultimately, the characters never err or misstep (or mis-slash or mis-punch), because the films are on their side, putting the audience on their side. Bizarrely, yet predictably, the viewer goes away thinking they've learned something about human nature, or even been challenged to reconsider their understanding (in quotation marks) of human nature, but the films so unabashedly romanticize their lead characters, and milk every aggrandizing step the characters make, and present situations in ways that are so contrived and pat, that I doubt anybody ever comes away with a different opinion; the only variance in opinion is a purely emotive one (and binary, at that); a viewer either finds the films agreeable or not. The status quo is asserted, and Hollywood bankrolls its next ten blockbuster projects.

In a way, then, I sympathise with Zizek, or some of the (flawed) thinking that may have led him to believe that Anakin does not fight "evil" thinking he's doing "good", until he becomes a monster himself, and the corollary: that ROTS should have framed his struggle in these terms. Would this not have made ROTS an antidote to other blockbuster movies? A commentary on them? A solution, perhaps? And here's the thing: ROTS *does* include precisely what Zizek says it does not. I think I was a bit hasty before, and a little off in my assessment of Anakin's journey. If you go back to Episode II, we have that pivotal scene in the meadow on Naboo: visually, it's an obvious homage to another of Robert Wise's pictures, "The Sound of Music", which inflects the discussion between Anakin and Padmé in ominous political terms, with the storm clouds subtly rolling in in the background as analagous with the inclemencies of Anakin and Palpatine's actions (literal and metaphorical) in the next picture, as they birth a tyrannical super state. What is extraordinary in Sith, as it is throughout the saga, is the twinning of Lucas' erudition with his concision. Anakin's express desire for a dictatorship in Episode II takes shape in Episode III, but this wish of Anakin's is now subliminal in ROTS, as happens frequently in the GFFA. In the sweep of the films, and the parameters of the world the characters inhabit, it makes perfect sense. After all, does Anakin belong, or does he not belong, to a stagnant order of monks and warriors that adhere to outmoded codes and presume to think they can function as hermetically sealed from the rest of the galaxy, yet still in support of a democratic body? And, if so, is Anakin's airing of a desire for a dictatorship not totally heretical? To whom, and when, can he air this belief, safely, if ever? Only to Padmé, as it turns out, his Oedipal pillar, and since it would seem to harm his chances of getting the girl, he quickly diffuses the incendiary nature of his articulated wish by making it appear as a joke. Moreov

 

Yeah, it's funny how people view the films differently. I always have to chuckle a bit when I hear that the reasons why a lot of viewers "can't relate to" Anakin are the same why I think this character works. Some people simply can't equate a hero with a "creepy stare," for instance. Moral objections likely do play into the reason why many viewers can't buy into a character that exhibits some awkward courting behavior, but at the same time, I have to admit that it might also be my own set of moral objections that allows me to accept this and other markers of a character that's not presented as archetypically Good. The key is that I'm not accepting the idea of unhealthy obsession as a trait I vicariously subscribe to while I watch a film, but rather that I'm accepting the notion that within the context of the narrative a creepy stare is an understandable and even an expected reaction given the character's previous development. What I'm specifically objecting to is not an unhinged hero, but a world and set of personal choices and outside circumstances that allowed for a bit of emotional unrest to eventually expand to a far greater degree of derangement and violence.

I think one of the prequel trilogy's greatest strengths is that it flips viewer expectations as a means of, as drg4 put it earlier, actively setting out to emphasize the idea of human frailty. Does anyone else find it a bit ironic that certain viewers can revel in Vader's "badass" murderous behavior, and yet for others the aforementioned "creepy stare" Anakin gives Padme in AOTC is one of the most emotionally unsettling, unwatchable moments of the series? A curious thing, to me, but a natural enough reading, I suppose, when some films clearly delineate the character you root for/despise and others do not. As others have mentioned before in this thread, though, with the prequels Lucas seemed to actively want to challenge certain aspects of what he did with the originals. Want to cheer the destruction of Death Stars and laugh out loud in glee as the heroes blow away the enemies? Go for it, as there is no denying that that is a huge part of the joy of Star Wars. Enter the world of the prequels, though, where Jedi lead stormtroopers into battle and the ultimate bad guy Sith Lord seems to show Anakin just as much fatherly guidance as Obi-Wan Kenobi, and I think Star Wars is deepened. It's still pulp, no doubt. But the layers are there should you choose to plumb the depths, and that option is something I've always loved about the best examples of pulp. Are droids enslaved? Possibly, but so are people and clones in the Star Wars universe. Does Padme take a wound primarily for the sake of offering the audience the chance to look at some bare midriff? Probably. Nonetheless, a work of art can only be good or bad for you depending on what you're willing (or unwilling) to bring to the table as a viewer. For myself, I'm just glad my moral aesthetics and stylistic preferences have allowed me to enjoy Star Wars on all its various levels, whether it's the adventure I'm reveling or the subversion.

On a side note, I just want to say that has been a great thread thus far. I feel like I've stepped back into the glory days of this forum.

 

What a great thread.

I think a lot of SW criticism comes from the slightly uneasy paradox which has been present in the saga for a long time, whereby a Saturday arvo matinee style, goodies v baddies piece of pulp has to also function as a tale of spiritual, philosophical and almost religious significance to a large proportion of it's audience. It's a pretty tricky tightrope to work I think.

In recent years I've come to realise that in order for me to fully enjoy Star Wars and not become too frustrated, I have to accept that the saga can be both a piece of corny, pulpy, woodenly acted fluff, and a real heavy mother at different times, and even all at the same time.