Star Wars: Emperor Paul Saltines Karate Killings

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Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Hbomberguy posted:

Are the droid armies supposed to be some sort of message about how America sees its enemies? Because I always thought they represented that George Lucas was a hack who didn't want anyone to think the good guys were killers, even in self-defense (AKA the continuation of the entire 'Han Shot First' debacle).

Star Wars has always been pretty critical of Western military hegemony and (at least originally) sides with jihadist guerrillas.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2012 22:44

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 20:51

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Voodoofly related a story about Lucas in the chat thread that seems relevant to this discussion a couple months ago I hope he doesn't mind me reporting it here:

Voodoofly posted:

How does George Lucas crush someone's soul in two words?

This is sometime between the release of Episode 1 and Episode 2 - probably fall of 2000. We had a continually running class that took on one or two directors for the entire semester. The year before I had taken the Hitchcock class. This semester it was on George Lucas. The class filled super quickly because it was open to all students and film students didn't get priority, so basically if you weren't a senior or lucky junior you didn't get in. Unless you were working in the projection booth for that class, like I was.

The class is roughly 250 people with a makeup of what you probably suspect. The Q and A with George was week 14, so by then we had been able to recognize certain people from up in the booth. One of those people was basically a tall, skinny guy who was obviously a HUGE fan of Star Wars. He wasn't a jerky pedantic fan, but you could tell from his questions throughout the year (and from random conversations we would hear him in before class) that he absolutely adored the films and the characters. He was also one of the big Jar Jar apologists in the class and would passionately defend Episode 1, which seemed to be what half of the questions and conversations outside of the class and during the break were about. Frankly, he seemed like a nice enough guy and was much more tolerable than a lot of the other "noticeable" people in that class. For simplicity I'll just call him Tim because it is short to type.

Cut to George Lucas day. The professor gives a thirty minute spiel waxing poetic about University Board Member and huge donor Mr. Lucas. Gorge Speaks for about twenty minutes. Then there is a Q and A session which lasts about an hour. One microphone on each of the two aisles, people standing in line to ask questions, professor stepping in from time to time to expand on things. This class runs from 7 to 11 at night, so it is around 9 as the session wraps up. There are only a couple of people left in line to ask questions, and we notice up in the booth that Tim has slowly made his way down one of the aisles and now is the last person in that line.

Tim's time finally comes, and it looks like he will be the second to the last question. He approaches the mic and starts his question - or more correctly his explanation. He goes on about how he always felt the strength of the films was in the protagonists, and how thoughts of Luke, Leia, Han and Chewey always helped get him through sad times because they were such fun and life-embracing people (people, not characters). I can't even paraphrase everything he said, or how his excitement and joy grew with each word, but after a couple of minutes he finally got to the question. "So, basically, my question is to ask what happened to them after Jedi. Did they stay friends? Go on more adventures? Did they ever have kids of their own?"

This whole time George has been sitting in his chair with the table and water at his side on the stage in front of the screen. He doesn't move or blink during the question, and appears to be giving Tim his rapt attention. After Tim finishes, he looks up for a moment or two in a "pondering" pose, then looks back and slowly says "They died." He then turns to the other aisle for the final question.

Tim just sort of slowly stood at the mic after that. I couldn't see his face, but his entire body just sort of slumped. The person in the other aisle just quietly said "I think you answered my question already" and went back to his seat. The theater was pitch quiet, Lucas had turned back to face the center of the theater and took a sip of water, and the professor just sort of slowly walked forward and said "If there are no more questions, lets take our break and start the film in ten minutes."

People slowly shuffled out of the theater. I had to stay in the booth to get things set up, so I never saw Tim's face, but I do know it took him about two minutes before he left that now dead mic on the left aisle. I didn't see anyone in his seat once we got the film going after break. Tim didn't show for the final class, although to be fair there was only one more class left, and that is the one that they screened Episode 1. I can't honestly say I blame him.

I knew a few people who took the class, and I guess Tim turned in his final about thirty minutes into the test. Those finals are two to three hour multi-part essay tests, and you take them in the big theater, so everyone saw him turn it in way, way before anyone else finished. I'd love to have read what he wrote in that bluebook.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2012 16:03

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Granted if I made a film about revolutionary social change and the thing that viewers took from it is how to calculate the diameter of the Death Star and what color swords there are I'd be a bit frustrated too.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2012 17:13

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Or than Han and Chewie aren't people.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2012 05:16

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

It was an impressive marketing campaign for a overlong commercial for more commercials.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2013 18:22

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Star Wars is essentially about class struggle and the need for revolutionary politics. The prequel sort of underlines this regarding the utter failure (and ultimate corruption) of liberalism.

edit: And calling Lucas dumb is pretty absurd. The story first told on this forum about his Q&A will forever be proof to me on that.

Danger fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Jan 30, 2013

# ¿ Jan 30, 2013 21:43

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

ReV VAdAUL posted:

Not to be facetious but how does the extremely aggressive merchandising tie into such a message?

If anything the merchandising is simply an appropriation of the film and shouldn't influence any singular reading of the text. That's not to say it shouldn't be considered, but the radical message in Star Wars is pretty apparent within the film regardless of toys being sold. I can't say that Lucas has any sort of enthusiasm for this appropriation either. In fact, he seems to disdain it. For instance: "They died".

# ¿ Jan 31, 2013 04:01

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

GORDON posted:

I think I disagree. "The Force" and Jedis were never a religion or into mysticism, that was just Han Solo's cynical opinion in Ep4. The Jedi weren't worshiping any invisible sky people. "The Force" obviously existed, and could be objectively demonstrated in the real world. What the prequels did is delve into the mechanics of it and clumsily try to deconstruct it with the finesse of a bull in a China shop.

Now drat you, sir, for giving me an opening to defend the prequels, which I will hate until the Moon turns to dust and the birds sing no more.

People still use the 'sky wizard' pejorative with a straight face? There is something delightful about this in the context of discussing the symbolic nature (and I guess legitimacy?) of religion in Star Wars.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2013 15:05

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Abrams was a good choice considering the EU it seems.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2013 21:58

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Alchenar posted:

The original trilogy had an adolescent Luke being plunged into a conflict he wasn't psychologically prepared for. The prequels showed us what the Jedi are like having grown up in peace and having stagnated.

For a decade post 9/11 Star Wars sequel I'd like to see what a generation of Jedi who have grown up knowing nothing but (the Galactic Civil) war look like. My three film outline would be to follow a group of Luke's first students (and let's have the backdrop being something akin to Thrawn's great counter-attack, because he's a decent villain template), have one of them fall to the dark side at the end of the first film and then spend the next two films trying to kill/redeem him.

End with an uplifting 'love your enemy' message.

Or show how the 'light side' and adherence to such a dichotomy and denial of ideology (it is wrong to inform yourself with emotion and conviction) is the more insidious choice. The prequels did that quite a bit already though.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2013 16:19

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Nessus posted:

I believe the underlying message of this entire sequence is that you can't trust criminals, and if anything, the Emperor and Lord Vader were too merciful. (Perhaps they were tainted by their unnatural powers. The only sane users of these powers would appear to be Kreia and, perhaps, Qui-Gon Jinn, who at least attempted to comprehend them using rational inquiry and the scientific method, viz. the midichloran tests.) I would say it is quite reasonable to say from this that George Lucas feels we should use atomic bombs on the Middle East (Tatooine) to stop the criminals and terrorists at their apparent source.

Star Wars is certainly concerned with the necessity of revolutionary resistance to objective violence, but I don't think it leads to the conclusions you draw here. The 'midochloridian' inquiry is a condemnation of that sort of blind rationality and a part of the wider criticism of the sort of "non-ideology" of the Jedi order and the liberal republic.

Star Wars pretty overtly asserts the righteousness of the insurgency against imperialist hegemony. The prequels were then made in light of the 30 years of fan reaction and dissolving of the radical message into franchise, a process of reterritorialization.

Danger fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Mar 1, 2013

# ¿ Feb 28, 2013 17:39

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

jivjov posted:

Er, Jabba is a crime lord and Greedo is a bounty hunter (a profession that in the Star Wars universe seems to be exclusively reserved for evil/dark side/bad guy activity). Hardly representatives or officers of the law.

The law is subject to the financiers and not the other way around. People would never dream of supporting imprisoning debtors or indenturing women, and yet:

David Graeber posted:

The IMF (International Monetary Fund) and what they did to countries in the Global South�which is, of course, exactly the same thing bankers are starting to do at home now�is just a modern version of this old story. That is, creditors and governments saying you�re having a financial crisis, you owe money, obviously you must pay your debts. There�s no question of forgiving debts. Therefore, people are going to have to stop eating so much. The money has to be extracted from the most vulnerable members of society. Lives are destroyed; millions of people die. People would never dream of supporting such a policy until you say, �Well, they have to pay their debts.�

Then Jabba is garroted by one of his slaves.

Danger fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Nov 20, 2015

# ¿ Feb 28, 2013 17:46

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Perhaps its not quite anger, but utter disappointment and frustration.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2013 16:44

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

The best possible outcome would be for Abrams to do the reboot thing again, or at the very least stick to the critical view of horrible fan universe stuff.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2013 14:08

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Well, reboot or sequel or whatever it's the idea of 'canon' itself that is the problem and antithetic to what made the original so resounding.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2013 14:57

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

There was a really decent conversation about the existence of the EU completely missing the point of the original, radical politics of the first film late last year. I've gone back to SMG's words on it a couple times because he really captured it well in this post (and which I hope he doesn't mind reposting):

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Obsessive fandom (of the sort that results in Wookiepedia) is fueled by fantasy of total positive knowledge. Star Wars fans desire 'answers' that will provide a complete picture of the Star Wars virtual universe, so that its entire teleological design can be fully comprehended. (What are the clone wars, how did Yoda use a lightsaber, etc.) Since no such design actually exists, the point of fandom is the desiring itself. Fans do not 'actually' want these answers. It's just endless desire. And Lucasarts has gladly catered to with the endless supply of tantalizing 'Expanded Universe' materials cataloged as Wookiepedia.

With the midichlorians (and showing the 'actual' Clone War, and showing the 'actual' Jedi Order, etc.) the prequels confront fans with their desire, fully materialized in a horrifically literal fashion. The point is to break them away from the fantasy of total knowledge and (hopefully) spur them towards authentic appreciation of the original films as pop mythology.

The true lesson of the midichlorians is that Qui-Gon is a lovely Jedi and that the true path of the Jedi is in belief in the force, not in vulgar knowledge of it. The message to fans is, likewise, that Wookiepedia is garbage and anathema to what Star Wars is actually about.

Danger fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Apr 5, 2013

# ¿ Apr 5, 2013 17:25

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

I don't see how Padme is shown as heroic in any way. In Star Wars, Princess Leia shrugged off her aristocracy to join a revolutionary revolt, routinely casting herself as guerilla fighter and slave in solidarity. Padme very clearly represented the insidious betrayal of liberal democracy that eventually sold out to outright fascism (as liberals are wont to do).

# ¿ Jun 2, 2013 02:03

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

I think oftentimes people lack the language to discuss the reactions (emotional, ideological, visceral) they have from the films (or many other 'franchise' films) and so it gets reduced to an error or accomplishment of plotting by the writer.

Space scientists hired by a mega corporation are dumb is bad writing and not political statement.
Star Trekkers engaging in asymmetrical warfare instead of slow-paced submarine battles is dumb writing and not historical reflection.
Transforming the quasi-Taoist mystical space magic into positivist mumbo jumbo is dumb writing and not ideological critique.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2013 17:10

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Colonel Whitey posted:

The problem here is that if you only engage films in this way then you fall into the trap of having your assessment of the film's quality completely dependent upon whether you agree with its political and ideological bent. When you do this you render discussion pointless because you're viewing the film through your own individual lens that nobody else can see through. Films have elements that are interpreted through ones own biases (themes, politics) that are worth discussing but they also have elements that are observable in a more unbiased way and are also worth discussing (plot, dialog, cinematography, etc.). What makes good discussion is talking about how well and in what ways the latter supports the former, instead of making a judgment on a film purely based on the former, which is how it seems some people here like to approach film. Basically what I'm saying is, a movie can check all the boxes of your personal ideology but still be a bad movie.

For the record I love Prometheus but hate the SW prequels.

I'm not arguing that a film has to be ideologically pure or anything, but that those elements being discussed only in terms of plotting is reductive. Saying that a part of the text of a film is "just bad writing" isn't really discussing it or engaging with it. "Jar Jar is stupid and lazy writing" isn't really meaningful.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2013 20:59

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

It was one of the scenes that hinted at the more apparent sexual relationship between Luke and the droids that was excised shortly after filming wrapped.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2013 19:00

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

What is a Star Wars movie?

# ¿ Nov 6, 2013 20:21

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Star Trek '09 and ID weren't so much love letters as they were overtly about Star Trek and the construction of cultural narratives and media as hyperstition, criticizing the formulation of universal canon (the brightness of the new history was overtly artificial and false even in it's construction, e.g. lens flare). Likewise, the Star Wars pre sequels took a similar critical eye to the appropriation of the original's radical politics.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2013 22:57

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

sassassin posted:

Anakin's dangerous instability and rage is a product of his lack of an extreme political ideology. He is the anti-Luke. Given the choice he would quite happily live on a moisture farm with his wife and (preferably) mother, fixing hover buggies and driving around the dunes, only an accident of birth and circumstance has dropped him in the centre of a galactic war.

This point is similar to Zizek's criticism of Revenge of the Sith:

quote:

Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace gave us a crucial hint as to where to orient ourselves in this melee, specifically, the �Christological� features of the young Anakin (his immaculate conception, his victorious �pod-car� race, with its echoes of the famous chariot race in Ben-Hur, this �tale of Christ�). Since Star Wars� ideological framework is the New Age pagan universe, it is quite appropriate that its central figure of Evil should echo Christ. Within the pagan horizon, the Event of Christ is the ultimate scandal. The figure of the Devil is specific to the Judeo-Christian tradition. But more than that, Christ himself is the ultimate diabolic figure, insofar as diabolos (to separate, to tear apart the One into Two) is the opposite of symbolos (to gather and unify). He brought the �sword, not peace,� in order to disturb the existing harmonious unity. Or, as Christ told Luke: �If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and his mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters�yes even his own life�he cannot be my disciple.� In order for there to be a properly unified �symbolic� community of believers, Christ had to first come and perform the Holy Spirit�s separating �diabolic� founding gesture.

Thus the Christian stance is radically different from the teachings of paganism. In clear contrast to the pagan wisdom that the universe is the abyss of the primordial Ground in which all �false� opposites�Good and Evil, appearance and reality, folly and wisdom, etc.�coincide, Christianity proclaims as the highest action precisely what paganism condemns as the source of all evil�the gesture of separation, of drawing the line, of clinging to an element that disturbs the balance of All.

What this means is that the Buddhist all-encompassing Compassion has to be opposed to the Christian intolerant, violent Love. The Buddhist stance is ultimately that of indifference, of quenching all passions that strive to establish differences, while the Christian love is a violent passion to introduce a difference, a gap in the order of being, to privilege and elevate some object above others. Love is violence not (only) in the vulgar sense of the Balkan proverb, �If he doesn�t beat me, he doesn�t love me!� The choice of love itself is already violent, as it tears an object out of its context and elevates it to the Thing. In Montenegrin folklore, the origin of Evil is a beautiful woman: She makes men lose their balance, she literally destabilizes the universe, coloring all things with a tone of partiality.

And�back to the Revenge of the Sith�the price for the film�s sticking to these same New Age motifs is not only its ideological confusion, but, simultaneously, its inferior narrative quality. These motifs are why Anakin�s transformation into Darth Vader�the series� pivotal moment�lacks the proper tragic grandeur. Instead of focusing on Anakin�s hubris as an overwhelming desire to intervene, to do Good, to go to the end for those he loves and thus fall to the Dark Side, Anakin is simply shown as an indecisive warrior who is gradually sliding into Evil by giving way to the temptation of Power, by falling under the spell of the evil Emperor. In other words, Lucas lacked the nerve to really apply his parallel between the shift of the Republic to Empire and of Anakin to Darth Vader. Anakin should have become a monster out his very excessive attachment with seeing Evil everywhere and fighting it.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2013 20:01

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

cptn_dr posted:

I've been wondering if Zizek had anything to say about Star Wars. What's the source on this, if you don't mind me asking? I'd be interested in reading more of it.

Whoops, here's the link.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2013 20:43

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Zizek's a funny guy.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2013 20:52

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Consider her in contrast to Princess Leia, who shed her uniform of royal aristocracy and joined the people as a revolutionary guerrilla fighter, a bounty hunter, and as a slave. Padme is introduced as discarding her image as a helpful servant and donning a cloak of liberal decadence.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2013 18:25

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Force Powers are what is wrong with Star Wars.

# ¿ Dec 16, 2013 00:34

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Sounds like you need to have your midichlorian levels checked.

# ¿ Dec 16, 2013 00:58

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

RoboticSpaceWizard posted:

2: What kind of racist conflates Jews and Arabs?

So you know that Arab Jews are a population that experiences a great deal of systemic discrimination to this day, right?

# ¿ Dec 17, 2013 17:05

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

RoboticSpaceWizard posted:

Which stereotypes - wealthy, greedy, control the world media, Zionist, wear yarmulkes? On the other hand - want to enforce theocracy, bloodthirsty, breed terrorists?

There isn't any overlap.

So you have no idea what you are talking about, right? Any other conclusion is super hosed up.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2013 03:54

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Darko posted:

The issue is that the idea of a new mother losing the will to live (because her husband turns out to be an rear end in a top hat) immediately after giving birth and seeing her newborn children goes against the laws of common sense so much that it weighs towards parody.

The laws of common sense don't recognize post-partum depression I guess, a clinical diagnosis that affects like 20% of new mothers.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2013 20:00

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Padme's death and implied rejection of her children (and, you know, the whole rest of the films) can only be read as symbolic. It's a fairytale. The EU stuff will never stop being hilarious though.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2013 20:55

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Her death during childbirth is also a hint to fans, a way to reaffirm the radical message of the original films by retroactively asserting the hero and heroine of the originals as a repetition that has produced a radical difference: while Luke and Leia share basic archetypes with their imagined past lives (The Princess, The Black Knight, the legendary sword, the taboo love) the virtual environment in which they repeat has shifted, creating a radical difference. While Padme and Anakin were in service to the stagnating process of liberal democracy, here they exist as revolutionaries fighting waging guerrilla war in the opposite direction. You can see this in the alterations of the original trilogies as well, highlighting the virtual shift.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2013 22:35

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Robotnik Nudes posted:

It's the Holy Spirit

Legit this.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2013 00:43

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Sprecherscrow posted:

I think that having the would-be messiah fall to evil makes it not properly Christological. He redeems himself in the end which is in line with it, but the whole narrative is anti-messianic. The power of friendship is one of two main themes I see in the OT (The folly of putting your faith in technology being the other). The heroes in the OT only succeed by relying on each other.

It is Christological in the sense that his fall represents a violent separation, where the 'balancing the force' isn't a return to some stagnant status quo but a radical difference; the fall itself represents the messianic act in a literal baptism by fire. Love is a violent act and a properly christian act is a commitment to this violent love in the face of all else.

Danger fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Dec 20, 2013

# ¿ Dec 20, 2013 18:06

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Sith Happens posted:

I remember that, and it was written much better than the way it was portrayed in the movie (surprise, surprise). Then later Palpatine plays the audio for the Senate and all to hear. That leads to...

...most of the population absolutely loving Palpatine and viewing him as a galactic savior. All the blame for everything bad was placed squarely on the Jedi, so Palpatine was credited with saving the galaxy from the Jedi [phantom] menace and putting an end to the Clone Wars.

It was all part of the plan.

Vintimus Prime posted:

The way the arrest scene goes in the novel is incredible. Mace and his crew don't know Palpatine is recording the audio, so he makes it sound like an outright assassination attempt while he kills the first 2. After that, he destroys the device and pretty much says well enough of that. I might have to do a re-reading this weekend, it really is a well done story all around.

The earlier comparison between the Force and the christian concept of the Holy Spirit is very apt. In Star Wars, the force is entirely virtual, where it's actual power is represented and sustained by actions and relations between objects. The films position Anakin in the role of Christ--a child who in some way embodies a actual maternal relationship with an essence of pure virtuality--who sheds his physical body in a radical act of becoming:

"What if Christ is an Event in the Deleuzian sense - an occurrence of pure individuality without proper causal power? Which is why Christ suffers, but in a thoroughly impassive way. Christ is "individual" in the Deleuzian sense: he is a pure individual, not characterized by positive properties which would make him "more" than an ordinary human, i.e., the difference between Christ and other humans is purely virtual - back to Schumann, Christ is, at the level of actuality, the same as other humans, only the unwritten "virtual melody" that accompanies him is added. And in the Holy Spirit, we get this "virtual melody" in its own: the Holy Spirit is a collective field of pure virtuality, with no causal power of its own. Christ's death and resurrection is the death of the actual person which confronts us directly with the ("resurrected") virtual field that sustained it. The Christian name for this virtual force is "love": when Christ says to his worried followers after his death "when there will be love between two of you, I will be there," he thereby asserts his virtual status." -Zizek, Deleuze's Platonism

It's no coincidence that Darth Vader's schmaltzy bellow (with direct reference to Frankenstein's monster and shown as a violent distortion in the force) coincides with the birth of Luke Skywalker: It is a repetition of pure difference:

"What directly resonates in this topic is, of course, the Protestant motif of predestination: far from being a reactionary theological motif, predestination is a key element of the materialist theory of sense, on condition that we read it along the lines of the Deleuzian opposition between the virtual and the actual. That is to say, predestination does not mean that our fate is sealed in an actual text existing from eternity in the divine mind; the texture which predestines us belongs to the purely virtual eternal past which, as such, can be retroactively rewritten by our act. This, perhaps, would have been the ultimate meaning of the singularity Christ's incarnation: it is an ACT which radically changes our destiny. Prior to Christ, we were determined by Fate, caught in the cycle of sin and its payment, while Christ's erasing of our past sins means precisely that his sacrifice changes our virtual past andf thus sets us free. When Deleuze writes that "my wound existed before me; I was born to embody it," does this variation on the theme of the Cheshire cat and its smile from Alice in Wonderland (the cat was born to embody its smile) not provide a perfect formula of Christ's sacrifice: Christ was born to embody his wound, to be crucified? The problem is the literal teleological reading of this proposition: as if the actual deeds of a person merely actualize its atemporal-eternal fate inscribed in its virtual idea:

Caesar's only real task is to become worthy of the events he has been created to embody. Amor fati. What Caesar actually does adds nothing to what he virtually is. When Caesar actually crosses the Rubicon this involves no deliberation or choice since it is simply part of the entire, immediate expression of Caesarness, it simply unrolls or 'unfolds something that was encompassed for all times in the notion of Caesar. (Hallward 54)

However, what about the retroactivity of a gesture which (re)constitutes this past itself? This, perhaps, is the most succinct definition of what an authentic ACT is: in our ordinary activity, we effectively just follow the (virtual-fantasmatic) coordinates of our identity, while an act proper is the paradox of an actual move which (retroactively) changes the very virtual "transcendental" coordinates of its agent's being" -ibid.

Anakin-Vader-Luke-Anakin. It is a repetition of the mythic knight reflecting difference as a positive and radical ethical shift. The prequels themselves assume the viewer is aware of the outcome, the future is already located in the past as the OT was screened before many die hard fans were born. It is then the ending of RotS, showing Vader's virtual becoming, that illicits a re-writing of the past; a repetition where the past is already itself a purely virtual reflection of difference:

"This logic of virtual difference can also be discerned in another paradox, namely the above mentioned cinema version of Billy Bathgate is basically a failure, but an interesting one: a failure which nonetheless evokes in the viewer the specter of the much better novel. However, when one then goes to read the novel on which the film is based, one is disappointed - this is NOT the novel the film evoked as the standard with regard to which it failed. The repetition (of a failed novel in the failed film) thus gives rise to a third, purely virtual, element, the better novel. This is an exemplary case of what Deleuze deploys in the crucial pages of his Difference and Repetition:

while it may seem that the two presents are successive, at a variable distance apart in the series of reals, in fact they form, rather, two real series which coexist in relation to a virtual object of another kind, one which constantly circulates and is displaced in them /.../. Repetition is constituted not from one present to another, but between the two coexistent series that these presents form in function of the virtual object (object = x).(DR-104-105)

With regard to Billy Bathgate the film does not "repeat" the novel on which it is based; rather, they both "repeat" the unrepeatable virtual x, the "true" novel whose specter is engendered in the passage from the actual novel to the film. This virtual point of reference, although "unreal," is in a way more real than reality: it is the ABSOLUTE point of reference of the failed real attempts. This is how, in the perspective of the materialist theology, the divine emerges from the repetition of terrestrial material elements, as their "cause" retroactively posited by them. Deleuze is right to refer to Lacan here: this "better book" is what Lacan calls objet petit a, the object-cause of desire that "one cannot recapture in the present, except by capturing it in its consequences," the two really-existing books." -ibid.

So in short, fans actually really love the pre-sequels and edits.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2013 19:18

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Hbomberguy posted:

hahahhahaha

I'm not joshin, friend. True fans necessarily appreciate the Star Wars project as a (w)hole concept; that is the totality of the unending artistic work and as a critique of history in the vein of Negarestani's ()hole complex. The only thing I'd slightly disagree on in the last passage is Zizek's all too parallel comparison of Deleuze's repetition and difference as some sort of Platonic ideal, but Zizek's whole schtick is to purposefully misread Deleuze.

edit: I would also venture a guess that this is why it seems likely that only children (not man-) can be True Star Wars fans.

Danger fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Dec 20, 2013

# ¿ Dec 20, 2013 20:34

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Star Wars has countless pasts, presents, and futures. The past is an essentializing condition of the Force, an entirely virtual conception of the present. These aren't the droids you're looking for.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2013 22:56

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

When has spectral evidence ever led anyone astray?

# ¿ Dec 21, 2013 04:20

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 20:51

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

The virtual history of the special editions exist as an example of hyperstition, perhaps not factual but nonetheless true; more so than the original trilogy. The primal consideration of the theatrical OT comes from considering the nature of it's difference with the special editions; wherein lies the core of Lucas's idea of the Force and where the consequences of our commitments react back onto our past as a universal law of motion. Where history subsists as an immanent aspect of the present.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2013 05:47

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