I'm going to start with two things.
One, I'm going to suggest that the answer of what to do about current
politics is deceivingly simple. Two, I'm going to talk about Star
Wars. Stick with me, because these things are related.
When I saw The Last Jedi, the seventh
sequel, or the eighth movie in the series, or whatever it is, there
was a point where I started to lose interest. Yes, the Rebels (or the
Resistance) are noble in their quest to confront and wage war with
the evil Empire...or the First Order, or whatever it's now called.
It's just that it's all too familiar. The (chronologically) first
Star Wars movie set basic plot lines the other movies followed,
sometimes to a fault. The first sequel (The Empire Strikes Back) made
history by ending on a down note, and the next (Return of the Jedi)
made another kind of history, ending on a happy note:
Return of the Jedi is where we get
Princess Leia's “sex slave” outfit, which is the origin of the
name of my first novel, Sex Slaves from Galaxy Seven. It's a comedy.
And a romance. But not a romantic comedy in the cinematic sense of
the phrase...more of a satire in the style of Kurt Vonnegut, John
Barth, Tom Robbins, Douglas Adams, Christopher Moore, etc. But I
digress...
This latest movie, The Last Jedi, was
all too familiar not only because the films have similar story arcs,
but because a lot of the political nuances in the film was happening
in real time, in the US and abroad. Okay, so after the first three
movies, we get the prequels, whose sole purpose is to tell us how
“good” Anakin Skywalker turned into the “evil” Darth Vader. I
expected something along the lines of the fall of Michael Corleone in
the Godfather, but no. It turns out that the Jedi don't really have
an existential grip on things, and some guy who proclaims to be evil
can just turn a normally good guy evil with a few well-placed
cackles. You can read the commentary on that, of how silly the plot
is of the Revenge of the Sith in my novel, Sex Slaves from GalaxySeven, where two space monks discuss just how preposterous it would
be for that sort of thing to happen. And then, you know, more
interesting stuff happens. In my novel, not in Revenge of the Sith,
because by that time the movie is over.
How would I have written the fall of
Anakin Skywalker? you ask. Easy. Just create a romantic tryst between
Obi -Wan Kenobi and Padmé
Amidala, somewhere in the second or third prequel. They are friends,
having bonded from the first prequel, where Anakin is still just a
boy. So Amidala goes to Kenobi for support because Anakin is acting
weird, spending too much time with Palpatine, and there you go.
Amidala realizes that Anakin Skywalker is a whiney little bitch who
is about to sell out everything good, and everything he loves, just
because he had a bad dream. Both Amidala and Kenobi try to bring him
back from Palpatine's influence, he gets jealous, feels betrayed, and
attacks Kenobi, who ultimately whips his ass.
What is lacking in the movie is any
motivation on Anakin's part. What we need is some reason where the
audience can say, okay, the guy has some reason for going to the dark
side. We still know he's evil, but we have a level of sympathy for
him. Have him face off with Obi-Wan first, and get burned half to
death. Then, when he's rebuilt as a cyborg, he hears that Amidala has
died, and he blames the Jedi Order. He then goes in to the temple, as
Darth Vader, and murders all the “younglings,” the children
learning to one day become a Jedi. Now he's a murderer, and the
transformation to evil is complete.
But no. In the movie, he kills all the
children first, simply because his new mentor told him to. His new
mentor, of course, being an evil Sith lord bent on taking over the
galaxy. And then Amidala and Kenobi confront him, trying to save him,
after he's already comitted genocide for no real reason. So what we
end up with is the only guy (so far) in the series who gets laid –
the only one who gets married – is the one guy who turns evil.
Sure, Han Solo and Leia Organa later on have a child, but that child
turns evil. It's almost as if George Lucas and/or Disney have weird
ideas about sex and romance.
So we finally get to the movies after
Return of the Jedi, with The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, and
what do we find? Years after Solo, Organa, and Luke Skywalker save
the galaxy, it's all messed up again. Some new evil government is in
power, weilding a leadership of two more Siths (including ex-Jedi Ben
Solo), and here we go again with the resisting and rebelling,
fighting for democracy while, here in real life, the populist
demagogue who is supposed to be President threatens the free press
while his critics declare proof that he's committed treason. There
are people on both sides, and we're supposed to engage in lively but
civil debate about the future of our government.
But wait, wait – even if you support
the Republicans in power, you're wondering why everyone is so
hostile. And I think they have a point. After all, Ben Solo is on
point, in that the Jedi have done everything wrong. The “dark side”
of the force always seems to be stronger, and the supposedly good
people are always struggling against those in power. What's the
difference, really, between a rebel and a terrorist? What made Han
Solo so cool is that he was a pirate. He didn't even try to follow
the rules; he just did his thing. That's what made Boba Fett so cool,
also: here was a bounty hunter operating on his own terms, not some
tool for the Empire or the Rebels.
So we're supposed to get along. We're
supposed to sit down with the other side and reason with them,
convince them that these Sith lords are bad people, as if it wasn't
already obvious. And by the time we get to the Last Jedi, I've about
had enough, because all these First Order guys were, in some way or
another, put into office. There are millions of people in the galaxy
that either voted them in, or supported them financially, or, perhaps
they just abstained from voting at all. And so the future of the
galaxy depends on a handful of rebels? They're going to save
everyone? What's the point?
Sure, there will be another movie.
Probably several more. Part Nine (IX) will be in theaters at some
point, and it will be entertaining, as they all are. But I just can't
support the Rebel/Resistance anymore. They've won so many wars,
literally decades of star wars, and humans just keep going back to
being evil and stupid. We need a new tactic, I think, and that's
where apathy comes in.
Caring isn't bad, it's just that we
have to have a sense of humor about everything. We need to be a
little less like the Avengers and a little more like Deadpool.
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