Star Wars: Dystopia or Tragedy? (And is there a difference?)

Wow, long title.
Daddy and I went to see Star Wars tonight. We did this for several reasons:
1) We always go to major sci fi movies together as bonding time
2) I promised him 2 years ago that I would be in Ohio to see the final Star Wars with him
3) Anakin Skywalker is hot, Vader or not.

(Dad is exempt from number 3)

But as per usual, he and I did not sit there like the dummy kids next to us (two boys aged 17ish, major idiots, and not in the good Red Sox idiot way), but instead spent the 20 minutes prior to the film in our bad seats discusing the possibilities of the film. As with Kari, I jokingly asked him, "So, do you think he'll choose the Dark Side or the Light Side?"

As Kari did, he paused and looked at me as though I were the stupid kid next to me, who had by this point, scooted down so far in his seat that I was a head taller than him, and he spread his legs so wide that he looked like he had been riding an elephant for three days. I considered asking the kid if he would mind getting out of my personal space (or if I could perhaps drape my leg over his), but instead interrupted my father's insult-to-be by saying: "I know. I'm trying to make a point."

Who is the hero?
This question remains unanswered for me. Daddy and I attempted several guesses (including Yoda), but could not answer this until we decided whether to take the film as episodic or serial.

The genre of the film makes it difficult to determine the hero. Episode II and part of Episdoe III certainly contain "dystopian energies." A sense of impending doom, complicated government over throwing, rebellions, blah blah blah. It's the hero question that bothers me almost more than the chronology.

If I call Star Wars Episdoes I-VI "dystopian," then I am designating a special form of tragedy, a special postmodern form of tragedy that questions destiny and the ability of individuals to move against greater Forces (yes, I know). And if I designate it a dystopia, then there are requirements for the hero (according to me).

Luke Skywalker seems to fit these requirements fairly well. Taken as a single unit, the first (second?) trilogy Lucas released, episdoes IV-VI easily comprise the dystopian genre I initially outlined in my honors project. But what do we do with the second (first?) trilogy?

In dystopias, the "back story" of how the dystopian state arrived is often told in flashback, through a character I called the "Enlightener." Usually, the enlightener is the "magical helper." Sometimes, the enlightener is the leader of the State. When Obi Wan fills Luke in on The Force, he is enlightening. When Darth Vader tells Luke, "I am your father," he is enlightening. As a unit, the first released trilogy works as dystopian.

But now, now in a time of greater technological advancement, the back story is released as its own story and elevated to the status of explicit narrative. The completed sextilogy (is that even a word?) asks us to see it as a whole, or at least two halves which complement each other. We cannot read one without the other, not now.

And this second (first?) trilogy has those tingles of dystopian melancholy because of its chronological complexity. Is it first or second? Is it now or then? What does this say about destiny and possibility?

We cannot ignore that we knew Anakin Skywalker's fate from Episdoe I--that cute little kid was destined to kill millions. So why tell the back story? Lucas says it's just a story about a father and a son coming to know each other. But, as my father pointed out in less lit crit terms, even if this were Lucas's intent, the story has built into it other concerns. The confusion of the death drive and eros was particularly emphasized in this film. The "code" of the Jedi and the code of the samurai's of Japan's late feudal era (pre 1865). Power versus love.

And, to be American, the ability of an individual to overcome tyrany.

The constant mentions of democracy and "republic" remind us that this film was originally begun in Cold War American, and is finished in the midst of our bloody and equally ridiculous War on Terror (eek! Terror! Somebody go shoot the terror down!). The cultural changes (or not?) make me read the democracy/tryany opposition with a certain wince. Even as Dad leaned over to whisper "Hitler" at some points, I leaned over to whisper "Bush." I think we were both right. He certainly didn't argue with me when Anakin said "If you're not with me, then you're my enemy."

Star Wars will hit its 30th birthday in 2007. It is difficult for me to imagine a generation so engulfed in pop culture (like Dad's) and news and war and the effect that Star Wars had on their "ideological becoming" (Bakhtin's word). What about generations before them? After? What do you do when one of the defining narratives of a generation is dystopian?

Or, perhaps, simply tragic?

Tragedy itself allows more for a hero who is not just a goofy screw up (that's like Winston in 1984), but who has been deceived--someone good at heart, but twisted by some accidental, or coincidental happening. Think Oedipus here (and wow, could we make some massive comparisons). None of it was his fault.

But tragedies are individualistic in that the tragic events usually only "affect" the hero. We identify so soley with the hero that the deaths/plague/etc that emerge from his tragedy seem like side notes. In dystopias, it is the mass of people and their collectively tragic states that takes the stage. The tragedy in dystopias is already present. In tragedy, we watch it unfold.

Which makes me want to label this second (first?) trilogy a tragedy. Like all tragedies, the audience is aware of the destiny of the hero; we know he will fall. We watch it for the cultural lessons we can learn; like dystopias, tragedies are important because their hopelessness leads (hopefully) to action/attitude on the part of the audience. We see where the hero should have done something different, the one place where he could have changed his fate, and make notes to ourselves: Don't trust men in black cloaks.

I jest about the black cloaks, of course. I'm not sure exactly what the "representative anecdote" (K Burke) of this tragedy was. Calling it a tragedy does allow us to give the title of hero to Anakin/Darth Vader. Calling it a tragedy separates it from the "comedy" of the first(second) trilogy where the tiny, fuzzy Ewoks save the galaxy. American dystopias are comedies.

And if we separate them, what becomes of the series as a whole? If we were to watch all six episodes, how should we do it--Do we begin with I or IV? Do we end it as tragedy with episode III or comedy with episdoe VI? The choice here is important--now that we have both halves, indivuduals can choose how to read the epic. This is a performative. It is Act. Act is good.

I can't help but remember, however, how each episode begins. Star Wars, remember, does not happen in the future as most sci fi does, but in the past, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. There is never any immediacy for the American audience in the 21st century.

Then again, now that 1984 has come and gone, it, too, has less exigency.

I'm going around in circles. Despite the organized sounding title of this post, I really have no idea what I think about all of this. But I thought I'd write it down before I forgot the lines of argument that were being stubornly curvacious.

May the Force be with me...and you, whoever you are. (indeterminate audience makes for weird rhetorical situation--Bitzer)

Amy's endless waltz

The Endless Waltz is the subtitle of one of the Gundam series, I think. Gundam makes my nerve endings tingle because it is so different, so big, so full that I can't think all that I want to think about it at once.
Thinking several things at a time is no problem. I remember the first time I did it--it was during the "Otis-Lenon Test" (at least, that's what it sounded like to my little flightly ears. It might have been Otis-Lemon, or OTIS-Lennon or any variation in between that makes phonemic sense) in third grade. It was something like (something like something like) an IQ test, with those fascinating shaded boxes and triangles and word problems and inversions of 3-D images that our brains had to do. Some kids cried. I finished early.
Daddy used to play those games with me for fun. They are fun.
The answers to fill in were obvious to me before I finished reading the question. Once (okay, probably more than once), I chanced a glance around the room--fobidden!--to ease my neck muscles. I remember how Eric Yoder (yes, Yoder) sat with his leftarm stretched across the desk, left ear on elbow crook, right hand five inches from his face, eyes just about closed. I remember standing up once or twice in excitement. Nerves? Or is it like when I'm typing a paper and it's not happening at the speed of my thoughts? Freshman year of college I used to walk up and down the hall bouncing one of those Super Bouncy Balls, talking to myself, focusing on the sound of the pounding and not the multiple noises of fragmented thoughts. Too many possible directions. Writing is linear.
Multiple choice is linear. They probably would have sent me to the principle's office if I hadn't been an otherwise good kid. I think that's when I took to tying strings around my finger, to remind myself to sit still, to give my hands something to do, to focus the noise. I probably am hyperactive, minus the active part.
We are probably all hyperactive. The new commercials for adult ADD have me convinced of this. The myth of the productive, diligent worker (the pervading Puritan ideologies that clash with post modernism) continues to control things it shouldn't control. Of course, my desire to control my own ideologies is also a product of that ideology. We waltz again, repeat the coda. One two three.
One two three.
That, of course, was not the point of this post. The point was to say something about how I am still scrolling through internet sites, here the 19th of May (yes, Star Wars), clicking and linking and making favorites and deleting and other Ing words. Getting nowhere but to the Stoodt's Market in Bellville, where people stared at me. Granted, my hair was unwashed from the Budokon of the night before, and I was wearing a sweater with an inquisitive beaver on it, but that is no reason to stare.
Damn, I miss Boston.
I was right, when I thought that a city would afford me the annonymity I desire. It felt good to get lost for a while. And being back here for two weeks, no longer lost (once was lost, now am found) has me antsy again. I'm done being found.
So I search online for apartments to appease mother's anxieties. I email Purdue daily to appease my own. I try to let myself enjoy movies without thought.
It all ends up looping back anyway, and I have the urge to write about Gundam, or how Barnes and Noble have rearranged their shelving to allow for twice the number of Manga and graphic novels. I think about Star Wars and the fandom it spawned and my own fandom and the multiplicity of fandoms--no one is just a Star Wars fan, or just a DBZ fan.
Can you overload a fan? Is this psychosis a real necessity? What happened before media? What about Homer?
I'm reading an InuYasha fanfic that has finally been updated. I plan on nominating it for next quarter. I'm a member. The emails tell me so.

Animerica (tm)

[adultswim] announced part of its new lineup for summer. As usual, I am both excited and disappointed.
Taking the place of Trigun . (Good bye Vash; we'll see you when they need to fill slots again) will be FULL METAL ALCHEMIST (seasons 1 and 2). Woohoo, I say. Now, if you would all kindly translate the next 13 episodes, so we know who the hell Al meant by "Teacher?!" I will stop writing angry posts to adultswim.com message boards.
Taking the place of the Big O (insert required euphemism here) will be GitS: SAC (for those not in the loop, that's Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex which ended its run Saturday the 14th with the culminating episode wherein the Laughing Man is offered a job at Section 9, but turns it down. Everyone is alive and well, except the Tachikomas, which were never really alive, but are now definitely not well. They are in tiny Tachikoma pieces in a forest.
I just like saying "Tachikoma." Say it out loud. Ta-Chi-Ko-Ma. I can write that in hiragana.
I am special.
Adding on to [as] another hour has allowed them to bring back Lupin III and Case Closed/Detective Conan . So, if you're up at 5 am and bored, those are good, episodic little things to get you awake while your coffee brews.
Speaking of which, I've got 2 pounds of Kona just sitting here....and no coffee maker to be found in my car. Please don't tell me I left it in Boston!

Kono Ai-wo kese-wa shinai.
(this love will never die)
Kono Amylea...What is this Amylea doing? Waiting for May to pass into June, again.

In the Garden, In the Garden!

That book by that lady...Frances Somebody, with the girl from India named Mary popped into my head as I was reading Haruki Murakami's South of the Border, West of the Sun. And I started to write. I can't even tell what's good anymore.


"What you want to say is that the cement that makes you up has hardened, so the you you are now can't be anyone else."

"If you want a cat, all you have to do is choose a life in which you can have a cat. It's simple. It's your right...right?" (Windup Bird Chronicle)

Right. Simple.


      Just when I let myself relax into his prose, Murakami surprises me with a strange turn. It's not Vonnegutian. It's not even Pinter-esque. Is it Japanese? And if so, why? Is there really a difference between East and West?
      Does this have something to do with why I cry now at the end of Sex and the City? Is it the Pill or is it me? That's not nihilistic--I'm still asking "to be" questions.

Sitting there, marinating in coffee, I can almost feel it at the base of my spine. They did not remove it after all, when they laid me out too flat. It retreated for a time to tingle in solitude somewhere so centered that it was outside completely.




Waiting at B-Dub's

A murder of new ones tests the air. It's all pomp from here to the ocean--flight aside, they equate love with nearness and the scent of beer. Inspiration ruffles some feathers and we find it is easier to just enter than to wait to not be alone in the 11 o'clock hour. Bad noise under their ruby throats, they flick off the snow. I hope to sing, too, one day.

Post from Miami

Unfortunately, I mean Miami, OH.
Miami makes me think of miasma, which InuYasha has been using wrong in translation. Miasma is a gaseous substance that is thick and confusing. In InuYasha, "miasma" is the green poisonous gas let out by Naraku (evil trademark goes here).
We ate "Vietnamese" and I did not get sick. Apparently the trick is to eat crackers and drink enough water to pee out the Arctic Ocean.
And now, I'm typing on a Mac (shh, don't tell Gregg), feeling happy and content.
"We can say 'Vagina Monologues'--what's wrong with that word?" Tracey Ullman, Tonight Show.

The Vagina Monolgues reminds me of Anna Gleisberg, who is now basking in Hawaii.

I want a puppy. That will aid Derrida, perhaps Burke. But not Nature. Nature is never silenced.

There was a moment that I almost turned around. I-90 is monochrome, the rest stops filing away the miles. Somewhat missing, gutteral fricatives, those extra noises we used to make have revived with the long sleep long needed. The rocket tree, easily maneuvered, waits for earth to disolve.