Interesting Jedi article on Star Wars and gender (among other things)

[DevP]

I'm always impressed by Strange Horizons, but I really liked this article on Revenge of the Seth: We Must Love One Another or Die.

The article takes a lot of swings at what's wrong with Lucas's prescription of Jedi morality. Sometimes it swings a bit wild, but I appreciated a lot of problems with the kind of heroic fantasy, and the punitive nature of that ethos.

So I'm saying, read this article and it should get your mind running for Banthas in the Vineyard.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Thanks for the link. In watching the new Stars Wars films (once apiece; repeat viewings are too painful), I was repeatedly struck by the godawful repressiveness of the Jedi Order they portray: no parents (since you're inducted as children), no lovers (viz Padme Amidalla), no children, no love, no hate, no grief, no freedom -- just power and duty. (These are the guardians of democracy? These are people who say "trust your feelings"?).

For what it's worth, it's interesting in this context to revist Yoda's clashes with Luke in the original series, because Luke consistently goes with his heart over his head, love over power: he tries to rescue his friends instead of continuing his training, he tries to redeem his father instead of hiding from him or killing him -- indeed, in the first movie, he chooses to trust the disembodied voice of somebody he loves who's died and turn off his targeting computer. Han and Leia consistently make heart-over-head choices too, and they almost always work out (Premise!). One of my great disappointments with the new trilogy is that Lucas seems to reverse himself and say, well, maybe love will destroy you after all, or not, or maybe -- the Premise goes all over the place.

All of which is to say: For all the difficulties I have with the moral code of the Faith in Dogs in the Vineyard, I find it vastly more human and appealing than the Jedi.

[Brand_Robins]

All of which is to say: For all the difficulties I have with the moral code of the Faith in Dogs in the Vineyard, I find it vastly more human and appealing than the Jedi.

The only way I was able to watch the most recent trilogy without puking was to assume (though I knew it was probably false) that Lucas was showing the Jedi as a fallen and oppresive relic of a once-great order and that Yoda was as responsbile as the Emperor for bringing about the birth of DV. Seen from that angle it became an (almost) interesting story about how adherance to doctrine, any doctrine, over that of the call of the heart inevitably leads to corruption -- with the Sith and Jedi not being opposites, but just dualistic manifestations of the same inevitable slide to decay.

Which, to turn this back to Dogs and Banthas, is something that one might want to use as grist for the conflict and character mill. When caught between doctrine and the heart, which do you follow and when and why? To make Banthas work the way Dogs does you have to have Jedi who do not have Yoda always looking over their shoulder, who have an ability to actually make decisions between the two rather than simply being tossed back and forth between demons and temple.

Or, to put it another way, there is a damn good reason why in Dogs the temple is way the hell over there and the Dogs are out here all alone.