EPISODE 124: A NEW NEW HOPE

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

I have Darth Vader’s head in my closet.

Okay, that’s not exactly true. But having written that sentence I’m pretty pleased with the idea.

I mean, where did Kylo Ren even get his grandfather’s head? It’s one of “The Force Awakens”’ unanswered questions, along with why is Princess Leia not running the universe and why is so much time spent having minor characters say how great Poe Dameron flies. We have eyes of our own. And it’s Oscar Isaac, for God’s sake. The man can put on fifty pounds and a gross beard, dance with robots and we’re like “Yeah, more of that.” He’s fine. Poe Dameron is fine. Leave it alone.

(It might be worth saying, I have some Poe Dameron issues. As in, he doesn’t talk like he’s in Star Wars. He's way too buddy-buddy-affirmation-and-emotion bro. He needed a scene with Han Solo so that Han Solo could show him what Star Wars looks and sounds like. Pull back on the stick, Poe. You’re trying too hard.

Also, he disappears for half the movie and all we get for an explanation is “it took a while”? Like, maybe if he had been frozen in carbonite -- and I wish he were because then he couldn’t emote all over us. Although he’d probably be frozen with some weirdly empathetic smile on his face, and then I’d have to stand up in a crowded theater and start shouting “No” and “Wrong”.

You don’t get to have everyone say you’re a big deal and then not be onscreen for like an hour. Nobody cares that you like to make an entrance, or needed product for your hair. Get it together.)

Seriously, how much time did he spend putting himself together for the Resistance yearbook photo?

So anyway, Vader's head: given that Kylo had to get it from somewhere, why couldn’t it have come from my closet?

And truth be told, I’ve had mie VaderNoggin (for those who speak German) pretty much since the original trilogy came out.

So, yeah. There you go. I have Darth Vader’s head in my closet. It's still smoking.

Oh, and it’s filled with Star Wars action figures.

What was the deal with action figures? Not today’s oh-so-happy Pop Dolls or those Tiny Timelord figures that they have for Doctor Who. I’m talking old school action figures here, with limbs that don’t twist at the joints and holes in their feet so you could make them stand on the different Star Wars play sets, like Hoth or the Droid Factory or the Millennium Falcon.

I had (or as my mother likes to remind me from time to time, have) a ton of them. And I remember very happily collecting them. I think from time to time I would set them up. But I don’t think I was ever one of those kids who would “play Star Wars”, holding action figures in their hands and having them say stuff like “Hey, Chewie, what was the deal with that punk they were all talking about, Poe Dameron, he seemed like someone running from a sense of his own inadequacy, amirite?” and “GRRRRRRRR”.

I’m sure part of the reason I wanted them was as a collector. I mean, what serious Star Wars fan has the original Han Solo but not Cloud City Han Solo? Please.

At some point along the way I ended up losing my original R2-D2 and thinking it wasn’t a big deal because I had “built” my own in the Droid Factory. Older Me is still angry at (Stupid) (Embarrassing) (Star Wars Failure) Young Me for that bit of utter foolishness. (I now have a correct-sized Artoo who whistles when you push a button his front. And I like it a lot. But still, if I let myself start to think about the fact that it is not an original Artoo I can lose a whole day.)

Yeah, collecting was definitely part of it, although not with the intent of ever selling them. This is the 70s and 80s, remember. We didn’t abide by any of this “Hey, no, it belongs in its packaging!” nonsense – at least not those of us who were kids.

But looking back I wonder if I collected them mostly because of what they represented, a whole universe of interesting creatures and things. Like for some reason as I’m writing this I keep thinking about this guy.

Yep, Walrusman. (Who has since been given the name Ponda Baba; whatever, George Lucas. On the original Kenner action figure packaging you called him Walrusman, so he's Walrusman.)

Walrusman has about fifteen seconds in the Mos Eisley cantina in the original Star Wars (actually, [adult swim] did this excellent “Day in the life of Ponda Baba” that you really need to watch about that scene). And that’s all we ever see him.

And while I can’t say he was ever one of those characters I thought “Man, I wish I could know more”, still, a universe with drunk, belligerent Walrusmen walking around in it is pretty cool, you know?

Or IG-88, the scary looking robot bounty hunter. Or the floppy eared green dancer in Jabba’s Palace (who I think I have previously mentioned I’m pretty sure was a spy for some group, maybe the police, and things went very very badly). Or ships like Luke’s X-Wing and the Millennium Falcon. For me, they all sort of point to the magic of the universe, how much there is out there to see.

That’s the thing about “Star Wars” that Episodes I-III mostly forgot – even when it goes dark, it is an essentially hopeful story, in that it reveals a much bigger and more interesting world. I got the chance to see “Rogue One” Wednesday night and it’s much the same. Tons of cool characters that you want so much more of. Even though it’s talking about super-dark times and stars some characters whose hands are dirtier than anyone in the original trilogy, still, meeting them and seeing these new worlds remains an invitation to wonder and dream every bit as strong as the series’ magical opening.

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(I won't say any more about “Rogue One” until after Christmas, so people have a chance to see it. After that, we talk.)

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Postscript/Episode I-III Mention Trigger Response: If you think about it, in a way Episodes I-III fail not because they don’t have a good story to tell, but because the worlds they reveal are actually less interesting and fun than our own. Think about it – Eps I-III are the only episodes that have characters that you absolutely hope you'll never have to see again, like Jar Jar Binks, or those weirdly-Asian-stereotyped guys from the Trade Federation, or the bug people making the robots, or pretty much any of the digital characters on Tatooine, or even Anakin himself. Maybe because many of them were clearly made to sell things, they don’t have that same sense of a realized universe. And so watching them makes the universe seem empty and annoying.

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One more Star Wars story, in honor of the new film: So Leia is a political insider of Hillary Clintonesque proportions (but with hair craft instead of pantsuits -- although...

... but there she is in "Awakens", back with the outsiders. It makes no sense, really.

I was recently talking to a friend, Gerry Arbuckle, a Marist priest who has spent his life working as an anthropologist. And he was saying with regard to the *ahem* unexpected nature of the election result that it’s worth taking a step back and asking yourself, What is the founding American story? That is, if we looked at the history, our pop culture, what’s the story with which most Americans have and continue to identify?

His thought, which makes sense to me, is that our ur-text is the Western. The lone cowboy who rides into the frontier community alone, finds the community beset by fear and corruption, stops it and then rides away.

“Star Wars” definitely fits that model. Instead of one Lone Ranger we get a ragtag bunch, but they do much the same thing – see a problem, step in, save the day a couple times, and then ride away.

Which brings us back to Leia. I don’t know about you, but I was enormously surprised that we didn’t get even a glimpse of the goings on of the Republic. Not that I wanted Episodes I-III’s “Hey, this is a Star Wars movie, so let’s make sure we have long arguments in the cosmic United Nations that are as frustrating to watch as they are for Queen Amidala to sit through, oh, but we’ll add little easter egg ETs as winky face so Steven Spielberg smile at me”. Come on, though, the original three movies were all about them gaining freedom for the galaxy, and then we never even get a glimpse of what that freedom looked like.

But making that choice does fulfill the rules of the Western, in that all of the good guys have moved on. Han and Chewie are back to smuggling, Luke is being sad and I assume swimming a lot, and Leia is running “The Resistance”. They did their part, and then they went off, each all by their lonesome.

I have a bad feline about this.
(Runner up: It's a cat!)

++ LINKS ++

This is a Filipino ad for “Rogue One”. I am sharing it with you because I like to see you cry.

Great read in New York Magazine about late night host Seth Meyers, who has been doing some pretty strong commentary work since the election.

For those still racing around buying Christmas gifts, here’s some tips on putting together the best gift from fictional gift-giving expert, Leslie Knope. (And speaking of Christmas gifts and Star Wars...)

Can you find someone to perform for the inauguration? You should try! You could win yourself an ambassadorship!

And lastly, if you’re not tired of me talking about Star Wars, I put together a little article for America wondering about how it’s possible we can all love Star Wars and yet be so divided otherwise. In some ways it’s a response to things I’ve written in this newsletter. (It also gave me a chance to make jokes about Harambe, Neo-Nazis and Star Trek. Which is never not a good thing.)

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So the Electoral College is meeting Monday. It’s hard to believe that anything significant will happen, but then absolutely nothing that I’ve thought about this election has proven true.

I’m very leery of the United States introducing the practice that after elections some group of people that I don’t know and had nothing to do with choosing could get to decide to elect someone else. It might be on the books, but if that’s ever been a real thing we actually did it was a long, long time ago.

Having said that, in the last few weeks our president-elect has attacked another country on Twitter (which then did a test launch of a nuclear missile in response); sent the stock price of Lockheed-Martin tumbling after another Twitter attack; did not invite Twitter to a major tech meeting of Silicon Valley types supposedly because Twitter had not allowed his campaign to create a “Lying Hillary” emoji; seems not only to be okay with the Russia hack story, but is now appointing cabinet members with close ties to Russia and seems to have possibly sent an aide to Russia during the election to talk to Putin, who it’s seeming more and more certain was at the center of the implementation of the material gained from the DNC hack.

And he also didn't responded to the civilian catastrophe in Aleppo this week for days, and then only after complaining that Vanity Fair is no longer any good because they didn't like his new restaurant.

Most troubling of all, neither he nor anyone around him seems to be concerned about any of this, or is able to control him.

All of which is to say, if there were ever a time for the Electoral College to at least talk about its responsibilities, this would be that time. So, whether any change happens or not, I’m hoping they do.

2016 is almost over. Hang in there. We gonna put a stake in this thing yet.