Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
So we finally watched Solo, and I wasn’t that excited about it so I just glanced at it every now & then, sort of seeing it with half an eyeball. But I do have to say what I saw surprised me and it looked pretty good overall. All this fuss about the social justice robot seemed overblown, to me.
Disney’s new direction, I’ve come to realize, has stirred a sort of weariness in me. It’s not annoyance and it’s not actual fatigue. I’m weary of going through the motions pretending something is deep and complex, when at the end of it the narrative turns out to be threadbare and shallow. Back in my childhood, the franchise excited us as a meeting-place between technology and spiritualism, as good confronted evil. That’s gone, and what a shame that is. What we had before wasn’t just a mix of tech and holy ghosts, all dumped into a big bag & shaken together. There was planning, there was elegance.
There was real mystery. Yeah we were disappointed when we realized Lucas was making it all up day-by-day as he went along…there’s no explanation for Darth Vader standing right in front of his own daughter and being unable to sense her. Sorry, but every explanation you’ve heard about that is bunk. The unavoidable fact is that Leia was not his daughter in 1977, and by 1983, she was. But at least each character had a solid anchoring within a much larger story, including Leia…who, since then, has become a plainer, simpler, less interesting character.
It’s not just Leia. Some of the old elegance, that depth of good story-telling, has been bleached out by this effervescent drive toward “Girls Are Awesome!!” Okay, yeah, boys got a lot of inspiration out of Star Wars and there’s a desire to share this among girls who couldn’t get into it. This issue with girls who couldn’t get into it, puzzles me too. I recall the girls being just as inspired as we were, and having just as much fun. These days it seems we have a lot of people who see yet another inequality in need of correction. But the people most agitated about that, don’t warm up too cozily to the concept of religion. As a consequence, Star Wars has lost depth. I tire of obligatorily pretending the depth is still there when it isn’t.
It’s come to be just another thing social justice warriors are wrecking. And we’re not supposed to notice.
This issue of the droids being potentially sentient and therefore deserving of rights, though, does rightfully claim an anchoring in the old trilogy, specifically at the moment when Luke tries to enter the Mos Eisley Cantina with his droids and is curtly informed by the bartender “We don’t serve their kind.” Therein lies a loose thread, that can be pulled to offer us the story of how oppressive things are in this galaxy at that time. I remember wondering about this, maybe for just a split second, clear back in ’77 as I was trying to take in the story. I guess this is just a weak point in the story-telling, because with good story-telling things should have a point, a reason to be. What was the reason for this exchange?
Luke comments to 3PO that they should acquiesce, which they do, since they “don’t want any trouble.” Is this to clue us in on the situation that, with the Empire looking for the droids and the entourage now wading into a much more densely populated area, they’re in danger? Seems redundant. Is this setting up a theme that “there are alternatives to fighting,” which is picked up a little while later as the Millennium Falcon is sucked into the Death Star? Or a situation in which the droids are out in the alleyways looking for proper hiding spaces, instead of meeting Han Solo and the Wookie?
Maybe, when it came time for Obi-Wan to save Luke by slashing that guy’s arm off and killing the insect-creature, a couple of zany mechanical sidekicks would have hurt the suspense factor? I never did get a good answer to this. George Lucas has always been a stickler for the good-storytelling rule that, if there isn’t a definable reason for a thing being there, the thing should be ejected along with even the most marginal risk of possibly boring the audience. Seems to me the Mos Eisley Cantina could’ve gone right on ahead “serving their kind,” the droids could’ve waddled around, and everything with the story would have been fine. So what gives?
I’m very sure there’s nothing deep or challenging in the state, or degree, of droid sentience that I’m missing. As characters in the story, the droids service the whims of children who haven’t yet put any serious thought into the difference between gadgets and living things. The droids do things robots simply don’t do, like express pleasure while taking a hot oil bath, swear at each other and tell each other to “switch off,” etc. To adults who fancy themselves sufficiently sophisticated to ponder weighty moral issues, they’re toasters, with just some fictional/metaphorical embellishments added, like speech to a cartoon animal, to entertain the less mature.
Toasters don’t need liberating. Oh yes, I know slaveholders referred to their slaves exactly this way in the antebellum era…they’re things and not people. This doesn’t cause me much discomfort with regard to my toaster. As far as I’m concerned it can stay where it is.
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Frank Zappa, Joe’s Garage-Acts 2 and 3 (OK, maybe it was in Act 1)
- CaptDMO | 02/17/2019 @ 07:30“Appliance”
I always figured it was just bar policy. If your clientele are doing shady deals, probably not a good idea to let in anyone with a dowloadable memory.
- DanB | 02/21/2019 @ 11:18Hm, that’s a pretty good point.
- mkfreeberg | 02/23/2019 @ 06:12