Barker, Bender, Shaver, Palmer . . . and Beyond

I have been working on an idea and a series for many months. That's too long for this kind of thing, but that's just how it is. Before continuing, I would like to provide links to previous entries. Although the idea for this series started earlier last year, the first entry is from July 2017:

The Summer of Flying Saucers (July 18, 2017)

Another Silly Season-Part One (July 21, 2017)

Another Silly Season-Part Two (July 24, 2017)

Barker and Bender on the Case-Part One (July 27, 2018)

Barker and Bender on the Case-Part Two (December 10, 2017)

Barker and Bender on the Case-Part Three (December 13, 2017)

The Cosmic Question (February 2, 2018) (a segue way and an aside)

Next comes The Shaver Mystery-Part One. Stay tuned.

Copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

The Shape of an Oscar-Part Two

I didn't mean for there to be a part two to this article, but I read something on Friday night, after I had written part one, that fits so perfectly with this topic and this title that I have to tell you about it.

I found last week a book called Seeing Is Believing, or How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the 50s by Peter Biskind (1983, 2001). In my reading, I skipped to Chapter 3, "Pods and Blobs," about science fiction and monster movies of the 1950s. Here is an excerpt from the author's discussion of the Creature from the Black Lagoon trilogy of 1954-1956:

In the first film . . . the Creature was mildly appealing, more sinned against than sinning, almost but not quite a noble savage tormented beyond endurance by the arrogant scientists who mucked about in his lagoon, and driven into a frenzy by the proximity of Julia Adams in a one-piece bathing suit. . . . In the second and third films the Creature gets increasingly put upon. In [John] Sherwood's 1956 version [The Creature Walks Among Us], "he" has been taken out of his natural habitat entirely, removed in chains to a cage on land. Here, he's unambiguously sympathetic . . . . But he's unable to protect himself from the mad scientists who perform all sorts of grim experiments upon his body while prattling about "reality and facts." They transplant this, amputate that, move a fin here, a gill there, until his own mother wouldn't recognize him. One of the scientists even tries to frame him for murder, and in the end, the creature is killed. (Bloomsbury, 2001, p. 121)

That sounds a lot like The Shape of Water. There's a difference, though, and it's a significant one if you look at this movie of today in the context of the science fiction movies and monster movies of the 1950s. In those movies, there is a dichotomy between the military man of action and the scientific man of words and ideas. Sometimes the moviemakers were on one side of the dichotomy, and sometimes they were on the other. I can think of no better example than The Thing from Another World vs. The Day the Earth Stood Still, both from 1951. In The Thing, the military men are the heroes. It is by their action that an invasion (or infestation) of Earth is prevented. The scientist on the other hand, Dr. Arthur Carrington, wants to understand and communicate with the alien creature. He even goes so far as to propagate it by feeding it blood, including his own blood. He very nearly wrecks the whole operation, thereby threatening Earth with destruction. In contrast, in The Day the Earth Stood Still, the military men are the tormenters of the alien. They even shoot and kill him, only to see him resurrected. (The Gill-man in The Shape of Water is shot, killed, and resurrected, too. Earlier, he is tormented by electric shock, like the giant carrot in The Thing.) By their actions, the whole of Earth is threatened with destruction. It is the scientists who sympathize with the alien and to whom he appeals. If the planet is to be saved, it will be by their ideas rather than by militaristic action.

So, in The Creature Walks Among Us, the scientists--"mad scientists," Peter Biskind calls them--torment and mutilate the Creature. They are, then, scientists of the first type, i.e., bad scientists. This, I think, is the more conservative version of the military man/man of science dichotomy. (Not conservative in the contemporary political sense but in an older, non-political or anti-political sense.) In The Shape of Water, there is an inversion. The military men or quasi-military men are now the tormenters of the Creature, and it is the scientist who sympathizes with him. (Significantly, the antagonist is the only character in The Shape of Water to quote from the Bible.) Instead of the conservative version of the dichotomy, we have the more liberal or leftwing version. (The scientist in The Shape of Water is a Soviet spy. I think his humanity and sympathy for the Creature are more to the point than his nationality or political affiliation.)

In any case, I haven't seen The Creature Walks Among Us in a long, long time. There may be more similarities between it and The Shape of Water. But as I wrote the other day, The Shape of Water is basically a sequel to The Creature from the Black Lagoon. I think that's okay. Universal Pictures doesn't have exclusive rights to the idea of a lizardman, nor to the idea that a monster or beast might love a woman, a story as old as humanity. (The Creature of the Black Lagoon is essentially the same story as King Kong.) But in any movie a person might make, art should trump politics. More essential than that, bad storytelling should always be banished in favor of good storytelling. Like I told a friend, a good story is what counts. Nothing else in storytelling matters very much.

Finally, I mentioned how I found something in my reading that pertains to the title of this article. Well, the second series of ellipses in the quote above are in place of the following parenthetical statement:

(The Creature's distinctive costume was reputedly derived from a sketch of the Oscar statuette.) (1)

I didn't know that when I wrote the first part of this article, but by a bit of serendipity, my title closes a circle.

Notes

(1) According to the blog Psychobabble: "Millicent Patrick, who designed the Gill Man, was a television and film actress and had been the first female animator at Disney Studios. She was also responsible for the Mutant alien in This Island Earth." (July 25, 2010.)

(2) According to Wikipedia: "Producer William Alland was attending a 1941 dinner party during the filming of Citizen Kane (in which he played the reporter Thompson) when Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa told him about the myth of a race of half-fish, half-human creatures in the Amazon River. Alland wrote story notes titled 'The Sea Monster' 10 years later. His inspiration was Beauty and the Beast." And so another circle is closed in that a Mexican moviemaker, Guillermo del Toro, has made a movie based on a story told by another Mexican moviemaker more than three-quarters of a century ago.

The Gill-man and swimmer from Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). You could write more than a few sentences about this image: about the Creature's superior position vs. the woman's inferior position; the fact that his hand is positioned just right to cover a part of his anatomy not intended for display; about her passiveness, fear, and averted gaze. But look at the background. Note the series of symmetries. Is this an unaltered image? Or did the original rocky background, in all of its symmetries, look like a view through a kaleidoscope? Where is Richard Shaver when you need him? He could tell us what these things mean.

Original text copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

The Shape of an Oscar

We saw The Shape of Water a few weeks back. I was going to let it slide without comment, but then the thing won Oscars for best picture and best director this past Sunday, so here I am with my two cents' worth.

I read a long time ago that in a decadent culture, everything is reduced to allusion. I would add a remake or an outright swipe to the end of that sentence. Avatar (2009) is really just Ferngully in space (or Dances with Smurfs). The recent Star Trek and Star Wars movies are simply retreads of previous entries in those series. And The Shape of Water (2017) could easily be called E.T. from the Black Lagoon, or The Splash of Water (you know, the movie with Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah), or The Little Mermaid in Reverse. There is still some originality, creativity, and imagination in movies today, but these things are becoming increasingly rare. The Shape of Water may be a nice movie in some ways, but it has some really debilitating flaws, too, and in my little opinion, it should never have won an Oscar for best picture. You could take its winning as a bad sign in creative or artistic terms because it's such a step down from previous winners. But I think there's actually something different at work here. It may be something that will blow over. But if our culture keeps going in this direction, it won't blow over. It could actually be the thing that blows other things over, and people will stop going to movies as a result.

I wrote sometime back about the idea that politics ruins everything it touches. Put another way, politics is sewage, art is wine. Pour a cup of wine into a barrel of sewage and you still have a barrel of sewage. Pour a cup of sewage into a barrel of wine and you have just another barrel of sewage. This year at the Oscars, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences poured sewage into the art of moviemaking. Many of the major awards and probably some of the minor awards were tainted, either in actuality or by association with politics. They mean comparatively little because of it. The Shape of Water won an Oscar not for its artistic merits but because it checked so many boxes on the scorecard of political correctness. The members of the Academy see themselves as part of the so-called "Resistance" to the current presidential administration, which they deem as horribly and atrociously racist, sexist, and xenophobic or anti-immigrant. And so, seeing their chance to stick their finger in the eye of our current president and to do some conspicuous moral preening before the world, the members of the Academy handed out awards based on something other than merit. They chose sewage over wine. I have not seen Coco, but I don't think it's any coincidence at all that movies made by and/or about people from Mexico won Oscars for best picture in their respective categories this year. I don't know about you, but as an artist, I would not want to receive an award tainted by political considerations: I would want instead to have my work judged solely on its artistic merits. If I were Guillermo del Toro, I would always have to doubt the integrity of an award given with a political asterisk attached to it.

So what are the problems with The Shape of Water? Let me count them. Actually, let me not count them, as I don't want to spend too much time on this topic. I guess I'll start by saying that a person should not make a movie using a sledgehammer. That's how this movie was made. Okay, yes, we know by now that you, being a Hollywood-ite, believe that pre-Beatles America was a horrible, terrible, unlivable place. It was also horrible and terrible. We know that. Quit reminding us. Quit hitting us with this sledgehammer. (Never mind that Saint John F. Kennedy was president when The Shape of Water is set.) We also know that heterosexual white men attached to the American military-industrial complex are the worst villains the world has ever known and ever will know. This villain is even worse, though. He's got it all covered: he lives in the suburbs with his 2.5 squeaky-clean whitebread (and white-bred) children. He has a Stepford Wives wife who whips out her lovely breast the second his children are out the door and submits to sex in the starfish/missionary position with his disgusting gangrenous hand over her mouth so that she'll shut up while he's going about his bidness. He calls black people "you people" (signifying his racism), sexually harasses the protagonist (signifying his misogyny), makes fun of her disability (signifying his making fun of people with disabilities), torments and tortures the Gill-man (signifying not only his xenophobia but also his mindless and motiveless cruelty and psychopathy), and packs a pistol (signifying his inherent violence and probably also his unnatural feelings for the Second Amendment). He is also former military, and as we know from watching Avatar and other films made by James Cameron, Guillermo del Toro, and their co-religionists, anybody who has served in the military is necessarily a mindless, stupid, aggressive, insensitive, racist, misogynistic, violent, psycho knucklehead.

So the villain in The Shape of Water is a twofer, threefer, fourfer, or morefer. The other characters are twofers or morefers, too. The protagonist is not only a woman and disabled, she's also Hispanic, an orphan, and working class. Her co-worker is not only a woman, she's also black and working class. The protagonist's friend may be white, but he's also homosexual, and we're led to think that he lost his job because of his homosexuality (signifying the homophobia of pre-Stonewall America). (If he's white but gay, he's okay. If he's white but straight, we gotta hate.) There's a twofer in the restaurant where he likes to eat, too: not only does the man at the counter refuse his advances (signifying the man's homophobia), he also refuses service to a young black couple who are looking for what we're all looking for in this life: a good piece of pie. This of course signifies the counterman's racism and the general overall racism of pre-Civil Rights America. In short, this is moviemaking with a sledgehammer. And so much of it is gratuitous--gratuitous, that is, unless moviemaking with a sledgehammer is your purpose: unless politics rather than art is your guiding inspiration.

So if you disregard all of that (not an easy thing to do), you arrive at a love story in the form of a magical-realistic/contemporary urban fantasy/weird-fiction/fairy tale. It's hard to accept the idea of love, specifically physical love, between a human being and a reptile, amphibian, or fish. After all, we have an atavistic revulsion towards these creeping, crawling, swimming creatures, those made on the fifth day of Creation rather than the sixth. (It's much easier and more natural to believe in the love of Beauty for the Beast, as he is at least soft and furry, i.e., mammalian.) But for an hour or so, you can set that aside, too. The protagonist is, after all, very lonely, and we can all identify with loneliness, even extreme loneliness. In our loneliness, we might even envision love with a toad.

You can also accept impossibilities, like the bathroom filling up with bathwater so that the two new lovers can enjoy a kind of sexual aquacade, like the contrastingly chaste underwater scenes in Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) in which the Gill-man spies on and soon abducts Ginger Stanley, standing in for Julia Adams. (The Shape of Water is basically a sequel to Creature from the Black Lagoon. Screwy, but a sequel.) What you can't accept is the ignorance and lack of imagination on the part of the moviemaker when it comes to storytelling. I'll give just one example of each. I think each one of these is pretty disastrous. 

First, one of the badguys in the movie is U.S. Army General Frank Hoyt. We already know he's bad because he serves in the military. He's worse because he's in command of this whole operation in which the Gill-man is supposed to be used for some kind of nefarious secret government conspiratorial plot, just like all government operations were until our most recent ex-president got into office. (If we ever know what the plot is in The Shape of Water, we have forgotten by the end of the film. This reminds me of a Squatcher I know who thinks the U.S. Army is hiding evidence of Bigfoot. Why? Who knows.) Anyway, Hoyt is not just a general. He's a five-star general. I guess in Mr. del Toro's stunted imagination, the U.S. Army hands out stars the way you hand out candy at Halloween. Never mind that there have been exactly four five-star army generals in American history (and five previous generals-of-the-army). Hoyt might as well have been called a Super-Duper General. That would have made just as much sense. Mr. del Toro's gaffe is reflective not only of the hostility moviemakers have towards the military but also of their breathtaking ignorance when it comes to military matters. Somebody should have stopped him before he made his mistake.

Second and more serious is that when the Gill-man is brought into the military-scientific facility for study, he arrives inside a tank with a window. Any Joe (or Jane) Blow standing around picking his nose or mopping the floor can see what's inside--and she does, the protagonist that is. For a place that's supposed to be about secrecy and security, there is astonishing incompetence when it comes to actually keeping anything secret and secure. The cleaning ladies wander around on their own, going wherever they want, seeing whatever they want, talking to the Gill-man, playing him records and feeding him hardboiled eggs, like the cheapest date there has ever been. (What does he know? He lives in a river. And what about the eggs? They're her eggs, aren't they, meaning her own symbolic ova? She of course prepares them by the egg timer she uses every morning for another purpose.) The screenwriter should have thought of a better way of telling his story. Instead he took the easy way out, and so we have a whole movie based on an entirely unbelievable premise. This may be a fantasy, but even a fantasy has to follow basic rules, one of which is that people must act like real people instead of like incompetent morons when the moviemaker requires them to because he's too stupid or lazy to figure out how to tell his story otherwise.

Now see what has happened? I have written way more than I was planning to, and I'm not even done yet. This will be the last, though, I promise. I have written before about the idea that fantasy and weird fiction tend to be conservative genres and generally about the past, while science fiction tends to be progressive and generally about the future. The Shape of Water is not science fiction, despite any science-fictional elements it might have. It is obviously a fantasy, but it's a progressive fantasy. Is that a self-contradictory thing? Can there really be a progressive fantasy? Maybe. But The Shape of Water is a progressive fantasy not in that it imagines how things might be in a progressive world. Instead, it's a fantasy imagined by a progressive moviemaker. In other words, it's not the movie itself but the moviemaker who is progressive. Guillermo del Toro has told a story from a progressive point of view. In so doing, he has relied on extreme and unrealistic stereotypes*, gratuitous episodes and gratuitous story elements, implausible or impossible situations, ignorance as to history and human nature, and extreme laziness or incompetence in his storytelling. Despite the opinion of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, his movie is middling in its accomplishments. So if this is an example of a progressive fantasy, it falls pretty flat. I would argue that any progressive fantasy is likely to fall flat, as: a) fantasy is an artistic genre; b) art is about the nature of human beings, life, and reality; and c) progressivism is basically out of touch with these very subjects. If anyone can come up with a progressive fantasy that can stand on its own two legs, I'm willing to listen to your case. Just make sure it's a strong one.

*Speaking of stereotypes, did anyone in the Academy or the media notice the stereotype of the black man as weak, cowardly, unreliable, lazy, or afraid in The Shape of Water? I suppose in this age, stereotypes of men are permitted, no matter what color they are, especially if the stereotype is being peddled by another person of color (although Guillermo del Toro is a pasty-faced white dude with brown hair and blue eyes), and especially if that person is of a higher caste in the hierarchy of political correctness.

Copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

The Cosmic Question

I have been reading The Cosmic Question, a British edition of the book The Eighth Tower by John A. Keel, published in 1978. (The original was published in 1975.) By a process of serendipity, my reading of this book at this moment provides a transition from my series on Star Wars to my previous series on the Fortean authors Gray Barker and Albert K. Bender. Here is a quote from The Cosmic Question (Panther Books, 1978):

The standard definition of God, 'God is light', is just a simple way of saying that God is energy. Electromagnetic energy. He is not a He but an It; a field of energy that permeates the entire universe and, perhaps, feeds off the energy generated by its component parts. (p. 21)

Keep in mind, John Keel wrote these words at least two years before Star Wars arrived on the scene, yet he used some of the same language that Obi-Wan Kenobi uses to describe the Force:

Well, the Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.

and that Han Solo uses in his later rebuttal (spoken to Luke Skywalker):

Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other, and I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe that there's one all-powerful force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field controls my destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.

Now, I have never heard anyone ever say that God is light. (By the book of Genesis, God created light, and so precedes it.) I think Keel was just making that up. His point, though, is to assert that God is simply energy, electromagnetic energy that exists on an electromagnetic spectrum, in other words a continuum. That's the point of this book, too, that all energy--in other words all phenomena, including Fortean phenomena--exists on a spectrum, one that he calls and describes as the superspectrum. According to John Keel, then, all phenomena--Fortean phenomena and non-Fortean or scientific phenomena alike--are continuous. The procession of the damned shall, by this scheme, gain entry into the halls of the un-damned, and all things, which were once discontinuous, shall be continuous again. Keel, who I believe was an agnostic at best, also sought here to reduce everything supernatural to the merely material. In any case, the Fortean notion of continuity vs. discontinuity is the theme of my series on Barker and Bender, a series that will eventually go well beyond them and into the coming spring.

The Cosmic Question, by John A. Keel, published by Panther books in 1978. Peter Jones' cover art recalls the image of Kenneth Arnold's famous encounter with the first flying saucers over Mount Rainier in 1947, shown below on the cover of the first issue of Fate, from 1948.

Original text copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Scraps of Star Wars

I have gotten on to Star Wars and away from my previous series on Gray Barker and Albert K. Bender. Today I'll finish with Star Wars. I'll return to "Barker and Bender on the Case" as soon as I can. That series is going somewhere, so I hope you'll see it through.

Before that, here are my scraps of Star Wars.

"May the Force be with you." This is what people in Star Wars say as they part, sometimes never to see each other again. In speaking these words, they echo our own valedictions: "May God be with you," "God be with you," or simply "Goodbye." Instead of God there is the Force. Impersonal, scattered, Manichaean, indifferent to the fate of humanity or of individual human beings, the Force, then, would seem the god of the Star Wars universe. Evidently there is no human soul here either. The only way anyone has of coming in contact with or experiencing this god is through a biological, hence material, intermediary. Even then, only certain, select people, an elite with high midi-chlorian counts, are permitted that contact and those experiences. But what experiences? Does any Jedi or Sith undergo a genuine spiritual experience, any deep feeling of transcendence, any contact with a higher power? Or is the Force used simply for a person's own purposes or as an exercise of power? If the Jedi can countenance human slavery, then are they really a force for good in the galaxy? And if the Dark Side is merely about hate and anger, as Emperor Palpatine seems to be saying in the throne room scene in Return of the Jedi, is it really evil? Yes, the empire destroys Alderaan, but that is the decision of Grand Moff Tarkin, who is not in touch with the Force and whose exercise of power is purely secular. Darth Vader is his servant and lieutenant, the wizard at his side. He does what he is told. Beyond that, Alderaan was destroyed before there were midi-chlorians--when there were still good and evil in the Star Wars universe and while the Force was still secondary to the secular power of the Empire.

* * *

The midi-chlorians are supposedly intelligent, but they are also seemingly morally neutral. Or maybe they lack any concept of morality. They will facilitate access to the Force for the person who has crossed over to the Dark Side just as readily as they will for a Jedi. Are they agents of free will? Do they simply allow the people whom they inhabit to make the choice between one side and the other? Or are they like the deist concept of God the Clockmaker, who has stepped away from his creation to allow it to unwind as it will? Alternatively, do they simply not care?

Midi-chlorians are supposed to be symbionts, but are they really? Or are they parasites? Do they manipulate people, playing them off one against the other in some Darwinian struggle for existence? Do they play the field, chancing that this person using the Force for "good" is likely to survive by defeating that one using it for "evil," and vice versa? For if the person in whose blood they live survives to reproduce, then they will, too. Like Richard Dawkins' selfish gene, are midi-chlorians also selfish, seeking only to be perpetuated into the next generation? And will they do anything to make that happen, however wrong or immoral that might be?

* * *

We have seen this idea before in fantasy and science fiction. I'm thinking of the Star Trek episode "Return to Tomorrow," first broadcast fifty years ago, on February 9, 1968. In that episode, god-beings of pure energy occupy the bodies of Captain Kirk, Mister Spock, and babe-of-the-week Dr. Ann Mulhall. The beings inhabiting the bodies of Kirk and Spock vie with each other for survival--and presumably for the chance to reproduce. (Don't forget the babe-of-the-week, Dr. Ann Mulhall.) The difference between Star Wars and Star Trek of course is that in Star Trek, some things are known to be good and moral, while other things are known to be bad and immoral, and so the god-beings decide to fade into oblivion rather than make immoral choices.

* * *

So in the newest Star Wars trilogy (now 67% complete) why is the First Order evil? And why is the Resistance good? Both have military governmental structures, both are vying for power, both use the Force for their own seemingly amoral purposes. Is the cause of the Resistance freedom? If so, has anyone in that organization ever stated as much?

As for the First Order, we know what they're up to. Here is their mission statement, spoken by the baby Vader, Kylo Ren, according to Wookieepedia: The Star Wars Wiki:

"It is the task of the First Order to remove the disorder from our own existence, so that civilization may be returned to the stability that promotes progress. A stability that existed under the Empire, was reduced to anarchy by the Rebellion, was inherited in turn by the so-called Republic, and will be restored by us. Future historians will look upon this as the time when a strong hand brought the rule of law back to civilization."

Order, stability, progress--these are the values of the tyrant. (They remind me of the goals in the novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.) In our neck of the galaxy, they are the ingredients for making a big heapin' helpin' o' Dystopia. And not just any Dystopia but the leftist/socialist/statist brand favored by tyrants of the twentieth century. So I'll ask the question again: What is the cause driving the Resistance?

* * *

I have more questions about the new Star Wars universe. First, who is in control of the galaxy right now while Snoke lies in pieces and Kylo Ren is rapidly winging his way into the boondocks of space? Is it the First Order? Aren't they too busy running down the Resistance to pay any attention to anything else? And where do they get their funding? Every week or two, some enormously expensive piece of space weaponry is reduced to dust by the Resistance. Who is financing all of these boondoggles? Aren't the people of the galaxy fed up with all of their hard-earned money being flushed down a big black hole?

More questions: In The Last Jedi, the First Order seems to be reduced to a small fleet whose sole obsession is, like Ahab after his whale, to chase the Resistance to the ends of the galaxy, no matter the cost. They don't seem to care that everything might be lost or that they might never see home again. What drives these people exactly? We know that the True Believer here on Earth will give up everything for his holy cause, but what holy cause is there in this galaxy of long ago and far, far away? Does anyone among the First Order really believe in order, stability, and progress as the one cause for which they will sacrifice everything? Considering that there is no God or god in the Star Wars universe, no one has ever been driven by anything holy or even close. How can they be now? Or are they all being dragged along by a singular obsession, Kylo Ren's desire to have Rey?

I sense an air of decadence and of smallness hanging over the whole operation. General Hux is a clown, lacking all of the gravity and ruthlessness of Grand Moff Tarkin. At the beginning of The Last Jedi, he falls for Poe's radio trick, like Moe answering the phone on The Simpsons or some outer-space ship captain encountering Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy. Needless to say, Kylo Ren is a mere shadow of Darth Vader, Snoke an almost comical caricature of Emperor Palpatine, and Captain Phasma a rejiggered Cylon. For their part, the Resistance is down to so few people that all can fit on board the Millennium Falcon. Princess Leia is an old rummy whose offscreen death will soon have to be explained. Luke Skywalker is a Force-ghost who may or may not return. Han Solo has fallen into a pit, as most of the major characters in the Star Wars saga do at one time or other. Poe is his third-rate replacement. Chewbacca, C-3PO, and R2-D2 are relegated to very minor roles. Lando Calrissian is nowhere in sight. The Resistance fleet has been destroyed and they're on the run like the crew of Battlestar Galactica. Only Finn and Rey have any spirit left. How long will it be before the whole series collapses from exhaustion?

* * *

So is it just me, or in the Star Wars universe does no one ever sing, dance, or listen to music--endless hours and days spent flying through outer space and no music. (At least Star-Lord has his mix tapes.) There is actually singing, dancing, and music in certain places, places that are cast as somehow immoral, corrupt, or decadent: the cantina at Mos Eisley; Jabba's palace on Tatooine; Takodana in The Force Awakens, a place for spies, smugglers, and fugitives; and most immoral and decadent of all, the casino planet in The Last Jedi. No one ever eats or drinks anything, either, nothing but blue milk anyway. Nobody but Han Solo and Lando Calrissian seems to have any interest in the opposite sex. In fact, no one has very much fun at all in this place. Everything seems to be a very grim and joyless struggle. So is the Star Wars universe one full of Puritans and ascetics? Why?

Better questions: Where is all of this going? What is the goal? What is the point? If there is no moral struggle, no striving for love or freedom (as in Star Trek), then isn't the Star Wars universe essentially empty? Did George Lucas design it to be empty in fact, not intentionally, but by his lack of belief in a personal God or in the individuality of all human beings, created by God in his own image and endowed with free will, the capacity for love, and a deep desire to strive for understanding and transcendence? Does Mr. Lucas believe in an individual human soul? He is famously leftist in his political orientation. A hostility towards individuality might come naturally to him. The idea that the Force is created by all living things is, after all, vaguely collectivist. I have already written about the materialism behind the concept of the midi-chlorians. Collectivism, atheism, materialism, hostility towards the individual--these are the values of the leftist/socialist/statist, throughout the twentieth century and still today. The irony is that George Lucas and similar-minded moviemakers would seemingly identify more with the goals of the First Order than with the opposing goals of love, faith, and freedom. But then the Resistance doesn't seem to have these things as their goals either. In any case, leftwing politics comes out in The Last Jedi, but it is so naïve and ignorant as to be laughable. These things can pretty easily be dismissed:

• The war profiteers who are busy whooping it up on the casino planet while the Resistance fights, suffers, and dies. (Remember, in the Star Wars universe, fun=moral corruption.) Never mind that in the real world the people who so often enrich themselves under any form of government, especially under tyranny, are actually in government rather than in the private sector.

• The Resistance forces who are so soft-hearted that they free the animals used and abused for entertainment on that same planet. Again, never mind the poor slave children who clean out the stables. We don't care about their plight because, as we already know, slavery is acceptable in the Star Wars universe.

• The labeling of the Republic/Rebellion forces as "the Resistance," in sympathy, I suppose, with the people who oppose our current president by beating up people who disagree with them.

• The pseudo-fascism or pseudo-nazism of the First Order, who, ironically, have as their goals order, stability, and progress, the same goals that leftists, socialists, and statists of the twentieth century and today have.

These are the most obvious manifestations of leftism in The Last Jedi, but like I said, I think you can just dismiss them. There are far worse flaws in the movie. I had fun watching it, but here's hoping the next one is better.

Original text copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Weird Fiction Against Materialism

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. 

--from Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Lovecraft aside, weird fiction is a warning against materialism, for it is a genre that lives in a pre-science, pre-Enlightenment age, one in which magic and supernatural monsters are still possible. Its materialist characters are science-minded, working in physics, chemistry, medicine, and so on. The materialist himself is arrogant, superior, sure of himself in his beliefs and dismissive of anything that can't be measured, quantified, or described by a mathematical equation or an abstruse theory. Moreover, he lacks imagination and sensitivity. His mind is unbending. And because it doesn't bend, it breaks as he comes face to face with the non-material. Some examples:

From "May Day Eve" by Algernon Blackwood (1907):

It was in the spring when I at last found time from the hospital work to visit my friend, the old folk-lorist [sic], in his country isolation, and I rather chuckled to myself, because in my bag I was taking down a book that utterly refuted all his tiresome pet theories of magic and the powers of the soul. These theories were many and various, and had often troubled me. In the first place, I scorned them for professional reasons, and, in the second, because I had never been able to argue quite well enough to convince or to shake his faith, in even the smallest details, and any scientific knowledge I brought to bear only fed him with confirmatory data. To find such a book, therefore, and to know that it was safely in my bag, wrapped up in brown paper and addressed to him, was a deep and satisfactory joy, and I speculated a good deal during the journey how he would deal with the overwhelming arguments it contained against the existence of any important region outside the world of sensory perceptions.

From "Smith: An Episode in a Lodging-House" by Algernon Blackwood (1907):

"I was at that time, moreover, in the heavy, unquestioning state of materialism which is common to medical students when they begin to understand something of the human anatomy and nervous system, and jump at once to the conclusion that they control the universe and hold in their forceps the last word of life and death. I 'knew it all,' and regarded a belief in anything beyond matter as the wanderings of weak, or at best, untrained minds. And this condition of mind, of course, added to the strength of this upsetting fear which emanated from the floor below and began slowly to take possession of me."

From "The Eighth Green Man" by G.G. Pendarves (Weird Tales, March 1928):

I was frightfully embarrassed. How explain to such a rank materialist as Nicholas Birkett that instinct alone warned me against that road? How make a man so insensitive and practical believe in any danger he could not see or handle? He believed in neither God nor Devil! He had only a passionate belief in himself, his wealth, his business acumen, and above all, the physical perfection that went to make his life easy and pleasant.

There is of course Han Solo in Star Wars (1977), too:

Han Solo: Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.

Luke: You don't believe in the Force, do you?

Han Solo: Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other, and I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe that there's one all-powerful force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field controls my destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense. (1)

Every one of these characters gets his comeuppance, of course. Han Solo, not overtly a materialist, gets the best of outcomes. He may not accept things exactly, but he bends, out of friendship and, soon enough, love. Birkett, from G.G. Pendarves' story, gets the worst of outcomes here. All are shown that their materialism and skepticism are inadequate in the face of the true nature of the universe.

You might say that the materialist (or skeptic) in each of these examples is a kind of strawman, set up only so he can be knocked down again. You might say also that the non-materialist uses material means to show the materialist that the universe is at its base non-materialist. In other words, the materialist is shown to be wrong in his beliefs by his encountering physical (i.e., material) manifestations of non-material phenomena. The point is that weird fiction is very often a whisper of dissent in the great halls of Scientism and materialism. Given the current popularity of weird fiction and fantasy over science fiction, the idea that the universe is not strictly material may be an attractive one for both writers and readers of these genres.

Note

(1) Star Wars is sometimes labeled as science fiction when it clearly isn't a part of that genre, spaceships, robots, aliens, and blasters aside. Star Wars isn't weird fiction, either, but it is fantasy, and it is descended in part--Han Solo especially-- from the tales of Northwest Smith written by C.L. Moore and published in Weird Tales from 1933 to 1936. By the way, the last Northwest Smith story in Weird Tales was "The Tree of Life" from October 1936. I have written within the past couple of weeks about the Tree of Life as a myth that may have influenced George Lucas in his making of Star Wars.

Northwest of Earth by C.L. Moore (Gnome Press, 1954), with cover art by Ric Binkley. The image is conventional and not an especially good one. (Notice how long Northwest Smith's thighs are in relation to the rest of his body.) Nonetheless, C.L. Moore's planetary adventurer can be considered a progenitor of Han Solo. He's even wearing a vest and wielding a "good blaster."

Original text copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Materi-Chlorians-Part Two

So we have two--actually three--explanations of the Force. According to Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars (1977), "It's an energy field created by all living things." The Force "surrounds us and penetrates us," he says. "[I]t binds the galaxy together." In The Phantom Menace (1999), Qui-Gon Jinn is more vague, implying that the Force exists independently of living things and that we can come in contact with it or experience it only through an intermediary, the midi-chlorians that "reside within all living cells," without which "life could not exist," and without which "we would have no knowledge of the Force." (1) As you would expect, Han Solo's description in Star Wars is simplest and most direct of all: he calls the Force a "mystical energy field."

These three explanations have in common the idea that the Force may be partly mystical and partly material (or maybe, ultimately, wholly material). By Obi-Wan's explanation, the Force emanates from all living things. If it exists outside of us, it does so only by being created by all of us together, from bacteria to banthas, from butterflies to Boba Fett. That's a comforting idea, and it still allows for something greater than the Force to exist in or outside of the universe. Keep in mind that in Star Wars and its two immediate sequels, there is love, caring, and kindness among the main characters, while the Empire is demonstrably evil, in no greater way than when it destroys the planet Alderaan. The difference is stark. We know who is good and who is bad. Keep in mind, too, that only in The Empire Strikes Back (1980) does anyone say "I love you" with any deep or genuine feeling. Those facts may be significant, so keep them someplace close at hand.

Qui-Gon Jinn's explanation of the Force is far more vague than Obi-Wan's. If I had to guess, I would say that it's because George Lucas wasn't able to formulate a complete and satisfying system of belief for his second trilogy. I doubt that any person could formulate such a system, regardless of time and circumstance. Just look at the quotes by Joseph Campbell from my previous article. His ideas are fuzzy, imprecise, not well thought out, almost incomprehensible. Beyond that, there isn't any sound evidence in favor of them. We have seen this before, in every kind of cult and every crackpot religion or system of belief formulated by a single person or small group of people, in Theosophy, I AM Activity, the Shaver Mystery, Dianetics and Scientology, and the cult of flying saucers to name a few. (2) In contrast, well-established and enduring religions are worked out over the centuries, with the input and by the experience of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people. Belief systems like the Force in either Joseph Campbell's or George Lucas' formulation are by comparison weak, short-lived, confused, even empty.

Ordinarily that might not be a problem, but in his second trilogy, George Lucas made the Force and all of its penumbrae central to his story. And so you get this nonsense about Anakin Skywalker's having a higher midi-chlorian count than anyone ever. Even worse, we know what that count is. Here is an exchange from The Phantom Menace:

Qui-Gon Jinn: I need a midi-chlorian count.

Obi-Wan Kenobi (after running the count): The reading is off the chart. Over 20,000. Even Master Yoda doesn't have a midi-chlorian count that high.

Qui-Gon Jinn: No Jedi has.

Obi-Wan: What does that mean?

Qui-Gon Jinn: I'm not sure.

Yeah, join the club.

The foregoing is actual dialogue from an actual movie. It may not be the worst dialogue ever written, but in the second trilogy, Anakin Skywalker's midi-chlorian count is a very important piece of information, and we as the audience are supposed to care about it. And not only care but be amazed at such a high reading--amazed at this person who is like no one who has ever before existed--amazed at a character played first by Adam Rich or Robbie Rist or whatever his name was, then by Hayden Christensen, neither of whom inspires anything at all except disgust and indifference. (3) In 1977, we could go along with the Force and feel a sense of wonder that such a thing might exist in this great universe. In 1999, we found out that the power of the Force is measurable by way of a blood test, like checking your blood sugar in the morning. Knowing Anakin Skywalker's midi-chlorian count is about exciting as knowing his credit score.

There is another way in which Anakin is different from anyone ever, for according to Wookiepedia, the Star Wars Wiki, he is "[b]elieved to have been conceived by the Force." In other words, his was a virgin birth, just like that other guy--what's his name? Oh, yeah, Jesus Christ. And like Christ, Anakin is a savior. In the Star Wars universe, he is the chosen one who will save the galaxy by restoring balance to the Force. (4) So if Anakin Skywalker is the Christ figure and the Force is his father, then is the Force simply a substitute for the Christian God? And if the Force is God, then what are the midi-chlorians? Are they the Holy Spirit? If so, then we have a trinity. Or do midi-chlorians instead take the place of the human soul in the theology of Star Wars? Whatever the case, if being in contact with and experiencing the Force is the only spiritual experience available to people in this universe, then only those with a sufficiently high midi-chlorian count will ever have such an experience. That leaves the vast majority bereft of spiritual experience and spiritual lives. It's no wonder, then, that human society in the Star Wars universe is essentially pre-Christian or stoic in nature. It's no wonder that people lead such grim lives.

To go further, if the Force is the highest force in the universe--in other words, if there is an impersonal and scattered Force but no personal God--then its people must lack souls, unless midi-chlorians act as their souls. But if midi-chlorians act as souls, then only those people who have sufficiently high midi-chlorian counts in their blood (or hemolymph or protoplasm or ichor or whatever fluid fills them) have anything like a soul. Even then, the Force is seemingly not a force for good but something else. Even if you're in contact with the Force, you are still cut off from any moral action. You can be bad or good and nobody cares, least of all the midi-chlorians. All human efforts, then, must lack a moral dimension. The conflict in which people in the Star Wars universe are engaged is reduced not to one of good versus evil but to a simple vying for power. Yes, the Empire blows up planets, but the Jedi, and by extension the Republic, countenances human slavery.

It's clear that in Star Wars (1977) the conflict is between good and evil. It's clear also that the main characters love and care about each other and that they're capable of joy, excitement, grief, and other very real human emotions. By the time the second trilogy begins, things aren't as clear. Again, there is the issue of slavery. More than that, though, the Jedi are shown to be more nearly political animals than some high religious order guided by a sense of morality. Love, joy, pleasure, humor--all seem to have been banished from the universe. By the time of The Phantom Menace (1999), it has become a grim and faintly unpleasant place. Princess Leia, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Chewbacca have way more fun in Star Wars, even when they're running around on the Death Star. They're like the Dukes of Hazzard in outer space.

In the original movie, one side of the Force is exemplified in Luke--Luke as in light or light-giving--the other in Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith and practitioner of the Dark Side of the Force. One wears white (or off-white). The other of course is garbed in black. (5) Again, the conflict is clearly between good and evil, whereas in the second trilogy, there doesn't seem to be a clear distinction between the two. In fact, there may not be any such things as good and evil, precisely because the Force has been reduced to a material phenomenon by the introduction of midi-chlorians. In any case, in the real world we have seen a battle between the powers of light and darkness before, in a dualistic religion called Manichaeism, founded by a Persian guy named Mani. (Not Ani, Mani.) Manichaeism took ideas and beliefs from various religions and thrived for centuries in the Middle East and Far East. It didn't last, though, presumably because it was inadequate as a belief system. Are you paying attention, George Lucas? (6)

Anyway, if there is no God, then slavery cannot be morally wrong, hence there can be no moral objection to it, by the Jedi or anyone else. And if slavery isn't morally wrong, what is? What can be? The enslaved lack souls, just like everyone else. They have no claim to any rights or freedom, for those are granted by a creative and loving God, not by the Force, not by midi-chlorians, least of all by the State, whether it be a Republic or an Empire. Slaves also have the misfortune of lacking a sufficient number of midi-chlorians in their blood, all, that is, but young, already obnoxious Anakin Skywalker, the moppet of Tatooine. His gazillions of midi-chlorians earn him a ticket out of slavery and off the backwater planet he calls home. Never mind the mother who gave him birth. We'll just take her son from her and throw her to the wolves, good Jedi that we are.

Here's my real point, though. A few paragraphs back, I mentioned love in the Star Wars universe. This should make for a short discussion for the reason that there isn't any, or very little anyway. How can there be when everyone lives a life devoid of spiritual experience and no one possesses a soul? In the original Star Wars, there is love, caring, and kindness among the main characters. In The Empire Strikes Back (1980), love between a man and a woman blossoms. Princess Leia even says to Han Solo, "I love you" (to a famously funny reply). They are presumably still in love in Return of the Jedi (1983). But those are the most human of the Star Wars movies, especially the original from 1977. As far as I remember, overt acts of love don't reappear until The Last Jedi (2017), when Rose grieves at the death of her sister, moreover when she saves Finn from sacrificing himself in the last battle on the salt planet and subsequently confesses her love for him. In the meantime, midi-chlorians appear and the Star Wars universe suffers through a lack of love. In the second trilogy, it is a grim, loveless, and humorless place. Significantly, midi-chlorians are not mentioned in The Last Jedi, and I don't think they're mentioned in The Force Awakens. Maybe the series is finally emerging from its materialist fog.

But what about the relationship between Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala? Isn't that love? You tell me. Look at them together and tell me they love each other. The scenes they share are too excruciating to watch. There isn't any chemistry--no feeling, no life, no soul, no humanity in any of it. The words George Lucas (a champion of bad dialogue) puts into their mouths are embarrassing and ridiculous. I think it more accurate to say that the relationship between Anakin and Padmé is a plot device expanded for purposes of driving not only the second trilogy but the entire Star Wars saga, for who else is at its center than Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader? His whole story has to be told. And because of that, George Lucas was faced with a serious problem when he began writing the second trilogy, a problem that dates to The Empire Strikes Back, when Darth Vader became Anakin Skywalker. Mr. Lucas had to ask himself, How do I make Anakin Skywalker turn? He has to become Darth Vader. How can that be done? His simplistic solution was not for Anakin to arrive at Darth Vader by being naturally inclined towards ruthlessness and cruelty, or to become that way by being brutalized as a child (like Hitler, Stalin, and Saddam Hussein, for example), or by turning because of some great existential or philosophical struggle within, or by acting simply as a kind of mercenary and suppressing any moral objections he might have to performing his duties. It wasn't even by being seduced by the power of the Dark Side. Instead it was for love and the fear of the loss of love, the one crisis that everyone in the audience has experienced and with which everyone might sympathize. That might have worked under different circumstances. We have seen great love and great loss on the big screen before. Unfortunately, George Lucas wasn't able to pull it off. And so we have a failed attempt to depict love in the second trilogy, an attempt not for the sake of telling a great love story but for getting cute, revolting little Ani into the dark guise of Darth Vader. And in that, George Lucas failed, too. I for one was never convinced that Anikan Skywalker as portrayed in the second trilogy was the same person as the Darth Vader of the original Star Wars. The larger problem of course is that if people don't have souls, are incapable of having any spiritual experience, and have as their god "a mystical energy field," how can there be love? We might ask ourselves the same question about the real world in which we live. (7)

To be continued . . 

Notes
(1) If all living cells have midi-chlorians within them, and midi-chlorians are living cells, then are there midi-chlorians within midi-chlorians within midi-chlorians, ad infinitum?
(2) These, along with a belief in the Force, are among the religions of either pseudoscience or pseudoscientific fiction, aka science fiction. Be aware that there is now a real-world belief called Jediism. As G.K. Chesterton pointed out, once people stop believing in God, they'll believe in anything.
(3) Note the irony in his surname, Christensen. There is irony also in Luke Skywalker's Christian name--oops, given name--which he shares with the author of one of the Gospels of Jesus Christ and which means light or light-giving. Luke is of course a nickname for Lucas, as in George Lucas. And while we're on names, consider that Qui-Gon Jinn's surname is another word for a demon or spirit.
(4) Is it any wonder that in 2008 Americans would choose as our president a man whom some called a "lightworker" and "the one" or "the chosen one"? They must have been primed for such a thing by watching the second Star Wars trilogy in the years 1999-2005.
(5) Not yet Luke's sister, Princess Leia also wears white--pure, immaculate white--at least until she falls into the depths of the Death Star, where her garments are stained and tainted.
(6) I'm not the first to link Star Wars to Manichaeism. See "Manichaeism: A Dualistic Cosmology" by Jenny Northrup at the following URL:

http://jennynorthrup.com/index.php/2015/12/26/manichaeism-a-dualistic-cosmology/

(7) I read not long ago that the current moviemakers are planning to introduce homosexuality into the Star Wars universe. My initial question on reading this was, Shouldn't there be heterosexuality first? The people in this universe are pretty rambunctious, yet hardly anybody is interested in the opposite sex. Where do they all come from? Currently, the series appears to be aimed at children who are in the latent stages of their development. The story can be told without any kind of sexuality at all. Why bother with homosexuality? Better yet for the bottom line (no pun intended): if you think hardcore (no pun intended) fans hated The Last Jedi for all of its perceived transgressions, just wait until you show Poe holding hands with one of his buddies.

In the Manichaean struggle between darkness and light, Darth Vader easily fills the role of the powers of darkness. Given his name, Luke Skywalker would seem to exemplify the powers of light. But who else wears the pure, white vestments of those same powers but Princess Leia?

I wrote the other day about the roles women now play in movies, roles in which physical beauty is discounted and may even be considered undesirable. Now women only have to be as tough, as strong, and as in control as men. That wasn't the case in 1977 when Star Wars was released. Carrie Fisher was beautiful and played the traditional role of the damsel in distress. She was the princess who had to be rescued from the dungeon of a great castle called the Death Star. But when it came down to it, she was tough and strong. She could handle herself and a weapon. Hers was slender and dainty, though, the Virginia Slims of blasters. It's just too bad that moviemakers and audiences have decided that actresses and the women they portray should no longer be beautiful--that masculinity in a woman is a far more desirable trait. You haven't come a long way, baby.

By the way, the term blaster, originally spelled blastor, first appeared in the magazine Weird Tales, in Nictzin Dyalhis' story "When the Green Star Waned" from April 1925. I will soon have more to say about Weird Tales and Star Wars. When? Soon. How soon? Very soon.

Original text copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley