The Sense of Falling

The first thing I noticed about Death Valley was the impression of falling. First there was the sense that I was falling down into it. This is exacerbated when approaching from Pahrump, Nevada, because you cross a two-thousand foot ridge before plunging directly to well below sea level. I went downhill so long that I thought I had reached sea level long before I actually had. This sense of disorientation is not helped by the fogs and clouds which form over the descent.

The second sense was that of everything falling into the valley. To feel this, one has only to look up from the valley floor, and it becomes obvious that the walls are not, well, normal. I’ve grown up looking at mountains all my life; I know what a rocky slope is supposed to look like. But in Death Valley, the slopes look wrong. They aren’t solid slopes, but slow-motion slumps. You can tell just by looking that instead of assuming the shape of a fixed mountain, the rock has adopted the shape of a sand castle mid-way through the process of crumbling into the surf. But in this desiccated defile, the process is frozen, creating a sense of suspense. The world above looms over you, and you begin to feel that the rocks and hills may literally fall on you.

Finally, there is the sense of people falling, inevitably draining like water to the bottom. At the lowest point, Badwater Basin, a procession of tourists files silently off into the salty distance - pilgrims to the bottom of the world. The place is eerie, and I couldn’t help but be preoccupied with that same draw to the bottom as I stared southwest across the valley, searching the opposite wall for the canyon into which the fabled and tragic lost Germans had vanished twenty years ago. Then I turned, and began the climb back up.

The Fear of Falling Rocks

From my base airbnb in Kanab, Utah, I entered Zion via the eastern portal. What this meant in practice is a harrowing drive through moderately icy defiles and a long, winding tunnel of darkness and nerves. I came back a couple days later for a second round.

Actually, I came back because I hadn’t realized the first time that you needed to reserve shuttle tickets in advance to really see Zion, so I had to postpone the sightseeing. By the end of the week, I had made the drive back from Hurricane to Kanab at least three times (it’s not short).

So, while I was waiting to see Zion’s main valley, I went to Kolob. Not the planet, the canyon - although it certainly looks extraterrestrial, with ziggurats of rusty stone looming at impossible angles over canyons plunged in gloom. While there I walked a couple of miles along a frozen creek, which the trail crossed innumerable times. Each ford was a bet that the ice - carved and knitted into writhing fibers - would hold firm underfoot. I turned back a little while past an old settler cabin, because I could look up and see the boulders perched loosely hundreds of feet directly above me, ready to fall - now or in a hundred years or so.

The next day I made my way up the narrow canyon of the Virgin River, avoiding the toxic water full of cyanobacteria. This meant sticking to the trail that hugged the cliff base, so once again I was confronted with the fear of falling rocks. Water dripped from overhanging ledges, and icicles clung to concavities, reminding me of the forces of winter prying away at the rock, all while thousands of tourists constantly cycled by below, many with small children in tow. It’s an interesting calculation in probability the National Park Service has made, or maybe we all make it for ourselves. I spent the whole time thinking, what happens if today the face detaches and the rocks fall?

Still, it was incredibly beautiful to visit the canyon in winter, with snow filtering down between the walls.

The Last Star Wars

The Last Jedi. This is the one I wanted to write about in the first place. Back in the day I made lots of notes about this film and what I should write about it. But I’m not sure they matter anymore (or maybe that’s my excuse for being too lazy to look through them). At any rate, when I first saw this film I really liked it, but parts of it didn’t work for me. Over the past three years, however, it has aged incredibly well. The fact that this movie actually has something to say elevates it beyond most other Star Wars films, into a beautifully cohesive picture, both thematically and aesthetically.

So anyway, I like this one.

The film is burdened by The Force Awakens’ incuriosity about galactic politics, and I used to count that as a weakness in this film, but no longer. Do I wish I understood more? Yes, but that’s on JJ. Maybe I’m biased because the backlash against this film rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe I’m just falling in line with my tribe. Oh well. The movie is still great.

A big part of what makes the film work is the production design, which is gorgeously photographed. In particular I want to shout out the very clean First Order UI.

Actually the white and red of the UI is typical of the film, which deploys color to distinguish the various settings and plotlines. The island on Ach-To is green, blue, and above all, grey - it’s neutral, on the fence, like Luke and like Rey. The casino planet is, fittingly, golden; at one point Finn and Rose race the police through the space equivalent of a wedding inspo pinterest board of golden lights.

And of course, there’s the films two dominant colors, two of my absolute favorites: white and red. These are everywhere, separate at first, but exploding together as the film progresses. Snoke’s red chamber is one of my favorite sets in the saga, and tremendous color discipline is exercised to render the rebel ship’s interior pale and wan in every respect. But once on Crait, the red salt explodes onto the white surface of the planet, like so much blood being spilt.

As for beauty, the location scouts outdid themselves with Skellig Michael, which is as beautiful as anything the saga has seen.

Ultimately, this film is hard for me to write about because I had a hard time making notes about it, I was so distracted by enjoying it. I also, to be completely honest, haven’t figured out my process for writing this blog yet. I haven’t been putting in the time or energy to properly edit it, so everything just sort of emerges as transcribed notes, hence the weird aggregate structure of these posts. I’m not entirely happy with this, because it makes me feel I am lazy.

You can see this in my inability to transition smoothly between paragraphs, something The Last Jedi does brilliantly - see “Where’s Rey” and “Where’s Han”.

If The Force Awakens was about meeting your heroes, this film is about losing them - or more accurately, moving on from them. Poe’s arc is designed to prepare him to lead once Leia is gone; Rey must move on from Luke and Kylo from Vader; Finn has to learn to be the hero himself, in the absence of Han. And of course, in meeting Finn, Rose comes face to face with one of her own heroes. Rose is a particularly important addition to the saga, precisely because she is normal. The series needed a muggle companion, and Rose provides that. Otherwise it’s all endless aristocratic battles, wholly disconnected from the lives of the galaxy’s citizens.

After all, isn’t Star Wars always going on about how the force surrounds and binds together all lives and all life? This description of the force - as something immanent in each person and in every atom of creation may be a fictitious religion, but like other fictitious manmade religions, it reminds us of the real spiritual dimension of things. In other words, fans who identify as practitioners of the Jedi religion may be wrong and lost, but the concept of the force reminds us of the need for something immanent, omnipresent, and transcendent, through which all things have their being and meaning.

It is fitting that we end up in the realm of faith, because The Last Jedi is, at the end of the day, a text about first deconstructing and then reconstructing faith. Rey’s faith is troubled by temptation and doubt in the face of Luke’s flaws, but she ultimately decides to embrace the Light. Kylo sheds his faith in the past, but recommits himself to the dark side. And Luke, of course, loses his way only to find it again.

Yoda expresses this in his speech embracing failure. The film is about victory in defeat, and strength in weakness. Perhaps that’s why it’s so resonant with me, as a Christian.

The only other thing I have to say is the sheer delight I felt in the theater when Rey and Kylo turned and began fighting back to back.

It's a pity they didn't make any more of these films.

At the Top of the Continent

So, I’ve sort of let things get away from me the past month or two. Work has been unusually busy, and with it I’ve either had less free creative energy, or have been held back by anxiety. But I’m going to try to get back into the flow of writing, since I think it will be good for me, even if I am irrationally (or otherwise) afraid of mortally embarrassing myself somehow in the process.

Fortunately I haven’t traveled any since December, so I’ve not fallen further behind on travel writing - if I can use the term.

At any rate, last December I made the very silly decision to drive into snowy Colorado in my 2004 Camry. I had no trouble reaching the silent Black Canyon of the Gunnison, which has to be one of the more underrated sights in North America, given how little press it gets. Not that there’s much to do there in winter, but the stark towers dusted with snow are more than enough to justify the trip.

No, my decision to drive became silly once I had to go from Montrose to Telluride, elevation 8,750 feet. I crawled along the winding mountain passes, constantly aware of the annoyance of all the 4WDs behind me. Thankfully the road was mostly clear of snow, and entirely free of ice, but a screen of falling flakes descending on a pass made for interesting driving.

Telluride itself is a lovely town, if a bit expensive for the likes of me. There was a bookstore, which was good, but it would benefit from exchanging some of its boutique shopping for several more bookstores, in my opinion. The coffee was good, however, and the scenery cannot be beat.

The next day I repeated almost the whole of the same drive, only to continue on to Mesa Verde in time to catch the sun dying on the city walls.

That night I stayed in a tiny trailer refurbished as an airbnb. When I rose to leave at six a.m., I was amazed my car even started. It was three degrees above zero.

The Mouse Awakens

The Force Awakens has got something going for it that not even its ultimate successor can take from it: it got to be the film in which Star Wars became fun again. Younger people might not get this, but for a long time it looked like there really would never be any more Star Wars films (as ludicrous as that sounds in this Age of the Mouse). But prior to the Disney acquisition, I had no real expectation that sequels were ever coming. On the one hand, that was good, because they couldn’t mess things up more, but still, it’s always fun, in a very six-year-old way, to have more lightsabers on screen. So I remember the tremendous excitement I felt going to see this film by myself in the theater at Favore Mall in Toyama, which only grew as I enjoyed the film all the way through.

The trouble is, I really don’t have that much to say about this film outside of that nostalgic first viewing experience. Maybe I never had much to say about Star Wars in the first place. Maybe I shouldn’t have committed to doing a series, and should have just stuck to films I’m gushing to talk about. Or maybe, as much as I love film and adore the visual arts, maybe I’m just not that good at coming up with creative or interesting things to say about them, especially when writing with only the energy I have left over from teaching.

Or maybe that’s all this film is - a Star Wars ride. If you like Star Wars, you’ll have fun on the ride, but don’t try to do anything besides just enjoying the ride.

The film does have a couple things really going for it, besides nostalgia. For one thing, the core idea - that the film is about kids who grew up in the world of Star Wars finally getting to play at it for real - is a real mood that translates as honest. For another, the casting department knocked it out of the park. Finally, the film is just gorgeous to look at. I mean, look at these shots:

Especially the fight in the forest, which ranks as one of my favorite moments in the saga, mainly because of how it is lit.

The last thing I’ll say about the film is that I found Kylo talking his father into giving Kylo the strength to kill him compelling in a troubling way, because it reminded me of how I worry I talk to other people to get reassurance so that I can feel safe carrying out some sin (admittedly I have never done anything like murder a beloved character - it’s just an analogy).

A Strangely Small Finale

Return of the Jedi is clearly the weakest of the original trilogy, barring the throne room scene, and as such I probably have the least to say about this movie. Although as a child I loved it.

I’m not even going to comment on the most egregious changes Lucas made to the film.

I think the films biggest problem is shifting tones and the glue at the seems of scenes. To be specific, the opening sequence at Jabba’s Palace feels like a separate episode of TV, a prologue to the film - although maybe this is a situation they were stuck with coming off Empire. After that, the film diverges into parallel tonal tracks: on the one hand we have Yoda, Luke, and his conflict with the Emperor over Vader. And on the other hand, we have the ludicrous adventures of Han and Leia with the Ewoks. Shunted between these is one of the greatest space battles ever committed to film.

That’s really the extent of my thoughts on the film, unfortunately. Although I loved the introduction of the Emperor, and seeing it anew in the context of the prequels raises the question of which version is better: the Emperor as a mysterious, protean figure of darkness, or Palpatine as an upjumped politician with delusions of magnificence. I’m honestly not sure which I prefer.

I’ll also note that the Empire allows itself to be destroyed out of hubris, sheer unwarranted overconfidence.

The one choice that this film makes that I really love is that the stakes of the conflict between Luke and the Emperor are entirely personal - it’s just over Vader’s soul. The battle for the fate of the galaxy is won by the rebels without Luke. Tightening the stakes for the hero to just the personal and letting others win the war is a choice many other blockbusters are sadly averse to.

The Whole World Falls Away

I rose early and went to Arches when the park was still smothered in morning fog. The ground was dry, but every twig and stem was slathered in hoarfrost.

As the sun rose, the mist slowly began to clear, revealing a Louvre-worthy gallery of stone windows. Still, for all the awe it inspired, I couldn’t fathom why some folks were drawn to walk under the massive arches. How do you think they got to be that way in the first place?

Unwilling to navigate the ice on the downhill slope of road to the north end of the park, I left and headed for Canyonlands. After a long drive, including the harrowing passage of The Neck (exactly what it sounds like), I arrived at the cliffs from which the whole world falls away.

Over to westward, I could see the white mountains of Colorado, beckoning.

Lost in the Clouds

Empire Strikes Back is, aside from still being the best entry in the Star Wars saga, a film about consequences, both of choices in the previous film and in this one. Luke’s choice to take up the lightsaber and later to leave his training and Han’s decision to return to the Alliance and then to dally with them longer than he had too both have significant consequences for them personally. And for an older generation, the true apparition of the film is not the ghost of Kenobi, but Luke Skywalker, returned as if to haunt both Yoda and Vader with the spectre of their past mistakes.

It is also a story told more through the screen than the script, and the visual leitmotifs are as pronounced as anything in Williams’ score. Just as Empire is an in-between movie, the settings and visuals are restless and liminal: halls, tunnels, shafts, forests of trees and fields of asteroids wind our heroes in a maze of in-betweens. It’s a transient movie: the rebel base is quickly abandoned only for the film to end with the rebel fleet, and even the empire is seen only in their fleet, with no Death Star to call home. There’s no solid ground to be found, only ice, the flesh of the space slug, the mud of Dagobah, or the airy vastness of Bespin.

There’s also the mist. I think this film must have been the biggest payday for purveyors of smoke machines since the invention of the rock concert. All joking aside, it serves a real story purpose: the snows of Hoth, the mists of Dagobah, the clouds of Tibanna gas, even the starry cloud of the galaxy at the end, all emphasize the ephemeral, fragile position of the rebels, and their confused and lost way.

Let me end by saying that in a way, this film begins the process of redeeming the message of Star Wars from the great error of pure detachment. I mentioned this when I talked about Revenge of the Sith, but the galaxy needs a moral alternative to selfish passion or emotionless detachment. Luke begins to provide that alternative, as his failure - his unwillingness to set aside his link to his friends - is also the thing which allows Leia to rescue him. This will develop much further in Return of the Jedi and The Last Jedi, but it begins here.

Santa of the Slickrock

I stayed in Sandy, Utah, which was more snowy than what its name suggested. The next morning I cut my way through the Wasatch as the sun rose, and emerged in Helper to grab brunch at a local hole-in-the-wall. While in this town under the ramparts of the mountains I came across the following sign:

I love this, yet at the same time I feel I ought to point out that art itself is not the solution to reality, but that it points in His direction. Of course, feeling like I’m supposed to say that is itself problematic and smacks of a certain kind of insecure obligation that convinces no one and only puts people off. But maybe it’s useful to foreground this and be transparent about it, because I wonder if others feel similarly awkward-but-obligated about their seriously held religious beliefs.

Later that day I made it to Arches, after a long drive under a dry fog. I only have a photo of Delicate Arch (which you might know from the Utah license plate) from the distant lower viewpoint. I hiked up to the upper view, but was stymied by the icy, vertiginous ledge that was the only access point. I had just assumed that since so many tourists were making it up, including ones who were clearly inexperienced hikers and ones with small children, that it must be safe. On seeing the path, I realized that in point of fact we had very different ideas of ‘safe.’

Just as I was about to turn around and return to my car, something caught my eye, coming around the corner of the ledge.

It was a veritable Christmas miracle: the Santa of the Slickrock!

The Elan of Nostalgia

I’ll be honest, I was intimidated to go ahead and sit down to watch the original Star Wars for the purpose of writing about it. When I started blogging, the chief motive was to give myself an outlet for my impulse to point at great works of art that I loved and gush about them. So I was afraid to touch this movie, both because there’s really nothing left to say on it at this point (not that originality actually matters in art) and because I feared to waste my shot at writing about an all time classic. But I realized that I was unlikely to ever really feel conditions for creative engagement were ideal, so I chose to embrace my mediocrity and neutralize it by making it into the first topic of this blog. After all, that’s always been the redemption of mediocre writers.

Watching this film that I grew up with after years of prequels and sequels, the terrific work of the prop department is elevated into the realm of the otherworldly. I can’t look at R2-D2 as he originally was, after years of derivatives and slightly shinier versions, without a sense of awe at seeing the original as a new product, with all the DNA of its progeny already present. And seeing Darth Vader’s black carapace enter the screen for the first time feels like the film production design equivalent of glimpsing the carpenters and goldsmiths assembling the Ark of the Covenant. To paraphrase another space traveler, this is Star Wars, the definite article, you might say.

There’s definitely a wistfulness of nostalgia about this movie, about how things were in the beginning, and what could have been. Obi-Wan’s description of the Jedi as idealists on a crusade - unlabored with our years of baggage - feels far more appealing than what the Jedi become. And the binary sunset is wistfulness ascended to myth.

Ultimately, I was too engaged by the movie to keep consistently making notes all the way through it.

The Frozen Flats

In Idaho I drove out to find a natural formation known as Crater Rings - two well-defined craters immediately adjacent to one another. Tired of the intense speeds of the trucks on I-84, I took a respite by traveling directly over the frozen dirt roads between empty potato fields. As I went, the sun came up. A herd of pronghorn antelope turned tail and lit out for the mountains, and soon I was instead among their successors, the hefty cows.

I never found the craters. I mean, I found where they were, I just wasn’t confident of driving my sedan up an even rougher road, and I didn’t want to walk a mile in the cold.

Lightsabers Never Get Old

That’s the one thing I can really say for this movie. I loved the sheer volume of lightsaber action when I was fifteen, and I still love that about it. Unfortunately not even laser swords could make me excited to rewatch this film. This certainly remains the most watchable prequel (well, aside from Episode I, perhaps), but it’s the shadowy form of a Greek tragedy with all the content and good sense vacuumed out.

Sure, there are a few redeeming qualities. Ewan McGregor really comes into his own as Obi-Wan, and Ian McDiarmid is hilarious. And the lightsabers. But yeah, that’s pretty much it.

Padme’s character, in particular, is eviscerated, which is a shame not just for her but for the movie. She was ideally positioned to represent a moral third choice against the detachment of the Jedi and the selfish passion of the Sith - a third choice the saga sorely needs. Instead, she has basically no perspective or character.

The moral universe of Revenge of the Sith is actually more interesting than the film itself. In a way, it exemplifies the problem of people trapped in different tribal bubbles, with alternative frameworks for interpreting what is truth. Obi-Wan and Anakin’s falling out is, in its most interesting form, a political one. Anakin casts himself as the loyal patriot, unable to let go of control; the Jedi are likewise stuck, ossified and blind in their dogma.

Palpatine in particular seems resonant - his line that the Sith and the Jedi are almost exactly alike eerily echoes the rhetoric of ‘both-siders’ who equivocate between political factions based on the appearance of similar actions without regard for what cause those actions serve. This nihilistic axiom - that power is just power, without moral content, is the central lie that fascism uses to promise otherwise decent people a shortcut to whatever it is they want most. Palpatine’s seduction of Anakin, then, is also political, even if the object is personal. He even uses conspiracy theories to help Anakin justify the choice he already wants to make.

The lie of the Sith is also the lie of idolatry. Plagueis, we are told, could save those he loved from dying. This desire to save and to love is clearly good, but when seized through evil means, love of good is twisted into sin.

The problem is that the Jedi are a moral vacuum, and we are left with selfish nihilism set against impotent decadence and stagnation. This is why the story desperately needs a moral alternative, and Padme was the obvious character to introduce it - if she had been given anything to do.

The Frosty Badlands

I began my trip early, heading into the Columbia Gorge under cover of darkness. As I approached the eastern portal, the sun rose, and lit the fogs downriver to the west.

Unhappy with the direct sunlight in my eyes, and having seen Google suggest that I could make the trip to Nampa in eight hours without using the freeway, I turned south at The Dalles, pausing only to glance at its ludicrously rectilinear dam, before plunging uphill into Deschutes country on 197.

I was able to find gas at the one, tiny off-brand service station in Maupin, where a rotund chihauha trundled out from behind the counter to greet me, before I struck out toward Fossil and John Day, and into the badlands of eastern Oregon. This part of the drive was phenomenally stunning, and I didn’t have to deal with anyone riding my bumper - there wasn’t a car to be seen for miles. Maybe that should have disconcerted me more than it did.

I arrived at John Day in the mid-afternoon. At this point I began to realize that the road ahead went over a higher pass than I had anticipated, and I began to think about finding an alternate route. But I was already too committed to the southern road; every way out of John Day, except the road I had come by, led over a pass. So I went ahead on Route 26, over Austin Summit.

This is where I broke out my universal chains, which were supposed to work with any tires. As the sun set, I pulled over in the ice near the summit, expecting trouble on the downhill, and knelt to thread them through my wheels - only to realize that the type of wheels my car uses makes this threading impossible.

I was stuck. Well, not quite. I could still go forward, although for a few moments of spinning out I wondered if that would even be possible.

I crested the first of three summits, engaged my flashers, slowed to a crawl, and began the long descent over a surface of packed snow and ice. Just at that moment, the sun went down, and it began to snow.

I have no pictures of this section of the road.

It took over two and a half hours to go the fifty miles from John Day to Unity, where I arrived mercifully at a convenience store with a bathroom ten minutes before they closed. The entire way I had clung to the wheel, expecting to lose control and go sliding down the slope, yet in point of fact my Toyota performed admirably and never lost traction. The bigger enemy, it turned out, was drowsiness - it was exhausting to remain so tense at the wheel at such slow speeds.

Once I got to Unity and the convenience store closed its doors onto a parking lot of slippery sheet ice, I consulted my highway map, only to find that I was now well and truly entrapped - Unity was surrounded by five-thousand foot passes on all sides. There was no low road out whatsoever. So I had to go on, voluntarily entering another pass after I had just found relief from the last - and this time it was fully dark, past six p.m. in December.

Well, I got over, and I got to Nampa, bleary-eyed but living, and vowing to always take the low road from here on out.

American Carnage

The Capitol at dusk. Photo by @LeahMillis pic.twitter.com/MSzdmTKnMs

— corinne_perkins (@corinne_perkins) January 6, 2021

Turns out a spade was a spade all along.

Are We Still Doing This?

Well then, onto Attack of the Clones. Again, not a comprehensive takedown or review or anything like that - I am not a critic, and everyone and their dog has mocked this film to bits (and then some people have tried to reconstruct its reputation a little - amazingly). No, I apparently just want to force myself to watch all the Star Wars, good and bad, as punishment for my sins.

As the crawl announces, we’ve gone from turmoil in the Galactic Republic to “unrest in the Senate.” At this rate, the saga will probably end on a mild disagreement about phrasing on a non-binding subcommittee resolution. Although if they got Sorkin to write it, I would eat that up.

A question that first appeared in Episode I now becomes even more salient - what precisely does it mean for the Jedi to be “the guardians of peace and order throughout the galaxy”? How precisely do they achieve this? Personally, I find it deeply suspicious that our heroes need a massive army in order to force systems to remain in the republic. I get that the confederacy are called “the confederacy” and are the bad rebels, but if anything the Republic is just as bad, deploying a slave army to force systems to remain in a polity that can’t even be bothered to protect rights within its theoretical boundaries.

At any rate, the Jedi’s close relationship to the chancery and the military leadership raises one of two troublesome possibilities. Either the Jedi are merely enforcers for an oligarchic Senate, or the Senate is an empty pawn of the Jedi, and the Republic is an extremely badly-run theocracy – or perhaps just the demesne of a particularly well-off monastery. It’s additionally suspicious that Anakin can play off chopping someone’s arm off as “Jedi business, go back to your drinks,” and that the Jedi all immediately assume generalships in an army - did they study tactics and grand strategy? What kind of religion is this?

Speaking of the Senate, my head-canon is that Boss Nass appointed Jar-Jar simply to get him off the planet. And oh yeah, this movie reveals that Naboo senators are appointed. In other words, the person who has the most to say in defense of freedom and democracy in this movie was herself appointed by an (elected) monarch - but yet a monarch who sometimes is simply a child and theoretically is a figurehead. I think their democracy has about as much legitimacy as the ham sandwich that Ian McDiarmid is devouring in every scene.

As if to confirm this, there’s a scene where Obi-wan begins lecturing Anakin about the massive influence of money on Senatorial politics, and Anakin shuts him down as if this were a boring subject. But I wish we got more space politics, instead of the ‘romance’ this film tries to serve up. Though the problem there isn’t conceptual, it’s that no one involved acts like a human being. Anakin is incredibly creepy, and yet apparently this works.

I guess Padme does charge at red flags like an enraged bull.

Honestly, maybe she feels she’s obligated to after creeping on child Anakin in the last movie - maybe following through with this is another crooked turn of her strange mind. But it’s seriously weird how she goes for the person who stares at her creepily and won’t stop when asked to, who bosses her around, who openly advocates fascism, and who slaughters children. Their relationship is the biggest leap of science fiction in the whole saga. At least Padme has the excuse of only finally succumbing when she thinks she’s going to die anyway - another great fictional example of people making snap decisions in the face of death, only to live to regret them.

I’d also like to know how Padme changes her hairstyle up in the absence of any maids or salons.

Does Threepio do it? I’m impressed.

At least while this is going on, we have a decent Detective Obi-wan movie, guest starring Temuera Morrison, which I would greatly prefer to watch instead of the rest of this movie. Especially since they shot the Kamino scenes on location in my hometown of Seattle.

I’ll say this for the movie - the factory scene very effectively contributed to my fear complex about assembly lines as a child. Between this and the trash compactor, Star Wars played an outsize role in my childhood fear of heavy industry. But speaking of the factory scene, are we not going to ever talk about how R2 straight up tries to murder C-3P0 by knocking him into the machinery? Couldn’t he have asked him to move?

American Roads

I love American roads, but I don’t always love the other people on them.

I love that American roads go everywhere, but I don’t love that they don’t necessarily have warning labels to tell people like me not to drive just anywhere on them. Google suggested I could make it from Portland to Nampa in eight hours even if I left I-84 and struck out through the badlands of Eastern Oregon. I thought that sounded fun. Well, it took more like thirteen hours, because it turns out there’s no way forward from John Day other than taking several high mountain passes in a row, in the dark, with snow coming down. I had chains - but it turned out the ones I had didn’t work. Always practice with your chains before you actually need them. I later replaced them with better chains. I still haven’t practiced with those either.

At any rate, I got over, at about three miles an hour, coming down icy grades at a crawl.

I also don’t like it when I’m driving more slowly than usual because it’s a six percent downhill grade and I don’t know if there will be a spot of ice or not, so I’d just as soon not go sixty-five, thank you, but the three-trailer truck (!!!) behind me is in a hurry, and I feel the pressure of being judged by everyone else on the road. So it’s anxiety either way, the constant tug between the anxiety of going too fast to be safe if I hit ice, and the anxiety of being judged by the angry people behind me.

Driving through the Wasatch in Utah, I was saved from angst solely by the frequency and length of passing lanes, further reinforcing my stereotype of Utah being competently-run. In Colorado I was constantly stressed, because everyone wanted to go ludicrously fast, and I wanted to go painstakingly slow, just in case I ran into a patch of ice. I never did, but I wonder how everyone else was so confident there wouldn’t be any. I mean, sure, some of them had 4WD vehicles, but there were also sedans and minivans, and we all had the same sort of tires. Did they just know something I didn’t?

Worrying about how the other cars would perceive me bedeviled me. My chief terror in Telluride was not slipping and falling on the ice, or spending all of my money on books (a very real danger), but that when it came time to unpark my car and drive away, I might slide into something and be mortally embarrassed. I already imagined I was being judged a foolish amateur tourist for arriving in a beat up Camry in a town where everyone else drove Subarus and SUVs. But then, I kind of am a foolish amateur tourist in denial, so…

Only one person actually honked at me or was in any way rude on this entire trip, despite all the large pickups I’ve held up going slowly over mountain passes. But being me, of course even before someone came along to confirm my projections, I had already decided that all of these drivers held me in contempt, and in return for this imagined slight I felt personally rebuked and slighted, and harbored a certain kind of irrational resentment. This is, of course, extremely silly, and no way to drive or live well, even if the supposition did turn out to be true in some cases.

Still, I wish there were a way to feel less pressure to drive fast or be judged, when conditions are at all adverse. But my idea of adverse conditions is Colorado’s idea of a nice day, so maybe that’s asking too much.

What’s really interesting to me is how my projections of unwelcomeness mapped the concerns about driving speed and type of car so closely onto political and social divides. I have a certain kind of insecurity whenever I go to a place I do not live, that someone will tell me I’m doing something wrong, or that someone will spot that I am out of place and think “oh no, another tourist.” This is not helped by carrying a camera everywhere I go. But as someone from the coastal suburbs, I tend to feel this anticipated unwelcomeness less when traveling in a foreign country, and more keenly when in the very urban or very rural parts of America. This is despite me not particularly liking the suburbs, aesthetically. I think it has to do with the visibility of class and political differences in these spaces - or rather, with my own stereotypes about them. Because this isn’t an objective phenomenon I’m reporting on and observing about our country - rather, this says some unfortunate things about the state of my own psyche, and how prone I am to prejudging and reducing others in my mind - so naturally I imagine they will do the same to me.

I think I used to be more empathetic and less judgmental when I was a child, but I’m not sure if that’s even true. I would like for it to be true again, though, if it ever was.

I’ve been on the other side of things as well. A year and a half ago when moving across the country in midsummer, I became increasingly impatient to arrive on the West coast, and drove faster and faster as my confidence grew each day. I remember tearing over the speedways of Montana, leaping up and down the hills by the Clark Fork at ninety miles an hour. And in Connecticut I was perfectly comfortable driving in the winter, because everyone just seemed used to it, and I figured they can’t all be wrong. Maybe it’s just that I’m rusty.

Star Wars Episode I: Why Am I Doing This?

The Rationale

So, I’ve just set up my own website and started a new blog on it (who starts a blog in 2020, by the way?), and dedicated a section of that blog to film. I opened a Letterboxd, years late to that party, and created a watchlist of 1,226 intriguing, sophisticated, canonical and obscure films to see.

And then, like a hack, I decided to start with Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

Why would anyone who hopes to be taken seriously in the year of Our Lord 2020 begin their film commentary on one of the most over-analyzed, mocked-to-death, and tiresome films of all time? Isn’t the internet littered with every conceivable form of comment, parody, imitation, and, more recently, sincere defense of this relatively harmless movie from twenty-one years ago?

Well, in my defense, I just wanted what everybody in July 2020 wants: to watch Hamilton (and yes, I drafted this in July – how’s that for showing one’s process?).

A younger, more shameless (and more broke) Andrew would have sailed the high seas, but I’ve been trying to turn over a new leaf, and I also realized that if I was going to spend $15 on doughnuts and coffee every few days, then I could certainly afford to pay for my entertainment. So I signed up for Disney+.

Actually, I still didn’t plan on spending a cent – the Mouse already owns the theater-going billfold of my wallet, and they really don’t need any more. No, I was going to avail myself of the free trial, and then cancel my subscription before it ended, having seen what I came to see.

The wrinkle, though, is that the free trial lasts for a whole month. It only takes two hours to watch Hamilton. A day later, and you can get through Free Solo as well. But what then?

There it was, staring at me on the home page: The Star Wars Collection. All of Star Wars, in one place. Well, except for the Holiday Special (however much you wish it, George, we won’t forget it!). And suddenly I had an urge to watch them all, in order, just to see how it played out. I’ve seen every Star Wars main saga film many times, with the exception of The Rise of Skywalker, which I pointedly only saw in theaters once – an aberration when it comes to Star Wars films. But we’ll get to that one.

So here I am, blogging my way through all nine main saga Star Wars films. Let’s see what I’m in for.

The Film

Disney+ loves to remind you that they now own Star Wars, and they love to put Star Wars content right in your face on the home screen. But, as if in shame, I had to scroll all the way to the right end of the list of Star Wars films to find Episode I – the least intuitive place for the first film of a saga to be, on the far right, offscreen. Of course, Episode I isn’t really the first film, so I suppose that makes some sense. Now, I haven’t sat through this movie in years – in fact, my memories of all of the takedowns, commentaries, parodies, and critical reviews I absorbed in my misspent youth are all more recently in mind than the unmediated film itself. My impressions may not be original, but I hope to be honest.

Let’s begin.

The first thing I notice is that the first sentence of the opening crawl.

“Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic.”

Now this is good Star Wars material. But then the second sentence slides onscreen:

“The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute.”

Oh. Ok.

Five minutes into the film, two thoughts predominate. First, perhaps I was wrong about the Rise of Skywalker (I’m not). After all, at least it wasn’t the cinematic equivalent of watching paint dry. The second is that the Nemoidians are so much worse than I realized when I was a kid. Wow. At least they have fun hats. Seriously, they’re hats are sillier than an archbishop’s.

Jar-Jar

I want to talk about Jar-Jar, but I’m not going to repeat all the criticisms lobbed at him for the past two decades. In fact, I’m not here to criticize Jar-Jar at all, who seems to have committed no crime other than being an idiot. I want to talk about the way the Jedi, specifically Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, treat him throughout the movie.

It is true - Qui-Gon does begin the relationship by saving Jar-Jar’s life, tackling him to the ground in classic meet-cute fashion. You would be forgiven for mistaking this as the altruistic act of a selfless warrior monk - but what comes next has me wondering if perhaps Jar-Jar was just in Qui-Gon’s way.

Having been informed that Jar-Jar owes him a life-debt and will serve him, Qui-Gon initially sees no use for the Gungan - but as soon as he gains utility for the Jedi, suggesting that they go to Otoh Gunga, Qui-Gon insists that Jar-Jar take them. Of course, our hapless froggy friend avers that he cannot safely return since he was banished (presumably for being a nuisance). This is an obviously correct point to make, and since Jar-Jar has already told the Jedi that they should go to the city, without which they would presumably spend the entire movie wandering around the woods and eating shrooms, they really ought to say thank you and swim off to the city already. After all, if it’s close enough to swim to, surely they could find it if Jar-Jar just points them in the right direction.

Of course, this is not what they do. Instead, the jedi heroically coerce Jar-Jar into going with them as their guide, with Obi-Wan joyfully relishing painting Jar-Jar a picture of his torture and dismemberment at the hands of the droids, should he not help them. As an aside, Obi-Wan is much better and more emotive in this movie than I remembered - just maybe not always in the right ways.

But once poor old Jar Jar has done his part, and, against his better judgment, taken the Jedi to the undersea city, the Jedi completely abandon him. After conferring with the Bosses, they walk right past the manacled Jar Jar and make as if to leave, without a second thought. When Jar Jar addresses them, Obi-wan actually urges Qui-Gon to not stop and listen, because they have little time. Only after realizing Jar Jar’s potential utility as a navigator does Qui-Gon inquire what will happen to Jar Jar. While Boss Nass only says that Jar Jar will be “punished,” Jar Jar declares that he’d rather be dead in Otoh Gunga than dead in the Core, suggesting that he may have been facing execution. In point of fact, it doesn’t matter if he was just going to be given community service - the Jedi knowingly placed him in a situation where he would be punished, and then didn’t even care to find out what would happen to him when they decided to leave.

I was still thinking about this when Jar Jar tries to jump off the bridge with the jedi, only to remember halfway out the window that they’re jedi and he’s not, so then he flails and grabs onto the railing. Honestly it’s incredible he survives the movie. Qui-Gon doesn’t care if he dies, Obi-Wan relishes his fear, and Jar-Jar himself seems like he’s competing with all his might for a Darwin award. I recall that at a certain point on Tattooine, Jar-Jar is being choked violently, and Qui-Gon, the mighty Jedi, just sort of stands there looking on until a child intervenes to stop the attack. That pretty much says it all.

Space Politics!

The other thing I really want to talk about in this movie is space politics. George got a lot of flak for putting so much space politics in this movie, but personally, I love space politics. I think the problem is more that he didn’t explain the space politics enough for anyone to really feel like there were stakes, and the characters are all way too chill for us to take it seriously.

But speaking of chilling out, can anyone tell me what the Republic even does? Let’s see:

- no army

-different local laws in every system, and even on the same planet

- no human rights enforcement

- no social services

- no external threat to defend against

- no serious attempt to maintain internal order

- no standardized trade policy

- relies entirely on a police force of several hundred volunteer monks who aren’t even good at what they do.

Is the Senate a governing body, or an elite social club? What if Palpatine is right that centralization is needed? The movie doesn’t give us much reason to disagree. For the record, this is not a the-Empire-was-right take. I mean, do those people remember Alderaan?

Maybe the Galactic Republic is a libertarian’s paradise, and if Ayn Rand were writing Star Wars the Nemoidians would be the heroes? I guess that last clause is less of a question and more of a given.

Oh, and one more thing, why does the queen have actual political power to sign or not sign a treaty, if she’s 14? I thought she was a figurehead? To be fair, she’s clearly the most competent figure in her government, but I suppose that’s the real problem.

Addenda

To wrap things up, here are some random observations:

When Jar-Jar first starts talking to Padme, her face instantly freezes into a rictus of horror.

“Don’t want to attract attention” - cuts to the chrome-plated space yacht

At this point the main thing I feel about Anakin is sympathy for Jake Lloyd. That’s really all I have to say about the the character in this film. That I can get away with saying so little about the nominal protagonist (?) does not speak well of the script.

Bubble (yes that is the character’s name) tells them that the death toll is catastrophic, and the room immediately dismisses this as a trick and doesn’t react at all. But what if he was telling the truth?

The only people more bored than the viewers are the characters in the film. They are all just totally checked out, especially Qui-Gon. I think the Republic secretly wanted to collapse, if only to relieve its monotonous decadence.

Maul’s ship honks. I bet he’s got a gym in there. The movie would be massively improved by a Maul workout montage.

How is Watto so rotund if he has to constantly flap to stay up? What’s his caloric intake?

I love how the film stops dead to just show off all the goofy racers and their pods - it knows this movie isn’t worth missing any of the race for.

The noise the guy makes before he hits the cave wall and explodes is exactly what I imagine a frog being stepped on sounds like.

The guy Sebulba grenades literally just says “rawr” in a scooby doo voice.

How did Jabba sleep through the most engaging part of the movie?

The invention of prequel memes has massively improved the viewing experience.

Why are treaties under duress even valid? The Republic really is useless.

My conclusion is that the Trade Federation should stick to trade, because they are hilariously bad at war.

The dramatic irony of the joyous tone, knowing where the trilogy goes, actually enhances the finale. What is NOT improved by dramatic irony is Padme’s creepy-in-hindsight smile at Anakin.

Finally, I just can’t believe they tried to set up a cinematic universe with a film that doesn’t even have a single post-credits scene.

Beginning Again, Again

Why am I starting a blog for the fourth or fifth time (I actually lost track) in the year of Our Lord twenty-twenty? Conventional wisdom says the age of blogging ended over a decade ago; personal experience suggests I will fail to complete any creative project not driven by institutional deadlines. Then there’s the matter of content: as I’ve gotten older my views have, if anything, become less interesting and idiosyncratic, especially as I now have a greater appreciation for the wisdom of general consensus. So if I’m just going to give the same hot takes that most people already agree with, and am going to publish them years late, on an irregular schedule, where I blog about something weeks after it happened, then why is this a good idea?

Well, I never said it was. But I’ve never let that stop me before.

This, this right here is the slough that gets me every time - I finished a paragraph, I felt all right about it, and I didn’t feel like doing the work of thinking of something to say next. And that’s usually where writing projects stop with me. This is especially a problem since I combine the unfortunate traits of having high standards while also being too lazy to try to reach them. But I’m going to ignore that and keep going even if the work is slipshod and lazy.

So, why do this? Well, to be perfectly honest, I feel that blogging offers the maximum scope for obnoxious exposition. You know how children commonly love to show their parents what they have found, to repeat what they are learning, as if the hearer were a complete naif? Well, I never grew out of that. My whole career in education was stumbled into not because I sought it or was especially good at it, but because I can’t learn any fact without immediately wanting to tell someone else about it, to vicariously relearn it through them - usually much to their annoyance! (This, by the way, is the great advantage of a classroom and a teaching sinecure - it provides one with a captive audience upon which to inflict one’s exuberance).

It’s not just facts, of course. As I’ve gotten older my taste in aesthetics of all kinds - art, music, film, literature, even the geography of the planet - has continued to broaden in variety and deepen in appreciation. And as I read or watch or go, almost always alone, I can’t stop myself refracting everything through the fantasy of another person also coming to see how great and beautiful it is. (Is this entire project an elaborate cry for help about being lonely? Let’s not investigate that too closely).

So that’s what I’m about. I honestly don’t know if anyone will read this, and I hope no one feels obligated to pretend to do so out of friendship - in an age when everyone has about five or six different personal entrepreneurial gigs going that all have to be self-promoted on social media, I think we all just tune each other out to some degree, even when we do love each other. I won’t pretend to be indifferent to the idea of having readers - I don’t want to hide behind the arrogant fiction of “just writing this for myself.” But ultimately, I am going to try to write this more because I want to than because I know anyone will read it. Actually maybe it’s better if they don’t - after all, the more honest I am about what I think, the more faults and points of potential disagreement or embarrassment are exposed.

So, what am I going to try to write about? Well, that depends largely on whether or not I even get around to writing at all, which as I’ve shown earlier, is very far from a given. Even if I do, is it that likely that I’d write often enough to cover all the topics I’m setting my sights on. Still, a statement of purpose is usually helpful. So, without limiting myself or excluding anything, I’d chiefly like to talk about my feelings - about what I find interesting, yes, but especially about what I find beautiful or moving, whether that be a place to travel, a film, a poem, or a song. I’m also leaving the possibility of giving my bad opinions on global politics on the table, as well as sharing any random nerdy tidbits of history I find fascinating. But my main interest is in chasing the tail of my own artistic taste down the rabbit hole of obsessively curating what things I love and want to share with others. That, and badly mixed metaphors.

Of course, I also hope to talk about my faith. After all, the impulse to glorify and to evangelize - to rush to get others to share in the joy we get when weeping at a symphony or biting into a delicious cinnamon roll, is the same energy that makes the rocks cry out to the glory of their maker, or that drives missionaries to estrange themselves from their lands and lives. But I’m not sure how that will go for me. I worry, because I often feel more positively motivated to spread the good news of earthly beauty than to point back to the eternal. I mention this because I am trying to be more honest, more transparent, about my struggles and true feelings as I get older - there is simply not time to waste on pretense. I also don’t think I can avoid it - one of the things I’ll have to negotiate as I write about art and culture, is the degree to which my artistic tastes feel like they’re at times in tension with my convictions. I might even be in error to write about some of this - perhaps discretion would be wiser. But this is the ditch I’ve chosen to err in, if indeed that’s what I’m doing. And if I embarrass myself on the way, you’re welcome to laugh with me at myself.