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Preface: I started writing this just before the election
results started coming in on Tuesday. By
the time I finished and checked the news, the inspiration for writing this had
pretty much fallen to shit. My first
inclination, besides vomiting, was to trash the whole piece. After thinking about it for a while, I’m
posting the entire rambling, painful, embarrassing thing anyway. As wrong as everything turned out, I still
think the underlying message is important, now probably more so. It’s
not much, but it’s what I’m putting out there.
Enjoy it for the deadly irony, at least.
* * *
I was going to write two pieces this week and post the one
reflective of our newly elected President on Friday. One would be optimistic
and triumphant, the other would be apocalyptic.
But you know what? Fuck it, I’m
just going for the optimistic one. I’m
not hedging my bets. Plus, I’m very lazy.
This one is more fun, anyway. It’s about the most wondrous, impactful, and
positive moment in my personal history of cinema. These recollections are from a five year old me. No, I'm not going to write as if I were five years old. That is hack bullshit. I'm going to interpret from my five year old self. Totally different kind of hack bullshit. And yes, I am
going to talk STAR WARS (the one from 1977).
The (Long-Ass) Capsule:
In an undetermined location and time period, two robots find
themselves in a serious shit storm when their tiny spaceship is swallowed by a
bigger, meaner looking one. One robot is
short and whistles instead of talks, but somehow everyone knows what he is
saying. The other one is tall, fussy,
and British. While a bunch of guys in
white plastic armor kill everyone, a girl with crazy hair gives the short robot
a secret message. He and his friend
escape to a desert planet and are promptly captured by some dwarf junk dealers. Back on the tiny ship, the dopest villain
ever struts around breaking necks and being super badass. He takes the crazy haired girl prisoner and brings
her to see the old guy from those Dracula movies with all the cleavage. On Desert World, a whiny blond kid buys the
robots, but the short one takes off.
Blondie and the fussy robot run after him, because short whistling
robots aren’t cheap. Blondie almost gets
killed by a sand mummy, but a well-spoken old dude saves him. The old guy turns out to be a magician
samurai with a laser sword and very good manners. The short robot plays the secret message for
the old dude and he convinces Blondie to go with him on a mission. Blondie agrees because Desert World is boring
and he suddenly has much less familial responsibility. They run into a scoundrel, who’s kind of a
jerk, but kind of cool at the same time, and his ape-bear co-pilot who only
growls but somehow everyone can understand him, too. The old dude hires the scoundrel to fly them
in his junky ship to a planet mentioned in the secret message, but Dope Villain
and the guy from Dracula have already blown it up with their giant deathball
ship. The junky ship gets pulled into
the Deathball and everyone splits up.
The old dude goes to flip the tractor beam power switch, Blondie and the scoundrel score some white
plastic armor and go with the ape-bear to rescue the crazy haired girl. The
robots stay behind to watch the car. They
rescue the girl, who turns out to be a princess who takes no shit. They run around, shoot stuff, swing over
chasms, Blondie almost gets drowned by an octopus monster, and they are all
nearly squashed in a very inefficient trash compactor. Also, the old dude turns off the tractor
beam. As they are all meeting back up at
the junky ship, the old dude gets in a sweet laser sword fight with Dope Villain,
then turns into a ghost. Everyone else
gets away and meets up with Princess Crazy Hair’s crew. Blondie and a bunch of other guys attack the Deathball in space fighter ships that are all named after letters. The alphabet ships get picked off by the enemy fighters, even though they all have hellacious blind spots and scream when they fly by. Things look even worse when Dope Villain
hits the scene in his custom screamer. Luckily,
the scoundrel, who we thought cut out after being paid, shows up in his junky
ship and sends Dope Villain spinning out of control. Blondie, guided by the old dude’s voice over
and The Force, which I didn’t really understand at the time but knew was a cool
catchphrase, shoots a rocket down a vent that leads straight to the Deathball’s
central explody part. The Deathball blows up, Dope
Villain runs away, and there is a huge party for the heroes. Everyone gets medals, except the robots,
which is hugely unfair because none of that shit would have gone down without
them. They get polished, at least. Everyone is happy and I didn’t see how there
could possibly be any negative consequences down the line. The End.
First of all, I’m not specifically equating Hillary Clinton
with Princess Leia, or the Democrats with the Rebels (clearly they are more of
the Old Republic, but I’m not going down that rabbit hole). And I’m really not equating Donald Trump with
Darth Vader. Trump only wishes he were
that cool. Plus, Vader has a small chance of
redemption. Trump is more like a certain
desert dwelling entrepreneur/slug creature who is disrespectful to women and is choked to
death by Princess Leia. Maybe I am slightly
equating Clinton with Princess Leia in this case. Obviously, personal interpretations may
vary. Some might see Clinton as the
Emperor and Trump as Han Solo. Just
kidding, no one is insane enough to think of him as Han Solo. [Ed. Note:
slowest, saddest head shake in history]
No, this isn’t a political statement. It’s about excitement and
enthusiasm. STAR WARS is the first
movie I can remember that I appreciated fully.
I’d seen movies before this, but they were just bits and pieces. Only certain fragments made any impression on
me. STAR WARS, on the other hand, had me
riveted from the first frame to the end, even the talky part in Ben Kenobi’s
house where even C3PO goes to sleep. I
went in expecting some kind of PLANET OF THE APES movie, as the only thing I
registered from the TV trailers was a big hairy dude. What I got, within the first few minutes, was
more than I imagined possible. It was
the first movie that solidly kicked my ass. It was my moment of magic.
Some of that wonderment fused directly into my DNA. Unless it’s absurdly hokey, my suspension of disbelief is almost total when dealing with space movies. I am all in. To this day, in my mind, the actor who played Chewbacca is a real Wookiee. Intellectually, I know it’s just Peter Mayhew, a regular, if freaky tall, human in a suit. I’ve seen plenty of pictures of him in the suit with his regular old human head poking out. Doesn’t’ matter, every time I watch the movie(s), I see a living, breathing, growling alien. It's cognitive dissonance in the best way, not the crazy way. [Ed. note: Like, say, thinking a billionaire who has never done any kind of public service and doesn't pay taxes will have the back of the working class.]
Sometimes it even surprises me. When I saw the behind the scene footage of
how they made the pen float for the shuttle scene in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, I was
floored. It never rationally occurred to
me that Kubrick hadn’t just made the whole thing in space. Come to think of it, maybe he did fake the
moon landing. I certainly wouldn’t have questioned
it.
Not only did STAR WARS color my appreciation of all movies
afterward, it affected the way I looked at women in movies, and in real
life. Princess Leia is an incredible character. She was strong, defiant, and
clever. She stood up to torture and
wasn’t even intimidated by Darth freakin' Vader.
She matched Luke’s heroism, Han’s sarcasm, and Chewie’s (real Wookiee)
heart. She may have slid down
the ranks of my favorite female characters over time (Ripley will always be #1), but she
was the archetype. Even more
importantly, at five years old, I didn’t think of Leia as a strong female
character. She was just part of the
gang, as capable as anyone. Gender was
never an issue. Except that her 12’ action
figure came with a goddamned hairbrush instead of a gun. When did she ever use a hairbrush Mattel?
It helped that gender wasn’t that big of a deal in the movie
itself. It did have a save the princess
trope, but Leia was as much a part of their escape, and their ultimate victory,
as anyone. No one bats an eye that she
is a woman in a position of power. It's never questioned. Peter
Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin (or Grand Moth Tarkin, as I thought, pre-Wookieepedia)
preys on her humanity to get information, not her femininity. Han Solo gets prickly with her because she’s
royalty, not because she’s a girl. And
he can be kind of a jerk. Luke clearly
had a crush on her, but she didn’t have time for romance (which was better for
everyone, as it turned out). The fact that she is in a dress does not hold her back.
I’ve seen A LOT of movies since STAR WARS, of all topics and levels of quality. A good many I’ve appreciated more. Many have
been better written, shot, directed, or acted. STAR WARS doesn't even make my top ten anymore. No matter how good or
how bad a movie is, though, it will never replace or erase that moment when I
was five years old, watching STAR WARS and feeling like anything was possible. When
it’s hard to keep going, that moment is what keeps me moving forward.
P.A.S. (Post-Apocalypse Script):
So Hillary Clinton wasn’t our Princess Leia. She was our Aunt Beru. But that’s okay. Our Princess Leia is still out there. Maybe she’s one of the four women of color to
win (or retain) Senate seats Tuesday.
Maybe she’s a little girl who dressed up as Leia (or more likely Rey, or a Ghostbuster) for
Halloween. It will happen.
Sure, the way things went down, it feels less like the
triumphant end of STAR WARS and more like the downbeat ending of THE EMPIRE
STRIKES BACK. We got our asses handed to
us, no doubt. But like the last scene,
it’s time for us to catch our breath, heal up, and make plans to deal with
Jabba the Trump. Don’t worry, it turns
out alright in the end.
C Chaka
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