Well. It's been an interesting day for news. Trump wants Russia back in the G8, the G7 are thinking about kicking the US out, and Yoel Romero missed weight for UFC 225. Anthony Bourdain lost his battle with mental illness. So there is a lot I could talk about. But I don't want to talk about any of that. I want to circle back to yesterday's post.
Yesterday I talked about why we should be hopeful for the future, despite all of the acrimony and vitriol you see online these days. Now I want to talk about why we should be scared. And the reason for that is pretty simple. We still need to get to the hypothetical bright future where our civilization has adapted to mass-connectivity instantaneous communication and data retrieval.
This may get a little rambling, as there are a couple of angles I want to look at here. The first is the matter of scales of perspective, and the second is the speed of emotional dissemination. And maybe I'll talk a bit about hypocrisy, too.
Right. So the other day, Kelly Marie Tran quit Instagram after enduring harassment at the hands of Star Wars fans enraged by her character. This sort of behavior is absolutely despicable; the woman was doing nothing that anyone else wouldn't have jumped at the chance to do. She got to be in a Star Wars money and make that Disney money at the same time. However, she unfortunately became emblematic of the many problems that some fans have had with the direction Disney has taken the Star Wars franchise.
Alright, so I suppose first I need to talk about The Last Jedi a little bit. I promise, this is all going to come back to politics eventually. But first, the movie. The Last Jedi was an objectively bad narrative work.
Breathe, angry ones! And chill with the rejoicing, those that agree! Because neither of you took the time to process what I just said! I said it was a bad narrative work. That doesn't make it a bad movie. In fact, it was a pretty good movie. It was fun. It was visually stunning for almost the entire run time, which is a feat. The acting was solid throughout.
The problem was entirely in the narrative. In the story. It was internally inconsistent, and it also didn't gel with The Force Awakens at all. Also, and this is merely critique and not complaint, there were some decisions made in the plot that I though were poor. That doesn't make them wrong, not in any kind of technical sense. Just that I thought they were weaker decisions than the ones that could have been made.
To the first point, it seems like the various groups of main characters were moving at different time scales: the space chase was supposed to take about sixteen hours, Bad Capitalist Planet took a little over a whole day, and Rey and Luke's training sequence was several days, at least. (Yes, I am aware that different planets have different day lengths. However, this is not a thing that Star Wars has ever explored, and it could have been addressed in a line or two of dialogue. However, I have to think that the Resistance group that was operating together had a unified sleep schedule, and... you know what? This post is going to be long enough without me going into all of this.)
To the second: subverting expectation is an effective technique. However, in order to be effective it needs to be used sparingly. Because foreshadowing is a huge part of storytelling. Foreshadowing allows the audience to build a foundation for the story to build on as the narrative progresses. That is actually what makes subversion so effective. Unfortunately, if you toss out literally every scrap of foreshadowing deployed in the move before yours, all you have done is unhinge the meta-narrative.
Okay. So now we have a picture of TLJ. This movie has apparently divided the Star Wars fandom into three groups. And bear with me, I know I'm painting with a real broad brush here, but it will illustrate a general point. There are people that claim it was the best Star Wars movie ever made (those people are wrong, Rogue One was the best one fight me), there are those that claim it was "SJW trash that ruined the franchise," and then there are... well, everyone else, I guess. People that fall into varying shades of "I enjoyed it but it had problems."
Now I don't have any hard numbers on any of this, but I'd be willing to bet that the people that will defend TLJ to the bitter end make up maybe 20% of Star Wars fans. And let's say, for the sake of argument, the neckbeards attacking Ms. Tran also come in at about 20%. That leaves a very large majority of the fan base that sit in the middle.
Now this is where things get pretty interesting. Because from the perspective of the middle, you see a very large minority of people that are absolutely rabid, and that looks pretty scary. That is 40% of people, fucking screaming about this movie. That is almost half.
Now, from the perspective of either absolutist position, absolute ideological agreement is a requirement for membership. This means that either extreme faction perceives a massive power imbalance, which causes them to fight all the harder. To the absolute supporter, my claim that TLJ had huge narrative problems is tantamount to me saying that Star Wars is a place for white men only, that Rian Johnson murdered my childhood, and that all women are evil. To the reviler of the movie, my claim that it was a really fun, visually stunning movie means that I automatically thought that VII and VIII are the greatest movies ever made, and that I am a beta cuck (in the parlance of our time) that hates myself.
The two extreme perspectives see their 20% minority standing against a massive juggernaut of 80% of the population that are actively trying to destroy their worldview. People have tied enjoyment or derision of TLJ into political views on gender and race. So these groups are fighting for their way of life.
I hope I painted as neutral a picture of the state of Star Wars as I could. In an unsurprising leap, let's take a step back. Because this same exact drama is playing itself out writ large in American political discourse.
Again, I have no solid figures as to the numbers of people at the more extreme ends of the spectrum. And let me be absolutely clear, here - I AM NOT SAYING DON'T FIGHT FOR WHAT YOU BELIEVE IN. That is, fight metaphorically, not actually. Because... well, you'll see (effective foreshadowing!). But what I am saying is that each extreme sees themselves in the position of a faction about to be ground to dust under the weight of a mass of implacable foes, when the actual reality is that there is a huge number of folks that are more than willing to listen to what you have to say, engage in discussion, and even change their perspective on things.
This long, meandering path, has led to a warning, and some consolation.
Oh wait, Roseanne. Right, that is the other thing. Speed fucking kills, y'all. Roseanne Barr, of the TV show Roseanne, said some racist shit on Twitter like she thought she could get away with it, and she got her show cancelled with record quickness. People have the ability to perceive an injustice, and react to it effectively in a way that we've never had before.
Right, so the scary bit about the next few years - we have people polarized on both ends of the political spectrum that see themselves as defending their way of life against an overwhelming foe. There is a lot of anger, a lot of yelling at the other side, and not a lot of reasonable discussion. Shit, from what I've seen recently, there isn't really an effort being made by either side to determine if an interlocutor is reasonable, they just go straight for the guns.
And with the speed of communication and the level of anger, all it might take is one serious misstep, one instance of out-and-out, large scale political violence to start something terrifying. We've already seen a massive spike in political violence in this country; fortunately, none of it has been organized. But the moment you see one instance of serious, organized blue-on-red violence in the US, you might see it everywhere.
Even this grim story has a bright side, though. And I hope that if you are reading this, you made it this far. Because the moral is, just like in yesterday's post, things aren't as bad as they seem. Keep struggling for what you believe in - that struggle is what makes the human race better, year after year. But while you do, remember that the whole world actually isn't against you, no matter how it might seem.