Monthly Archives: September 2014

The Return of the Jedi is Better than The Empire Strikes Back

I realize this title is heresy. This is really a test to see if you can even try to make that case.

I’m one of those (flawed) individuals who believes that the original Star Wars film (A New Hope, if you must) is superior to its sequel, The Empire Strikes Back. This is a personal decision I’m not interested in debating, though I know the consensus that the sequel trumps the original in character development, plot lines, and production value. We’ll leave that aside for another time.

While the importance and relative value of Hope and Empire is debatable, what’s not debatable is The Return of the Jedi’s place in the pantheon. It is certainly the third, perhaps the fourth best film in the saga, and depending on how J.J. Abrams’s lens flares translate into galaxies far, far away, Jedi may be pushed even further down the list.

It shouldn’t be. Here’s everything wrong with Jedi: the Ewoks. They gave it that kid-friendly, collect-them-all aspect that really kick-started George Lucas’s much-maligned moneymaking world tour. It’s pretty much just the Ewoks.

What else is bad? The pacing is a little weird. We spend an awful lot of time on the opening rescue of Han Solo, then do the Dagobah retread and watch Frank Oz die in the swamp, followed by the whirlwind Rebel Fleet tour that feels totally decentered, and finally we alternate between three endings—all at the same time—rotating between the Emperor’s throne room, the Battle of Endor, and California Forest Moon Ewok Crawl.

The characters are all fine, still. Darth Vader is fascinating here, and the triad of him, Luke, and the Emperor all taunting/threatening/defying/cajoling one another remains, to me, a tragedic masterpiece act within the overall space opera. Luke (dressed in Hamlet’s Jedi robes) has grown up from the whiny kid, Vader has grown weary of being a robot (and an absentee father) while struggling to find a way to quit his job as the Emperor’s lapdog. The Emperor here is alternately hysterical and terrifying. He’s the perfect mix of crazy “grandfather” thrown into the oedipal power struggle of Luke and Vader.

The action in the movie is as good as it gets. Aside from Ewoks, there’s much less cheese than you might anticipate. It’s a great adventure, and that Jedi-Sith triad at the end of the film covers a multitude of sins.

And who doesn’t like to see possible incest get sorted out so cleanly? What a relief Leia was a little more in love with Han than her bro. Yeah, the ending is kind of a joke, but what do you do after saving the universe and narrowly losing it? You have to laugh, right?

 

In contrast: Empire has its own faults. It’s as episodic as Jedi, (though this is not really a fault if we buy into Lucas’s original “Flash Gordon” serialized vision). Thus we have ice planet, swamp planet, space time, cloud planet, space time. Basically the film equals its siblings in this, and in its pacing issues (I’d argue). The movie is terrific fun, of course, but it’s really not that different than Jedi.

The major difference here is the love story: there is one in this film. That’s it. That’s where your whole plot arguments stem from. Once again, I’ll give you that it’s a wonderful love story. It’s fun, it’s witty, it’s perfect, and it is really over by the time Jedi rolls around.

But this movie has its own Ewoks: Yoda. I’m not going to argue that point, because by now we’re all required to love Yoda. Still, he’s so obviously made for kids and toys.

And though Empire’s impact is tremendous in complicating its main villain (in the big reveal that Vader was Luke’s father), I still believe the throne room scene between Luke, Vader, and the Emperor in Jedi means more. In Empire, we still have our brave, rash hero and his nemesis/archetypal father. But in Jedi, our hero is in black, scarred (and disfigured) by facing his foe, and battling demons inside and outside throughout Jedi. Luke manages to finally become a complicated character in Jedi, something Han Solo achieved in Empire. Our protagonist becomes real to us in this last act. And not only him, but Darth Vader, Dread Lord of the Sith, finds himself battling between the same temptations Luke faces—the need for power and the desire to destroy it. The villain becomes a sacrificial figure. The Emperor, the uber-villain, simply cackles and watches most of this struggle play out. He’s both an audience surrogate and a manipulator of all plots, all characters. To finally see the man pulling the strings of an entire galaxy, finally, and to see him undone by the very forces he created, makes for a perfect ending.

Empire’s ends strongly: where in Hollywood do we see the bad guys win? In contrast the coda of Jedi (the celebration on Endor) feels silly. But the real center and ending of Jedi are the throne room scenes between three forces struggling to save or end the galaxy. And though it is dragged down by the uneven remainders of that sixth episode in the Star Wars saga (as fun as it is to watch Jabba choke, this might have been a completely different episode—just like the Battle of Hoth in Empire), I think this exploration of archetypal forces pushes Jedi into the top spot.

So I suppose I should say Return of the Jedi is the best forty-five minute film of the series.

Is Are Be Am Was?

I’m still on the Wiktionary kick (for whatever reason) so let’s talk word origins!

In answer to one of Bill Clinton’s golden lines, we will (briefly) investigate what the meaning of is really is.

This following is a practice sentence:

It is important that we be open to what was—as well as what things are becoming.

I apologize for not spending time to make that sentence sound better. It’s major problem, though, is its purpose: it illustrates four forms of “to be,” each one of which, as Wiktionary (and no doubt the OED and its copyrighted brethren) states, originated from a different word:

is: From Middle English, from Old English is, from Proto-Germanic *isti, a form of Proto-Germanic *wesaną (“to be”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁ésti (“is”). Cognate with West Frisian is (“is”), Dutch is (“is”), German ist (“is”), Old Swedish is (“is”). The paradigm of “to be” has been since the time of Proto-Germanic a synthesis of four originally distinct verb stems. The infinitive form “to be” is from *bʰuH- (“to become”). The forms is and am are derived from*h₁es- (“to be”) whereas the form are comes from *iraną (“to rise, be quick, become active”). Lastly, the past forms starting with “w-” such as was and were are from *h₂wes- (“to reside”).

How exactly does that happen? It doesn’t happen with most verbs: for instance, the word “to know” remains a dominant holdover from its Germanic origins. “To know” overtook “to wit” and its older forms to become our controlling word for understanding (“to understand” remaining an alternative). But these words stayed separated, despite some overlap in their meanings. So why didn’t we keep four (or more) discrete words for existence (from the Anglo-Saxon, to clarify, as Latin forms like “to exist,” etc. arrive to the English party later on).

There may be a linguistic or anthropological explanation for why combine four separate words into one word: “to be.” So I’ll ignore those avenues and leave that research to you.

The Germans offer us another useful word (beyond is and its ilk): gestalt, the apprehension of a whole as different or more than the sum of its parts. “Be” embodies this notion: in no other lexeme (a single word’s set of inflected forms) is English so various (to my knowledge).

To clarify: I may know, you may know, they may know; you may have understood, I may understand, you all will understand. In contrast, I am, you are, she is, they were, we have been.

What is odd is that this four-piece band that composes tiny to be goes mostly unnoticed. The gestalt has managed to flatten its pieces and made the final product less than their summation.

Is there a solution? If we all agreed, then “she be powerful” might allude to a woman in the act of drawing power. Likewise, “They was happy” might refer to a mental state long and profound, rather than temporary (as the ser/estar forms of “to be” in Spanish can negotiate). “He are fast” could express the speed and force of running, without even the modifying “fast.”

This sounds fantastic, akin to recovering the long-abandoned neuter gender Old English to abolish the language’s present gender woes. Still all the meanings are still there: for one reason or another our linguistic ancestors kept them, though smashing them together into one verb. The connotations remain, waiting for someone patient or silly enough to put them to use.

I’re be waiting.

English as Our Privilege

 

I like to pat myself on the back sometimes for picking English as a native language. I won the language lottery: everyone else has to speak my tongue to communicate with me. My halfhearted forays into Spanish, French, and German (Old English, really) aside, I never had to leave my language home to visit another. These other languages won’t die anytime soon (Russian, Japanese, and, especially, Chinese will probably also live on quite awhile), but nothing will dethrone King English. Except maybe English.

More specifically, Simple English, Basic English, or some facsimile. As far as I can tell, this is a new sub-language of English (clearly I’m not a linguist), one whose central words are English, though its spellings and perhaps its usage has been simplified. If English is to be humanity’s lingua franca, then it ought to make some concessions to the masses, as a simplified English might. “Tough” softens to “tuf,” perhaps; rhythm transforms into “rithm,” philately becomes—forget it. Besides spelling, many words must vanish: we have too many repeats for our own good.

Why hasn’t a simpler English caught on? Charles Kay Ogden was ahead of his time, describing a list of 850 essential English words in 1930. Are these words taught in schools? Only in foreign classrooms. They are primary words to all English, certainly, but few Americans have even thought about any such list of words being made, much less one existing (though these word lists are critical in TESOL contexts).

I suspect no simplified English would catch on with native English speakers because they don’t need it. The only way we’d have to engage with it is if the rest of the world (or a majority of English speakers) decided that simplified English was a better way. An English built on a basic vocabulary and unified spelling and phonetics would make a useful universal tongue.

Thus native English speakers may eventually require a second English language to communicate. Would this lead us to drop Traditional English? Literature demands we keep Traditional English alive: literature in English thrives on the meanings of a vast vocabulary culled from the world’s languages, and its forms—sound and sight—contain additional artistic matter. To dispose with Traditional English is to abandon both specificity and ambiguity—for something simple and vague. The paradox.

Other reasons? Cost of changing government documents and signage. That could be done in stages. Should we keep tradition for its own sake? Americans love their “standard” measurements; maybe we love our language “thoughts” and “psychologies” just as much. There are cultural reasons to keep English as it is: it’s old, and natural, and beautiful. There are racist reasons to maintain it: to deny others its use and power.

But I don’t think that’s entirely why we cleave to Traditional English. I think it’s a question of personal growth or personal insult, depending on your perspective. Why would anyone who has spent a lifetime mastering a language—floating, owning, parading, and bequeathing English—willingly return to first grade phonics class? A movement for a universal simplified English must originate from the bottom up, because, as with all power, the ones on top have no incentive to give it up and sacrifice their own position. English privilege is too difficult to abandon. Simple English proponents need a linguistic George Washington who will defy the King’s English and take up the case of the disenfranchised. Political, religious, and cultural shifts made English, and it will take some awesome momentum to reverse its millennial movement.

It’s unfair to call this purely a power struggle. Do we ask the enlightened to return to the dust? It is unjust to demand one turn over wisdom (whatever its form) to the authorities (though Lord knows they need it). We can unlearn, but that is tragedy, not success. I can’t ask you to abandon your life’s work.

And it turns out I’m not George Washington.

Gud luk, un-Inglisht frend!