Star Wars as post-modernism

This is a provocative read:

[Lucas] makes explicit his theoretical interest in the mechanics of plot. As viewers, we take pleasure in the implausible events that must happen for the narrative contraption to snap shut in a satisfying way. But the characters come to understand that there is another agent, external to themselves, that is dictating the action. Within the films’ fiction, that force is called … er, “the Force.” It’s the Force that makes Anakin win the pod race so that he can get off Tatooine and become a Jedi and set all the other events in all of the other films in motion. We learn that Anakin’s birth, fall, redemption, and death are required to “bring balance to the Force” and, not coincidentally, to give the story its dramatic shape. The Force is, in other words, a metaphor for, or figuration of, the demands of narrative. The Force is the power of plot.

Brushing against bigotry

The boyfriend and I decided to go for a quick jaunt to Downtown Crossing to do some winter shopping. We were jostling with the Saturday afternoon crowd trying to get out of the rain and into Filene’s Basement, when this short Asian lady shoves a clipboard in front of Knox, and points at it, trying to get us to read it and sign it. On the clipboard is a computer printout, in a large font, urging us to “SIGN PETITION TO DEFEND TRADITIONAL DEFINITION OF MARRIAGE.”

Ooh, that got me angry. I rushed past the lady into the store, throwing her a scathing look and saying as pointedly as I could, “We’re GAY.” Did she understand me? I’m not even sure she spoke English, given how she kept pointing and gesturing. At any rate, my blood was was boiling, and the frenzy of shoppers in the store did nothing to calm my nerves.

Later tonight, we were thinking that maybe I should have told her that “traditional marriage” would have her in the kitchen, pregnant, barefoot, and rightless, or that if she weren’t enjoying the fruits of a liberal society she would be working in the mines or in a sweatshop.

Sigh.