Laura Vianello | = Social Media + History + Art + Fashion + Cartoons + Cats. Basically, a huge nerd.

Time 2021-05-30 07:15:46

Web Name: Laura Vianello | = Social Media + History + Art + Fashion + Cartoons + Cats. Basically, a huge nerd.

WebSite: http://lauravianello.wordpress.com

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Laura Vianello = Social Media + History + Art + Fashion + Cartoons + Cats. Basically, a huge nerd. I am gonna go ahead and say it straight away: Episode VIII is now my favorite Star Wars movie out of the entire saga. How do I know so quickly? Because I cried through and through the entire movie, from beginning to end. I know I will cry as I write this. And as much as I enjoy Star Wars, none of the Episodes have made me have such a raw emotional response. Anyway. I have a LOT to say, so I’m gonna get down to business (spoilers ahead).Carrie Fisher as General OrganaRight from the opening credits, just reading Leia being mentioned had me in tears. Carrie’s death hit me just as hard as David Bowie’s. They could both have lived to be 145, and their death would have still come too soon. So I knew coming in that watching Carrie’s last performance would be a big blow on me. And it was. The love I have for Carrie Fisher, the actress and person, can only be beat by my love for Leia Organa. Leia: princess, general, leader of the resistance, untrained Jedi mistress. Leia: the character that didn’t deserve all the heartbreak that she got, and nevertheless persisted. Leia: the only real hope for the resistance, and thus for everyone watching.Just as it was pointed out in the original trilogy, Leia could have had the same shot to being a Jedi as Luke did. It is Leia who senses Luke is in trouble after the big I AM YOUR FATHER reveal and finds him. And as a fan, the one thing I craved for in the new trilogy was seeing her use her Jedi powers. And we do get to see it a bit in The Force Awakens, but man… we really got to see it in The Last Jedi. I bawled my eyes out when she saved herself from outer space. I mean, granted, someone really needs to explain to me how exactly oxygen works in the Star Wars franchise. What the visuals lead me to believe is that as long as the force-fields are up, the oxygen can be kept inside the ships’ “bubble”, hence why we get shots of cruises or bombers with their gates wide open without all the oxygen BEING SUCKED OUT INTO SPACE. But (I think for the first time?) we actually got a close-up shot of a cruise being hit and everyone, including Leia, being either blown up by the explosion or sucked out into space. And just when we think that’s it for our Princess General, that we will have a beautiful, frozen-in-space death shot……………. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SHE FORCES (pun intended) HER WAY OUT OF THE EXPLOSION AND INTO SAFETY AND OH.MY.GOD. I DIED. I AM WRITING THIS FROM THE GREAT BEYOND. I AM DEAD! DEAD!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS WHAT LEIA DESERVES. THIS IS PADME AMIDALA’S DAUGHTER IN ACTION RIGHT HERE! SHE IS ONE WITH THE FORCE AND THE FORCE IS WITH HER.He can t.And the fact that Kylo himself wasn’t able to take the shot is also extremely, extremely important but let’s put a pin on this. I swear I have so much to say about this. And as if this wasn’t enough, we then got Leia whooping Poe’s ass for mutinying. If I had died with Leia’s space-comeback, this is what brought me back to life. Which leads me to…Vice-Admiral Amilyn HoldoI am just going to take a moment to do the long, slow clapping Admiral Holdo deserves. First, for being such a kickass vice-admiral. And second, for having to deal with Poe Dameron’s bullshit. COME ON. POE WAS GIVING HER SO MUCH GRIEVE LEIA HAD TO COME BACK FROM THE DEAD TO WHOOP HIS ASS. AND HOLDO STILL HELD HER GROUND. Anyway, It is so, so, so, SO refreshing to see a woman Vice Admiral in Star Wars actually being able to do her job. And, most importantly, doing so with purple hair and a fabulous gown. Why is this important? Because Amilyn Holdo’s entire attire is a symbol of what makes The Last Jedi so different from the other Star Wars movies: here, not only women are our main heroines, to the point of redefining completely what it means to be in an intergalactic war and how the force should be approached, but these are women who are beyond being coded as men. You see, this is a subject I am very passionate about, to the point this is what my PhD is about: the image of hyperfemininity as a symbol of strength, resistance and subversion, in the face of imposed toxic masculinity.*fangirl scream*Quick, quick. Try to recall as many images about armies and war propaganda as you can. Chances are you didn’t think about elaborate uniforms such as the Pontifical Swiss Guard, or the Queen Guard’s at Buckingham palace, or even your run of the day pre-great-war uniforms in Prussian blue or Scarlet red. No, you probably thought of contemporary military uniforms in camouflage or, at best, WWII uniforms. And that’s ok, both World Wars changed so, so much in regards to military tactics it’s easier to forget that what is nowadays only reserved as fancy-gala uniforms in the military is…. Actually very similar to what soldiers had to wear for combat just a little over a hundred years ago. Yes, I have a point, stay with me.Real subtle you guysThis contemporary imagery we have about war is not only a mere synonym of being practical over being fanshyshmancy. It actually plays heavily with our own concept of The Masculine. Why? Because war is supposed to be a manly business, damn it. And because battle-gear is supposed to be functional above anything and everything. Your top-of-the-mill masculine imagery will share the same principles: men are not frufru! ‘Real Men’ dress is clean lines, no accessories, no make-up, no nonsense! And when women are tried to be taken seriously in “men’s fields”, historically, they have had to camouflage as men to be accepted in… while simultaneously being criticized for being too feminine to do a man’s job, and condemned for being “too manly” and actually doing it.And why, oh why, am I bringing this up? Because that’s when a symbol like Admiral Holdo comes in. BAM! Here she is, in a full gown, purple hair, and a halo on her head. She’s not a man, she doesn’t need to be and, most importantly, she doesn’t want to be. And she doesn’t need to dress as one to command your respect. SHE’S VICE-ADMIRAL HOLDO AND SHE WILL KILL YOU WITH FLOWERS IF SHE HAS TO. And she single-handedly is responsible for the Kamikaze attack that saves whatever was left of the Resistance. She is like Queen Senator Padme Amidala, but in the military. Their femininity doesn’t make them inferior. Their femininity makes them powerful and subversive. And have you noticed who has no women in power??????? HAVE YOU?! THAT’S RIGHT! THE JEDI! Wait, what? You thought I was gonna say The Empire and the New Order? Well, yes. But again, I don’t expect them to, because of this whole men’s-monopoly-on-power thing and how being masculine is what is considered intimidating. But the Jedi? That’s an entire different matter, and here’s why this movie is such a game changer and, alas, my favorite, because «she was more interested in protecting the light than seeming like a hero».A new, feminist approach to the force and toxic masculinityRemember that pin we put on Kylo not being able to kill Leia himself? Let’s bring that pin back, yes.Kylo Ren is a character that re-opens a window on the Jedi Knights as an organization that we hadn’t seen since the prequels. I am just gonna go ahead and say it: JEDI KNIGHTS ARE A MESS. Not the Force, not the ability to connect with the Force, no no. The Jedi Knights as an institution, a patriarchal, heteronormative institution. Why patriarchal and heteronormative? Because of the way they approach the world. See, the Knights reject everything that would be traditionally considered ‘feminine’: no love, no families, no emotional ties, no feelings, no feelings, NO FEELINGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FEELINGS, BAAAAAD!!!! ‘But!’ I hear you say, ‘those are not intrinsically masculine things in the Star Wars universe!’. Are you sure? Aside from the fact that there’s no female Jedi master in the council [long beleaguered sigh], try to look at it this way: see the approach Jedi Knights have to the force, vs. the approach Force-sensitive women have.Sometimes the Force is just about lifting rocks an looking cool, you guys.Jedi Knights emphasize asceticism, which is a severe form of self-discipline that seeks to avoid all forms of indulgence, in their case ridding themselves of everything that would cloud their path to the Force. Hence why pesky things like feelings, especially passionate feelings, are something not only to be controlled, but suppressed altogether. But what happens if you don’t go the Jedi way is what is really important: if you succumb to your feelings, you will end up at the Dark side. And that’s it. Being emotional is bad, so a true Jedi master should be as devoid of feelings as they can. Does that sound familiar? Ok, let me rephrase it: “Boys don’t cry”; “oh, he’s so sensitive, he could be a woman”. I don’t think I need to go on: that’s our societal approach to men’s feelings. That’s what makes men out to be emotionally illiterate (I always use this word because I believe this is something that is learned) in our society. As long as you’re good at suppressing it, you should be ok, RIGHT? Wrong! Have you noticed that the ENTIRE point of the franchise is how thin the line between the Dark side and the Light side is? Yeah, that’s because the Jedi Knight’s stability is BULLSHIT, and fragile, to the point where they’re constantly trying to be balanced. You know who’s the only Master who’s beyond it all? Yoda. And Yoda could be coded either male or female (in fact as a child I always chose to role play as Yoda or Rafiki because they’re past and beyond gender roles and in my imagination there was no reason why they couldn’t be played by me, a girl, even when they were referred to as masculine characters).Everyone else is always struggling. And those who can’t cope go to the Dark side. The Dark side is of course the obvious example of what happens when you cannot deal with your inner turmoil. It’s the classic case of that kid who lived in an abusive environment, became a bully, and then a wife-beater vs. the kid who just got on with it and silently carries the trauma but isn’t overtly, physically abusive but yet has no idea how to handle emotions. But I think it would be wrong to think that the Jedi way is the direct opposite of the Sith path: Jedi Knights are one wet-finger-in-the-ear away from jumping ships. And why? BECAUSE THEY DON’T GET IT.Your so-called balance, bullshit it is hmmmmrrrr.So that bring be to Kylo and Rey: these two are a breathing, living, growing ball of feelings. And that is what makes them connect. What really is significant in this movie is that both of them are above Jedi/Sith politics. And they are able to beautifully connect because they have both been through heavy trauma. But where a Jedi Knight would be all like ‘feel the Force! Come back to the light! Control your feelings! And by control I mean suppress (but not really because that never works)!’ our gurl Rey is just as much of a mess as Kylo is. But in her similarity to him, she’s a much better counterpart: she’s ushering in a new way of connecting with the force. A way we have only seen women use in the Star Wars universe. Why only women? Because, again, Jedi Knights keep trying to reject this (and fail miserable). Would you say Leia or Maz are emotionless? Of course you wouldn’t. They are not, but they don’t need to be either.They re just sensitive, ok?Allow me to recall my favorite Buddhist fable: when the Buddha was looking for Enlightenment, he tried many paths, one of them was asceticism (ahem, like the Jedi) to the point of just meditating and avoid things like, you know, eating. During his meditations he finally found joy for the world around him (The Force) but realized that he couldn’t sustain that feeling of joy if he didn’t eat (because he would die in 3, 2, 1 ). At that moment, as if the Universe was listening to him, a girl crossed his path and offered him a bowl of rice porridge, which he accepted. That is the moment where he acknowledged compassion not only to the world around him, but to himself, and made a decision towards life. “He remembered about his wife, about his son, and the deepest emotions that he had suppressed; they overpower, they come up. They were still there. And he had a feeling of missing. He had a feeling of seeing his son and a feeling of being near his loved ones. They were so powerful. Oh, that must have soaked his whole entire being. While the Jedi knights are Ascetic monks, Force-sensitive women are Buddhists. They do not recoil away from emotion. If something is there to break their hearts, they let it. They do not run, they do not strike back. They do not let it consume them, they learn from it. The only real way to transcend beyond fear and connect with the Force is through compassion, towards themselves and others. And this is what is opening infinite new possibilities in the Star Wars universe. This is what the true balance of the force looks like, the face of peace after so much heartbreak and sorrow. And this new approach to the Force is also coming hand in hand with a worldview infinitely more complex than Good vs. Evil. We finally get to see real world implications of this long, long war: people playing both sides for selfish gains; an entire generation of children who have known nothing but war and slavery; the meaninglessness of the Jedi order.I, for once, am very grateful for this movie. This is the movie Leia deserved.I m not crying, you re crying. Ok, I guess I am. But so are you! Star Wars may be the most beloved film franchise of all time. You might have been alive when the Original Trilogy came out, or maybe your parents raised you watching it, and then the Prequels came out, and now here come the Sequels. Now, I love them, you love them, we all love them. But have you ever asked yourself why?Time and time again you find people repeating that the Star Wars franchise is just the best there is (hardcore fans will love the Original Saga as much as they hate the Prequels). But is it really? Or do we give it more meaning than it actually has? Is George Lucas really such a genius? Well, long story short, the answer is “not really” (and before you start running around in circles with your imaginary light saber, screaming LALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOUUUUU, finish this paragraph). I’ll try to break it down and get to the root of all of this and try to understand why it’s not as amazing as we want it to be, but why we still love it so much. The way I see it, the more we love something the more it’s worth analyzing.So, there, I’m doing this out of love! Note that I’m mostly focusing on the original Star Wars, even though I sometimes mention the other movies in the Original Trilogy.Making of Star Wars: how it was done and how it changed Hollywood foreverHave you ever asked yourself how Star Wars was made? This is actually a fun story. Now, if you have the time I recommend you watch Star Wars: Empire of Dreams, a 2.30 hour documentary on all the details of the making of Star Wars. But if you don’t, stick around and I’ll tell you what you need to know.It was the 70s. Up until then the film industry had been made up of big Movie Studios which, at the time, were being broken up and sold into bigger, commercial companies. With new management in charge, they asked the question any business asks: how do we make more money? Younger audiences were seen as an untapped market so they put two and two together and started looking for new talent in films schools… and they found it alright, as this is where Coppola, Spielberg, and Scorsese (to name a few) came from. In the meantime, young Lucas was an independent director and had just made American Graffiti (a simple comedy) with Universal Studios. A Princess of Mars (1912)Now, once upon a time, Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote A Princess of Mars (1912), a pulp novel set in Mars, with a confederate veteran who has super strength and agility (because of lesser gravity, duh) and telepathy, and who falls in love with a humanoid Martian Princess, and other space adventure elements we’re so familiar with today. The novel was successful enough for a comic publisher called King Features Syndicate to do their own version of it, so they hired Alex Raymond for the job and his result was Flash Gordon (1934). And it was so, so successful that it spawned films, radio serials, novels, plays, games and TV series (both live action and animated). And who was watching and fangirling over it? Why, our George Lucas, of course. Flash Gordon movie poster (1980)So, right after making American Graffitti, George wanted to do his own take on Flash Gordon and actually attempted to buy the rights to it to make his own movies about it… but couldn’t. In his own words, he wanted to make “fun films for young people”. But not having the rights to Flash Gordon didn’t stop him, so he did what Alex Raymond did before him: he went ahead and wrote his own version and made the first draft for Star Wars in 1973. So basically, Star Wars came to be as a Flash Gordon fanfic, with some tweaked details. Also consider that, at the time, the only “successful” sci-fi movie was 2001: Space Odyssey, and the sci-fi movies people were used to watching were dark. Very dark. Sean Connery with a moustache, bullet belts and a red speedo kind of dark (the 70s were weird, ok?).Sean Connery in Zardoz (1974) Adventures of the Starkiller [ ] original artGetting a studio to fund his project was not going to be an easy task. Even more so considering that Star Wars was not even about the post-apocalyptic science fiction they were used to but, rather, a light-hearted (and optimistic) space fantasy. Lucas went around pitching his idea to studios like Universal and United Artists and they both passed. And then he met with Alan Ladd, Jr., from 20th Century Fox, who decided to invest in Lucas right around the time American Graffiti was coming out and proved to be successful with the public, and by 1974 George was writing his screenplay. A movie, btw, that was too long for one feature film. So because he had no idea if he would get the money to do more movies, he managed to cram as much as possible into one: Adventures of the Starkiller, Saga I: The Star Wars.If you read on how Star Wars was made, here’s the part where everyone starts saying the same line: Alan Ladd saw the potential genius in George Lucas, and everyone knew since he was in film school that he was destined for great things, and that his professors remember him fondly because of his raw talent and so on. Yeah, whatever. Let’s tone the myth down to a 2. They’re just saying that because Star Wars became what it is now, relax. There’s more to it. Let’s keep going.Taking off the rose-tinted nostalgia glasses (part I): Show Me the Money.First you have to consider the “environmental” factors: first of all, there is the question of the audience’s taste. At the time, the American public was used to super realistic movies that tended to be dark and a bit pessimistic (think Dirty Harry, A Clockwork Orange, The Godfather saga, Deliverance, The French Connection, Taxi Driver). Some pinpoint this on the political situation at the time with the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. And I agree: movies tend to get either darker or more escapist in convoluted times. In addition to this, this was the golden age of the postapocalyptic genre: Planet of the Apes, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Mad Max, Soylent Green, Zardoz… plus, loads of zombie movies also came out during the late 60s – early 70s.A film like Star Wars was big on special effects, which also mean that it would not be a cheap movie to make. After showing the first art drafts to the studio, Fox approved an 8 million budget for the film. Profit was absolutely crucial and, in a time where making merchandising out of movies was far from the norm, Lucas had the idea of making this an extra income for his movie. Going out on a limp, he took a pay cut as director (all $350K) in exchange for all the rights to Star Wars merchandise and future sequels (and control over a bunch of creative details).Lucas with Destroyer model at ILM setSpecial FX studios were not precisely the best business in town. This was partly because of the expense they meant to the film studios, and also because of audience taste for more realistic-looking films (zombie movies, although prolific at the time, were far from the Hollywood system studios). So what did Lucas do? He founded Industrial Light Magic, his own Special FX Company, in 1975. This gave him a lot of creative freedom and, most importantly, the green light to be more experimental when it came to special effects. In fact, to make Lucas’ vision come true ILM had to pioneer in a bunch of techniques that had never even been thought of before. Spaceship Models and visual effects computers (custom made and assembled by hand because that’s how you did it at the time) were among the most important (and expensive) advances in this production.And if you still haven’t grasped why Special FX were so important, this is what you need to understand (aside from it being crucial to Lucas’ creative point of view): his goal was to make a movie for a younger audience (which he needed to be successful so he could keep working) and all his personal profit came down to the merchandise. What does this mean? That he needed a fun, cool looking movie. And if he was faced with a decision of style versus substance, he’s going to choose… whatever sells more toys. Do you hate the Ewoks in Episode VI and ask yourself why they are part of the movie? Doesn’t matter, those are easy to sell toys, so they’re in.If Lucas wants to make money off of his creation, he knows he has to sell merchandise. So he’s going to treat his movies like feature-length commercials. And we all know packaging is crucial to sell a product. Special FX and visuals were his packaging. This also included a lot of location shooting, which is also super expensive. So always consider that money is an important factor when talking about the first Star Wars movie, because it absolutely was.Original Star Wars merchandise, 1977Taking off the rose-tinted nostalgia glasses (part II): Star Wars is not as meaningful as we want it to be. No, really, it is not.If you really want to analyze Star Wars at its rawest, you need to do two things (do it simultaneously or not, as you wish): try to watch Star Wars without your nostalgia glasses, and try to watch it without the soundtrack. Yes, I know. Soundtracks are a crucial part of movies and watching a movie without its music would be like trying to experience a painting with your eyes closed. But you see, that’s precisely the point. If you’re too used to watching something in a specific way, you usually just keep seeing the same things over and over again. It’s not until you challenge your perspective and your senses that you may start having new experiences over the same piece you’re so used to seeing.Something that has been consistently amazing throughout the Star Wars saga is John William’s scores. And no one can argue that. It really is great music and it fits all the Episodes perfectly. But don’t you get the feeling, sometimes, that maybe they’re a little too good? I definitely did. And watching the movies without the music was a whole new experience. An experience that allowed me to see the movie at its core: how the plot and characters were developed, how the dialogues play out, and if it really was as good as I wanted it to be. And it wasn’t.

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= Social Media + History + Art + Fashion + Cartoons + Cats. Basically, a huge nerd.

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