“The “Star Wars” prequels plunge into several aspects of character
development, among them the deeply vital information that Obi-Wan Kenobi
was, in his youth, fully hot.”
This article is perfect. Another excerpt (in case some people aren’t convinced by the title):
Yes, we have much to treasure in this chrysalis form of young, hot Obi-Wan Kenobi, who, as portrayed in “Episode I,” has been waved aside as a tight-braided, lightsaber-up-his-butt sort, devoting a disproportionate percentage of his life to standing very still and occasionally declaring “Yes, Master.” It is an intergalactic tour de force of Sideshow Bobism.
It is also a grand-slam exploration of the vast emotional range lying within “Yes, Master.” Anger, thoughtfulness, disapproval, slight nausea: Obi-Wan has a “Yes, Master” for all seasons. For the bulk of the film, Kenobi barely cracks a smile, instead allowing his occasionally furrowed brow and his cha-cha lightsaber twirls to do the talking. And when he does break down, when the pain of losing a loved one overwhelms his careful training as his mentor dies in his arms, it is with one… final… sobbing… “Yes, Master.” The man has consistency, if not a thesaurus.
Kenobi seemed to realize, for instance, that things were not going to go well when young Anakin and his L.L. Bean backpack first skipped into the Jedi Temple. “That boy is dangerous,” he snapped. He knew — he knew— that the child would grow up to be the type of person who used “Sand is rough” as a pickup line, a person who Kenobi actually had to remind that use of one’s Jedi powers to feed fruit to one’s girlfriend qualifies as an outrageous case of Force abuse.
What we did not know is where Kenobi went so horribly awry in the training of young Skywalker, which is a fairly major facet of the films’ narrative arc in the sense that the entire saga pretty much wouldn’t exist without a Vader to stomp about, billowing his cape and lethally pointing at bureaucrats.
It is indeed mysterious, as Obi-Wan offered himself as a highly responsible role model in “Episode II.” He didn’t like reckless driving; he disapproved of being chained to a big pillar as large animals with pincers approached; he just said no to deathsticks. Where did he go wrong? Did he not give Anakin enough “Super Job!” reward stickers on his seatwork? Was he too strict? Too soft? Was it the way he shoved his apprentice into a flaming lava pit and left him for dead? What happened?
Last night I dreamt I went to see Beyond The Lights, except it wasn’t really about Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s popstar falling in love with her bodyguard, it was about a sudden attack by massive, apocalyptic dragons. Gugu and her friends retreated into a massive underground bunker, which was all decked out with a swimming pool and entertainment system (since the characters were pretty rich and all). They spent the reminder of the dream watching the dragons fight giants from the safety of the bunker, and arguing about the ethical implications of them having more than enough room in their bunker but using it for a swimming pool instead of inviting in more survivors.
I woke up thinking, “Wow, that movie had a really misleading trailer”.
My dad told me a story recently about how he was in Boy Scouts or something and they went on a hike and were each given a rifle and one single bullet to practice shooting with (idk, it was the 70s or whatever). One of his friends, whom I’ll refer to as Steel Balls for reasons that will soon become clear, beckons my dad to a part of the woods and points to a giant hornets nest up in a tree. SB announces that he’s going to shoot it, waits for my dad to take cover (as one should in this situation), and fires off his only round into the nest. Sure enough, a swarm of pissed off hornets descend upon SB, who stands stoically and perfectly still at the base of the tree. Dad maintains that, despite their buzzing right around him, none of the hornets stung his friend, and they soon calmed down and returned to their newly renovated nest. SB turns back to face my dad and imparts this chunk of wisdom: “That’s the secret to dealing with hornets, Jim. They don’t know humans make rifle shots; they don’t know where the noise came from. You gotta stand still and don’t move, and they won’t chase you. If you run, they know you’re guilty.” Apparently dad was so awed he gave up his single bullet so SB could shoot the nest a second time, with the same results.
Long story short: hornets can sense guilt and there are people in the world who have tested this theory.
tumblr meme culture is really just a form of neo dadaism
I’d like to clarify:
dada was a largely european art movement that took place after wwi. this time and place is not a coincidence. let me explain.
dada art made no sense. the artists who made dada lived in a world in which nothing made sense – in which conventional logic led to the senselessness of a world war. so, making art that made no sense, making – well, you can’t really call it art, so making ANTI-art that rejected the conventions that brought about that atrocity in the first place – it made total sense. (if that makes any sense.)
so the artists did weird things. new things! putting things that were already made together and calling it sculpture, cutting up bits of pictures and putting them together and calling that something to frame – this site has some nice examples.
but from my perspective – there’s serious intellectual continuity between the absurdity of attaching a bunch of tacks to the bottom of an iron, rendering it useless, and say…. bath bomb posts. Put a fucking macbook in a bath. it’s useless now. Nobody fucking cares anymore. you want something funny? you want a punchline? gun. that’s your punchline. Take it. I am laughing
in a way it could be a method of venting some of the frustration and hopelessness and dissatisfaction that tumblr’s userbase (largely, disenfranchised millennials) feels in the modern day. I can’t really speak for anyone else, but… at least from a US perspective, there’s plenty to be disillusioned about. growing up in a constant state of questionably justified war, income inequality, an economic recession caused by the actions of a handful of wealthy fucks who didn’t even get properly punished, growing awareness of police brutality, being called lazy and self-absorbed by the generations that gave us these problems in the first place… I can’t help but think that these factors (and more) could produce a similar mindset to the one that precipitated the first dada movement.
so of COURSE we make nonsense jokes. it’s a coping mechanism for a world which doesn’t make any sense.
related: this isn’t by tumblr but I have to plug UCLA’s atrocity of a virtual gallery once more. it really needs to be experienced, but… it’s definitely also millennial neo dada. from the presentation (like an unplayable video game) to the content (THE DOGS HAVE ARRIVED), it is exactly what I am talking about. it is a fucking shitpost. and it’s high art, too! I love this
tl;dr: my generation is fed up with this bullshit, and the best way that we can express that is by shitposting. alternatively, dada was an early precursor to modern shitposting and we should all thank duchamp for signing a fucking urinal
a dear friend has given a perfect update to some of my phrasing, courtesy of their word replace extension:
you see this? this is exactly what I’m fucking talking about. the thing that I’m talking about is:
shitposting is the deconstruction of hegemonic discourse through the use of the absurd and surrealism.
I’d also say that while Dadaism was obsessed with the technological aspects of Modernity, of newspapers, of industrial mechanics and factory made clocks, neo-dadaism (of which shitposting but also the increasingly broad reach of the New Aesthetic and net aesthetics) is obsessed with the technological aspects of our time, or at the beginning of our time.
As just a comparison, the Clock in Absurdist and Dadaist art is both a symbol of the uplifting beginning of industrial relations (as one of the first complicated machines made by manufacturers, as the symbol of mankind’s ability to triumph and analyze nature and better ourselves) and as the deified symbol of horrific modernity (of demarcated time, labor hours, the oppression of the working class via managerial time), Neo-Dadaism/Absurdism has a similar relationship with early computers, which both symbolizes the utopian attitudes which we entered the digital age with, and the horrifying period we live in now, where the Digital is ever present and semi-deified.
My favorite dada satire is probably from Georges Grosz who takes the kind of robotic modernist tube people of folks like Leger:
and turns them into these mindlessly patriotic broken automatons chanting rote phrases:
And it’s so so funny to me that there’s all kinds of Gen X artists out there creating art about the millennials on their damn cellumar phones who think they’re the inheritors of this aesthetic but really it’s people who use the Madden gif generator to shitpost because they’re taking the technology meant for a coherent purpose for a particular narrative and they’re breaking it and turning it back on itself.
Aside from color palettes and materials used, I see literally zero difference.
This is one of the top 3 best posts I’ve ever seen on tumblr and I’ve been here for years.
Love
My grandmother took several classes on Dadaism, and I attended them with her growing up. Then I took plenty of art history when I got my BFA in Illustration.
This post is 100% legit in their observations. I’m seriously impressed.
Duchamp’s Urinal was one of the most famous, well known Dada pieces ever made, and he made it purely to prove that literally anything can be art. It was all about ignoring the Establishment’s rules of what art was and wasn’t, – this is exactly the same thing happening in real time.
