Happy Halloween!

Remember to vote next week.

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On Star Wars

When I read this post, I just knew that I had to quote it:

Star Wars is not entertainment. Star Wars is George Lucas masturbating to a picture of Joseph Campbell and conning billions of people into watching the money shot.

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Episode I in particular is an airless, joyless slog; in the theater you could actually hear people's expectations deflate -- a whooshing groan -- the moment Jar-Jar showed up. After the first weekend of Episode I, people went to the prequel trilogy films for the same reason so many people go to church on Sunday: It's habit, they know when to stand and when to sit, and they want to see how the preacher will screw up the sermon this week. You know what I felt when Episode III was done? Relief. I was done with the Star Wars films. I was free. I'm not the only one.

Well, that perfectly summarizes how I feel as well. With the notable exception of Empire, the Star Wars films were pretty poorly written and unevenly executed.

But I love George's work nonetheless. I love ideas, read The Power of Myth when I was 14, and have started (painfully, slowly) trying to read the Western Classics in the original Greek and Latin. And I actually go to church on a regular basis, and get something out of it. Metaphors and stories, ritual and tradition, the patterns of thought and belief that surround all of us, well, they really do mean something important to me. And apparently, they mean something to millions of movie goers as well, who were more then willing to pony up billions of dollars in order to be part of it.

Either that, or lightsabers are just that cool.

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Odd quote for the day:

From Salon:

In an interview with the editorial board of the Bucks County Courier Times, embattled Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has equated the war in Iraq with J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings." According to the paper, Santorum said that the United States has avoided terrorist attacks at home over the past five years because the "Eye of Mordor" has been focused on Iraq instead.

"As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else," Santorum said. "It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States."

OK, I'm lost. Are we hobbits, and if so, is America (where the hobbits are at this point in the story) Mount Doom? Does George W. Bush have the Al-Qaeda Ring of Power on a necklace, and the entire Iraq debacle is just a distraction in order for him to buy enough time to destroy it? Is that why he's on "vacation" so often?

Whatever the case, I would like to say that I oppose using the American armed forces in general, and my little brother (a Combat Medic who spent a year fighting near Fallujah) specifically, as fly-paper for Islamic fundamentalists.

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