Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Lampsacus
Oct 21, 2008

Slutitution posted:

I said there was a possibility given his history of writing pedophile characters, and that maybe someone should look into it. Read.
Bravo!

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN
A major point of characterization on Raiders is that Dr. Jones had a relationship with Marion when she was one of his college students and it went very badly.

The discussion between Spielberg and the others concerns how much of a creep they can make Indy without alienating the audience, and Lucas says it would be interesting to make a film about an irredeemably awful person.

banned from Starbucks
Jul 18, 2004




Slutitution posted:

I said there was a possibility given his history of writing pedophile characters, and that maybe someone should look into it. Read.

What other characters are pedophiles?

Brother Entropy
Dec 27, 2009

banned from Starbucks posted:

What other characters are pedophiles?

padme

Winifred Madgers
Feb 12, 2002

Yaws posted:

Apply a little common sense here, dude.

You do realize what thread you're posting in?

Dr.Radical
Apr 3, 2011
This is why I read this thread right here. The posters calling people racist because they don't think droids are people. Posters secretly hoping that George Lucas is a pedophile because of Indiana Jones. This thread has everything!

Milkfred E. Moore
Aug 27, 2006

'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.'

banned from Starbucks posted:

What other characters are pedophiles?

R2-D2

Yaws
Oct 23, 2013

Son of Sam-I-Am posted:

You do realize what thread you're posting in?

It's without doubt the worst thread in CD and possibly the worst thread on the internet, but SMG and his lackeys make for hilarious schadenfreude.

loving Droid Rights. Repeat over and over again. Years on end with this poo poo. Not even a hint of self-awareness at the inherent ridiculousness of the argument. Casual accusations of White Supremacy because a certain poster doesn't sufficiently acknowledge R2D2s personhood.

It's so idiotic and unforgivably dorky. This thread is a gift. A gift that no one wanted but I cherish it all the same. Everyone here is an knuckle-dragging cretin and I hate them.

No Mods No Masters
Oct 3, 2004

The thread is about family. And that's what's so powerful about it

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.

Yaws posted:

It's without doubt the worst thread in CD and possibly the worst thread on the internet, but SMG and his lackeys make for hilarious schadenfreude.

loving Droid Rights. Repeat over and over again. Years on end with this poo poo. Not even a hint of self-awareness at the inherent ridiculousness of the argument. Casual accusations of White Supremacy because a certain poster doesn't sufficiently acknowledge R2D2s personhood.

It's so idiotic and unforgivably dorky. This thread is a gift. A gift that no one wanted but I cherish it all the same. Everyone here is an knuckle-dragging cretin and I hate them.

Dude, it's quite simple: within the fictional works of Star Wars, Droids are depicted as people.

Somehow a bunch of angry weirdoes can't get over this and come poo poo this thread over it every few months.

Lampsacus
Oct 21, 2008

The prequels are good, droids are people, jakku is tatooine, the sequels are good, the prequels didn't have as much cgi as one presumes and star wars fans don't like star wars.

Cnut the Great
Mar 30, 2014
George Lucas is a fascist, white supremacist pedophile. This is now canon.

MonsieurChoc posted:

Dude, it's quite simple: within the fictional works of Star Wars, Droids are depicted as people.

Somehow a bunch of angry weirdoes can't get over this and come poo poo this thread over it every few months.

They're clearly not, though, for all the reasons that I've repeatedly stated and shown, and backed up by the creator's consistently stated intent. Doesn't it bother you that you so enjoy a work created by a white supremacist? I mean, obviously a lot of people enjoy Wagner's music, but that's comparatively a lot more abstracted from the man himself. In comparison, George Lucas's hateful droidist ideology is inherent throughout every bit of his work. How can you just ignore that? It's pretty hosed up. At least I'm pointing it out and shining a light on it. You're just sticking your head in the sand and denying that it's there because you don't want to give up your pew pew space laser movies. It would be like someone denying that The Birth of a Nation is racist. This poo poo matters, man. It hurts people.

One reason the absolutist reading of the death of the author argument is so flawed is because it abrogates the responsibility of an artist for the content of his work. I think George Lucas should have to take responsibility for his beliefs, which he has chosen to express through film. Do you?

Cnut the Great fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Feb 3, 2019

Schwarzwald
Jul 27, 2004

Don't Blink
Star Wars is pro-slavery the same way it's pro-blowing-up-planets.

Schwarzwald fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Feb 3, 2019

Cnut the Great
Mar 30, 2014

KVeezy3 posted:

Unfortunately, even with the voluminous amount of quotes you've used, interpretation is still necessary. What does the individual consciousness's connection to a universal consciousness actually mean to you? Are you making a case for mind-body dualism? Leibniz's monadology? Is Margaret Thatcher not a living being? Does a droid have less existential choice than a squirrel?

Of course interpretation is still necessary. You can't rely on the author's intent for everything, because eventually the well of quotes runs dry, or you run up against conflicting or unclear statements. Sometimes the textual evidence is unclear or ambiguous. Sometimes an alternative interpretation makes more sense.

In this matter, regarding the particular topic I'm discussing, none of these is the case. The textual evidence is quite incontrovertible, and the commentary from Lucas only serves to clarify and guide us toward recognizing even more textual evidence. So far all of the alternative explanations have required ignoring vast swathes of textual evidence and intentionally misinterpreting clear imagery in comically inept ways. The arguments of my opponents in this debate are their own best counter-arguments.

In regards to your specific questions, I'm not at the moment making any particular case for anything. The philosophy of Star Wars is of course a mish-mash of various schools and traditions which Lucas has attempted to distill down to their basic elements and graft into a cohesive whole. It is unlikely that George Lucas succeeded totally in doing so, given that if he had he would no doubt be the greatest philosopher who has ever lived--which he is not. So there is certainly room for many alternative interpretations in that vein.

I will say that a literal reading of Star Wars clearly supports the notion of mind-body dualism. That seems pretty obvious to me. But there's no reason to read it in such a literal way, any more than we have to read Lucas's musings on the interconnectedness of all life in a literal way. Nor do we have to read the droids in the Star Wars films as literal representations of artificial intelligences as they might one day exist.

Bongo Bill
Jan 17, 2012

Cnut the Great posted:

George Lucas is a fascist, white supremacist pedophile. This is now canon.


They're clearly not, though, for all the reasons that I've repeatedly stated and shown, and backed up by the creator's stated intent. Doesn't it bother you that you so enjoy a work created by a white supremacist? I mean, obviously a lot of people enjoy Wagner's music, but that's comparatively a lot more abstracted from the man himself. George Lucas's hateful droidist ideology is inherent throughout every bit of his work. How can you just ignore that? It's pretty hosed up. At least I'm pointing it out and shining a light on it. You're just sticking your head in the sand and denying that it's there because you don't want to give up your pew pew space laser movies. It would be like someone denying that The Birth of a Nation is racist. This poo poo matters, man. It hurts people.

Your arguments don't carry water, and it's all based on a single logical error that several people have explained to you at length, both with and without increasingly personal speculation about why you remain unconvinced.

Specifically, you've built up an interpretation of the droid characters that is based on a rather confused semiotic framework in which being made of metal denotes a condition of spiritual inferiority. You've stated some straight-up nonsense, stuff that directly contradicts very basically evident events on the screen, as support for why we should consider that framework accurate and useful. And here you're blaming the problems with it on the author.

The author is dead. You should take responsibility for your own reading.

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.

Cnut the Great posted:

They're clearly not,

They clearly are. Otherwise you would not have EVERY SCENE WITH A DROID IN IT.

porfiria
Dec 10, 2008

by Modern Video Games
Droids have not tasted of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Cnut the Great
Mar 30, 2014

Schwarzwald posted:

Star Wars is pro-slavery the same way it's pro-blowing-up-planets.

No one is saying Star Wars is pro-slavery. The films clearly advocate in favor of treating droids with respect and kindness. They suffer and feel pain. They exhibit emotions.

It is also clear within the films that the droids are nonetheless aligned with technology in opposition to humanity (or personhood). They are programs. Simulations. Imitations. They're imperfect representations of humanity, lacking the vital spark. It's made very clear within the films what this means: It's the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Droids lack the ability to transcend.

I quote Lucas, not as an argument from authority, but because his explanations and analyses of his work are more elucidating than anything I could write:

George Lucas posted:

You'll notice Luke uses [Kierkegaard's leap of faith] quite a bit through the film--not to rely on pure logic, not to rely on the computers, but to rely on faith. That is what that "Use the Force" is, a leap of faith. There are mysteries and powers larger than we are, and you have to trust your feelings in order to access them.

Star Wars: The Making of Return of the Jedi posted:

[When asked by Lawrence Kasdan if Darth Vader will have "regular eyes" when he is unmasked]

Well maybe one. “I want to see you without the aid of this machine. I want to reject the machine.”

[...]

He relied on the machine. The whole machine thing becomes a partial metaphor for the dark side of the Force, which is: Machines have no feelings.

You see in these two quotes why the motif of mechanical vision recurs so frequently throughout the films. Mechanical vision is the antithesis of spiritual vision. When Luke looks through the targeting computer scope, he is seeing the world through mechanical eyes, just as Darth Vader saw the world through mechanical eyes. Machines do not feel the way humans do because machines do not see the world the way humans do. For a machine, the world is a collection of data to be compiled and analyzed according to the parameters of its programming--no more, no less. This is why the analysis droids in Attack of the Clones fail to trace the saberdart to its origin (which, perhaps tellingly, is a gigantic ocean world representing the cradle of life). It is also why Darth Vader adopts a strictly utilitarian worldview consisting of large numbers balanced against smaller numbers, impervious to pangs of conscience. It is why C-3PO, specifically programmed to understand humans, constantly complains of his perpetual inability to do so. True understanding comes through spiritual vision, which is the pathway to wisdom, or right judgment. This comes from being able to feel the interconnectedness of all things, the unity of the whole, the cosmic gestalt which gives all its constituent parts proper meaning.

When Anakin asks Luke to take his mask off so that he can look upon him with his "own eyes," he is not speaking of ocular vision. What he means is that he wants to look upon Luke with eyes of love. The script for Return of the Jedi in fact makes this distinction explicit:

quote:

Slowly, hesitantly, Luke removes the mask from his father's face. There
beneath the scars is an elderly man. His eyes do not focus. But the
dying man smiles at the sight before him.

Of course you do not have to read the script to comprehend the moment's meaning. I include this passage only as a point of interest, and as a friendly attempt to to assist those inveterate literalists among us who fancy themselves savvy deconstructionists.

Bongo Bill
Jan 17, 2012

Cnut the Great posted:

It is also why Darth Vader adopts a strictly utilitarian worldview consisting of large numbers balanced against smaller numbers, impervious to pangs of conscience.

?????

Schwarzwald
Jul 27, 2004

Don't Blink

Cnut the Great posted:

It is also clear within the films that the droids are nonetheless aligned with technology in opposition to humanity (or personhood). They are programs. Simulations. Imitations. They're imperfect representations of humanity, lacking the vital spark. It's made very clear within the films what this means: It's the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Droids lack the ability to transcend.

None of that is supported by the films and the quotes you provided likewise do not support it.

If Kasdan says that “machines have no feelings” then the take away is that we’re not meant to understand the droids as being machines.

Schwarzwald fucked around with this message at 08:12 on Feb 3, 2019

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Cnut the Great posted:

In this matter, regarding the particular topic I'm discussing, none of these is the case. The textual evidence is quite incontrovertible,

Totally false. There's no textual evidence that droids uniquely lack some critical, numinous aspect of personhood, because every psychic deficiency you cite in droids also appears copious times in non-droids. For instance, flesh-and-blood Jedi also cannot find Kamino.

Your repeated return to the concept of "spiritual" vision is also badly undercut by your own mention of midichlorians and, also, the actual context in which Luke using his targeting computer. Specifically, he uses "spiritual vision" to better target a mechanical weapon in order to achieve a material military objective. Since we know that magic powers are rooted in crude matter (they leverage a specific species of micro-organism that is capable of manipulating an energy field), what actually happens at the end of New Hope is that Luke discards an inferior targeting computer in favor of a superior targeting computer.

Cnut the Great
Mar 30, 2014

porfiria posted:

Droids have not tasted of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

The image of the World Tree--or its two aspects, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree of Life--is actually a very central one in Star Wars.

If you read some of the stuff Joseph Campbell said when he was invited by Lucas to his ranch to sit with Bill Moyers for The Power of Myth series, it's very easy to see all the stuff he’s saying about the symbolism of the World Tree manifesting itself in Lucas's films:

Joseph Campbell posted:

Motherhood is a sacrifice. On our veranda in Hawaii the birds come to feed. Each year there have been one or two mother birds. When you see a mother bird, plagued by her progeny for food, with five baby birds, some of them bigger than she is, flopping all over her––"Well," you think, "this is the symbol of motherhood, this giving of your substance and every drat thing to your progeny." That is why the mother becomes the symbol of Mother Earth. She is the one who has given birth to us and on whom we live and on whose body we find our food.

Joseph Campbell posted:

The nature of life itself had to be realized in the acts of life. When in the hunting cultures a sacrifice is made, it is as it were a gift, a bribe, as it were, to the deity that is being invited to do something for us, or to give us something. When a figure is sacrificed in the planting culture, that figure is the god. The person who died, was buried and became the food is Christ crucified, from whose body the food of the spirit comes. There is a sublimation of what originally was a very solid vegetal image. He is on Holy Rood, the tree. He is himself the fruit of the tree. Jesus is the fruit of eternal life which was on the second tree in the garden of Eden.





This image of the mother as a sacrificial, Christ-like figure whose suffering brings forth new life.

Joesph Campbell posted:

[Women] represent life. Man doesn't enter life except by woman, and so it is woman who brings us into this world of pairs of opposites and suffering.... Male and female is one opposition. Another opposition is the human and God. Good and evil is a third opposition. The primary oppositions are the sexual and that between human beings and God. Then comes the idea of good and evil in the world. And so Adam and Eve have thrown themselves out of the Garden of Timeless Unity, you might say, just by that act of recognizing duality. To move out into the world, you have to act in terms of pairs of opposites.”

Joseph Campbell posted:

When man had eaten of the fruit of the first tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he is said to have been expelled from the garden. He had already expelled himself from the garden. The garden is the place of unity, nonduality, nonduality of male and female, nonduality of man and God, nonduality of good and evil. You eat the duality, and you’re on the way out. So this tree of the nonduality, is the tree of the exit.

Now, the tree of coming back to the garden is the tree of immortal life. Where you know that “I and the father are one.” And the two that seem to become one again. And this is exactly the tree under which the Buddha sits.



Padme on her deathbed/birthing table, flanked above by images of the opposing/complementary pairs she is about to give birth to. Luke and Leia represent duality, one being the male twin and the other the female, but also a potential unity. They are one with each other and with their mother within the womb, but become separate upon emerging into the world and being given separate names, a boy name and a girl name. This separation soon becomes further emphasized as they are placed with different families on different worlds, and they come not to know one another. In the next film they are reunited, and Luke begins a quest of striving to know Leia by becoming more like her. By the final film, Luke finally regains the knowledge of his past oneness with Leia within the womb, which inspires him for the first time to inquire after their mother. Luke then redeems his father using his mother’s love and thus completes his quest to reincorporate the feminine aspect into his personality, which also allows him to atone and thus become one with the father from whom he had been separated. With his dying breath, Anakin implores Luke to share their mutual enlightenment with Leia. Then Anakin passes back into the universal energy field, becoming one with all and attaining eternal life through the death of his ego.



Luke within the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil on Dagobah. The serpent is prominently displayed in the shot as Luke battles his opposite number. Having entered the Tree with a dualistic mindset, Luke creates the evil which he encounters, which is of course merely an aspect of himself. Had he entered the Tree with an acceptance rather than a fear of whatever he would find inside, he would again have encountered nothing but himself, but this time unified and at peace, rather than being splintered in two.

It is no coincidence that in the TCW arc I posted about before, Qui-Gon’s spirit first guides Yoda to Dagobah and bids him enter the tree, where the apprehensive Yoda experiences horrible visions of future calamity. It is only after Yoda’s failure within the tree-cave that Qui-Gon leads him to the Edenic Force planet and the trials which await him there within a similar cave.

e:
He murders the Younglings, justifying it under Sidious's rationale of preventing future civil war; they are too dangerous to be left alive. This mirrors Mace Windu's earlier decision to murder a helpless Sidious in order to prevent further strife, which of course also mirrors Anakin's murder of Count Dooku. These are all morally incorrect acts predicated on utilitarian logic: An act is not immoral so long as it helps a greater number of people than you have harmed in committing that act. Thus, murdering innocent children and defeated adversaries becomes justified.

Cnut the Great fucked around with this message at 08:28 on Feb 3, 2019

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.
Look, dude. You're just wrong about this. Drop it before you give yourself a mind hernia.

Cnut the Great
Mar 30, 2014

Schwarzwald posted:

None of that is supported by the films and the quotes you provided likewise do not support it.

If Kasdan says that “machines have no feelings” then the take away is that we’re not meant to understand the droids as being machines.

Droid are machines. They are programs.

Bongo Bill posted:

Your arguments don't carry water, and it's all based on a single logical error that several people have explained to you at length, both with and without increasingly personal speculation about why you remain unconvinced.

Specifically, you've built up an interpretation of the droid characters that is based on a rather confused semiotic framework in which being made of metal denotes a condition of spiritual inferiority. You've stated some straight-up nonsense, stuff that directly contradicts very basically evident events on the screen, as support for why we should consider that framework accurate and useful. And here you're blaming the problems with it on the author.

The author is dead. You should take responsibility for your own reading.

I think you're lashing out because I have the superior argument, backed up by reams of evidence completely independent of any authorial statements. I do think the quotes from Lucas make you angry, frustrated, and embarrassed even though you claim not to care about them. But I can't prove that.

Cnut the Great fucked around with this message at 08:39 on Feb 3, 2019

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world
Hmm.. I wonder what other Star Wars characters harm huge amounts of people so that even more people might be saved.

ungulateman
Apr 18, 2012

pretentious fuckwit who isn't half as literate or insightful or clever as he thinks he is

Cnut the Great posted:

I think you're lashing out because I have the superior argument, backed up by reams of evidence completely independent of any authorial statements. I do think the quotes from Lucas make you angry, frustrated, and embarrassed even though you claim not to care about them. But I can't prove that.

this is a wild statement to make about bongo bill, quite possibly the calmest and most sensible poster on the entire internet, especially when contrasted with your own posting

Cnut the Great
Mar 30, 2014

ungulateman posted:

this is a wild statement to make about bongo bill, quite possibly the calmest and most sensible poster on the entire internet, especially when contrasted with your own posting

quote:

Rolling Stone
Vader is largely machine. Is that a reflection of Anakin having lost his humanity?

George Lucas
It’s a metaphor: As your humanness is cut away, you become more like a programmed droid. Even though some of the droids, like C-3PO, are very human in nature, caring and worried that they’re going to do the wrong thing. But they’re programs – there’s a difference. Even with R2, who is clever and ultimately the hero of the whole piece. He’s the Lassie of the movies: Whenever there’s a pivotal moment of real danger, he’s the one that gets everybody out of it.

How does this make you feel, ungulateman? What do you make of it? I'm genuinely curious.

Milkfred E. Moore
Aug 27, 2006

'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.'
im permabanned poster smgstomper14. i first started reading CD when i was about 12. by 14 i got really obsessed with the concept of “authorial intent” and tried to channel it constantly, until my thought process got really bizarre and i would repeat things like “droids are machines” and "if you read some of the stuff Joseph Campbell said” in my head for hours, and i would get really paranoid, start seeing things in the corners of my eyes etc, basically prodromal schizophrenia. im now on antipsychotics. i always wondered what the kind of “ironic” style of CD analysis was all about; i think it’s the unconscious leaking in to the conscious, what jungian theory considered to be the cause of schizophrenic and schizotypal syptoms. i would advise all people who “get” CD to be careful because that likely means you have a predisposition to a mental illness. peace.

Brother Entropy
Dec 27, 2009

Cnut the Great posted:

How does this make you feel, ungulateman? What do you make of it? I'm genuinely curious.

in that paragraph lucas can't even decide if droids are programs or animals

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world
Now that I think about it I'm pretty sure that even the idea of Vader's force powers being diminished because of his lack of biomass is pure EU fart-huffing. Obviously he's physically slower and stiffer, but is there any reason, from the movies, to believe that he's now only capable of summoning 70% as many Newtons of telekinetic force or something? Would Yoda have even more force power if he was twice his size?

Gonz
Dec 22, 2009

"Jesus, did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me?"
One of Vader’s arms is synthetic. Hasn’t it always been the case that the Force flows through living things?

Bongo Bill
Jan 17, 2012

ungulateman posted:

this is a wild statement to make about bongo bill, quite possibly the calmest and most sensible poster on the entire internet, especially when contrasted with your own posting

That's kind of you to say.

First of all, in regard to the content of the movies....

Cnut the Great posted:

He murders the Younglings, justifying it under Sidious's rationale of preventing future civil war; they are too dangerous to be left alive. This mirrors Mace Windu's earlier decision to murder a helpless Sidious in order to prevent further strife, which of course also mirrors Anakin's murder of Count Dooku. These are all morally incorrect acts predicated on utilitarian logic: An act is not immoral so long as it helps a greater number of people than you have harmed in committing that act. Thus, murdering innocent children and defeated adversaries becomes justified.

Anakin never frames his understanding of his murder in terms of numbers, or utilitarian moral concepts. He suppresses his conscience, sure, but he does provide several rationalizations for his actions, and they're quite specific. First he says he's doing it for Padme - he'll overthrow Palpatine and make her the Empress, which if you go by numbers is the opposite of what a "greater good" argument would lead to. Second he says the Jedi are evil, which is a deontological argument rather than a utilitarian one.

Secondly, in regard to the Lucas quote....

Cnut the Great posted:

How does this make you feel, ungulateman? What do you make of it? I'm genuinely curious.

Anakin's dehumanization and his dismemberment are certainly linked in metaphor. The Empire's tyranny is routinely signified by mechanization - they have the "technological" fake planet that is the Death Star replacing the peaceful blue Alderaan, sterile environments, crisp angles, hard armor obscuring flesh, the bunker in the forest, babies coming from birthing pods and being raised by computer terminals, and so forth. Vader enters his armor and he becomes fully, hopelessly the Emperor's slave, and these two events are one and the same; his iron lung means he lives and dies at the Emperor's will and his mask means he sees only what the Emperor wants him to see. So, there's certainly the symbolism there of technology and oppression.

In the quote about Vader looking on Luke with "his own eyes," even there it's clear he's not talking about his physical meat eyes any more than he was talking about the video screens on the inside of the mask. The eyes don't focus. He's looking on Luke with his feelings, unmediated by his body - neither the flesh parts of his body given to him by his mother, nor the prosthetic ones given to him by his (basically-)father.

So that's tying into this theme of a spiritual world superior to the crude material world, something that is accessed by emotions. Right? Very simple connection there: feelings are linked to the transcendence or enlightenment you speak of.

What you're missing is that metal isn't what indicates a preoccuptation with the material. Luke turns off his targeting computer to shoot the Death Star, but he also turns off his eyes when he's training with the remote drone. The thing that metal signifies is oppression, tyranny, and the droids are so thoroughly oppressed that they're literally made of the stuff. So no, they're not aligned with opposition to humanity; but it is the case that their existence is inseparable from the dehumanizing system, also represented by metal.

Anyway.

Here's the question I have. You've got authors who say that machines don't have feelings, when talking about a story that they wrote in which there are characters who appear to be machines but also appear to have feelings. This presents a paradox. Either the characters are not really machines, or they don't really have feelings, or the author was lying about machines not having feelings in the interview. For the sake of the argument I'll grant you that they're speaking truthfully (though I really do think that it should be considered).

So: either droids don't have feelings despite emoting, or they aren't machines despite being assembled in factories. Which is it? As you answer this question, consider that your answer relates to what you - not George Lucas the author, but you the reader - think that the concepts of "feelings" and "machines" mean.

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN

Cnut the Great posted:

George Lucas is a fascist, white supremacist pedophile. This is now canon.

They're clearly not, though, for all the reasons that I've repeatedly stated and shown, and backed up by the creator's consistently stated intent. Doesn't it bother you that you so enjoy a work created by a white supremacist? I mean, obviously a lot of people enjoy Wagner's music, but that's comparatively a lot more abstracted from the man himself. In comparison, George Lucas's hateful droidist ideology is inherent throughout every bit of his work. How can you just ignore that? It's pretty hosed up. At least I'm pointing it out and shining a light on it. You're just sticking your head in the sand and denying that it's there because you don't want to give up your pew pew space laser movies. It would be like someone denying that The Birth of a Nation is racist. This poo poo matters, man. It hurts people.

One reason the absolutist reading of the death of the author argument is so flawed is because it abrogates the responsibility of an artist for the content of his work. I think George Lucas should have to take responsibility for his beliefs, which he has chosen to express through film. Do you?

Of course interpretation is still necessary. You can't rely on the author's intent for everything, because eventually the well of quotes runs dry, or you run up against conflicting or unclear statements. Sometimes the textual evidence is unclear or ambiguous. Sometimes an alternative interpretation makes more sense.

In this matter, regarding the particular topic I'm discussing, none of these is the case. The textual evidence is quite incontrovertible, and the commentary from Lucas only serves to clarify and guide us toward recognizing even more textual evidence. So far all of the alternative explanations have required ignoring vast swathes of textual evidence and intentionally misinterpreting clear imagery in comically inept ways. The arguments of my opponents in this debate are their own best counter-arguments.

In regards to your specific questions, I'm not at the moment making any particular case for anything. The philosophy of Star Wars is of course a mish-mash of various schools and traditions which Lucas has attempted to distill down to their basic elements and graft into a cohesive whole. It is unlikely that George Lucas succeeded totally in doing so, given that if he had he would no doubt be the greatest philosopher who has ever lived--which he is not. So there is certainly room for many alternative interpretations in that vein.

I will say that a literal reading of Star Wars clearly supports the notion of mind-body dualism. That seems pretty obvious to me. But there's no reason to read it in such a literal way, any more than we have to read Lucas's musings on the interconnectedness of all life in a literal way. Nor do we have to read the droids in the Star Wars films as literal representations of artificial intelligences as they might one day exist.

No one is saying Star Wars is pro-slavery. The films clearly advocate in favor of treating droids with respect and kindness. They suffer and feel pain. They exhibit emotions.

It is also clear within the films that the droids are nonetheless aligned with technology in opposition to humanity (or personhood). They are programs. Simulations. Imitations. They're imperfect representations of humanity, lacking the vital spark. It's made very clear within the films what this means: It's the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Droids lack the ability to transcend.

I quote Lucas, not as an argument from authority, but because his explanations and analyses of his work are more elucidating than anything I could write:



You see in these two quotes why the motif of mechanical vision recurs so frequently throughout the films. Mechanical vision is the antithesis of spiritual vision. When Luke looks through the targeting computer scope, he is seeing the world through mechanical eyes, just as Darth Vader saw the world through mechanical eyes. Machines do not feel the way humans do because machines do not see the world the way humans do. For a machine, the world is a collection of data to be compiled and analyzed according to the parameters of its programming--no more, no less. This is why the analysis droids in Attack of the Clones fail to trace the saberdart to its origin (which, perhaps tellingly, is a gigantic ocean world representing the cradle of life). It is also why Darth Vader adopts a strictly utilitarian worldview consisting of large numbers balanced against smaller numbers, impervious to pangs of conscience. It is why C-3PO, specifically programmed to understand humans, constantly complains of his perpetual inability to do so. True understanding comes through spiritual vision, which is the pathway to wisdom, or right judgment. This comes from being able to feel the interconnectedness of all things, the unity of the whole, the cosmic gestalt which gives all its constituent parts proper meaning.

When Anakin asks Luke to take his mask off so that he can look upon him with his "own eyes," he is not speaking of ocular vision. What he means is that he wants to look upon Luke with eyes of love. The script for Return of the Jedi in fact makes this distinction explicit:


Of course you do not have to read the script to comprehend the moment's meaning. I include this passage only as a point of interest, and as a friendly attempt to to assist those inveterate literalists among us who fancy themselves savvy deconstructionists.

The image of the World Tree--or its two aspects, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree of Life--is actually a very central one in Star Wars.

If you read some of the stuff Joseph Campbell said when he was invited by Lucas to his ranch to sit with Bill Moyers for The Power of Myth series, it's very easy to see all the stuff he’s saying about the symbolism of the World Tree manifesting itself in Lucas's films:







This image of the mother as a sacrificial, Christ-like figure whose suffering brings forth new life.





Padme on her deathbed/birthing table, flanked above by images of the opposing/complementary pairs she is about to give birth to. Luke and Leia represent duality, one being the male twin and the other the female, but also a potential unity. They are one with each other and with their mother within the womb, but become separate upon emerging into the world and being given separate names, a boy name and a girl name. This separation soon becomes further emphasized as they are placed with different families on different worlds, and they come not to know one another. In the next film they are reunited, and Luke begins a quest of striving to know Leia by becoming more like her. By the final film, Luke finally regains the knowledge of his past oneness with Leia within the womb, which inspires him for the first time to inquire after their mother. Luke then redeems his father using his mother’s love and thus completes his quest to reincorporate the feminine aspect into his personality, which also allows him to atone and thus become one with the father from whom he had been separated. With his dying breath, Anakin implores Luke to share their mutual enlightenment with Leia. Then Anakin passes back into the universal energy field, becoming one with all and attaining eternal life through the death of his ego.



Luke within the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil on Dagobah. The serpent is prominently displayed in the shot as Luke battles his opposite number. Having entered the Tree with a dualistic mindset, Luke creates the evil which he encounters, which is of course merely an aspect of himself. Had he entered the Tree with an acceptance rather than a fear of whatever he would find inside, he would again have encountered nothing but himself, but this time unified and at peace, rather than being splintered in two.

It is no coincidence that in the TCW arc I posted about before, Qui-Gon’s spirit first guides Yoda to Dagobah and bids him enter the tree, where the apprehensive Yoda experiences horrible visions of future calamity. It is only after Yoda’s failure within the tree-cave that Qui-Gon leads him to the Edenic Force planet and the trials which await him there within a similar cave.

e:


He murders the Younglings, justifying it under Sidious's rationale of preventing future civil war; they are too dangerous to be left alive. This mirrors Mace Windu's earlier decision to murder a helpless Sidious in order to prevent further strife, which of course also mirrors Anakin's murder of Count Dooku. These are all morally incorrect acts predicated on utilitarian logic: An act is not immoral so long as it helps a greater number of people than you have harmed in committing that act. Thus, murdering innocent children and defeated adversaries becomes justified.

Droid are machines. They are programs.


I think you're lashing out because I have the superior argument, backed up by reams of evidence completely independent of any authorial statements. I do think the quotes from Lucas make you angry, frustrated, and embarrassed even though you claim not to care about them. But I can't prove that.

How does this make you feel, ungulateman? What do you make of it? I'm genuinely curious.

You aren’t addressing any of those many criticisms or otherwise refining your argument - only adding more volume. This does little but provide us with more examples of your trainwreck methodology.

Here you see the image of a snake, for example, and you start free-associating that the snake is Satan and so-on, etc. But the snake does nothing Satanic. It’s just chilling there, doing snake stuff. Maybe it’s a subjective thing and the snake represents Satan to Luke? This is his vision quest, after all. But of course not - Luke hasn’t read the Bible. Maybe it’s an archetype? No, because even in that new age junk, archetypes are not about the specific content of the image.

But on top of this, a basic error: there are multiple snakes. They’re all over the place on Dagobah. The same type of snake appears in Yoda’s house, and one infests Luke’s plane.

Everything you’ve written is unfortunately sloppy like this. You need to be careful.

Cnut the Great
Mar 30, 2014

Ferrinus posted:

Now that I think about it I'm pretty sure that even the idea of Vader's force powers being diminished because of his lack of biomass is pure EU fart-huffing. Obviously he's physically slower and stiffer, but is there any reason, from the movies, to believe that he's now only capable of summoning 70% as many Newtons of telekinetic force or something? Would Yoda have even more force power if he was twice his size?

Vader can barely breathe. Breath is life, which is the Force. Vader has been cut off from the breath of life, forced to draw breath from a machine. Because of this, he is incapable of overthrowing his master, even though he was once destined to become more powerful than the Emperor. This is why he must turn to Luke for help. It is also why the Emperor wishes to replace Vader with Luke.

No one ever said it had anything to do with biomass. Force power is based on life energy flowing through the body. But the energy channels of Vader's body have been compromised. His body is not a properly functioning body. It is on perpetual life support. It should be a dead body. The only reason it isn't is because of the machinery keeping him alive artificially. His body has lost its vitality.

This isn't some completely made-up concept. Within Traditional Chinese Medicine, it is accepted that a physical injury can lead to a blockage of chi. Of course this has no real medical meaning, but that's to be expected, because neither chi nor the energy field called the Force are scientifically real. Chi, like the Force, is just a word for something that you feel. It's not hard to imagine that you feel a flow of energy through your body. You feel it when you exercise: You're energized. There's an electric feeling throughout your body. You feel good, healthy, whole. You feel at one with everything. But when you're sick, or injured, or stressed out, you don't feel this way. You feel a tension in your body, a tightening, a knotting. Everything feels wrong. Your body is screaming at you, drowning out the world around you. This is how Darth Vader feels, 24/7, 365 days out of the year. It is impossible for him to be in full harmony with nature, because his body is in such an extreme state of disharmony with itself.

We may be luminous beings, but we are currently confined to the crude matter which constitutes our bodies. The luminous energy resides within our bodies while we are alive, animating it. When our bodies are in a state of health, the channels are open and the luminous energy inside us is free to connect and mingle with the cosmic energy of the universe. When our bodies are in a state of sickness or disrepair, the channels are closed or blocked, and that same luminous energy can no longer express itself.

It may be possible to bypass these physical limitations, but this is only possible by transcending the limitations of the body. Stephen Hawking and Christopher Reeve certainly seemed to have managed this to remarkable degrees through sheer force of will. But I don't think I would be too presumptuous in imagining that both of them still felt trapped within their bodies to a certain extent, which is of course perfectly understandable. No one fully transcends their body until they leave their body behind. That's what makes us mortal, as opposed to all-powerful gods.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Cnut the Great posted:

Vader can barely breathe. Breath is life, which is the Force. Vader has been cut off from the breath of life, forced to draw breath from a machine. Because of this, he is incapable of overthrowing his master, even though he was once destined to become more powerful than the Emperor. This is why he must turn to Luke for help. It is also why the Emperor wishes to replace Vader with Luke.

No one ever said it had anything to do with biomass. Force power is based on life energy flowing through the body. But the energy channels of Vader's body have been compromised. His body is not a properly functioning body. It is on perpetual life support. It should be a dead body. The only reason it isn't is because of the machinery keeping him alive artificially. His body has lost its vitality.

This isn't some completely made-up concept. Within Traditional Chinese Medicine, it is accepted that a physical injury can lead to a blockage of chi. Of course this has no real medical meaning, but that's to be expected, because neither chi nor the energy field called the Force are scientifically real. Chi, like the Force, is just a word for something that you feel. It's not hard to imagine that you feel a flow of energy through your body. You feel it when you exercise: You're energized. There's an electric feeling throughout your body. You feel good, healthy, whole. You feel at one with everything. But when you're sick, or injured, or stressed out, you don't feel this way. You feel a tension in your body, a tightening, a knotting. Everything feels wrong. Your body is screaming at you, drowning out the world around you. This is how Darth Vader feels, 24/7, 365 days out of the year. It is impossible for him to be in full harmony with nature, because his body is in such an extreme state of disharmony with itself.

We may be luminous beings, but we are currently confined to the crude matter which constitutes our bodies. The luminous energy resides within our bodies while we are alive, animating it. When our bodies are in a state of health, the channels are open and the luminous energy inside us is free to connect and mingle with the cosmic energy of the universe. When our bodies are in a state of sickness or disrepair, the channels are closed or blocked, and that same luminous energy can no longer express itself.

It may be possible to bypass these physical limitations, but this is only possible by transcending the limitations of the body. Stephen Hawking and Christopher Reeve certainly seemed to have managed this to remarkable degrees through sheer force of will. But I don't think I would be too presumptuous in imagining that both of them still felt trapped within their bodies to a certain extent, which is of course perfectly understandable. No one fully transcends their body until they leave their body behind. That's what makes us mortal, as opposed to all-powerful gods.

Yes, yes, I've seen all these suppositions of yours before. My question is: where, in the movies, do we see that Vader's magic is diminished as a result of his ensconcement in a futuristic life support system? Where's your evidence? Does he struggle with spells he could conjure easily as Anakin Skywalker? Does he complain of his weakened capacity? Does the emperor?

The first thing Vader does upon awakening from the operating table is telekinetically demolish the entire room around him. He shears and crumples metal with his mind across a wide area of effect. I don't think we ever see pre-incineration Anakin manage something that cool. So why would you link physical disability to spiritual disability?

porfiria
Dec 10, 2008

by Modern Video Games
*Ahem*.

Star Wars.

Captain Jesus
Feb 26, 2009

What's wrong with you? You don't even have your beer goggles on!!
We can deduce that Vader is weaker than Anakin from the fact that Anakin plans to kill the Emperor, not serve him, but then he never does (until ROTJ of course). He also tries to enlist Luke to overthrow the Emperor because he can’t do it himself.

However, it could also mean that Anakin has given up his ambitions after learning that Padme was dead, until he finds new motivation with Luke.

Angry Salami
Jul 27, 2013

Don't trust the skull.

Ferrinus posted:

Now that I think about it I'm pretty sure that even the idea of Vader's force powers being diminished because of his lack of biomass is pure EU fart-huffing. Obviously he's physically slower and stiffer, but is there any reason, from the movies, to believe that he's now only capable of summoning 70% as many Newtons of telekinetic force or something? Would Yoda have even more force power if he was twice his size?

"Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? And well you should, for my ally is my physical mass..."

Jabba would have been the most powerful Jedi, had he been trained.

Bongo Bill
Jan 17, 2012

Captain Jesus posted:

We can deduce that Vader is weaker than Anakin from the fact that Anakin plans to kill the Emperor, not serve him, but then he never does (until ROTJ of course). He also tries to enlist Luke to overthrow the Emperor because he can’t do it himself.

However, it could also mean that Anakin has given up his ambitions after learning that Padme was dead, until he finds new motivation with Luke.

Not only that, but we see how it goes when he tries to do it after the suit: he gets a little bit electrocuted and dies soon after. Is he any less able to gently caress someone up, aside from that specific vulnerability? It doesn't appear so. He can still fight Obi-Wan to a standstill and outfly a squadron of fighters. Shooting him doesn't work, and while Luke eventually gets the upper hand on him in their rematch, Luke is also probably the only one left who could.

Thematically, his iron lung is like the bomb implanted in him as a boy. All his power and all his rage is irrelevant to his owner, who can end his life at will.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Bonaventure
Jun 23, 2005

by sebmojo

Yaws posted:


loving Droid Rights. Repeat over and over again. Years on end with this poo poo. Not even a hint of self-awareness at the inherent ridiculousness of the argument. Casual accusations of White Supremacy because a certain poster doesn't sufficiently acknowledge R2D2s personhood.



  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply