Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Why The Last Jedi is a director's movie, not a writer's movie, the Spoilery AF version.

This is the very spoilery explanation of what I said elsewhere:
The Last Jedi: a director's movie, not a writer's movie. The moments are fine; the story is full of holes. I give it a B because I like Star Wars. Emma and I agree it's better than Rogue 1, not as good as The Force Awakens.
My problems:

1. The decision to turn Poe Dameron into an idiot who repeatedly disobeys orders and doesn't share information with his superior officers is less disappointing than what that decision does to the women who were his superiors. After Poe mutinied, Leia should have killed him on the spot or put him in chains or, if the rebels truly need every fighter at that moment, told him he would be facing a court martial if they survive. Instead, he is forgiven because...women are really nice or something?

And what is the price Poe pays for repeatedly disobeying his leaders? Alyssa Rosenberg put it nicely in From Canto Bight to the Resistance's plight, the worst parts of "Star Wars: The Last Jedi":
...I’m not going to get into how annoying it is that after being hugely wrong and unstrategic about everything for the entire movie, as well as acting like a massive jerk, Poe Dameron somehow gets promoted to be head of the entire Resistance, ending the long tradition of female leadership of this movement. But let me tell you, I noticed.
2. Finn is neglected. He only has two big moments, and both are undercut. The fight with Phasma is brief and not particularly memorable. His attempt to destroy a major threat to the Resistance by blowing himself up within it is thwarted by Rose because...women are really nice or something? Rose does not have another way to destroy the cannon. She just seems to think it's better for everyone to die in a couple of minutes than for Finn to sacrifice himself saving them. Perhaps we're supposed to believe she hated her sister's suicide bombing so she doesn't want anyone else to die the same way, but in times of war, we expect individuals to die for the greater good.

3. Rey is neglected. Her role in The Force Awakens was like Luke's in Star Wars (aka A New Hope): she was an inexperienced Jedi wannabe. But for the first half of this movie, she's less like Luke seeking Yoda for training in The Empire Strikes Back than like Leia seeking help for the rebellion in the first part of the original movie.

Rey never gets a great fight scene of her own. The Big Bad who is killed in this movie is killed by Kylo, not Rey. She's along for the ride.

4. Luke is neglected. First he's a whiny baby who isn't willing to clean up the mess he created by misjudging Kylo. When he finally acts, it's only after he has let almost every rebel be slaughtered. And then he doesn't come in person, so we don't know why he chooses to die when the rebels are at their weakest, and yet we're told he's at peace with this decision. If he had come in person, he would have died like Obi-Wan, buying time for the next generation to succeed. Instead, his death is effectively the final example of him quitting with the job undone.

5. I don't understand the Yoda cameo, so I won't discuss it, but I will note that Yoda's dialogue was not always right. Emma reminded me at the time that Yoda talks like German translated literally--the verb is always at the end.

6. R2D2 is neglected. Much as I love BB-8's design, BB-8's role in this trilogy is to be an upgraded R2D2. The writers should've simply upgraded R2D2's body in the previous movie instead of creating a new robot character.

7. C-3PO is so neglected that he needn't have appeared in this movie. Handled properly, C-3PO is a comic character who manages to be effective sometimes.

8. Chewbacca is neglected. But at least he gets a few funny moments.

9. A grumble about costume design rather than story arcs: Why does Holdo wear an unflattering outfit that looks more suitable for dinner than war?

10. A couple of points for people who say it's sexist to dislike this movie:

a. I wanted more kick-ass Rey and less overly-impetuous Poe.

b. I wanted Phasma to have more time onscreen so her defeat would matter. She easily could've shared the high minion job with the blond guy who was in charge of defeating the Resistance fleet. In a truly feminist action movie, women would be prominent among the bad guys as well as the good guys.

11. A couple of points for people who say it's racist to dislike this movie:

a. I wanted more examples of why we should love Finn.

b. Rose is a fine addition to the cast, but her job was to be just as stupid as Poe and Finn by failing to go to her superior officers, and, in her big moment, to prevent Finn from doing the right thing by blowing up the cannon when there was no suggestion that any other means of success was available.

ETA Hamill is right about his character:


ETA 2: My greatest problem with The Last Jedi: the message of the Poe/Finn/Rose subplot is "Don't question authority."

Blame Harlan Ellison for everything that's gone wrong with Star Wars?

When Emma and I lived in Los Angeles, a friend told us Harlan Ellison was the person who told George Lucas that "Darth Vader" sounded like "dark father". I don't know if that's true—Hollywood gossip is no more reliable than any other gossip.

But sometime after the first Star Wars movie was finished, and most likely after Leigh Brackett finished the first draft of the second movie, Lucas decided Vader was Luke's father.

The idea was clever.

What Lucas did with it was not.

So even if Ellison did suggest it to Lucas, it's not right to blame Ellison for how Lucas used it. But it is right to say that the greatest problems with the series come from Lucas's decision to build trilogies around the idea.

Prequels are almost always bad ideas because they tell us more about things we already know—they often function as spoilers for the movies that inspired them, so things that are surprises without the prequels become things we anticipate with the prequels. Sequels are naturally more exciting because we don't know what to expect from them.

If the Star Wars prequels had to be made, they should have been about things we knew nothing about, perhaps focusing on Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda fighting Darth Maul or an equivalent figure during and immediately after the fall of the Empire. To make that prequel trilogy interesting, the Empire should fall in the first movie so the next two could be about the rebel worlds finding ways to keep the Empire at bay.

But when Lucas committed to the idea that Vader was the "dark father", the series became the story of the corruption and redemption of Annakin Skywalker. Then when Disney bought the material, they decided the story should continue to be about the corruption of yet another Skywalker. Which led to story decisions that do not follow from the original trilogy:

1. Han and Leia were such awful parents that they produced Kylo Ren.

2. Han was so much of a failure that Kylo could easily kill him.

3. Luke was such a loser that he threw a temper tantrum and went into hiding.

A new trilogy should have sprung from the obvious idea: a son or daughter of Han and Leia must gather his own group to defeat a new Scary Baddie. But Lucas had established the idea that Star Wars is about Skywalkers gone bad, so now we have another story about another psycho Skywalker.

I didn't hate The Force Awakens or The Last Jedi, but I didn't love them the way I should have. For now, I'll blame Harlan. Even if I shouldn't.

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Dear readers who are disappointed that I'm a democratic socialist who believes in free speech, civility, and the presumption of innocence

I periodically get angry messages from people who say they loved my novels and hate that I oppose identitarianism, censorship, and mobbing.

Okay, they don't use those words. Here's the most recent example. On Twitter, Chorizo Oh No! (who identifies as "DOTA 2 player, feminist, non-binary habitual ne'er-do-well and raconteur" sent me this:
It's really depressing when you find out that someone who made art that carried you through some of the darkest times of your young life is so blinkered that they engage in ridiculous victim-blaming antifeminist rhetoric like you do. It's taken me over a year just to build up to

searching for you on Twitter, at least in part because I was hoping that your views had broadened and developed some the horrific secondhand accounts I read back then. Will, you've actively broken my heart. Kill your heroes, kids - they're all monsters in the end.
I've identified as a feminist since I learned the word in the 1960s, so I don't know what "victim-blaming antifeminist rhetoric" refers to. I suspect it means I criticize rushing to judgment and have often said a better motto than "believe the victim" is "take all charges seriously." I stopped "believing the victim" in the 1980s when the Tawana Brawley rape allegations made it clear that if you accept the folk definition that "feminism is the radical belief that women are people", you have to assume women, like men, sometimes make mistakes or lie.

I suspect the people who thought Elsewhere and Dogland were only about race and gender are like the people who cite Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and miss their criticism of capitalism. Socialists have always been at the front of the struggles for other rights—it's significant that Charles Fourier, who coined the word "feminism", and W.E.B. Du Bois, who first wrote about "white skin privilege", were socialists.

Some of my readers are disappointed by me, but I'm disappointed by them. They dream of a pure class system in which the rulers and the ruled look alike. I dream of a world without masters.

Relevant:

Respect everyone: the wisdom of St. Peter and Malcolm X

Eleanor Marx on socialist feminism and bourgeois feminism

Three men falsely accused after Weinstein's fall: Sam Seder, Matt Taibbi, Mark Ames

In times of moral panic—which often begin with a valid concern—the worst people exploit the panic to attack their opponents, knowing guilt will be assumed by everyone caught up in the panic.

At least three men have been falsely charged. The Destruction of Matt Taibbi focuses on one but provides background for the others. Perhaps the most outrageous fact:
Despite how widespread the story was, not a single journalist or editor contacted the women named in the controversial passages.
Every journalist and editor who shared the story should be fired.

Sam Seder was lucky enough to be exonerated soon after being fired because his accusation was built on fluff*, but had there not been a moral panic, sane people would've looked into the fluff before firing him.

* I wanted to write "obvious fluff", but nothing is obvious to panicking people.

Relevant:

MSNBC Reverses Decision to Fire Contributor Sam Seder

Matt Taibbi - A LETTER TO READERS

About Those Exile Smears… - By Mark Ames

ETA: Kathy Lally Was Caught Trying To Censor Journalism In Russia And Now Deceitfully Claims She’s A Victim - By Mark Ames - The eXiled

Sunday, December 10, 2017

Woody Allen and Soon Yi Previn: basic facts

Dylan Farrow's Why has the #MeToo revolution spared Woody Allen? asks a question that implies an answer she does not want to hear. Abusers tend to have more than one victim. When no one else is speaking out now, in a time when victims are being supported, the odds increase that Allen is innocent. Before deciding, read Woody Allen, Sex Abuse Allegations, and Believing the Victim, which includes useful information like this:
While Soon Yi Previn was an adult (her birthdate is unknown but her age was in the range of 18 to 20) and Allen had never acted as her stepfather, even his defenders generally agree that the affair was sordid and grossly inappropriate.
and
...a major Canadian study that tracked more than 11,000 reports of child abuse and neglect in Canada in 2003. While reports of sexual abuse made during custody or visitation conflicts are fairly rare — the study identified 69 such cases — they are also quite likely to prove unfounded. Child protection workers substantiated just 11% of these charges, while 34% were “suspected” to be valid but not fully confirmed; 36% were classified as unsubstantiated but made “in good faith,” and 18% as deliberately false. By contrast, the rate of false allegations for all child sexual abuse reports was 5%. (The claim that malicious accusations in custody disputes come mostly from fathers is based on an earlier phase of the same study. However, fathers’ false reports were overwhelmingly of child neglect and sometimes physical abuse; false charges of sexual molestation were more likely to come from mothers.)
Woody Allen’s relationship with Soon-Yi is creepier than you could imagine includes this quote from Soon-Yi Preven:
 “To think that Woody was in any way a father or stepfather to me is laughable.”
and notes:
Allen and Previn married in 1997 and have two adopted children together.
The adoption process is not easy for anyone. In Allen's case, the charges against him would've resulted in exceptionally close scrutiny.

Does this mean he didn't abuse Dylan Farrow? No. It means we can't know, and sadly, neither can she. One lesson learned from the Day-care sex-abuse hysteria is that young children are susceptible to having their memories manipulated.

But the absence of other accusers strongly suggests that Allen deserves the benefit of the doubt.

As for his relationship with Soon-Yi, I'm a little creeped out by the difference in ages, but she was an adult when the affair began and, so far as anyone knows, continues to be happy. Their relationship isn't for me to judge. Unless you want to change the age of consent, it's not for you to judge either.