Google| Subject | Re: Clobberin' Time... |
| From | James W. King |
| Date | 09/15/2001 17:37 (09/15/2001 17:37) |
| Message-ID | <20010915113755.07448.00000258@mb-fl.aol.com> |
| Client | |
| Newsgroups | rec.arts.sf.starwars.misc |
| Follows | C'Pi |
| Followups | C'Pi (11h & 45m) |
Wes Hutchings: "Since the children the Jedi have 'taken' to date have shown to be given voluntarily and have not been placed in a breeding program and in fact only number to 10k in a entire galaxy, your point is again shit."
C'PiJedi's appropriation of young children from their parents to the other 'baby mill' breeding programs of the Leibensborn program anyway. And I defy you to go to www.google.com/groups and find statements to that effect supposedly written by myself. *I absolutely defy you to do so.* "As to the number 10,000 for the number of Jedi in Faraway Galaxy at the time of the Prequels, I do not include Padewans in that number because they are not full-fledged Jedi. We could also suppose that some elderly Jedi retire, too, and wouldn't be counted in that number because they're no longer active. For if the Jedi are to be anything remotely like a thin blue line of defense in a galaxy teaming with trillions of inhabitants, the number 10,000 ought to apply only to those full-fledged, still-active Jedi and not include Padewans and retired (no-longer-active) Jedi. "But your argument of numbers (that there are only some 10,000 Jedi in the galaxy in the Prequel-Trilogy period) is beside the point. Thus far, the Jedi children taken away from their families haven't yet been portrayed as having any regular or sporadic contact with their birth parents or families -- and *that's* yet another compelling factor that puts me off altogether, because that similarity makes its comparison to the occupied-territory-child-appropriation division of the Leibensborn program all the more striking, since those children taken by the Nazis from their families were never meant to see their birth families again, either. So, it matters not how many children the Jedi took away from their families, for even if they took away only one child under such birth-family-disassociative conditions, that's already one child too many."
James King: "Bogus issue and false parallel. I have never compared the
C'Pi (<A HREF="mailto:jas221@yahoo.com">jas221@yahoo.com</A>): "False Issue:It has yet to be shown that even one child has been taken away and disassociated from its family."
James King: "Bogus! I note that you've not cited one fact to the contrary from any Star Wars book. We already know that parents are at least morally, if not also legally, obligated to surrender their Force-capacity-qualifying children to the Jedi Temple -- if parents indeed have any say in the matter.
C'Pi: "Which just as easily parallels the Buddhist model I presented."
Are you actually saying that parents are morally obligated to give up their their children to Buddhist temples?
C'Pi: "Qui-Qon left the choice up to Shmi. There was no indication that he would have taken the child. Despite the fact that he considered him the chosen one. Something that would have given him a strong incentive to take Anakin regardless of what his mother said. If the Jedi were in the habit of taking children regardless of the parents wishes, why did Qui-Qon act as if the parent did have a choice?"
1. As protectors of *the Republic,* the Jedi had some unilateral influence and control there. Tatooine in Episode One was NOT a member of the Republic. It was a Hutt world where Jedi had no real influence over things, especially since Hutts were immune to Jedi mind-control techniques.
2. It might have been more compelling if Shmi had feared the notion of handing Anakin over to Qui-Gon and actually resisted, if not refused, to allow him to take Anakin with him. After all, the very publum and vanilla version of "slavery" presented in Episode One on Tatooine could not have been unappealing to some slaves, especially given the rather comfy accommodations of their "hovels."
3. If Shmi had lived on a Republic world, it remains to be seen as to whether she would have much, if any, say in the matter.
James King: "But none of those children in any of the books that I've read thus far has had any sort of homecoming with their birth families much less a holo-letter from home.
C'Pi: "Which would also parallel children going into Buddhist monasteries if it is shown that is the case."
Buddhist children are NOT required to disassociate themselves entirely from their birth families.
C'Pi: "I haven't read any books that take place before TPM, so I can't comment. However if it is true that Owen is Obi-Wan's brother then that shows there is contact with family."
And yet, that contact with his brother may not come about until some emergency situation arises which forces Obi-Wan to go home for a particular out-of-the-ordinary reason (like Obi-Wan's anticipated flight with baby Luke Skywalker supposedly at the end of Episode III).
C'Pi: "Also in later books the new Jedi have contact with their family."
The later books take place after the end of Episode VI though, some 30 years after the end of Episode III.
"In fact you have yet to show any evidence that Jedi training is atall reminiscent of the Nazi Leibensborn program, other than that both groups sought children out."
James King: "The issue does not concern 'Jedi training' per se. The issue is its recruitment policy, namely the obligatory conscription of Force-capacity-qualifying children into the Jedi Temple."
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"It has not been shown that children have ever been taken from anddisassociated from their family."
James King: "On the contrary, it's been prior established that such is the case."
C'Pi: "No, it hasn't. Cite a source."
I'll have to go back and look for that roleplaying game resource book. I only came across that information in passing while looking up another matter altogether.
James King: "Notably, you didn't cite any episodes from any Star Wars book or comic wherein a Jedi Padewan received a holo-letter from home much less got to go home to visit his birth parents."
C'Pi: "Again, you have not provided evidence that they are denied contact with their family. Cite a book in which a padawan or his\her family were denied a request to see each other."
False issue. The issue is that thus far, familial ties between a padewan and his/her birth family has yet been presented in any of the Prequel-Trilogy-period books
C'Pi: "And again even if they were, it would parallel the practice of placing children in monasteries better than the Nazi Leibensborn program."
Who are you insinuating is doing the placing of those children in Buddhist monesteries though -- the parents or the monks?
James King: "On the whole, though, if Lucas is going to defend this Jedi practice in creative terms, I believe it would be immensely helpful to venture to explain it in compelling detail and indeed, *if* the practice is not coercive, then some book in the future should include such an establishing scene as the parents of a young Force-capacity-qualifying child surrender their child to the Jedi Temple. Such a scene would provide a touchstone from which to better relate to the young Jedi Padewan character as he/she matures and progresses in his/her Jedi training."
C'Pi: "Why don't you write the story idea and submit it to the publisher of Star Wars books. For you it is a concern. For the authors who have already written SW books, it has not been."
On the contrary, we don't know for sure if such is the case at all. For all we know, a writer might well have already proposed such a storyline to Lucas Books only to get a memo from Lucasfilm explaining that such storylines in which a prior-established or new Padewan character has contacts, letters or reunions with his/her birth parents and family aren't allowed.
Moreover, I can't abide that odious notion about midiclorians, which offends my sensibilities altogether. As recently clarified by Lucas himself as dealing more with predeterminative flesh-and-blood genetics than any self-determinative matters of the spirit, the midiclorian stuff is the singlemost reprehensible notion advanced under the guise of heroism since anti-Semitic composer Richard Wagner wrote his "Rings of the Nibelung" quartet of operas with a deliberate "Deutchland Uber Alles" subtext and intent (to rouse the spirit of nationalism in the German people to seek their ultimate destiny as the masters of the entire world).
(And quite coincidentally -- or perhaps not so coincidentally -- Lucasfilm recently provided stage special effects work for the San Francisco productions of those very Wagner operas.)
"It is interesting, and an insight into you, that you continue to tryto link this movie plot with Nazism when other and better parallels exist. You have to look no further than children being placed in Tibetan or Thai Buddhist monasteries or the Shaolin monastery in China to receive training and conditioning to be monks. Something they will then be for the rest of their life. This is a much more analogous to the Jedi, than a group of people that had a forced adoption program."
James King: "On the contrary, I have seen such a news program about that child who was to become the new Dalia Llama under the express permission of China which now dominates Tibet. (The real Dalai Llama is in exile.) However, even that child was not prevented from contacting and receiving visits from his birth parents."
C'Pi: "Something you have not cited a source for yet. In which book was a family denied a visit to their child?"
Again, that's just it: There have yet to be any such depicted interactions between Padewans and their birth families, not even though holo-letters much less handwritten ones.
James King: "Because of his exalted status as the new Dalai Llama, his freedom was limited though, especially since his becoming Dalai Llama was under the aegis of China which hopes to make him their puppet of sorts."
C'Pi: "I wasn't considering the Dalai Lama, although it is not a bad example. I was thinking more along the lines of all the common children that are sent to monasteries and then have no contact with their families again."
Again, who are you claiming is making the decision when it comes to those children entering Buddhist monesteries?
James King: "What's more, the Buddhist angle would not be a satisfying comparison either, since Nazi occult beliefs state that their ancient 'Aryan' ancestors were the surviving overlords of Atlantis who fled and migrated to high ground in the Himalayas where *they* founded Buddhism. During the 1930s, Heinrich Himmler's own Occult Bureau sent several anthrolopological expeditions to Tibet to investigate and substantiate the supposed origins of the 'Aryan' German race. They went there looking to study an obscure tribe of native Tibetans still living there who didn't look all that Asian in appearance. Apparently, the Nazis felt that those particular native Tibetans were themselves the descendants of their own ancestors, the alleged 'first Aryans.'I found a example of this Nazi occult belief about the origins of Buddhism in a 1940s autobiography of a Dutch reporter who tells about some of the people he'd met during his career, including the unusual expatriate Brit character he'd met in the heyday of both Wiemar and Nazi Germany who mysteriously popped up now and them to relate his adventures about circulating among the seats of power in Europe, Asia and the Middle East."
Excerpt from pages 122-124 from the non-fiction book entitled "Days of OurYears: 1903-1938" by Dutch reporter Pierre van Paassen (1939, Garden City Publishing Company, New York), an autobiography of his years as a student and newspaper reporter in Europe and the Middle East:
One of the strangest figures to come to The World newspaper's office in Paris in the late '20s through the mid' 30s, where there was a daily flow of visitors, was Ignace Trebitsch-Lincoln. Said to be a son of Jewish parents, Trebitsch, when I knew him, had been a Catholic priest in Vienna, an Anglican clergyman in London, a Member of the Parliament in Westminister [in England], and was said to have been a secret agent for Germany in the USA and Canada during World War I. He had been secretary to the USSR's Leon Trotsky, political adviser to one of the Chinese governments and had some title at the court of Afghanistan. He always knew --- sometimes months in advance -- what was going to happen, but he never revealed his sources. This gave him an air of mystery, although there was nothing fundementally mysterious about him.
He was a restless soul, the Wandering Jew par excellence, who vainly sought for peace of mind in all the highways and byways of life. Personal success was the least of his concerns. He could have carved a brilliant career in half a dozen professions, and had more than once started out, only to break off suddenly, cut all his attachments and connections, and turn up on another road altogether. He was a marvelous writer, but he seldom had the patience to sit down long enough to compose an article. He blew in, made some startling announcement that left everybody flabbergasted, and went out again. Once (coming from Italy, I think) he brought the news that the French government had decided to occupy the Ruhr Valley. The Ruhr was occupied four months later.
In 1929, he predicted Hitler's advent to power in the spring of 1933 -- four years before it actually happened. Everybody had just smiled in bemusement at that prophecy when he first made it back in 1929.
He disappeared for long periods, but whenever he came back, the story of his experiences sounded more incredible.
Once he dropped in from India and began sending frantic telegrams to Lloyd George in London, asking the former British Premier to intercede with authorities there for a landing permit to enable him [Trebitsch] to fly to England. His only son, found guilty of murder, had been sentenced to die on the gallows [by hanging]. Trebitsch had rushed all the way from Indo-China to have a last word with his boy. Britain had deprived Trebitsch of his citizenship for his pro-German activities during World War I. When Lloyd George did not reply, Trebitsch tried every one of his former parliamentary colleagues, all to no avail.
I sat with him there in Paris, waiting for the dawn, early on the morning when his son would be hanged. When the first streaks of light appeared in the east, the tension became unbearable. He rushed outside and clenched his fists at the rising sun. The blood streamed from his mouth and nostrils [apparently caused by his rising blood pressure]. Then he sat slumped over on the curb of the street, moaning like a wounded animal. When he had recovered his senses, the boy over in England was dead.
Thereafter, it was in 1930, Trebitsch disappeared. In the summer of 1935, he was back, but this time he was waring the yellow robe of a Buddhist monk. I noticed him at the wicket in the Gare du Nord buying a ticket for Berlin.
"I see," I said to him, "that you have gone back to the yarmakle," pointing to his tight-fitting skullcap of a type that his Jewish ancestors must have worn in Hungary.
"I announce to you," replied Trebitsch gravely, "the doctrine that is glorious in the beginning, glorious in the middle, and glorious in the end --- the Gospel of Our Lord Buddha."
Trebitsch said he was on his way to see the Fuhrer [Adolf Hitler] and the leaders of the neo-pagan movement in the Third Reich [Nazi Germany]. "Buddhism," he explained, "is purely Aryan religion, and if the German people want to have done with that Jewish cult known as 'Christianity,' ...."
I wished him the best of luck in his meeting with Hitler but never learned how he fared. Before boarding the train, he gave me his new Chinese name and the address of the monastery in Ceylon of which he was the abbot. "If you ever want to say goodbye to all this," Trebitsch said with a broad sweep of his yellow sleeve,"come and see me and I'll make a monk out of you."
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C'Pi: "False issue. For any of this to be relevant you would have to show that Lucas drew the parallel between Jedi and Buddhist training of children because of Nazi occult theories of Buddhism, or at the very least show that the Nazi Liebensborn program was on Buddhist practices. Not even you could be so bold."
On the contrary, the fact speaks for itself that George Lucas has already demonstrated his familiarity with Nazi occult ideology; therefore, it is not beyond the realm of consideration that he might have been inspired or influenced by the occult-mythical connection between Buddhism and Nazi occult ideology. Moreover, it's damning enough as it is that Lucas' recent clarification of the midiclorian issue has made it even MORE shockingly identical in both comparative context and content to the Nazi occult beliefs about the magical/psychic properties of "Aryan" blood.
C'Pi: "Since these parallels are so obvious and a much better fit to the movie, then I am left with little choice but to think that your self-professed interest and nostalgia for WW II and Nazi Germany have clouded your ability to perceive things clearly."
James King: "Since you've failed to offer one iota of rebuttal of those points as even a token attempt to undermine their merits, I am not edified by your disingenuous conclusions. For only if you can credibly discredit in specific terms the merits of the exact arguments I offered, you're only whining disbelief. Moreover, major aspects of Lucas' Star Wars trilogy have *already* been cited in no uncertain terms as having been influenced by Nazi Germany. And those particular citations were approved for publication by none other than Lucas himself."
Excerpt from Chapter Two, "The Makings of Modern Myth: Cultural & HistoricalInfluences" from "Star Wars: The Magic of Myth," the companion volume to the Star Wars exhibition at the National Air & Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, by Mary Henderson (1997, Bantam-Spectra Books):
World War II
The trilogy's Galactic Empire was also influenced by real-life cultural concerns, capturing a cross section of images and attitudes from the history surrounding its creation. Lucas was born at the end of World War II and grew up in its aftermath. The Nazi concentration camps revealed all too clearly that humans could inflict the worst possible horror upon other humans, and the use of the atom bomb demonstrated that we could wipe ourselves out without any help from space invaders.
In Star Wars, the Death Star can be viewed as the ultimate nuclear weapon, and the look of the Imperial Army is clearly influenced by the Nazis.
There are other references to Germany and World War II in Star Wars that go beyond the costuming. Lucas called one group of Imperial soldiers the "stormtroopers" –- this was also the name given Adolf Hitler's personal bodyguards. Out of this group, Hitler created the elite black-coated Schutzstaffel (protection squad), or SS. The SS became "a state within a state," taking the police function and military and civilian intelligence and forming such feared groups as the Gestapo -- the "Death's Head Battalion" in charge of the concentration camps -- as well as a number of military divisions. They were all loyal to Hitler himself rather than to the party or government, and they struck terror throughout occupied Europe.
There is something of the SS in Vader, with his all-black robes and helmet and his obsessive obedience to the Emperor. As for the Emperor himself, the prologue to the novelization of the first film, "Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker," tells us that Senator Palpatine was elected president of the Republic and then declared himself emperor, exterminating his opponents. This brief summary matches Hitler's story; from the leadership of the fledgling Nazi Party, he got himself elected chancellor of Germany, then vaulted into the presidency, which he turned into a dictatorship, declaring himself the "Führer," or supreme leader. Hitler then shut himself away from any real contact with the people; he was surrounded instead by his personal bodyguards who were pledged to defend him to the death. The Emperor, too, has isolated himself, giving audience only to a few of the select, always protected by his Red Guards.
Hitler officially ended the German Republic by passing an act that gave him absolute rule. Early on in Star Wars, Grand Moff Tarkin informs the other officers that the Emperor has permanently dissolved the Imperial Senate and that the last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away. . . .
Even more important than the political structure, however, is the atmosphere of rigid control and dehumanization that characterizes Star Wars' Empire. This ambiance seems chillingly reminiscent of the fascism of Hitler's Nazi Germany.
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C'Pi: "What this shows is that Lucas based elements of his story on the dominating event of the 20th century and incorporated nothing more than common knowledge and nothing to do with the Nazi occult. Lucas is not the first have done this and he certainly won't be the last. There must be hundreds of movies out there that do the same thing."
Only "Star Wars: The Magic of Myth" author Mary Henderson was not talking about just basic storyline elements. She was also talking about the Nazi stylistic motif in the artistic designs for costumes, helmets, set pieces and other aesthetic factors. The unique thing about those stylistic touches is that it's somehow both subtle and not-so-subtle at the same time. There's even some World War II Imperial Japanese touches in the design of the caps worn by some of the Death Star commanders and officers as well.
James King: "What's more, George Lucas conceived the basic storylines for the Indiana Jones movies, two of which are filled with Nazis and demonstrate his familiarity with Nazi occult ideology."
C'Pi: "And does his making of Star Wars demonstrate his knowledge exobiology and hyper drive?"
False issue. Those are elements which do not contribute to the philosophical and mythical themes of storytelling anyway. One does not have to explain the technicalities of how to make a clone in a science fantasy as Star Wars. That one can do so is explanation enough; but one certainly does have to explain *why* a character(s) would want to create clones in the first place in such a storyline.
*However,* if you're bound and determined to have a protagonist character explain the process anyway, it had better make sense and not invoke revulsion in the viewers.
C'Pi: "You have yet to cite a source that showed Lucas had knowledge of the nazi occult before he made Star Wars and that it wasn't something he researched for the making of Indiana Jones? Or cite a source that he even did research it?"
George Lucas did not introduce this midiclorian bunk until Episode One, long after he had written the Indiana Jones movies. The original trilogy did not contain any concepts that were evocative of Nazi-occult beliefs. And it was also not until Episode One that Lucas broke his prior policy of not assigning Terran-ethnic accents to the voices of ignoble and villainous space-alien characters as well.
C'Pi: "If not then I may to write a treatise on how Lucas based most of his story elements for Star Wars on Buddhism belief and mythology. I'm sure I could write a much more compelling argument than you so far have presented on the Lucas-nazi occult connection over the past year. Of course just like all the arguments you have presented, it would be a load of crap, too."
I didn't create the crap that constitutes the content of Nazi occult ideology, nor did I create concepts evocative of it but with a more positive spin, either, in my writing of fiction. *Although,* there are ways to take such twisted philosophies and turn them on their ear so as to expose the fallacies behind them, such as through dark satire balanced with drama.
In Episode One, though, Lucas does the opposite: He appears to embrace the repugnant notion of the Nazi occult beliefs of the magical properties of "Aryan" German blood and tries to give it a positive spin by endowing heroes with beliefs along the same lines. And that's absolutely reprehensible.
James King: "The Nazis and Nazi-occult themes are also major elements in most of the other Indiana Jones-related games, books and comics, too -- all also approved by Lucas himself."
C'Pi: "Is Indiana Jones the only story you've seen nazis in? What's unique about Indiana Jones that separates it from all the other movies that have Nazis?"
False issue. I was addressing *only* the works of/by George Lucas and Lucasfilm.
-- James King
09/11/2001-
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