Gungans and Jedi and Slave Boys, Oh My!
Jan. 29th, 2007 05:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunnyskywalkerWorking through some thoughts about TPM, and the PT generally.
I was watching The Phantom Menace last week, and noticed a visual parallel I hadn't seen before: the Gungan Bosses' chamber looks a lot like the Jedi Council chamber. It's round, it has a decorative floor, it has a panoramic view, and it has two Jedi who don't quite see eye-to-eye with the guys in the chairs standing in the center... There are some differences. One is that the Gungans sit together in a row while the Jedi sit in a circle, giving the Gungans a more unified, imposing look than the Knights of the Round Chamber. This difference manifests in their actions, too: while in the Bosses' chamber, only Boss Nass speaks, in the Council chamber, several Jedi speak, and they don't necessarily have the exact same views (as we see when Yoda and the Council disagree over whether to let Obi-Wan train Anakin at the end, for example). However, the Gungan Bosses and the Jedi Council do have some similar attitudes to go with their similar chambers.
Both groups start off insular and dogmatic. Obi-Wan tries to convince the Bosses that they are part of a symbiont circle with the Naboo and should help them, to which Boss Nass replies, "Wesa no think so." They don't like the Naboo, they don't think they should try to mend relations with them, they don't think that anything that affects the Naboo will affect them. And they don't think this line of thought merits any further discussion, because they made up their minds long ago. The Jedi are just as adamant about some points. A Sith? "Impossible"--they're extinct. Take a second apprentice? Also "impossible." The Code forbids it. Anakin is the Chosen One? That's a definite maybe--and as to him getting trained as a Jedi, wesa no think so. He's too old, and that's just not the way we do things. Our own counsel will we keep about who is to be trained, and not letting in just any emotion-filled child off the streets, are we! Like us, he is not!
Now, they do have some reason for these attitudes. The Gungans appear to have been treated unfairly by the Naboo in the past, and they have no reason to trust these outsiders. The Jedi have not seen a Sith in a thousand years, two apprentices would be difficult to manage, and a child without a Jedi upbringing would have difficulty becoming a Jedi (even a child other than Anakin). So they aren't being totally irrational. On the other hand, Obi-Wan is nearly ready for the trials, so taking a second apprentice might not be so unreasonable--yet the Council shoots this down without considering it, because that's the way it's done. And plenty of Jedi started their training late way back when and turned out well enough. What's the worst that's likely to happen?
Neither group is totally inflexible, either. The Gungans realize that they aren't safe from the Trade Federation, that allying with the Naboo gives them a better chance of surviving, and that they can get along with the Naboo. Mace Windu thinks it's possible (if unlikely) that the attacker was a Sith early on, and the Council (minus Yoda) agrees to give Anakin a chance. It looks like they have all learned to balance tradition with innovation and new experiences.
But this movie is all about apparent victory masking potential defeat, as we see when Palpatine becomes Supreme Chancellor and the chorus sings his theme at the victory parade in Theed. The Gungans and the Naboo reconcile, but I don't think a parade is going to make all their conflict vanish. Boss Nass only agreed to the alliance when Amidala begged for help, which strikes me as a sign that they still have a lot to work out. They probably did work things out--that might be one of the things Padmé is so beloved for--but by no means was it a sure thing. Similarly, the Jedi try really, really hard to adapt to the changing Republic and to work with Anakin, but they don't quite manage it. They never quite figure out that using an army a secret admirer ordered for you might be a bad idea, especially when the Commander-in-Chief (or whatever Palpatine is officially) is a guy you're talking about arresting. Yoda's reaction to an obviously troubled Anakin adds up to, "Don't get attached and you'll be fine, duh"--while that's advice Anakin needs, Yoda doesn't know how to give it to Anakin in a way that won't come across as pat and dismissive to Anakin. They try, but they just can't figure things out fast enough.
I started wondering whether it's just that the Gungans and the Jedi are having trouble shifting gears, or whether they have a bit of Anakin in them. "I don't want things to change," Anakin says. He's afraid of what he'll lose when they do. The Gungans look like they feel just fine living in their rose-colored force-field bubbles, and the Jedi Council is sitting happy in their tower--why change a good thing and risk losing it all? Why try talking to the Naboo when they'll probably just act all superior? Why admit a troublesome kid to the Order when infants are so much easier to train? Why change a few rules when doing so might lead to re-examining everything about the Order? What if they change and lose the security of having the whole Jedi business figured out? They'd have to figure out what to do all on their own, without the comfort of ancient, fixed rules and like-minded peers to guide them. That's just plain scary, and fear leads to the dark side, you know.
So I ended up feeling very sad for all the poor Prequels characters. They try so hard to do the right thing, and minor problems that they can usually work around get encouraged and magnified and played against each other (darn Palpy and his cunning schemes!) until it all goes to Mustafar. On the other hand, parallels are neat and make me happy, so balance was restored in the end.
I was watching The Phantom Menace last week, and noticed a visual parallel I hadn't seen before: the Gungan Bosses' chamber looks a lot like the Jedi Council chamber. It's round, it has a decorative floor, it has a panoramic view, and it has two Jedi who don't quite see eye-to-eye with the guys in the chairs standing in the center... There are some differences. One is that the Gungans sit together in a row while the Jedi sit in a circle, giving the Gungans a more unified, imposing look than the Knights of the Round Chamber. This difference manifests in their actions, too: while in the Bosses' chamber, only Boss Nass speaks, in the Council chamber, several Jedi speak, and they don't necessarily have the exact same views (as we see when Yoda and the Council disagree over whether to let Obi-Wan train Anakin at the end, for example). However, the Gungan Bosses and the Jedi Council do have some similar attitudes to go with their similar chambers.
Both groups start off insular and dogmatic. Obi-Wan tries to convince the Bosses that they are part of a symbiont circle with the Naboo and should help them, to which Boss Nass replies, "Wesa no think so." They don't like the Naboo, they don't think they should try to mend relations with them, they don't think that anything that affects the Naboo will affect them. And they don't think this line of thought merits any further discussion, because they made up their minds long ago. The Jedi are just as adamant about some points. A Sith? "Impossible"--they're extinct. Take a second apprentice? Also "impossible." The Code forbids it. Anakin is the Chosen One? That's a definite maybe--and as to him getting trained as a Jedi, wesa no think so. He's too old, and that's just not the way we do things. Our own counsel will we keep about who is to be trained, and not letting in just any emotion-filled child off the streets, are we! Like us, he is not!
Now, they do have some reason for these attitudes. The Gungans appear to have been treated unfairly by the Naboo in the past, and they have no reason to trust these outsiders. The Jedi have not seen a Sith in a thousand years, two apprentices would be difficult to manage, and a child without a Jedi upbringing would have difficulty becoming a Jedi (even a child other than Anakin). So they aren't being totally irrational. On the other hand, Obi-Wan is nearly ready for the trials, so taking a second apprentice might not be so unreasonable--yet the Council shoots this down without considering it, because that's the way it's done. And plenty of Jedi started their training late way back when and turned out well enough. What's the worst that's likely to happen?
Neither group is totally inflexible, either. The Gungans realize that they aren't safe from the Trade Federation, that allying with the Naboo gives them a better chance of surviving, and that they can get along with the Naboo. Mace Windu thinks it's possible (if unlikely) that the attacker was a Sith early on, and the Council (minus Yoda) agrees to give Anakin a chance. It looks like they have all learned to balance tradition with innovation and new experiences.
But this movie is all about apparent victory masking potential defeat, as we see when Palpatine becomes Supreme Chancellor and the chorus sings his theme at the victory parade in Theed. The Gungans and the Naboo reconcile, but I don't think a parade is going to make all their conflict vanish. Boss Nass only agreed to the alliance when Amidala begged for help, which strikes me as a sign that they still have a lot to work out. They probably did work things out--that might be one of the things Padmé is so beloved for--but by no means was it a sure thing. Similarly, the Jedi try really, really hard to adapt to the changing Republic and to work with Anakin, but they don't quite manage it. They never quite figure out that using an army a secret admirer ordered for you might be a bad idea, especially when the Commander-in-Chief (or whatever Palpatine is officially) is a guy you're talking about arresting. Yoda's reaction to an obviously troubled Anakin adds up to, "Don't get attached and you'll be fine, duh"--while that's advice Anakin needs, Yoda doesn't know how to give it to Anakin in a way that won't come across as pat and dismissive to Anakin. They try, but they just can't figure things out fast enough.
I started wondering whether it's just that the Gungans and the Jedi are having trouble shifting gears, or whether they have a bit of Anakin in them. "I don't want things to change," Anakin says. He's afraid of what he'll lose when they do. The Gungans look like they feel just fine living in their rose-colored force-field bubbles, and the Jedi Council is sitting happy in their tower--why change a good thing and risk losing it all? Why try talking to the Naboo when they'll probably just act all superior? Why admit a troublesome kid to the Order when infants are so much easier to train? Why change a few rules when doing so might lead to re-examining everything about the Order? What if they change and lose the security of having the whole Jedi business figured out? They'd have to figure out what to do all on their own, without the comfort of ancient, fixed rules and like-minded peers to guide them. That's just plain scary, and fear leads to the dark side, you know.
So I ended up feeling very sad for all the poor Prequels characters. They try so hard to do the right thing, and minor problems that they can usually work around get encouraged and magnified and played against each other (darn Palpy and his cunning schemes!) until it all goes to Mustafar. On the other hand, parallels are neat and make me happy, so balance was restored in the end.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-30 05:15 pm (UTC)"I don't want things to change," Anakin says.
And this to me very much sums up the prequels. The people in it, be they Jedi, Gungans or Anakins do not wish change - they want stability and harmony. But as Greek Philosophers like to tell us: There is nothing permanent except change - so of course change comes, and alters everything.
The Sith on the other hand are all about change and destruction (which you could argue is change as well, but in a rather violent form). The Jedi's seek to preserve, the Sith alter and tear things down. A rather strange example perhaps, but Palpatine uses a rather large amount of students. darth Maul, Darth Christopher Lee etc. When one isn't working any more, he substitutes them with someone who does. When laws and forms of government doesn't work his way, he changes that to.
Now I know the Sith, or at least Palpatine, talk about power and this being a Sith thing. And yes, power is a Sith thing, but it is also a Jedi thing - it is how they choose to use that power which separates them. the Jedi use it for preservation (of the Republic, of lives etc.) whereas the Sith use it to alter the world to change them.
So when Anakin in "Jedi" kills the Emperor he combines the two - he uses his power to change the situation (bye, bye Palpy), but his change brings about peace/harmony/stability for the galaxy. And in that way he brings balance to the Force.
And now I have an image of Anakin as a yin/yang kind of guy. ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-31 02:39 am (UTC)Anakin as a yin/yang guy makes so much sense. I'm thinking of his line in RotS when he says, "I have brought peace to my new empire." It's a massive, Sith-y kind of change, but he's trying to do the Jedi preservation thing in his twisted way. And that is such a good way of looking at the end of RotJ, Anakin using change to bring harmony.
I think there's also a lot of the Living Force/Unifying Force split going on here. Both the Jedi and the Sith work on the macro level - managing the Order or the Sith or the galaxy as a whole and not valuing individuals as much. The Jedi have their Code which they put above special cases most of the time, Palpatine has his decades-long master plan of galactic domination with disposable apprentices, Vader gets sucked into the galactic management thing as well... It's all about the Unifying Force, the macro structures. Even the uniforms in the Empire merge people into big, identical groups.
Then you have Qui-Gon, who is willing to break the Code if he thinks an unusual case warrants it, and who is much more in tune with the individual and the moment (but who also can take the larger view and go on about prophecies and Chosen Ones restoring balance to the Force as a whole). And there's Anakin, who gets positively myopic about individuals to the point where he can't see the big picture at all (like, maybe being evil will make it irrelevant whether Padme lives or dies, because he'll lose her either way). When Anakin swings over to the galactic management side, he does that just as badly as he did the individual, and just about as completely. Qui-Gon seemed to have a balance between the Living and Unifying Forces (tilted toward the Living), while the Jedi, the Sith, and Anakin usually fall heavily toward one side or the other. Anakin especially is an all-or-nothing kind of guy. He can't just like someone - it's total attachment. He can't just find them annoying - they're out to get him and he hates them. He can focus on either a loved one or on galactic order, but not both. And in both cases, he tries to keep things from changing.
So maybe the imbalance in the Force wasn't just between Light and Dark. Luke goes against Yoda and Obi-Wan at the end of RotJ; instead of looking at his father as the avatar of evil and killing him to balance out the Force better, he sees his father as an individual with both light and dark in him and tries to get his father to see that too. And then Anakin realizes change is still possible (it's not "too late" for him after all) and okay, and uses that to overthrow Palpatine, and realizes that his son is a separate person who can teach him things about himself, and accepts death, and brings balance to the Force and the galaxy... it's both personal and galactic-level things all mixed up, and using change to restore stability, and...
Heh, you've really got my mind running now. There is just so much to think about.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-31 02:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 04:17 am (UTC)I think "dogmatic" is the perfect description for the Jedi, even more so than for the Gungans. It's religious overtones work well here, too. Because the Sith (the ones who do want change, and strive to create it) are essentially Jedi heretics. They were all Jedi once (whether literally or metaphorically), but they disagreed on matters of dogma.
Ironically, though, by the time you get to the OT, it's the Sith who don't want things to change. Palpatine likes his empire, thank you very much, and he intends to keep it. And it's the Jedi who are placed in the difficult position of trying effect a change. It's difficult because they still don't get it. They want to educate Luke in such a way that he will bring about the change (i.e., destroy Vader and the Emperor), but they don't really want to change anything about the way the teach Jedi or the content of their teachings. The changes they do make (allowing Luke to begin his training at a much later age than traditional, etc.) they seem to make grudgingly. And they're still unwilling to admit any change in dogma. Yoda is still trying to convince Luke not to go to Bespin after his friends, essentially because he shouldn't be attached. And of course there's this gem: "Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny." Still no chance for redemption here - no chance for change (because redemption is also a kind of change).
I could probably go on forever, so I'd better stop. But this is a great meta! *adds to memories*
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 04:29 am (UTC)Also a good point about the Sith turning into the establishment in the OT. It seems like everyone who gets too entrenched in their ways ends up dead in these movies - not that it's necessarily always best to change for the sake of it, but that being unwilling to at least think about it or to understand changing circumstances will get you into trouble. I still remember how shocked I was when I first realized how much Yoda and Ben were living in the past, trying to project their old ideas of how things should be onto circumstances that clearly don't fit that. It's understandable that they'd cling to what worked in what they remember as the good old days, and kind of tragic, but it sure didn't do Luke any favors!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 04:50 am (UTC)I think of it like the Hindu "trinity." There's Brahma, the creator, and Vishnu, the preserver. And there's your continuity, your stability. But the third member of the trinity is Shiva, the destroyer. And he is every bit as necessary as the other two.
(I think there's Star Wars parallels to this, too. Read Yoda for Brahma, Obi-Wan for Vishnu, and Anakin for Shiva. Perhaps that's why they all appear together as ghosts/gods at the end? But Luke is something completely new, beyond the scope of the old mythology.)
but it sure didn't do Luke any favors!
I'd say it kind of traumatized him, actually. I'm really surprised he turned out as well as he did, after learning that he'd been lied to, or at least misled, by pretty much every authority figure he'd ever trusted, and that said authorities were essentially grooming him to murder his father. And I don't think it helped matters that the only person who finally told him the truth was the bad guy. ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 05:00 am (UTC)Poor Luke. It's no wonder he's wearing all black and not smiling by RotJ. Not to mention Force-choking the Gamorrean guard! And meanwhile his friend is frozen and his other friends are occupied with getting him back, so not much support there, and then there's a second Death Star to deal with... yeah, it's amazing he turned out so well.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 05:08 am (UTC)LOL! Luke must have had an amazing support structure. I also suspect him of having relied heavily on the wisdom of Owen and Beru.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 05:19 am (UTC)Oh, that's such a neat way to parallel and contrast them all! I especially like the "there is a rumor" parts - it gives such a feeling of myth and legend to it. And the line "The rumors say that he will change everything" is so powerful knowing what we do about how the characters feel about change, and what happens.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 05:32 am (UTC)*blushes* Thanks for the comment! Especially on the change bit... It almost doesn't matter how he will change things - it's the fact of change that bothers the Jedi so much.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 05:38 am (UTC)Just think, if only Shmi could have sat the Jedi down for a talk. "You can't stop the change, any more than you can stop the suns from setting."
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 05:49 am (UTC)Just think, if only Shmi could have sat the Jedi down for a talk. "You can't stop the change, any more than you can stop the suns from setting."
She did have the keynote line for the entire PT, didn't she? But I think that Luke is, once again, probably the only one who "heard" her. Well, and maybe Padmé and Leia as well.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-18 06:04 am (UTC)Padmé I think partly got it, especially when she starts wondering if maybe they're on the wrong side - she knows things need to change. But she's also trying to keep up appearances so Anakin can still pretend to be an old-style Jedi, and she still technically lives at home (even if she does have a good reason). She seems torn - maybe just afraid of too much change at once?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-22 06:21 am (UTC)That was my reaction too. But sadly, it's true. I suppose they were desperate to give Luke a sob story. As if his life wasn't hard enough already...
That's very interesting about Padmé. I think of all the major characters, she was usually the most open to change. But even she seemed to be very reluctant to change anything, especially in terms of the Jedi Order. Perhaps she felt it wasn't her place...