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Friday May 20, 2005
I just came from seeing Star Wars: Revenge of the
Sith. *Spoiler Warnings* because I'm not going to talk about the movie without
talking about the movie.
It was certainly not the best since Empire Strikes
Back but then I'm of the school that believes A New Hope was the best of the lot.
The people that are so impressed with ESB are of the same mold that think Wolverine
and Punisher are the best comic characters ever and that shows like Survivor are an
accurate mirror of society.
But back to RotS. It was jaw-dropping in
scope but that's what Lucas is known for. In fact there was one scene where the
background was so busy with detail that you thought you'd go blind trying to
follow the characters. The story was surprisingly intelligent if occasionally
executed in bad form. The change from Anakin to Darth Vader was believable and as
tragic as everyone has said, though there were two pivotal scenes that were hard
to take seriously. One where he becomes Vader in name and the other when he
becomes Vader in form. They'll be making fun of that last scene for decades.
As part of a whole it fulfilled its duty, no more no
less. Now as to the controversial political quotes and Lucas' own views. The funny
thing with art is that once its finished it is no longer within the artist's
control to interpret. And the funny thing about truth is that it has a way of
poking its way through no matter what you try and pile on top of it. The quotes are
throw away lines that just sit there like lumps but the conversations
speak volumes.
The first significant conversation is between Anakin
and Yoda. Anakin has been having dreams about Padme's death similar to what he
had before his own mother dying. Yoda speaks of a higher plain of existence
and that we shouldn't mourn the dead because they are not gone, they are a part of
The Force. In his Jedi way he tells Anakin that death is inevitable and that to
cling to life at all cost is a form of fear and also greed.
The second is between Palpatine/Sidious and Anakin
where Palpatine reveals who he really is. Up to this point he has been tempting
Anakin with the possibility that there are powers that could save Padme from death.
He begins the conversation by saying that he is trained in Jedi ways and he is also
familiar with the ways of the Dark Side. Palpatine's defense is that you need to
experience something to truly understand its nature. At this point he tells Anakin
that the power to save life lies in the Dark Side if Anakin wishes to learn how.
The third conversation is during the final battle
between Obi Wan and Anakin. Every decision up to this point made by Anakin has
been to protect Padme. His final view is laid out as simply being peace and
protection of Padme through complete control of everything. There can only be
peace if he's in charge. This is where we get the controversial "with me or
against me/only Sith deal in absolutes" bit.
So we have a Sith lord who has engineered a
galactic war by siding both with the merchants and with the Republic. His
interests lies in only what power he can obtain now, regardless of innocents killed
by those who work for him. His path is through a murky gray implied by his own
name (Sidious, as in insidious) that allows no absolutes (Evil exists by implying
that there is no real Good). His new apprentice feels that he can accomplish
great good, he simply has to overlook the evil going on around him. A good
description for the UN and its fawning supporters.
And we have Jedi that do actually deal in absolutes
by completely eschewing the nature of the Dark Side. Jedi that are mystical in
nature (i.e. religious) and strong believers in a here-after. (As a side note they
are also strong believers in what they 'feel' to be true, advice given on a number
of occasions. These 'feeling' have to be considered more of a philosophy because all dark
feelings are suppressed, which means only certain viewpoints are going to be tapped.
An interesting view considering the occasional demand for 'facts' I receive when
making arguments, as if the person isn't capable of making a decision within themselves.)
They are also very powerful. In fact, while they may have
lost a major battle by the end of this movie, the fact is those that fell were
shot in the back, those that didn't, fought and won their respective individual
battles and were simply outnumbered in the end and forced to flee. Peace and
strength through a strong belief system.
I don't know what message Lucas was trying to send,
but I think in the end his own view of the Big Picture is what moves this vast
project and that whatever his political views of the day are, they fall quickly
into the shadows.
Thursday May 19, 2005
One of the programs at the MLA Conference was part of
an all day affair dealing with the
Digital Commonwealth. This particular session was on "The Changing Place of
Libraries in the Digital World." It was a lecture given by a Greg Crane of Tufts
University, head of the Perseus Project.
He had a lot of interesting things to say, a fair
amount philosophical (what kind of reading counts? intensive? extensive? do
libraries transcend memory or stilt it? ideas only matter if they are in your brain
etc.). Stuff that's fun to talk about when out with co-workers and half in the bag
but never get to consider when you're showing patrons how to work a scanner
or download an email attachment to a floppy.
One hard bit of information he talked about was
'Smart Books'. Books as databases basically. Take a book, add criticism and related works,
hyperlink to the Nth degree and ta-da! Smart Book.
I
said recently that books were already perfect in form and function. There are
some books that transcend the concept of being 'just a book', major works that have
survived the centuries, even millennia. They are meant to be both Book and Smart Book
and can function in either form.
Today I was introduced to a database called BookSource
that I'm going to do a trial run on. Its a collection of books, nonfiction,
available in full text, for grades K-12. There's a title list available
here. Going through it I see a
vast number of school-related reference questions being answered very quickly.
Sitting here thinking about Mr. Crane's Smart Books it occurs to me that most of
the books in the list are Dumb Books. That's not a bad thing, we've been buying
these Dumb Books in print form for quite some time now. They fill a demand. This
being the constant barrage of school questions like "do you have any
state/country/biography/cultural cooking/career/etc books? And are they at least 100 pages?"
So we filled the demand with our own demands on publishers. We wanted books in sets,
we wanted them to be colorful with lots of pictures and facts that were easily
picked out, easy to read, covered all the really important stuff, and was long
enough to impress the teacher but not scare the student. No narrative, no beginning
or end, just a series of pages of stuff on stuff. We invented websites before the
Internet was invented, we just put them on paper because that's all we had.
Now Dumb Books can also function in either form,
online or print. But I think its natural form is online. And I think that this will
be a healthy step forward to the end of the book as we know it. Because a real Book,
neither Smart or Dumb, is important not just because of what its about but how its
about it. Reading a Book means gaining knowledge but also experiencing it. Research
doesn't always require the experience and we've made a mistake saying it needs to be
done with books alone. Now we're going to be stuck convincing people that this
online source is as legitimate as the ones on the shelf (one and the same in fact),
but no, you still can't use just anything you find online.
People are going to start thinking we don't know what
we're talking about. Tuesday May 17, 2005
Yeah, I pretty much blew tonight shooting zombies. Enter at your own peril.
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