| 06 December 2010
And These Are The Good Guys?
Warning: this Review and Rant contains some “spoilers”
A Review of and Rant on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, complete seasons one and two, as presented on Blu-Ray Disc under the logo imprimatur of LucasFilm ™ & WB ™
The first two seasons of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, 22 episodes each, with extras and commentaries, plus the animated movie of the same name are currently available on Blue Ray Disc, as of November 2010. Playback is in 1080P, and the episodes were clearly produced at or above that quality level. I will address, with somewhat prejudice, principally a naïve first take on the episodes, as a stand alone work, with only some reference to the Wookieepedia for fact-checking, though I am responsible for errors oversights and misinterpretations.
I am approaching this as someone who saw the early Star Wars when they first came out, and never became a serious fan. So it's almost as if I am seeing their universe anew. A gestalt take on the new series as a body of work in it's own right.
The Clone Wars provides planet-scapes, space-scapes, varieties of species, and of technologies that are simultaneously breathtaking and fine grained. Everything is rendered in a fairly sophisticated 3D CGI. Pausing here, I will interject that as an entertainment value, they are excellent, and as a fan interest, controversial to the point of personal outrage. So I am risking people taking umbrage by writing this intentionally naïve review.
Each episode begins with the exact same signature Star Wars theme, over the identical Star Wars film logo, followed by the reading of an aphorism. The aphorisms come across a bit like the “moral” of an Aesop Fable to me. The stories themselves almost always contain some fairly obvious “teachable moment” related to the aphorism offered at the beginning. Overall, the OP is heavy handed and unsophisticated. It seems to me that Lucas could hire himself some musicians, lawyers, whatever; who could bring some variety to the OP.
I dunno if anyone else has noted this, but the technologies of the Galactic civilization unfolded before us are overwhelmingly bio-mimetic in nature. The various species and cultures have so long ago adopted a universal fine technology that they seem to have even largely forgotten basics like the wheel, or simple chemistry. This I find to be an interesting and likely direction for a millennial duration high technology. One result is that the mechanisms and design style of a given species often seems to reflect their evolutionary biology.
I give a mild nod to the tendency of The Clone Wars toward a more realistic interpretation of space and space technologies than previous iterations of the franchise. In particular, I'm nodding toward the current design and function of the escape pods.
The characters are rendered in a sculpted, non-realistic style which many people, including among the production team, have likened to claymation. Further, the colors are muted almost throughout, giving an almost monochrome feel, and most surfaces have a patina that suggests age and use. The Characters have big glittering eyes that seem the most conspicuous vestige of anime influence to me. Overall, I don't really care for the style, especially when it is carried out so...meticulously. Regarding color, I make invidious comparisons in my mind to the sort of coloration we saw oh so many years ago in, for example El Hazard. (ah, remember, once, decades ago, when the world was young, or at least I was younger? We were, at one time obsessed with Anime)
I'm enough of a philistine to note that even Cartoon Network's low budget Fire Breather, much less Disney's recent efforts are far more realistic, and far more aesthetically pleasing CGI. What are these guys afraid of? Maybe the Screen Actor's Guild or someone? Perhaps because the best CGI is now very pleasing, and very plastic to the demands of Fantasy and Science Fiction?
The stories themselves seem to me to be bearing down constantly on the messiness of human, or more broadly sentient species', interactions. Hmm, it was Aristotle who defined “Man” as the Political Animal. Lucas and his minions have delved at such detail into the moral and ethical ambiguities of his players; that is the real driving force behind my writing this review cum rant.
In my opinion there is no question of the moral intent of these stories, given the moralizing nature of most of the aphorisms.
I interject another digression concerning the conflicts that have arisen between continuity in other Star Wars “Canon” and The Clone Wars. As a trained historian, I find the claim by Lucas spokespersons that differences reflect different viewpoints and interpretations utterly persuasive. If you feel that there cannot ever be any contradictions in the record, then for the sake of peace on Earth, don't take up the study of History. On the other hand, where something is shown unambiguously, at length, it's implications must be taken seriously.
Much of the politics of this universe is based on our history, particularly classical history, though I must say that all the Caesars together were not up to the perfidy of Palpatine. Palpatine and the Sith Lords are intentionally colored as Hitler-evil, Pol-Pot-evil; utterly beyond the pale, despicable and beyond redemption. On the other hand, the profound flaws of the Old Republic and it's institutions do correspond to those of the Roman Republic; which is why we had the Caesars.
Because of the long tradition, self-styled within the franchise, upholding the Jedai as the good guys, I am going to cite a series of damning examples from The Clone Wars that make for a very dark interpretation of Jedai morality and ethics. To put it bluntly, I find the personal character of the Jedai leadership disturbing.
The first problem I noticed with all the Jedai, including Yoda and Kenobi, is the constant trash talking at their enemies. Much of it is transparently racist (specie-ist?). The clones, deeply conditioned and trained in the manner determined by the Jedai, imitate this. If I weren't a standard homo-sapiens I'd think twice about whether there's really a place for me in the Jedai ordering of things. In some instances racism in our sense is out front; contemptuously speaking of “Tail-heads” for example, as non fighters. It's not like Lucas and his minions are unaware of this, they periodically highlight the moral contradictions.
For anyone with a basic understanding of biology, the episode where a Clone Trooper marries a Twi'lek woman and has children is ironclad proof, in any rationalizable universe, that Twi'lek (and by implication the character Ahsoka Tano's species) are closely related to homo-sapiens. This has further implications that I'll get to.
Jedai endorsement and participation in the Clone Warrior program is so profoundly bankrupt morally and ethically that one wonders why human rights organizations have not railed to the heavens against their moral example. These guys are at worst disposable people, at best they are slaves. Anikin shows quite a bit of moral distress, insisting (correctly, as the fundamental biology implies) that they are individuals. But scant lip service is paid to their individuality by the Republic's war machine. They are simply a fleshly counterbalance to Grievous' droid troops.
In a universe where sentient beings are in essence thinly spread, and scrabble hard for the benefits of their technological civilization, the option of being a warrior falls on the riffraff. Worse, in a technology laden society, much like our own, war is dominated by the professional warrior, who must devote his life to that “calling”. Alas, the poor Clone Trooper has little choice.
Next in my calling out of Jedai sins is the example set by Yoda and Kenobi's recruitment of Ahsoka Tano as a Jedai fighter. Whether she is 11-12, as indicated by the Wookieepedia calendar, 14-15 as claimed by the Lucas spokespersons, I call BS. Even if she is 40, the fact is that she is pre-adolescent. According to Wookieepedia, and as shown within the program, among Ahsoka's “species” the tail-heads develop tall hornlike spires on top of the head at puberty. This Ahsoka Tano is a “Child” in the strictest sense of the word, and the majority of leaders she deals with make no bones about that fact.
Do you recall yourself as you were before puberty? I remember, and I emerged from it a completely metamorphosed being. The entire meaning of existence was transformed. This a key reason why child molesting, faginy, and the recruitment of child warriors are all looked on almost universally as utterly reprehensible.
Maybe Yoda has an excuse, in that he's not even approximately human, but what about Kenobi? Despite Yoda's constant dropping of Zen platitudes, these guys, and not just Anikin, are about as introspective as an iron club. When directly confronted with the retort to his moralizing, his claims to be working for peace, that he scythes down sentient beings without any compunction, he neither pauses nor reacts. Lucas and his minions are quite conscious of this.
There is an interesting book out there: Superior Beings: If They Exist, How Would We Know? By Stephen J. Brams.
Ask Fritz Leiber, or any of a multitude of other writers and futurists, if there were Superior Beings, they'd be demons.
In the Galaxy long ago and far away, there are Superior Beings; they are called “force wielders” How fortunate that this is so explicitly not the future. Yeah, just ask Grievous; they are indeed demons. While there are very narrow limits to cultural relativism in real life, Lucas and his minions make no secret that the Confederates and Grievous have very real grievances against the Republic, the Jedai, and their institutional corruptions.
As a final grievance against the Jedai, I raise the matter of Geonosis. Oh, I can already hear the howls of outrage. Well, I'm not taking anyone at their word, I'm sticking strictly to what you can see on the face of Kenobi and company's actions, reactions and conversations as they confront and destroy the Geonocian Queen. On it's face genocide, that flagrantly contradicts the Jedai's code of conduct toward species, proclaimed in later episodes of the series under review.
Spare me the cries about how horrible the Queen's mind control larvae are. The ick factor is a pale excuse for Jedai ignoring their self-styled Code of Conduct, particularly in the case of a sentient species on their own world, trying to survive.
Ah well, even without the Sith Lords, the Jedai are doomed. “Form no personal attachments” News for Mr. Yoda, celibacy is not hereditary.
And these are supposed to be the Good Guys.
