why i loved the last jedi

Ques­tion every­thing, right? 

You’ve heard this, but wat does it re­al­ly mean? 

I have a take on this. And in my world, it start­ed with George Car­lin. When he found his voice. It was with a glass of wa­ter and his de­scrip­tion of entropy. 

Pri­or to this, my only un­der­stand­ing of en­tropy came from an an­noy­ing Star Trek nov­el that my friend Joe read in ju­nior high. It in­volved a frus­trat­ing time re­peat­ing Ground­hog thing that made the book an­noy­ing and some­how Sulu grew long hair. I nev­er read it, but in my life lex­i­con, I la­belled en­tropy as an­noy­ing.

As my own life went on it kept com­ing up, de­cay, break down of sys­tems – a con­stant feel­ing of: Wa­t­ev­er this is, it’s a mess. And the per­son I’m work­ing for/or with thinks it works, but it doesn’t work at all. Some­one should take it apart and put it back together.

Which ex­plains how I’ve spent my ca­reer. Fix­ing things I see are bro­ken. Fight­ing en­tropy. Even though I’m of­ten the only one who sees this.

It makes me crazy. A trub­ble­mak­er. Some­one who does not fit in. I’ve nev­er fit in. 

But should I give up or keep go­ing? Al­low change to hap­pen on a small­er scale? Maybe one stu­dent at a time.

Hu­mans make most of wat we use in life.

And hu­mans are NOT per­fect. And Rules are made up. And rules and sys­tems AS THEY ARE are usu­al­ly flawed in some way be­cause HU­MANS (again) are NOT perfect.

En­tropy.

George Lu­cas’ take on en­tropy: Star Wars should ap­pear lived in, at least by Luke Skywalker’s time. The great so­ci­ety is in de­cline, even though the great part is typ­i­cal­ly not great, just ap­pears so on the surface.
 

“It is trag­ic. I’m not a method ac­tor, but one of the tech­niques a method ac­tor will use is to try and use real-life ex­pe­ri­ences to re­late to what­ev­er fic­tion­al sce­nario he’s in­volved in. The only thing I could think of, giv­en the screen­play that I read [in the 1970s], was that I was of the Bea­t­les gen­er­a­tion – ‘All You Need Is Love’, ‘peace and love.’

“I thought at that time, when I was a teenag­er: ‘By the time we get in pow­er, there will be no more war, there will be no racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, and pot will be le­gal.’ So I’m one for three. When you think about it, [my gen­er­a­tion is] a fail­ure. The world is un­ques­tion­ably worse now than it was then.”

—Mark Hamill on the weird­ly trag­ic tra­jec­to­ry of Luke Skywalker
 

Fail­ure! That thing that we learn and build from.

In the canon Rian John­son-penned sto­ry­line (it’s re­al­ly all long time ago leg­ends any­way – fuck canon if you ask me), Luke fucked up big. And bailed. 

And op­ti­mistic, bril­liant peo­ple I’ve known in my life­time have done the same. Giv­en up on cre­ative lives be­cause MAYBE the un­cer­tain­ty of where your next pay­check may come from is tooo damn scary. Maybe the neigh­bors will re­al­ize you aren’t like them and burn down your house. Maybe the Mid­town Boys will beat your ass just like the bul­lies in high school used to. Like the Nazis used to. 

I mean, right now, one of Der Tung’s best writ­ers has delet­ed their Face­book ac­count and is tak­ing a break BE­CAUSE of all the fas­cist trolling right now.

So I loved The Last Jedi (2017) be­cause it GETS the state the world is in. Just how the first Star Wars film GOT the 1970s. It’s up­dat­ed for to­day, and not only shows how em­pow­ered women have be­come – it’s, shit, do­ing wat Star Trek does. And Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca (“All of this has hap­pened be­fore, it will hap­pen again”). It’s our mirror.

And right now, things are not so great in the mir­ror.

The Last Jedi to­tal­ly takes to task a sys­tem that doesn’t fuck­ing work. A sys­tem that keeps re­peat­ing its mistakes. 

Right now I’m teach­ing my BAUHAUS sem­i­nar to a bunch of high school kids. Güd high school kids for the most part, who just hap­pen to be burnt out on our ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem and the so­cial con­structs within.

In my course, the stu­dents study not just the learn­ing ma­te­ri­als of the BAUHAUS (1919–33), but wat po­lit­i­cal so­cial con­structs al­lowed in­cred­i­ble cre­ativ­i­ty to flour­ish in the Weimar Re­pub­lic – as well as the evil that fought back and de­stroyed amaz­ing things.

Adolf Hitler, 1918:
fu­ri­ous Ger­many was dis­graced by France, the allies

Don­ald Trump, 2011:
fu­ri­ous he was dis­graced (roast­ed) by Obama

Those are the flash points. HUGE to the lead­ers in­volved, and cen­tral to wat played out his­tor­i­cal­ly and wat is go­ing on to­day. Al­most hun­dred years dif­fer­ence. Trump is PISSED OFF that he was hu­mil­i­at­ed in front of the press and the world (be­low).

 

And why his­to­ry is important. 

Lat­er gen­er­a­tions do not KNO wat came be­fore. So we re­peat things. A lot. I’ve been teach­ing this BAU course since 2014 and wat blows my mind is how stu­dent re­ac­tions to my les­son plan are AL­WAYS the same. I at­tempt to change how they ap­proach the work, even ask them to read my blog posts, but they all pret­ty much fol­low the same patterns.

HU­MANS are pat­tern recog­ni­tion freaks. Why asym­me­try is so hard to teach. Why ab­stract art dri­ves al­ready taught artists bonkers. We have our habits.

So for my ‘his­tor­i­cal’ dis­cus­sion in class to­day we end­ed up go­ing over wat is go­ing on in the world RIGHT NOW and its re­la­tion­ship to wat The (now most­ly dead) Great­est Gen­er­a­tion ex­pe­ri­enced.

Aside from books and me­dia, how many 90-year-olds do we ac­tu­al­ly pay at­ten­tion to in our society?

My dad was in WWII. He died in 2006. And he saw and knew things that we do not know about to­day, and was adamant that WWII doc­u­men­taries were NOT ac­cu­rate. Were bi­ased. Were pro­duced by peo­ple with agendas. 

My dad was also clas­si­fied a draft dodger. 

Be­cause his draft card ar­rived at his house WHILE he was in the war zone. Watch­ing all his friends get BLOWN up. “You don’t make a lot of friends in a war zone, cause they could be gone in a sec­ond.” He ex­pect­ed to die in the war, he just hap­pened not to die.

His fam­i­ly didn’t read or speak Eng­lish so they had no idea wat a draft card was. And even­tu­al­ly a war­rant was is­sued for his ar­rest. And he was in­volved in sup­ply runs that were re­al­ly bloody.

He said the worst point – be­yond tak­en off his ship in hand­cuffs – was be­ing screamed at by a mil­i­tary judge (who was state­side the whole war, btw). It was a long lec­ture on do­ing your part for the war ef­fort and wat a cow­ard is.

He had a choice: Mil­i­tary prison with hard la­bor or two years in boot camp in the Army.

He did the two years. And would wear his pur­ple heart, just to piss every­one off. (it worked)
 

My class dis­cus­sion start­ed with wat his­to­ri­ans see in his­to­ry that the un­e­d­u­cat­ed, ar­ro­gant part of the pop­u­la­tion just DOES NOT SEE. 

RE­FUS­ES to SEE.

Wat their roles are in all this. The cliché: ‘You may not think you’re a nazi, but you’re be­hav­ing just like one.’

Can this all be dis­tilled down to a sim­ple dis­cus­sion of how every­one is play­ing their part? Is com­pla­cent in all this? Is stuck in events that are be­yond their grasp, but also have the pow­er to change things on their own?

Yeah, ac­tu­al­ly.

Learn­ing of­ten HAS to be bro­ken into small di­gestible chunks. Just like EVIL can come to pow­er us­ing sim­ple ad slo­gans that show peo­ple were ‘stabbed in the back’ by a de­mo­nized oth­er – eas­i­ly a group of peo­ple who aren’t us, who can be viewed as threat­en­ing OUR way of life.

Flag wav­ing. Let’s make Amer­i­ca Great Again. Get ’em riled up. Be­cause things didn’t go the way we want­ed them to. And we should be pissed off and mean and hor­ri­ble about it.

Our im­mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy is be­ing run by the kid who nev­er got over be­ing called a honky that one time in high school. https://t.co/3yqxsg0qzX

— francesca fioren­ti­ni (@franifio) June 19, 2018

So this is where we are. 

“… The Amer­i­can peo­ple by a fluke elect­ed an im­be­cil­ic for­mer re­al­i­ty TV show host and con man whose only affin­i­ty for read­ing any­thing were the Adolf Hitler speech­es he kept on his night stand.”
—Steve Schmidt, for­mer GOP strategist

As a his­to­ri­an I can see the play­book be­ing played. And it’s every day. And we will ei­ther fight, adapt, or end up on the los­ing side.

So, his­to­ry ex­perts from Amer­i­ca who kept claim­ing Hitler could nev­er have put all those peo­ple in con­cen­tra­tion camps if only there were more guns. I guess this is your big moment?

— An­ders Ny­gaard (@nygard) June 18, 2018

And,

our dis­cus­sion end­ed up with
wat Taco Bell food is
vs.
real, au­then­tic Mex­i­can cuisine. 

An­tho­ny Bour­dain (1956–2018) opened our eyes to how in­cred­i­ble and di­verse the world is. Through food. And his lega­cy leaves us a lot to learn from. It should be our homework. 

Even though

The New Order 

would like us to be­lieve a taco sal­ad at Trump Tow­er is just as güd as any­thing out there. 

 
 

—steve mehal­lo

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM! Pic­tured up top: Still from Bob Clam­pett, Russ­ian Rhap­sody (1944).

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