ray245 wrote: ↑2019-06-04 06:57pm
The Romulan Republic wrote: ↑2019-06-04 05:24pm
Yes. When one has as strong a natural connection to the Force as Rey evidently does, they are going to draw on it instinctively to some extent, but its going to show up more as just being naturally good at their mundane abilities, rather than more overt, conscious uses like Force pushes or mind tricks. Her abilities seem to run in the same vein as Anakin's and Luke's too (another reason to suspect they're related, or at least that Rey is another version of the Chosen One)- she's really good at mechanical stuff and piloting, first and foremost.
However, since a big part of using the Force for something is believing that you can (see Yoda and Luke in ESB), once Rey became aware of what was possible, her strong natural link combined with that awareness would allow her to rapidly pick up new abilities (just like Anakin). She is limited only by what she believes she can do.
The harder part is learning why to use the Force/how to use it responsibly. That's the may reason, to my mind, that Jedi required decades of training, not because it took that long to learn specific techniques. Rey doesn't have that, and that's the main thing Luke (in his own misguided way) was trying to teach her.
From a story-telling point of view, you want your characters to grow before they "unlock" more powers. Rey could have been an interesting character with a good hero's journey, she just doesn't work well within the context of Star Wars.
Fuck the "hero's journey". The idea that the only measure of a good protagonist, even of a good Star Wars protagonist, is rigid adherence to the template laid out by Joseph Campbell* in the fucking '40s is absurd.
Because in the OT and the PT, a lot of what the whole Jedi philosophy is all about is learning to become more zen and be at peace with one-self. Jedi becomes more powerful the more enlightened they become. It's very, very Buddhist in terms of philosophy.
Which is something I'm fine with, and I actually think is reflected more in the ST (albeit more by implication than directly stated) than you give it credit for (more on that shortly).
Rey is an very "western-style" action hero, and having her be such a good Jedi did go against the core philosophy established in the OT and PT. The whole issue about Jedi understanding the dark side is not "stronger" than the light, and being at peace and serene with oneself makes one a more powerful Jedi was the central theme.
So essentially your complaint against Rey is that you feel she's too "Western"?
Maybe (though its a bit odd to complain about that when your standard of quality is apparently the very Western-originating template of the "Hero's Journey"), but I don't feel that Rey's depiction goes against what was previously established. It may feel that way because the execution was not as smooth as in the OT, but:
1. The idea of certain families/people being innately more connected to the Force goes back to the OT, and the idea of there being a "Chosen One" who is naturally gifted even without training goes back at least to
Phantom Menace.
2. While Rey is powerful
for a beginner, she is utterly outclassed by Snoke and Luke, and hasn't clearly demonstrated any abilities beyond what a typical PT-era knight or even a skilled Padawan could do. Nor is rapidly picking up abilities with minimal training entirely unprecedented (Anakin in
Phantom Menace, again, and at least Rey didn't do it as a nine year old). Her power is exaggerated by bashers to justify their grievances, and by political partisans seeking to stoke feelings of misogynist resentment in insecure men.
3. Both Rey and Kylo actually do reflect the idea that Force ability is tied to one's mental/emotional state.
Rey is repeatedly held back by her fears and insecurities about her identity. She does not begin to really learn about the Force or use it on more than a very latent level (possibly) until she leaves Jakku. She runs from the Force and ends up getting easily captured by Kylo in TFA. And in TLJ, her insecurities pit her against Luke, allow her to be baited into a trap, and basically cause her to fail in every major goal she has. It is only after she accepts that she is "no one" and demonstrates that she is strong enough to accept that about herself and still not join Kylo that she starts to win. Seriously, watch TLJ again- Rey fails at every major thing she tries to do, often embarassingly so, until that conversation with Kylo in Snoke's throne room. After that, she succeeds at everything she tries to do. I'd say that's probably significant.
Kylo, meanwhile, is a mass of insecurities about is identity and background, and Snoke notes that it is holding him back. He tries to resolve that in TFA by murdering Han and embracing the Dark Side, but it doesn't really work. This probably partly explains his wildly-fluctuating abilities, and his loss to Rey in TFA, in my opinion. It also allows Luke to bait him with ease in their final confrontation. I would not say that this is bad writing, either, because Kylo is pretty clearly intended to be a pathetic character, not a "cool bad ass". He's a deconstruction of a Sith Lord, and a pretty good one.
If your point is simply that Rey's progression as a character is not clearly conveyed, then that's somewhat true. Her development is fairly thinly-sketched, and you have to read between the lines a bit, speculate a bit, to get the picture I'm describing. That is a fair point against the films' handling of her characterization. But I do think the outline is there, if you look for it.
I also don't see Ahsoka really having a conventional "hero's journey", at least not rigidly so, to bring it back to the original topic of the thread.
*Campbell is a more questionable scholar than his fans make him out to be:
Wikipedia wrote:Campbell's scholarship and understanding of Sanskrit has been questioned. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, a former Sanskrit professor at the University of Toronto, said that he once met Campbell, and that the two "hated each other at sight", commenting that, "When I met Campbell at a public gathering, he was quoting Sanskrit verses. He had no clue as to what he was talking about; he had the most superficial knowledge of India but he could use it for his own aggrandizement. I remember thinking: this man is corrupt. I know that he was simply lying about his understanding".[67] According to Richard Buchen, librarian of the Joseph Campbell Collection at the Pacifica Graduate Institute, Campbell could not translate Sanskrit well. However, Buchen adds that Campbell worked closely with three scholars who did translate Sanskrit well.[68]
Ellwood observes that The Masks of God series "impressed literate laity more than specialists"; he quotes Stephen P. Dunn as remarking that in Occidental Mythology Campbell "writes in a curiously archaic style – full of rhetorical questions, exclamations of wonder and delight, and expostulations directed at the reader, or perhaps at the author's other self – which is charming about a third of the time and rather annoying the rest." Ellwood notes that "Campbell was not really a social scientist, and those in the latter camp could tell" and records a concern about Campbell's "oversimpification of historical matters and tendency to make myth mean whatever he wanted it to mean".[69] The critic Camille Paglia, writing in Sexual Personae (1990), expressed disagreement with Campbell's "negative critique of fifth-century Athens" in Occidental Mythology, arguing that Campbell missed the "visionary and exalted" androgyny in Greek statues of nude boys.[70] Paglia has written that while Campbell is "a seminal figure for many American feminists", she loathes him for his "mawkishness and bad research." Paglia has called Campbell "mushy" and a "false teacher",[71] and described his work as a "fanciful, showy mishmash".[72]
Campbell has also been accused of antisemitism by some authors. Brendan Gill, in an article published in The New York Review of Books in 1989, accused Campbell of both antisemitism and prejudice against blacks.[73] Gill's article resulted in a series of letters to the editor, some supporting the charge of antisemitism or accusing Campbell of having various other right-wing biases, others defending him. However, Robert Ellwood wrote that Gill relied on "scraps of evidence, largely anecdotal" to support his charges against Campbell.[69] Masson accused Campbell of "hidden anti-Semitism" and "fascination with conservative, semifascistic views".[74] Contrarily, the "fascist undercurrents" in Campbell's work and especially its influence on Star Wars have been called "a reminder of how easily totalitarianism can knock at any society's door."[75]
The religious studies scholar Russell T. McCutcheon characterized the "following [of] the bliss of self-realization" in Campbell's work as "spiritual and psychological legitimation" for Reaganomics.
"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver
"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.
I SUPPORT A NATIONAL GENERAL STRIKE TO REMOVE TRUMP FROM OFFICE.
