The SWU Podcast LIVE | 02/11/18 | The Star Wars Underworld

Friday, November 2, 2018

The SWU Podcast LIVE | 02/11/18

Posted by Dominic Jones on 11/02/2018 2 comments

On this episode, Dominic, Ben, and Chris discuss the news the long rumored Boba Fett movie is officially DEAD! They reflect on the long winding path of the doomed film, and talk about what other Boba stories they would like to see. They also look at the announcement of Lego Star Wars: All-Stars, John Williams being on the mend, and the latest from Hasbro. Plus, listener feedback, more from Leia Day, and can Kylo Ren be redeemed? All this and much more!

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2 comments:

Unknown said...

Ok so a lot of your ideas for Kylo being in exile are super close to Ulic Qel Droma from tales of the Jedi. I adore Ulic and his rise, fall, and redemption. but I honestly don't want that from Kylo. Ulic was a bad person to be sure, and did lead a cult, but the moment he killed his brother in a fit of rage he broke down and turned away from the dark. Kylo has had that moment again and again, and on top of that is a flipping space nazi.

I feel that we sometimes have a bad habit of taking the theme of redemption within Star Wars to the extreme of SW having to be about redemption in every case. Just cause arguably everyone can, does not mean everyone should be from a writing perspective. I think also we use redemption when we mean atonement cause those are different things.

The biggest thing for me though has to do with the real world, Kylo is a perfect example of an entitled, toxically masculine, nazi. I mean he serves Snoke on a ship literally called the supremacy. Is redeeming him really the story we wanna tell in this day and age? I get that we can argue that saying he can be redeemed makes the case that these people can change, but at the same time media has power and star wars, which already serves as fascist porn for some, needs to really and truly put its foot down on people like Kylo.

We can beat up on guys like Hux cause he is slimy, but the real evil, the real core of fascism are those like Kylo; he is not overtly evil looking and does his puppy dog eyes and "oh what a misunderstood monster" thing. Even if we send him off to some island does that really drive how the destructive and evil path of entitlement and fascism?

Much as I love Rian I found some of the stuff he said in early interviews about everyone being able to see themselves in Kylo off putting cause, no not all of us can relate to someone like Ben. The character is meant to be an allegory for neo nazis and right now we are practically swimming in them. Saying "they are people to and we just need to give them a chance to redeem themselves" is frankly not the best story to tell. Even if you hammer in how bad Kylo is, you are still making only a 2 hour movie in which by the end he is treated as someone either forgiven or given the chance at redemption or a happy ending. Should that really be the narrative we use?

I have some friends who are big Kylo fans and while they will on the surface say "he is bad and does need time to atone" any time you dig a little deeper they go to the "well Hux ordered SKB to fire" or "well ordering the execution of the villagers was likely protocol so it is not a moral action" those are legit defenses someone made in a video Joel (who is my co-host and the one who asked this question btw) and I did a while back. I feel like if we are not utmost careful we can let these enablers feel validated. I don't think people like that approve of real world fascism or anything, but thing is their mindset still plays into the strengths of actual toxicity and we need to really use SW to drive home that people like Kylo irl don't redeem themselves, even those who feel bad about their actions are still monsters and that bigotry and evil never really leaves.

Look at nazis or reconstruction era southerners, how many of them really changed their views? I am not talking Mark Twain here, I mean like those who where plantation owners or SS officers? If we give Kylo a decade or more to "redeem himself" we still may be spreading this idea that time heals all wounds, which it frankly does not, least of which within a single lifetime. We end up removing the bigotry from Kylo to an extent when we send him off to rehabilitate cause his actions are caused by an actual evil ideology, not just the spiral of the dark side itself. The dark side is augmenting his entitlement.

November 2, 2018 at 5:55 PM

Unknown said...

I worry what message we are sending by redeeming him, sure anyone can repent, but should every story really do that? Irl we cannot just expect the rioters at Charlottesville to go live on a farm for 10 years and come back fine, we have to deal with people who will likely never change, and whose children might not ever change; people like Kylo represent an ideology of hate and when those hoping for his redemption get their wish what are we saying? What are we portraying about actual hate groups if the leader of an allegorical one gets given chance after chance and the benefit of the doubt and sympathy. Just saying if Ben looked 50% less attractive I doubt people would be as certain there is so much good in him still.

I think today we need a story that says "yeah sometimes people don't come back, sometimes people choose to be evil and keep being evil and we just have to accept that and fight them till we die or they die one way or another"

Also interesting point by Chris on Hercules/Herakles. Though when I think Greek mythology and atonement I think the much more common thing of people who legit don't have major reasons to suffer besides hubris at best and end up suffering for all of eternity. AG Sisyphus who while a terrible guy only got punished cause he ruined Zeus' booty call iirc, Echo, Prometheus gave us fire and ended up chained to a boulder with his liver ripped out by ravens everyday. Arachne beat Athena at weaving so she made her so depressed she hanged herself (the spider thing being Athena actually being nice and reflecting upon her actions allowing Arachne to weave for all of eternity now)

Then there are those that are actually villains like Atlas the Titan who assisted his brethren in the Titanomachy ended up having to hold the darn sky up forever, Tantalus stole ambrosia from the gods and killed and served his own son to the gods as a trick and thus was forced to forever sit in a pool of water with a fruit tree just out of reach - both receding if he ever tried to consume any. And yes that is the origin of the word tantalize.

Or in Norse mythology Loki tricked Hodr into killing the otherwise invulnerable Baldur with a spear tipped with mistletoe (that was his one weakness). When way later everyone found out then tied Loki to a boulder with the entrails of his son, where a snake would sit on a tree above him and pour acid into is always opened eyes forever.

It really depends on the Myth, but Hercules is more of an exception to the rule since he got to burn away his mortal half and become full god and head to Olympus; like damn near everyone else suffers eternally.

Plus as we head into more modern mythology and literature on mythology we get The Divine Comedy, a third of which is just Dante placing people we dislikes into different layers of hell, some mythological, some other relgions gods, some people who owed him money, some politicians he disliked.

November 2, 2018 at 6:17 PM

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Friday, November 2, 2018

The SWU Podcast LIVE | 02/11/18

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