Zeitgeist, Loose change, Earthlings and us

When movies were born, first films ever made were documentaries. Back then there was talk about people not having to travel around the world to see things anymore, cause film would bring all the wonders of the world to them. It was to be a new strong medium for education and civilization.
Now we live in a time when everyone (who has the level of wealth as most of Finns have) can buy a decent video camera and a laptop with cheap editing systems and produce films, much easier than Lumiere bros and our subjects could be examined more thoroughly, than the social commentary about workers leaving factory, by Lumiere brothers, because of the infinite material we have for filming, seemingly no cost at all.

When I look at films like Zeitgeist- Addendum, Loose Change, and Earthlings, I feel like "this is what we should all do, this is NOW". These three appear to be some of the flagships of internet distributed indie documentaries.

The internet and the easiness of working with moving images has only now, 100 years later of the first documentary film filmed, reached the level of really starting to work as the medium it was supposed to be. And services like Youtube contribute also to this cause. The fact that writing an essay or publishing an opinion letter on newspaper is not the only way to state your mind and taking part. Of course youtube in all its good has also set an example of the surplus that a good service always produces, and it struggles with not drowning to it.
The documentaries I mentioned are almost completely compiled of archive material or animated material. Only some interviews have been shot and they both work pretty much because of the strong text, read by a voice behind the repetitive images - meaning that the language of cinema they use is quite simple and old fashioned. But this only shows that you wont even have to film anything to make an important, or at least strong and interesting film.

And there has of course been films like this before, but now combining the lightness of digital cinema to the lightness of broadband internet, the information and viewpoints are free to take their place, out of the cages of: festivals, cinemas and the totally lost medium: TV.

The argumentation on both films is clearly simplified to serve the aims of the movie makers, but this is the fact that needs to be understood: There is no way around it that they tell us the things in the light as they want us to perceive them, but never think that this is not the case in all the movies, books, newspapers or news you see every day.
Meaning that they only give a new angle on things and I believe that this is their goal. Even though there is always a slight touch of mass psychology since all these films tell us to "Join" something..But since we already are members of this capitalist-religion, this can be accepted.

So I am not saying that a new age of political movie has begun because of these internet documentaries, but in my opinion there could be something to it. The only problem is that being a new interesting subculture, it won't be taken seriously in the mainstream media. It is partially a good thing, cause it aims to take the lead from the mainstream media. But also gives large amount of people the view that theses kind of docs are just conspiracy jibberish, not to be taken seriously.
The fact that there has not been, at least not to my knowledge, a public statement against the "proofs and theories" that Loose Change gives out, which are quite easy to believe, has two sides. On one hand it gives the image that these theories are ridiculous and therefore not worthy of a official response. But the other side of it is this: Now in the time of freedom of speech, internet, blogs and everything, we drown in opinions and theories. Therefore, to raise one or two from this mass of information, even to deny or criticize, is to state that it has some truth to it.

And since it seems probable that they can not explain for example about "the building 7" in 9/11 attacks, they see it better just not to answer the question. This is the new censorship of information: When asked - don't answer. The people will forget and stop asking and get on with our everyday life with money problems and jobs and entertainment.
We can write to our blogs, even make documentaries, no one says to us we can't do it. But it won't help, as long as the arguments don't get "publicly recognized" (whatever that means). But you still get the feeling that you have said what you had to say. This works only as long as there is the mainstream media that has some authority.

Of course, countries like Finland are still quite safe from this. The circles are so small that even one sms-message sent by some politician goes straight to every paperstand. But that is also a way of restricting our knowledge. Finnish news media tend to attract our thoughts in totally wrong things.

Now a film Earthlings, differs a bit, not building any theories of how governments enslave mankind. It just shows the facts behind our habits concerning our place in this planet,what we eat and so on. Make the connection.

So links at the end, for films to watch:

http://www.earthlings.com/

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

http://www.loosechange911.com/blog/

To believe? Well, I watch them as I watch any other film..And of course there are tons of others, but just these 3 for starters.

Star Wars - the story about fathers love

Now comes an interpretation of Star Wars and an attack towards a great film theorist.( I put this back on the front page)

Some time ago I watched all the Star Wars movies, yes, all 6 of them, even the 3 new ones. I must admit, that even being an old somewhat "hardcore" star wars fan, it was quite a struggle. The new 3 movies are just bad movies, bad cinema, and there is no way around it. The most pleasurable view were the episodes 4 and 5, New hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Even Return of the Jedi was a bit eerie. But, although I´d like to, I am not going to complain about the 3 newer episodes or the changes made to the old ones, even though they make me feel sick.

But now when all the 6 Star Wars movies are out there, what is the saga about? If we look at the characters, we see that there are 3 characters appearing in all 6 of them. R2D2, C-3po, and Anakin Skywalker, although he appears as Darth Vader in 3 of them, but the core person stays the same. So I think it is safe to state that the main character of star wars clearly is not the 2 robot buddies, although they are 2 important ones.

So the the lead character of star wars is Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader. He goes trough the biggest changes, he learns the biggest lessons.
Anakins mom states to Qui-Gon, that Anakin was born without a father, miraculous birth due to the high count of midichloriants. So, wanted Lucas is or not, we make an instant connection to Jesus, and all the talk of Anakin being the chosen one makes the matter even worse and irritating. Well only thing I´m going to say about that is this; Jesus had somewhat complicated relationship with his father, don´t you think?

Originally a slave boy, Anakin is characterized in a quite cartoonie way to be lost and unbalanced kid who has mixed emotions and is quite temperamental. He longs for recognition from the Jedi council but the Jedis are not so eager to accept him to be their savior and wonder child. This strange and somewhat unexplained longing for recognition and power is not too clearly explained in the film. Anakin just is that way. Yes, he misses his mother who had to be left behind, but the emotional motives for Anakins behavior are not too clear, possibly due to bad directing. Anakin is constantly saying lines like "I am the best pilot!" and "I am the strongest Jedi!", like he had something to prove someone.

Well, isn´t there a theory about sons and fathers, and the emotional distresses they can create? Anakin, a fatherless child never had the fathers love and acceptance that he is important and adequate to full fill his place in the world. He longs for it, but can never have it. Anakin finds his father figure from the "most powerfull man" in the Galactic senate, a strong senator Palpatine who quickly rises to be the leader of the Galactic senate. This person is the only one who Anakin sees to be sufficiently great to be his replacement for a father. And he turns out to be a Sith lord. So what choice Anakin has? He has to be his apprentice, cause he is like a father he never had.. A note for later: Palpatine appears in 5 of the six movies, as same as Yoda, but has much more screen time..In Episede III Anakin is totally lost, he needs Padme, but doesn´t seem to be able to emotionally connect to her (there is something realy fake in their relationship, is it the acting or the story?), he respects and hates The Jedi´s at the same time, Padme and Anakin have this secret relationship that is unaccepted and Padme is pregnant, and it is forbidden to Jedi´s to have children. This is like a too young kid going trough life too fast, not quite understanding whats happening and ultimately unable to take the responsibility needed. (the story telling might be similar to Anakins feelings, concentrating on the wrong things, alot of extra stuff..)

The scene what we all were waiting, where Anaking finally turns in to the Darth Vader we know, is irritatingly inter cut with the scene where Padme, his fiancee, gives birth to Luke and Leia and dies in the birth her self. So we witness the birth of Luke and Leia and the birth of Darth Vader - the birth of the next(or the old)chapter of Star Wars saga. And we see the death of Anakin, Padme, the Jedis and the Galactic senate as it turns in to the Empire. Death of this trilogy. How brilliant...
But more importantly we see the transformation of a fatherless Anakin,to a father him self. Not having a father he can not become one now, without turning in to some kind of monster. Even tough he is not aware of the children surviving. Hes anger towards himself is catalyzed by the lie that he killed Padme himself. But the concrete thing we see is, that when Anakin becomes a father, he becomes this inhuman dark machine. As I heard somewhere that Darth Vader is based on Dark Father..eh.

So now, the old, good, Star Wars films tell a story about Luke, an orphan, a bit restless and rebellious. He has this unexplained longing to somewhere, which is common to teenagers, I think. He hears a tale about great wars and about how great pilot his "real father" was and how Darth Vader betrayed and murdered him. Luke starts to follow the path that eventually leads him to confront Darth Vader. This is of course told in a way much more believable way than anything in the new saga.
Luke becomes something of a hero and seems to be pleased about the fact, but something still troubles him. There is the tension that Luke must confront the man who supposedly killed his father and therefore robbed him of the love and bonding between father and son. Comparing to Anakin, Luke has a goal which he can reach for, the supposed reason for his detachment where Anakin never had any target to put all his energy to, cause there was no clear reason for his fatherless life.

Luke sees a hallucination which tells him to go to this distant planet to became a Jedi and for some reason he follows it. There he has another vision of his friends being in danger. He also fights imaginary Darth Vader and kills him, seeing that the Darth Vader was actually he himself. This is later referred as "the failure in the cave". As in if Luke just kills Vader, he fails and kills a part of himself, the chance to become complete. To reach the unity which lies in the truth about the true relationship of Luke and Vader. And also gives clues to still ignorant viewer about whats going to be revealed.

Well, soon enough Luke finds out that the reason for these weird visions was that Darth Vader did not kill his father, but is his father. Then we see a great scene where he shouts "No! That´s not true! Thats impossible!" Yeah.
"Join me, so we can rule the galaxy as father and son!" As we know, Luke jumps down from that thing, he chooses to take the chances of dying in the fall and not to join Darth. Cause the fact of Vader being his true father, his origin, is at this point seems too terrible to live with anyway. It is in incongruity with everything he had believed. This can be argued that Luke knew that he would not die when he jumped down..but then a gain..did he?

When realizing that Palpatine was evil, Anakins most precious father figure, he dropped down to his knees and pledged his obedience. And when Luke hears that hes true father was the devil, sort of speak, he dropped to almost certain death.

Comparing to Lukes situation to Anakins: Palpatine represented the "Galatic Senate" and "democracy" at that point. Jedis were there to protect them, so the revelation of Palpatine being evil was much more difficult for Anakin, cause now he knows that the leader of the Republic that he had served and the father figure he had needed so much is, what only the Jedis call evil, so there was too much mixed feelings for Anakin. Palpatine supported Anakin on purpose constantly told him that he was "becoming the greatest Jedi" giving him this feeling of importance that parents often give, so how could he deny this.. Where as Luke and his friends fight the evil Empire anyway and it represented everything that they hated. So the knowledge of Vader being his father was too much, cause all the basis for his life was suddenly gone, the target of Lukes hatred was wrong.

Luke: "I am a Jedi, like my father before me."
Surviving and unable to avoid the fact, Luke again seeks confrontation with his real father, and whats most important: with acceptance of the fact that Vader, the so-called ultimate evil, really is his father. He goes to Vader and Palpatine and again Luke chooces the almost certain death to joining the evil, for the second time, when Anakin had failed at the first try. The saga ends to the point where Anakin who never had a father, sees that his own son, who he did not raise himself, loves him enough to trust his life in front of the Emperor (formerly known as Palpatine). Kind of unconditional love that he has never experienced. At this point Anakin gets all the recognition he has ever needed, the void of never having a father is surprisingly filled from unexpected feeling of being one himself, so and decides to end the manipulative and demanding relationship to Palpatine, and saves his son, who despite all the things Vader represents, believes in him. Vader sort of accepts that hes search has been futile, but sees that he is now on the other side and has now a chance to take the place of the father he should be.

There is this close-up shots just before the act of saving, which i think is the only shot, or series of shots, that had some extra meaning with the "new saga". In that shot we see the story of Anakin gathered to this one moment. But then again, it worked without the new saga..


Like the quote above states, that even though Lukes father had become a dark lord, he had a father, therefore he has something to cling on to, he wants to be a Jedi, like his father was, there is a meaning in that. Where Anakin was to become a Jedi, cause, well, he had no place else to be. Some one told him that he must be cause he is so good at it. But in the light of the new episodes, Luke is no longer a leading character, but supportive to Darth Vader in completing his story.

A famous film theorist Zizek said that in the birth-death scene, Anakin becoming Vader, we see the ultimate nightmare, our father becoming immortal. And this is what the old saga is about. There is this Dark figure that dominates everything, until the final confrontation of father and son.

But where Zizek was wrong, was that, at first, Anaking never wanted to be immortal. Both Anakin and Luke suffer from attachment to the persons near to them. I mean they can´t bear the thought of them dying or even being hurt and are always running to help them. They don´t trust their loved ones to survive them selves, they have this kind of narcissistic thing going on, where they their friends exist only to compensate some missing feelings of importance and safety.. Of course this has to do with the person surviving himself, but from my point of view Anakin does not seek a path to immortality, he seeks only to make sure that the persons he loves stay alive, what matter the consequences. This is stated very clearly in many Anakins lines in the movies "Someday I am able to stop people from dying!" and "I won´t let you die" and so on. Actually it is the good side of the force, the Jedis that find a way to make themselves immortal. There is only talk about this some sith lord able to save others from dying, but then not able to avoid being killed themselves.

So Zizeks Freudian theory of never dying father being the ultimate nightmare is somewhat irrelevant, I think. And takes things out of the wholeness of the story and manipulates the story and character to fit the spychoanalytic analysis. This seems to be common for this sort of analysis. He should treat the StarWars saga as a whole, cause he takes the basis for his Darth Vader-theory from Episode 3 but it only aplies in episodes 4-6. So in that way it becames a bit meaningless.

Through my view, view of Vader being the main character, all of the Star Wars films seem to be about finding the lost father. Anakin does not choose to became immortal(or in a sense immortal), he needs to become, because had he died in the burning lava after Obi-wan cut of both of Anakins legs, the longing for acceptance and love would never be fulfilled, and finally he dies right after the moment it has fulfilled. In the scene where Anakin almost dies, he does not beg for anyone to come for his help he just shouts "I HATE YOU!" to Obi-wan, as if now that he hates everybody he could as well die..
This somehow connects to the scene where Luke jumps down in ESB, seeing what his father was, makes life feel too unbeareble and meaningles and he feels that he´d rather die, but Luke survies the fall for the same reason as Anakin survided the burn.
The Zizeks explanation of Darth Vader is at least totally inadequate. As we see right in the beginning of Empire Strikes Back, is that Darth Vader is no overlord, that he obeys the Emperor still as an apprentice. In episode 4 Vader is all the time under the power of Grand Mof Tarking, he orders, Vader obeys. And as we can understand with the help of the new saga, this is the only thing that Anakin has ever wanted; to obey and get recognition about the good work he has done. He tries forever to be the "good son" he never could be. That´s why Vader is constantly shown to kill his vassals, when they fail to do the jobs Vader needs them to do. The whole saga ends with the death of the false father figure, the true source of all evil!!

At Luke does not treat Vader as this dark father figure that must be defeated, in Episode 4 there is no confrontation directly between Luke and Vader, Episode 5, the firs saber-duel Luke still thinks Vader killed his father, Episode 6 They fight for a time, but Luke repeatedly says "I will not fight you father" and Vader is the aggressive one, because of the Emperors will.

In Return of the Jedi, Luke still has chance to think if he would joins his father and complete their relationship as the Emperor wants, but if he does that, they´ll both be under Emperors might, and by joining Darth he would never find his real father.

If Luke is Vaders son, therefore there must be something of Vader in him, so it must work the other way around also. And because of this the final battle is not between Vader and Luke, but Luke and Palpatine, the Empreror. Vader intervenes, he wakes up from the dream that started in Episode III, killing the younglings and all that, and now kills the false father figure that has been around for so long and finally gets to see the acceptance and love of his son. Now, when the false father of Anakin has died, he can be a father himself, for the brief moment. He asks Luke to take the Vader mask of, which he psychologically does not need anymore, or which Luke has already taken off in a way. "Let me look at you with my own eyes." Anakin becomes what he never had, the thing he could never own. The saga could have ended there: The real father and son are united for the first and the last time. Had there not been all the other characters of course.

This theory might explain why the new Star Wars saga is so badly directed. I don´t know, but if Lucas had some father-son trouble of his own, the feelings might have been too clear for him self, so clear that he could not, or forgot to transmit them to the audience. So that we would know whats going on.

End question: Do you know how many times a hand is cut off in all the Star Wars films? Everybody gets their hands cut off!?! The theme of cut-off hands? Could some one tell me whats the idea behind that?