The conspiracy theory site that MrBananaGrabber linked to a few days ago in the Ron Paul thread turned out to be a delightful rabbit hole of symbol analysis in pop culture. The "Inanna Montana" posts are pretty hilarious, but I was impressed with author Christopher Knowles' dissection of the symbolism in A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. I read it as simply film critique by a weird and interesting guy. Take the twin articles on Dark City and the Matrix, interpreting them as superficially identical Gnostic parables with radically different ideas about gender, for example.
Here's Knowle on the order of the two trilogies:
It was this thought exercise, though, at the end of the Return of the Jedi article, that struck me as the most creative of the flights of fancy I've read on the site so far:
All in all, the site makes for some fascinating reading, and the author handles trolling in the comments much more gracefully than many of us would. I found it too interesting not to share.
Here's Knowle on the order of the two trilogies:
Quote:
Even so, Lucas has accomplished something unique with the Star Wars films in that they truly form a cycle. The reverse chronology motif of ritual drama (meaning the drama is meant to reverse an unhappy historical event, often using reversal of time in the narrative) is used in a way to see the story as an endless loop, similar to the cycles of creation and destruction in Hindu theology. The last film in order of release ends on a down note, in which the hero of the past three films is transformed into the personification of evil. In order to experience the kind of redemption that ritual drama provides, you need to return to the first film, which is set after the last film chronologically. By watching the films in order by release, you are then returned -- by emotional necessity --back to the beginning. And by emphasizing the chapter assignation in the titles, viewers are now perpetually confused by what the ‘first film’ actually is.
It was this thought exercise, though, at the end of the Return of the Jedi article, that struck me as the most creative of the flights of fancy I've read on the site so far:
Quote:
So how would an Ewok describe Return of the Jedi? He'd say it's about giant aliens who came down from the sky with amazing powers and terrible magic. In the midst of this the Golden God fulfilled the prophecies and walked among the people and taught them the secrets of the gods and about the war in Heaven. The other gods then asked the Ewoks to join them in battle against the demons with their terrible beasts.
The gods defeated their enemies and left Endor, promising one day to return. The shamans and chiefs were entrusted to teach subsequent generations the stories of the gods that the Golden God taught them. Which is essentially the same story told in this book (Zechariah Sitchin's "The Wars of Gods and Men")
The gods defeated their enemies and left Endor, promising one day to return. The shamans and chiefs were entrusted to teach subsequent generations the stories of the gods that the Golden God taught them. Which is essentially the same story told in this book (Zechariah Sitchin's "The Wars of Gods and Men")
All in all, the site makes for some fascinating reading, and the author handles trolling in the comments much more gracefully than many of us would. I found it too interesting not to share.
