Look, I’m a capitalist. You’ve heard me say this before: I have no
problem with corporations turning a fair profit or getting the return on
their investment and innovation. But this isn’t remotely what’s
happening. Oil companies’ record profits today are not because they’re
doing something new or innovative. Their profits are a windfall of war -
the windfall from the brutal conflict that’s ravaging Ukraine and
hurting tens of millions of people around the globe. You know, at a time
of war, any company receiving historic windfall profits like this has a
responsibility to act beyond their narrow self-interest of its
executives and shareholders. I think they have a responsibility to act in
the interest of their consumers, their community, and their country; to
invest in America by increasing production and refining capacity.
Because they - they don’t want to do that. They - they have the
opportunity to do that - lowering prices for consumers at the pump. You
know, if they don’t, they’re going to pay a higher tax on their excess
profits and face other restrictions. My team will work with Congress to
look at these op- - these options that are available to us and others.
It’s time for these companies to stop war profiteering, meet their
responsibilities to this country, and give the American people a break
and still do very well.
President Biden delivered these fiery remarks one week before the midterm elections. “Shell announced that it made $9.5 billion in profits for the third quarter... Exxon's profits for the third quarter were at $18.7 billion... In the last six months, six of the largest oil companies have made more than $100 billion.” Biden repeated each figure twice for emphasis, projecting his abject disbelief.
While I was pleasantly surprised to hear the President of the United States uttering the words “war profiteering,” I couldn’t help but think of the boy who cried wolf parable. Which government has this man been serving in for the last 50 years?
After more than two decades of war profiteering inextricably linked to oil and gas extraction and delivery, the President’s cry treats transnational energy giants as if they are simple end product resellers whose worst crime is price gouging their consumers.
And the solution he is proposing sadly seems to toe the oil industry line, strategically deflecting Republican “critique” of his administration’s policies onto the industry itself – refine more oil, produce more gas! But this is circular nonsense. In the midst of an ongoing decades long geo-political pissing match over who will provide “essential” energy resources (whose currency and economy will profit), the obvious answer is, the only real answer is, get off the pipe... um... oil.
Here is what’s missing: there is no actual shortage of oil and gas driving up prices.
The apparent scarcity is a supply and demand sleight of hand manipulation on the part of the oil and gas industry to validate their inflated prices. They’re not even being covert about this. They just keep hammering their absurdist narrative that prices are up because they can’t drill for oil everywhere and anywhere they want (with absolute impunity and government subsidy). And the Republicans are all too happy to parrot this false narrative – drill baby drill.
As the neoliberals (and the neocons) like to say, how did our oil get under their soil? Let’s be clear, no one is war profiteering from energy sources that cannot be horded and controlled. No one is bombing anyone, or seizing their land, overthrowing their democratically elected government, etc. to capture their abundant sunshine and wind. Dare I say it? This all goes away with a shift to renewables. Yet another reason to leave it in the soil. As if a mass extinction event wasn’t enough.
I am always impressed by the neoliberal mastery of the qualifying
statement. “It’s time for these companies to stop war profiteering...”
Only these companies?
The bulk of the benefits from U.S. arms sales go to just four companies —
Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and General Dynamics. Of the $101
billion in major arms offers since the Biden administration took office,
$59.1 billion — over 58 percent — involved weapons systems produced by
one of these four companies.”
So am I supposed to be excited that the president is threatening Big Oil with a windfall tax, that will in all likelihood never come to pass? Will the righteousness of reclaiming this blood money inspire me into the voting booth? Well, no, but I don’t need inspiration from my pal Biden* to get my ass into the voting booth. Democrats are pretty relentless when it comes to pointing out that our rights, our very democracy, is on the line – every DCCC & DNC fund raising missive tells me as much. That said, I would encourage everyone who can vote, to go vote, because the margins matter.
Watching Lula win the Brazilian election by just under 2% reminded me how important it is to keep moving forward, even when the prevailing narratives tell you otherwise. There is no doubt in my mind that rampant voter suppression by the outgoing Brazilian cabal was meant to close the margin enough to call the election into question, even if they could not win outright. We have seen this tactic employed in election after election here in the United States. Lest we forget the 2000 election debacle that proved the strategy’s viability.
In the US, voter turnout is rarely upwards of 60% (and far lower in the midterms) and this number is split by a two party system, essentially 30/30. That leaves 40% who are NOT voting, an invisible “majority...”
The 50/50 polarization narrative is a convenient crutch for tyrants who want to question the will of the people, and it must be understood as such. Put plainly, voter suppression is not something the majority needs to engage in to win in a democracy. The 50/50 narrative is also very useful in keeping any potential challengers, so called “spoilers,” out of the political debate.
Perhaps we could take a lesson from Brazil: make voting mandatory, make election day a national holiday, or simply try a runoff voting system so that we can build a bit more democracy, rather than ceaselessly struggling to protect the little we are allowed to have.
Allowing ourselves to be distracted by the constant barrage of conflict narratives, arguing over which horse will win the race, has us going in circles back to the same starting line again and again. Politicians can pay lip service to our hopes and fears without ever addressing what it is we might actually want. Consoling and comforting us in our misery (or stoking the fires of blame and hatred) isn’t much of a campaign promise, but it’s all they got. Winning the argument gets you nowhere if you have nowhere to go.
In the most recent Star Wars iteration, there is a surprisingly compelling depiction of the Empire imprisoning its citizens in a labor camp to build what appear to be
weapons. It occurs to me that the depiction could be intended as allegory for Amazon or Foxconn. I couldn’t help but wonder if watching the show would make viewers more comfortable with such things,
rather than forcing them to confront the absolute horror of slave labor. So, yes, let’s move boldly into our shared future, with an awareness that allowing the media and the political pundits to define our demons for
us, to cry wolf as it were, could get us eaten in the end.
___
*Your pal Biden is how my father (my “Political advisor”) would laughingly refer to then Senator Biden. The moniker comes from a discussion we had regarding the so called Rave Act back when Biden was sponsoring that oppressive puritanical nonsense. Today is my dad’s 85th birthday, this piece is dedicated to him. I could hear him laughing as I wrote it.
The film is called Star Wars (The Last Jedi), it’s not going to be about peace. But I’m a sucker for allegorical sci-fi, so I just gotta go there. If you haven’t seen the film, and you don’t want ***SPOILERS*** – get off this ride now.
There are certainly some interesting ideas in this film and, as others have written, it does tend to defy expectations with its many twists and turns.
For example, women in a galaxy far far away are really good at helping men reconsider
their conditioned heroic tendencies. Reconsider that their rush to sacrifice others, and
even themselves, in the face of impending doom, might be a bit
overzealous, or even outright unnecessary. Sadly, the story seems to continue down the same inevitable path even after the women school the men. More war, more fighting, more heroic self-sacrifice, albeit in a more gender inclusive way.
At one particularly poignant moment, Yoda tells Luke “The greatest teacher, failure is.” But our boy Luke just can’t seem to let it go. At the climax of the film, Luke delivers the rather obvious applause line, “The Rebellion is reborn today. The war is just beginning. And I will not be the last Jedi.” Eight films in, and the war is just beginning – good grief. Way to learn from failure Luke. Maybe things will change now that he’s moved on.
But what is most interesting to me is the way this film addresses war profiteering. Yes – that happened. A major part of the film revolves around the idea that 1% is making all their money off the wars in Star Wars, selling weapons to both
sides of the conflict. A life of luxury underwritten in blood.
The film does a good job subverting the myth that weapons manufacturers are loyal to a particular faction, country, side, etc. As Benicio Del Toro’s DJ clarifies
“They blow you up today, you can blow them up tomorrow. It’s just business.”
Perhaps this allegory is sufficient in a galaxy where power seems to have little interest in profit. Evil for the sake of evil, the dark side, the last Jedi must die, and all that other First Order inevitability. In our galaxy, however, war profiteer CEO’s busily escalate conflict from positions they have been appointed to, and elected to, within our own government. In our galaxy, maximizing profit and consolidating power go hand in hand. War profiteers and the powerful are not two separate entities, but one and the same.
The wars they engineer divert resources and attention, simultaneously destruction
and distraction. It reminds me of something I once read about the
firebombing of Dresden; the people didn’t burn to death, they died from
asphyxiation when the fire consumed all of the oxygen.
So no, I don’t expect Star Wars to be about peace, but a film can be about war while also questioning our preconceptions about war.
Lucas gave it a shot in the prequels, showing us that the Wars began as a distraction, a conflict methodically engineered to
consolidate power in the hands of the Emperor (Senator Palpatine/Darth
Sidious). The clone army of the Republic (the “Good Guys”) ultimately becoming the (Evil) Galactic Empire’s stormtroopers... Maybe this has something to do with why the prequels were so negatively received: it’s just not as pleasurable to cheer for your hero if you aren’t entirely sure which side you’re on.
J.J. Abrams did a bang up job infantilizing the motivation for war in Force Awakens. We all laughed as Kylo Ren threw yet another temper tantrum, and General Hux screamed ever louder in some pathetic attempt to be taken seriously. Last Jedi takes this almost satirical absurdity even further, revealing the coldly calculating war profiteers selling guns to these squabbling brats.
So when the rebellion realizes that they are in a war with a bunch of insecure adolescents, what will they do? Will the adults figure out a way to take the guns away from the children? That would make sense right? I mean unless, children killing people with guns is somehow advantageous to your bottom line.
___
I’ve made references in other posts about Hollywood movies, and entertainment in general, but I haven’t written a post about a specific film. I recently went to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens at the beautiful Ziegfeld theater. With the language of conflict narrative fresh in my mind I couldn’t help but notice how this film handles its narrative differently than previous Star Wars films. With the new film quite possibly on its way to becoming the top grossing film of all time, I thought it might be interesting to share some of my insights growing up with the films, and my thoughts about how this new J.J. Abrams iteration compares with those of Star Wars creator George Lucas.
IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS STOP READING NOW.
A couple things up front. I’m not a Star Wars fanboy (isn’t that right Boba Fett 12" figure standing on my desk?), but I have always been into science fiction (which some claim that Star Wars is not), particularly allegorical sci-fi. I’ve only viewed Force Awakens once. I considered seeing it a second time as research for this post, but I wanted to
keep this to my first impressions. That said I did subsequently watch
the prequel trilogy again despite its seeming lack of consequence to the
recent J.J. Abrams reboot. I was moved to do so because it seems that much of what is so satisfying
to the fan base is that there are practically no references to the prequels in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. You don’t have to be a hardcore Star Wars fan to know that the prequel
films were an enormous disappointment to much of the original trilogy’s
fan base.
Not familiar with the chronology of the seven films (go ahead and skip this whole paragraph if you are)? Star Wars, released in 1977, is now referred to as Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. The following two films The Empire Strikes Back (Episode V) and Return of the Jedi (Episode VI) complete what is commonly referred to as “the original trilogy.” Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace is released sixteen years after the original trilogy in 1999, followed by Episode II – Attack of the Clones andEpisode III – Revenge of the Sith. These three films chronicling the origin of Darth Vader and the events leading to the rise of the Galactic Empire are commonly referred to as “the prequels.” The new film Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the seventh in the series and takes place approximately 30 years after the events in Return of the Jedi.
Ok – so let’s get started, as all Star Wars films do, with the opening crawl:
Episode VII: The Force Awakens
Luke Skywalker has vanished. In his absence, the sinister FIRST ORDER has risen from the ashes of the Empire and will not rest until Skywalker, the last Jedi, has been destroyed.
With the support of the REPUBLIC, General Leia Organa leads a brave RESISTANCE. She is desperate to find her brother Luke and gain his help in restoring peace and justice to the galaxy.
Leia has sent her most daring pilot on a secret mission to Jakku, where an old ally has discovered a clue to Luke's whereabouts....
The first thing I notice here is that the Galactic Empire and the Rebellion of the original trilogy have been replaced by the First Order and the Resistance respectively.
As a child watching Star Wars for the first time, I don’t think I was particular familiar with the term empire, but I had heard of rebellion in the context of the Revolutionary War in grade school social studies class. Seeing this group of Rebels rise up against an oppressive Empire was a pretty formative moment for me. While I wasn’t quite sure how the fighting had begun, it was pretty evident that the Empire were some bad guys. They had built a weapon that was capable of destroying whole planets, and they used it to destroy Princess Leia’s home world just to demonstrate its power. Now these Rebels on the other hand, they appeared to be quite the ragtag bunch, barely able to keep it together. Watching their tiny Rebel ship completely outclassed by the enormous Star Destroyer in the opening sequence, stormtroopers utterly overwhelming the Rebel soldiers as they board the ship, Darth Vader strangling the Rebel commander with his iron grip – clearly some desperate times. The opening crawl told me there was a civil war, but I didn’t really know what that meant. I knew that there had been a civil war in the United States, between the North and the South, but it didn’t occur to me that this implied the Empire and the Rebels had once been united in some fashion. And I certainly couldn’t conceive of the stormtroopers evolving from the existing army of that united body. More on that later.
Years later I would hear the term “empire” used in all kinds of contexts from historical colonization, to Reagan’s cold war, to recent wars for oil. And while I may have come to understand that there was more to empire than “evil,” the underlying meaning was there. And of course the antidote to empire? Well that would be rebellion – pretty radical politics for a Saturday matinee serial writ large.
So what do we get from the Force Awakens crawl? The First Order is sinister, instead of Evil (with a capital E). Well maybe that’s not such a bad thing. It’s more of a shade of gray, yes? And maybe that provides us with a more workable starting point if a galaxy far far away is going to work its shit out ultimately – balance the Force and all that good stuff.
But what is this First Order’s objective? Well they want to find that last Jedi and destroy him! Darth Vader was hot to get Luke on board with the Dark Side so they could rule the Empire together. This First Order doesn’t seem to have any subjects at all, only troops. I couldn’t help but wonder after watching General Hux’s rousing speech to his troops, does an army made up entirely of captured children “raised to do one thing” (– Finn) really need a pep rally to get them to raise their fists (raised fists – really? Power to the people.)? Perhaps they just needed a little extra encouragement. When the time comes to test the new mega Death Star, the Order obliterates five planets all at once. I get that they are incapacitating their enemy in a single stroke, but without the prequel provided context of a Republic consisting of thousands of worlds, doesn’t this sequence play out as a mass execution of all the people they could potentially rule? So if not Imperial rule, what exactly is their motivation? We’re not given much to go on beyond some
dialogue establishing General Hux and Kylo Ren’s obsession with order
and power. Or maybe it’s all just about grandaddy’s melted helmet.
And what of the Resistance? Depicted as the bastard child of the Republic, they are a sort of independent special ops counter to the threat of the First Order. But if the Republic is still the ruling body of the galaxy, then isn’t the First Order also a resistance? Or perhaps this word is reserved only for the good guys? Empire and Rebellion meant something to me as a child watching Star Wars and they were concepts that I could reference later in life, I wonder how the less explicit First Order and Resistance will resonate with a new generation of Star Wars fans. It took three films to destroy democracy (the prequels), and three more to restore freedom (the original trilogy). I’m not sure when they lost it, but I look forward to finding out how they go about “restoring peace and justice to the galaxy.”
I can still clearly recall hearing the theater audience cheer when
the 2nd Death Star was destroyed at the end of Return of the Jedi. I remember being deeply disturbed by this – hundreds of thousands (over
half a million crew on the Death Star itself) killed in a war that was
set up as the inevitable clash between the light and dark sides of the
Force. What is the take away here as we wander back into the same
conflict for a new generation?
The second thing that stood out to me: a stormtrooper with a conscience?
Kylo Ren gives an order to slaughter a group of villagers and a single stormtrooper, FN-2187, disobeys this order. The character appears to be in shock, his helmet marked with the crimson hand print of a fallen comrade. When the order is given he stands perfectly still while other troopers massacre the remaining villagers. We don’t know what is going through his head, is he consciously disobeying the order or is he simply not able to comply? It’s an important moment because in six films we have never seen a stormtrooper (or clone trooper) disobey orders. What is it that keeps him from killing the villagers? Revulsion? Compassion?
Later in the story this same character, now called Finn, tries to convince new found friend Rey to forsake the coming battle and head for the outer rim of the galaxy. Maz Kanata, this iteration’s new wise sage character (a reboot Yoda if you will) tells Finn “I am looking at the eyes of a man who wants to run.” Is this solely about self preservation? How does this square with the earlier scene where Finn disobeys orders? Is he risking his own safety in that scene? Is he being portrayed as a coward? Afraid to kill the villagers, but also too afraid to fight back? And how about now – perhaps Finn is just lacking faith that the Resistance can actually defeat the First Order? Or perhaps he is just
trying to keep Rey safe? “You don't know a thing about me, what I’ve seen… we all need to run.” I am intrigued, not because Finn seems to be taking some sort of principled stand against the war, but because he is questioning it at all. Everyone else on the scene seems willing, ready and able to do what must be done.
The third thing I notice watching Force Awakens is possibly the most challenging to address: the narrative surrounding Rey.
Long before the movie was released Star Wars fans were well aware of the new female lead character Rey. Watching the trailers it became fairly obvious that she was essentially the new Luke, which of course implied that she would also become a Jedi. George Lucas has said on many occasions that the Star Wars saga (the six films together) is the story of Anakin Skywalker’s descent into the dark side and his redemption through his son Luke, but for those of us who grew up watching the original trilogy, the central character is of course Luke Skywalker.
Rey is presented to us as a prodigy, exceptionally good at everything that she does, often to her own surprise (she even speaks Wookiee). This is similar to the way Luke or Anakin are depicted in the previous films, but there is an essential difference in these narratives. Both Luke and Anakin are introduced to the Force through a master, whereas Rey begins using the Force with apparently no training at all. Of course there is nothing inherently wrong with having a character discover her power on her own, and it does help the writers avoid a potential patriarchal pitfall having her learn from a male master; it does, however, create some narrative questions for me that I think may prove problematic. Is Rey infallible? Does she, can she, make mistakes/bad decisions?
Again I come back to the moment in Maz Kanata’s castle/cantina when Rey effectively joins the Resistance. What is her motivation here? What is the context of her decision? In the previous films it is the dialogue between master and apprentice/padawan that has provided us with this context. But with that missing here it appears that Rey is essentially going along with the decision that Han Solo has already made for himself. Perhaps this is to show us the implicit trust that she has for Han, but it provides us little insight into Rey’s character when she is making perhaps her most important decision in the film. This may not be an issue for original trilogy fans (who have been there with Han through thick and thin, carbonite and all), but how does this play to a new generation who will be inspired by Rey? Does it allow them to understand why Rey is willing to go to war? Practically two weeks to the day before the premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens United States Department of Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter announced the decision to open all combat jobs in the United States military to women.
Star Wars is quite literally filled with characters that go to war at the drop of a hat (it is, after all, called Star WARS), so why does this bother me? Well I think it is primarily because George Lucas has intentionally built a great deal of complexity into his grand myth. He has claimed repeatedly that he made Star Wars primarily with children in mind, going as far as to categorize it as a kind of mythmaking experiment to see how it might affect a generation of youth. With that in mind I have to wonder what, if any, mythmaking J.J. Abrams is engaged in with Force Awakens.
Star Wars warns again and again of the potential downside when good people are stirred to action through emotional response. This is of course central to our understanding of The Force as presented in Lucas’ films. Yoda’s explains to Luke:
Yes, a Jedi’s strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan’s apprentice.
Yoda famously clarifies this in The Phantom Menace:
Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
But then maybe I am reading too much into this. Perhaps this isn’t lazy writing, basing the motivations of new characters almost
entirely on the motivations of past characters. Perhaps it is the Force itself that is guiding Rey in her actions.
This brings me to my fourth point: is Star Wars at its essence about one really dysfunctional “royal” family whose problems cost the lives of millions throughout the galaxy?
Wasn’t there something along the way about seeking balance in the force? Why is everyone so hell bent on killing one another? Watching the original trilogy as a childthe war seemed unavoidable. Dropped into the middle of it, it felt as reasonable, and vindicating, as a kid fighting back against a schoolyard bully – the quintessential David and Goliath story. But rewatching the prequels recently it became more apparent to me that the wars began as a distraction, a conflict methodically engineered to consolidate power in the hands of the Emperor (Senator Palpatine/Darth Sidious).
The clone army of the Republic, activated through emergency powers granted to the Supreme Chancellor (Palpatine at the time) to battle the secessionists (whose leadership was actually a cabal of corporatists, bankers and weapons manufacturers in cahoots with Palpatine), would become the Galactic Empire’s stormtroopers. As a child I was completely unaware that the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars was effectively fighting their own army.
After watching the trailer for the J.J Abrams reboot, I commented to my partner that it looked like the
new characters in the film were essentially fanboys (and fangirl in
the case of Rey of course), in absolute awe of the heroes we have seen
in the past films. Pretty clever in terms of drawing in an
audience full of fans that have grown up watching Star Wars,
allowing them to vicariously
participate through the on screen awe/adoration of these new
characters, but how does it play to a younger audience? There is
something disturbing about a narrative honoring and celebrating the heroes of the war
while simultaneously excising the political machinations that led to
the war. What are they fighting for? Does it matter any more? ___ *Universe
