response part nine (the end! really!)
Feb. 8th, 2012 09:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineListening back, this is probably the weakest part - partly because I was fairly frustrated, and partly because I was really unclear and had to add in a ton of editorial remarks just to clarify what I meant. But here is the last part.
But there are plenty of strong characters, male and female, who don’t win in the end. The fact that the character fails to achieve her intended goal doesn’t mean she wasn’t strong to try.
I don't know what her intended goal was. I don't think her goal was to stop him from doing things like this again [eta: her primary goal, anyway - I think we can safely assume she didn't want him to], because nothing about what she says or how she behaves implies that this is her goal. I don't think it was her goal to save him, the way Luke's was [eta: that is, I think she was trying to get him to stop what he's doing at the moment and just ... come home, which could be considered a form of saving, but not much like Luke's - if Anakin had been penitent, as he was in AOTC, I don't think her reaction would have been much different than it was then; Luke, otoh, doesn't seem so much concerned with what Vader's doing at the moment, with any particular wrongdoings, as with an all-encompassing redemption].
I [sigh] again, I do not see how you can argue that she is doing the same thing they are, she just - by coincidence! - fails, even though she's doing it for the same reasons, in the same way or something [eta: that is what people say about it, not my opinion]. She's not trying to do what they're trying to do. She's not doing it in the same way. She's not doing it for the same reasons.
There are similarities, but there are so many differences that you just can't say that her situation is just like their situation. And it's not just bad luck that she fails [eta: generally, not specifically with Anakin]. It's not bad luck. The PT is a tragedy. It's supposed to be. But it's not a tragedy because of sheer misfortune. It's a tragedy because all of the characters' faults sort of meet up and cause it, all these things happen, they've all got these really big Achilles' heels and where Padmé's failings meet Anakin's failings meet Obi-Wan's failings meet everyone's failings and it all feeds into this downward...thing.
So yeah, I don't think it's just coincidental that she failed [eta: again, as a person]. I think she failed where her children don't because of the ways in which they're different from her. In much the same way that they don't make - they don't fail in the way that Anakin did, because of the ways they're different from him. It's not just luck. It's just the characters, the people that they are.
And I guess it is, I don't know what she was trying to do, really, in an overarching sense. I mean, she has specific goals in each of the movies - well, at least the first two movies. In ROTS, I don't know what her goals were. But certainly in the first two she has some fairly specific goals. At first she succeeds, and in the second one, she doesn't get killed ... I mean, she sort of fails [eta: at stopping the military act], but it's not really her fault. She has some fairly immediate political goals that fail, but I don't think she can be blamed for it, really.
And in the third she doesn't really have any goals at all, except I guess trying to save Anakin [eta: in the aforementioned 'stop him from doing this particular thing at this particular moment' sense] and failed, but I don't think she's weak because she tries to save Anakin and argue him out of being evil, but that - the way she went about it was ... unwise. It's not that she - it's not that she went after him and he was unconvinced, she went after him and he choked her nearly to death and she gives birth to his children, their children, and out of nowhere no longer has the will to live. That's where the focus of the fanrage is, it's on the "lost the will to live" thing, not "she tried to save him but failed."
Though I - again, she didn't fail just because - I think that Padmé's failure [eta: generally, as a person] comes from her character. And I think that in a lot of ways what Leia does is, she faces a situation that parallels in some ways, where she's a politician who evades things by becoming her position, and then she falls in love and has to find a way, and - and Leia manages to find a way to remain herself and not be absorbed into who she's with [eta: or her career; she doesn't define herself by anything but herself] and to find a way that works for her while still being able to love freely.
She kind of manages to do what Padmé doesn't, in much the same way that Luke manages to find a path between what the Jedi tell him, you must do this, follow the, toe the line, even if that line is "kill your own father," while Vader's like, screw them, screw the rules, do the - Dark Side, hell yeah! - do whatever the hell you want ... as long as it's what I want too. But you don't need to obey any higher law, any law at all. You answer only to yourself [eta: that is, the Jedi are all about subordinating all personal feeling to their dogmatic ethics, and Vader is about discarding principles altogether for personal feeling, and Luke has to walk the tightrope of being ethical and humane]. And he has to find a way that works. They both manage to do what their parents didn't. But it's not just - I keep saying this, but it's not luck, it's who they are.
George Lucas created remarkable parallels between the two trilogies, and not only between Anakin and Luke,
and Leia! Uh, that's my interpolation.
but also Padmé and both her children.
Yeah - I wrote about this. I think Leia has more in common with Padmé than Luke does, Luke has some things in common with her too, that Leia doesn't, Luke and Leia have quite a bit in common with each other, and they both have a lot in common with Anakin. But yeah, there are certainly parallels between Padmé and both of them.
Mapped back against their parents, Luke’s and Leia’s greatest strengths – compassion and political prowess – come from their mother.
What? Uh, I don't think you can really argue that Anakin was not innately compassionate. We saw him in TPM, he was very compassionate. So I don't understand this argument, I guess. And Luke has what political prowess? He's not a political - he doesn't even have a political role! I mean, he's kind of above politics by the end, he pretty much does whatever and people just roll with it. He has a position as commander, but it's fairly brief and he leaves it. I guess I don't understand what that even means.
Leia is political, but she ends up leaving it too. And it doesn't seem to really fit her that well once the Rebellion becomes anything more than her ragtag group of rebels. I guess that - I don't really see this. Their compassion could just as easily have come from their father, or from the people that raised them, and Luke doesn't have any particular political prowess that we see, and Leia has some, but frankly the way she goes about things seems much more Darth Vader-like. Just ... less homicidal.
Yeah, I don't see that, particularly. I mean, I get - you could defend the argument that Leia's political...ness comes from Padme. I personally disagree, but you could argue that. But I don't see how either the compassion thing, or Luke being political thing, works.
Or to look at it another way: did Padmé truly fail to save Anakin?
It wasn't her job to save Anakin. It wasn't - [sigh] - Anakin's fall is not Padmé's fault. Padmé trying to bring him back to some semblance of sanity is - I think it's something she felt she had to do, but that's not a wrong thing. The reason she failed at that doesn't have that much to do with her [eta: that is, Anakin not listening is mostly on Anakin, however inept I consider her approach], though I think the way she went about it was totally foolish [that is where the significant differences between her and Luke lie]. His choices are his choices. She is not responsible. And - my issues with her [whimper/laugh] have nothing to do with Anakin.
Or did she just work the long way around it, come at it from a different angle, much like my struggles with that tack trunk?
What? She died!
How much courage must it have taken to not tell Obi-Wan, the one man strong enough to fight Anakin, where Anakin was?
Well...she didn't want him to die, so...I don't think it even entered her head that Anakin might harm her in any way, because normally Anakin wouldn't do something like so I'm not sure how much courage - yeah, she probably thought Obi-Wan would attack Anakin, and she didn't want him to! So I...don't...understand this. Anyway.
How much bravery does it take a defenseless person to beseech a Sith to come back to the light?
...wha...but I don't think she thought of him as a Sith. I mean, she ... he was her husband, she loved him. She thought he was the person that he'd been the last time she saw him. Why on earth would - I don't think she was afraid of him. Look at how she behaves. She goes there and as soon as she sees him - she knows he's just killed a whole ton of people - but the first thing she does, she runs right up to him. She's not afraid. So I guess I don't see how much courage it would take to face someone that she's not remotely afraid of. Even if she should have been - I mean, should have been in that it would probably have been wiser.
Isn’t that exactly what makes Luke the redemptive hero of the Skywalker saga?
No? Luke is in a different position because he has no reason to think that it won't be extremely dangerous. Padme does not think she's going to be in any danger from Anakin, because she loves him [eta: not that Luke doesn't love him, but I think we can agree he has a clearer idea of what's going on with him]. Luke absolutely knows that he's in danger from his father but thinks he can save him. It's just ... no, it's not the same. Yes, there are similarities, but the situations are not perfectly matched-up. [sigh]
Now that I’ve made you consider those things, I hope you’ll check back in a couple days for a more comprehensive look at the life of Padmé Amidala, Queen of Naboo, Republic Senator, wife to Anakin Skywalker, and the woman who believed he’d ultimately make the right choice.
I'm not - I'm a little confused. I guess you could argue that she believed he'd ultimately make the right choice, but what I heard was that she thought that there was still good in him but did not know what would come of it. I think she was hoping, maybe, that something would manage to evoke that good that she believed was left in him. I'm not sure you can fairly say that she absolutely knew that - I mean, maybe, I don't know.
But yeah, so that's this essay. Which I've now talked about for, like, two hours. [laugh] Um, yeah. When I write I am apparently more concise than when I talk! Yeah, that's - this essay was really all over the place for me, and made a lot of the arguments that seem - irrelevant to how I see things, to my objections, to vaguely allude to them and then not really deal with them. To not deal with the things I actually do have problems about, and then dwell a lot on the things I I don't have problems with. And then to make equivalences between Padmé and various other characters that don't actually seem equivalent.
But there are plenty of strong characters, male and female, who don’t win in the end. The fact that the character fails to achieve her intended goal doesn’t mean she wasn’t strong to try.
I don't know what her intended goal was. I don't think her goal was to stop him from doing things like this again [eta: her primary goal, anyway - I think we can safely assume she didn't want him to], because nothing about what she says or how she behaves implies that this is her goal. I don't think it was her goal to save him, the way Luke's was [eta: that is, I think she was trying to get him to stop what he's doing at the moment and just ... come home, which could be considered a form of saving, but not much like Luke's - if Anakin had been penitent, as he was in AOTC, I don't think her reaction would have been much different than it was then; Luke, otoh, doesn't seem so much concerned with what Vader's doing at the moment, with any particular wrongdoings, as with an all-encompassing redemption].
I [sigh] again, I do not see how you can argue that she is doing the same thing they are, she just - by coincidence! - fails, even though she's doing it for the same reasons, in the same way or something [eta: that is what people say about it, not my opinion]. She's not trying to do what they're trying to do. She's not doing it in the same way. She's not doing it for the same reasons.
There are similarities, but there are so many differences that you just can't say that her situation is just like their situation. And it's not just bad luck that she fails [eta: generally, not specifically with Anakin]. It's not bad luck. The PT is a tragedy. It's supposed to be. But it's not a tragedy because of sheer misfortune. It's a tragedy because all of the characters' faults sort of meet up and cause it, all these things happen, they've all got these really big Achilles' heels and where Padmé's failings meet Anakin's failings meet Obi-Wan's failings meet everyone's failings and it all feeds into this downward...thing.
So yeah, I don't think it's just coincidental that she failed [eta: again, as a person]. I think she failed where her children don't because of the ways in which they're different from her. In much the same way that they don't make - they don't fail in the way that Anakin did, because of the ways they're different from him. It's not just luck. It's just the characters, the people that they are.
And I guess it is, I don't know what she was trying to do, really, in an overarching sense. I mean, she has specific goals in each of the movies - well, at least the first two movies. In ROTS, I don't know what her goals were. But certainly in the first two she has some fairly specific goals. At first she succeeds, and in the second one, she doesn't get killed ... I mean, she sort of fails [eta: at stopping the military act], but it's not really her fault. She has some fairly immediate political goals that fail, but I don't think she can be blamed for it, really.
And in the third she doesn't really have any goals at all, except I guess trying to save Anakin [eta: in the aforementioned 'stop him from doing this particular thing at this particular moment' sense] and failed, but I don't think she's weak because she tries to save Anakin and argue him out of being evil, but that - the way she went about it was ... unwise. It's not that she - it's not that she went after him and he was unconvinced, she went after him and he choked her nearly to death and she gives birth to his children, their children, and out of nowhere no longer has the will to live. That's where the focus of the fanrage is, it's on the "lost the will to live" thing, not "she tried to save him but failed."
Though I - again, she didn't fail just because - I think that Padmé's failure [eta: generally, as a person] comes from her character. And I think that in a lot of ways what Leia does is, she faces a situation that parallels in some ways, where she's a politician who evades things by becoming her position, and then she falls in love and has to find a way, and - and Leia manages to find a way to remain herself and not be absorbed into who she's with [eta: or her career; she doesn't define herself by anything but herself] and to find a way that works for her while still being able to love freely.
She kind of manages to do what Padmé doesn't, in much the same way that Luke manages to find a path between what the Jedi tell him, you must do this, follow the, toe the line, even if that line is "kill your own father," while Vader's like, screw them, screw the rules, do the - Dark Side, hell yeah! - do whatever the hell you want ... as long as it's what I want too. But you don't need to obey any higher law, any law at all. You answer only to yourself [eta: that is, the Jedi are all about subordinating all personal feeling to their dogmatic ethics, and Vader is about discarding principles altogether for personal feeling, and Luke has to walk the tightrope of being ethical and humane]. And he has to find a way that works. They both manage to do what their parents didn't. But it's not just - I keep saying this, but it's not luck, it's who they are.
George Lucas created remarkable parallels between the two trilogies, and not only between Anakin and Luke,
and Leia! Uh, that's my interpolation.
but also Padmé and both her children.
Yeah - I wrote about this. I think Leia has more in common with Padmé than Luke does, Luke has some things in common with her too, that Leia doesn't, Luke and Leia have quite a bit in common with each other, and they both have a lot in common with Anakin. But yeah, there are certainly parallels between Padmé and both of them.
Mapped back against their parents, Luke’s and Leia’s greatest strengths – compassion and political prowess – come from their mother.
What? Uh, I don't think you can really argue that Anakin was not innately compassionate. We saw him in TPM, he was very compassionate. So I don't understand this argument, I guess. And Luke has what political prowess? He's not a political - he doesn't even have a political role! I mean, he's kind of above politics by the end, he pretty much does whatever and people just roll with it. He has a position as commander, but it's fairly brief and he leaves it. I guess I don't understand what that even means.
Leia is political, but she ends up leaving it too. And it doesn't seem to really fit her that well once the Rebellion becomes anything more than her ragtag group of rebels. I guess that - I don't really see this. Their compassion could just as easily have come from their father, or from the people that raised them, and Luke doesn't have any particular political prowess that we see, and Leia has some, but frankly the way she goes about things seems much more Darth Vader-like. Just ... less homicidal.
Yeah, I don't see that, particularly. I mean, I get - you could defend the argument that Leia's political...ness comes from Padme. I personally disagree, but you could argue that. But I don't see how either the compassion thing, or Luke being political thing, works.
Or to look at it another way: did Padmé truly fail to save Anakin?
It wasn't her job to save Anakin. It wasn't - [sigh] - Anakin's fall is not Padmé's fault. Padmé trying to bring him back to some semblance of sanity is - I think it's something she felt she had to do, but that's not a wrong thing. The reason she failed at that doesn't have that much to do with her [eta: that is, Anakin not listening is mostly on Anakin, however inept I consider her approach], though I think the way she went about it was totally foolish [that is where the significant differences between her and Luke lie]. His choices are his choices. She is not responsible. And - my issues with her [whimper/laugh] have nothing to do with Anakin.
Or did she just work the long way around it, come at it from a different angle, much like my struggles with that tack trunk?
What? She died!
How much courage must it have taken to not tell Obi-Wan, the one man strong enough to fight Anakin, where Anakin was?
Well...she didn't want him to die, so...I don't think it even entered her head that Anakin might harm her in any way, because normally Anakin wouldn't do something like so I'm not sure how much courage - yeah, she probably thought Obi-Wan would attack Anakin, and she didn't want him to! So I...don't...understand this. Anyway.
How much bravery does it take a defenseless person to beseech a Sith to come back to the light?
...wha...but I don't think she thought of him as a Sith. I mean, she ... he was her husband, she loved him. She thought he was the person that he'd been the last time she saw him. Why on earth would - I don't think she was afraid of him. Look at how she behaves. She goes there and as soon as she sees him - she knows he's just killed a whole ton of people - but the first thing she does, she runs right up to him. She's not afraid. So I guess I don't see how much courage it would take to face someone that she's not remotely afraid of. Even if she should have been - I mean, should have been in that it would probably have been wiser.
Isn’t that exactly what makes Luke the redemptive hero of the Skywalker saga?
No? Luke is in a different position because he has no reason to think that it won't be extremely dangerous. Padme does not think she's going to be in any danger from Anakin, because she loves him [eta: not that Luke doesn't love him, but I think we can agree he has a clearer idea of what's going on with him]. Luke absolutely knows that he's in danger from his father but thinks he can save him. It's just ... no, it's not the same. Yes, there are similarities, but the situations are not perfectly matched-up. [sigh]
Now that I’ve made you consider those things, I hope you’ll check back in a couple days for a more comprehensive look at the life of Padmé Amidala, Queen of Naboo, Republic Senator, wife to Anakin Skywalker, and the woman who believed he’d ultimately make the right choice.
I'm not - I'm a little confused. I guess you could argue that she believed he'd ultimately make the right choice, but what I heard was that she thought that there was still good in him but did not know what would come of it. I think she was hoping, maybe, that something would manage to evoke that good that she believed was left in him. I'm not sure you can fairly say that she absolutely knew that - I mean, maybe, I don't know.
But yeah, so that's this essay. Which I've now talked about for, like, two hours. [laugh] Um, yeah. When I write I am apparently more concise than when I talk! Yeah, that's - this essay was really all over the place for me, and made a lot of the arguments that seem - irrelevant to how I see things, to my objections, to vaguely allude to them and then not really deal with them. To not deal with the things I actually do have problems about, and then dwell a lot on the things I I don't have problems with. And then to make equivalences between Padmé and various other characters that don't actually seem equivalent.