My Friend Mike

Posted by Jennine Lanouette on Thursday, January 7th, 2010

Over the holidays, a couple of my students tipped me off to the You Tube video review of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (Parts 1-7). Have you seen it? It’s very smart, very funny and . . . SICK!! But I guess that’s the point – that even an axe murdering misogynist hiding out in a basement can tell the difference between this film and a good film. Another point, I suppose, is that you might want to disguise your voice and create a fictional identity if you’re going to criticize the Big Man. Who is this Mike from Milwaukee, anyhow? Are we sure he’s not some CGI geek at ILM? He’s got some pretty intimate knowledge from behind-the-scenes at Lucasland.

Anyhow, it was fun to watch and I can’t disagree with a bit of it. I have to admit I only saw The Phantom Menace for the first time a few months ago. Like Mike, I, too, couldn’t understand what was going on most of the time, but I was trying to reserve judgment. I thought, “Maybe it’s a generational thing.”

I had decided to view the entire series in sequence, most of which I’d seen before but a couple of which I hadn’t. I found myself regarding the first three as if engaging in an anthropological study. Or reading the sacred texts of an exotic far-off religion. I can’t really relate to them but I know they have great meaning for vast numbers of people. So I respectfully decline to comment.

Then I got to Episode IV and – Phew! What a breath of fresh air! Is it only my sentimental memory of standing in line on the corner of 86th Street and Lexington Avenue in New York on the first day it opened in 1977 that makes me feel this way? Not according to my esteemed colleague “Mike” who is now here to tell me I’m not such an old fart after all. Thank you, Mike, for affirming that those of us who came of age with #4 were, indeed, fed a more substantial diet than those who have sentimental memories of the day #1 was released. I’ve got to learn to trust my instincts more. May the Force be with me.

My favorite part of Mike’s review was when he asked four “average” people to describe the characters without reference to their looks, costumes or role in the film. The difference between their answers about the Episode IV characters and the Episode I characters says it all. After all those years I’ve spent trying to explain to students why it’s important to give each of your characters their own distinct personality, all the words I’ve parsed, all the breath I’ve expended, and, now, here it is demonstrated, simply, efficiently and with an indisputable clarity in a three-minute video analysis. Wish I had that clip ten years ago when I was teaching know-it-all 19-year-olds back in New Jersey.

Next favorite part is Mike’s comparative analysis of the two films’ openings. I’ve always loved the exercise of examining purely visual openings – just staring at them, deeply contemplating them – to tease out all the information they provide that you’re not fully aware of on first viewing. He gives a nice illustration of the difference between the light, airy, poetically visual opening of #4 that works on you unconsciously and the dense, dialogue-bound, information-heavy opening of #1 that you have to think about to figure out what the hell it means.

And, of course, his constant grousing about #1’s failure to give us an emotional connection to a solid main character endears him to me even further. Such a lovable kvetch. And no fool. It’s not lost on him that if you’re going to play around with that cardinal rule of storymaking, you really want to be sure you’re doing it to serve some greater intent, as has been shown by that pantheon of Film Gods he parades across the screen (Coen Bros., Kubrick, Lynch, Scorcese, etc.).

But, I have to say, he does drone on a bit in the middle about illogical plot connections. It’s a fantasy, after all. Some stretching of plausibility is expected in a fantastical world. He gets a little picayune. But I get his point: there’s a limit to how much suspension of disbelief one can take before the neuron cables start to snap and the whole synapse network collapses into narrative confusion. And I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, given some of his other unusual tendencies, that he can’t seem to resist beating a dead horse about it.

I think, however, that the part for which I am most grateful to Mike is his comparative analysis of the fight scenes. It gets bizarre, in fact. Almost like he’s comparing the work of two different directors. He shows how over-choreographed and emotionally empty the seemingly endless sword sparring is in #1 as compared to how much more spare but emotionally meaningful each individual maneuver is in the fight scenes of #4. He further bemoans the lack of any “temptation, anger, revelation, defiance, sacrifice or redemption” in the #1 fighting. An impressive lot of big words for such a troll-under-the-bridge.

Nonetheless, his simple analysis goes to the heart of the whole violence-in-the-movies debate. It seems there are many different ways to portray violence. Some ways are emotionally numbing, others provide emotional release. Whether or not some types of violent portrayal have the power to completely desensitize the viewer to its human consequence, or, worse yet, incite copycat behavior, is a subject for further, and much more in-depth, study.

But there is no question, as this analysis demonstrates, that within this debate, it is not accurate to treat “violence in the movies” as if it is all one thing. Most of us who advocate against censorship just want to make sure that, at the least, the artistically meaningful portrayals are not lost in a puritanical effort to sanitize the world of the purely exploitative. But, unfortunately, there is much commercial incentive towards the purely exploitative. I, for one, would like to see more shaming revelations such as Mike’s out there to motivate those in creative control to use their dramatic violence more substantively.

“You see, we need a deeper meaning to things,” says Mike in conclusion. “Without it, none of it really matters, does it?” I couldn’t have said it better myself.