Slog

News & Arts

The Stranger Suggests

Critics' Best Bets
Music Arts & Food

Line Out

Music & the City
at Night

  |  

Monday, December 22, 2008

Architecture / Arts / Film The Star of Theory

Posted by on Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 11:57 AM

Picture_1.png

John Powers essay "star wars: a new heap" in Triple Canopy is theory in its most productive state, one of total activation. In this state, the object of inquiry (in this case Star Wars) is not the end but both the end and the starting point of the theory machine. The object tells us not so much about itself but the all of it, the conditions of its happening, of its coming to be. It tells us everything, and everything tells us about itself.

One of my favorite passages:

The Death Star is a flying saucer that has been inflated to the size of a moon. Like the minimalist art it resembles, the Death Star is a utopia stripped of all progressive justification: It has monastic barracks, its sexuality is defined negatively (see Darth Vader’s masochistic garb), and its entryway is a breach in the “equatorial trench.”1 In contrast, the other saucer in Star Wars [the Millennium Falcon] is a filthy “incremental city” of jury-rigged hand-me-downs.2 This seedy saucer accommodated the details of everyday life, replete with drinking, gambling, sexual flirtation, and bickering. It harbors all the chaos of the unplanned street: rebel scum, smugglers, hicks and hermits, all navigating their own lives for good or ill.
Here cleanliness is not close to God but to evil. The opposite of purity is life, the good. To get to this point, this conclusion, the real nature of evil and good, the theory machine activates modernism, science fiction, architecture, biology, theology—anything that can be processed or process is processed or processes. This is total activation.

 

Comments (7) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment
1
I'm not sure it's healthy to devote so much intellectual thought to a 70's space opera.
Posted by Hernandez on December 22, 2008 at 12:06 PM
2
Well, duh!

Where did Luke learn to master The Force? In the pristine corridors of the Jedi Temple on Corruscant?

No -

In a freaking SWAP, taught by a freaking FROG CREATURE!

This is pretty basic shit, like "Star Wars 101", Chaz...
Posted by COMTE on December 22, 2008 at 12:13 PM
3
that first guy looks like he didn't make the final cut for the village people.
Posted by scary tyler moore on December 22, 2008 at 1:05 PM
4
bad guys always have the cooler outfits


which is why Batman is badass...good guy...bad guy outfit.
Posted by CM on December 22, 2008 at 1:17 PM
5
Well, f*cking DUH, Charles! Why must you always state the obvious?
Posted by northbound on December 22, 2008 at 1:40 PM
6
tl;dr
Posted by Greg on December 22, 2008 at 1:44 PM
7
You really love the sound of your own typing, don't you?
Posted by burgin99 on December 22, 2008 at 2:10 PM

Add a comment

Advertisement
 

All contents © Index Newspapers, LLC
1535 11th Ave (Third Floor), Seattle, WA 98122
Contact Info | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Takedown Policy