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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/1qvJ9GZ:
millicentthecat:
animafantome:
millicentthecat:
animafantome:
millicentthecat:
Can I just remind everyone that the area of Jakku where Rey lives is called “the graveyard” and that, just for fun, she hoards and wears a helmet that she pulled off an actual decomposed person?
Keeping tokens to remember and honor the dead is not unusual, in the SW universe or ours. The only thing unusual about J.J.’s-barely-relevant-headcanon for Kylo Ren is that he honors the sacrifice of his enemies. He assigns meaning to their sacrifice, which is…an unusual level of caring and compassion, by our social and religious standards. It’s definitely ritualistic but…
IDK, sounds like some Light Side shit to me?
What does honor have to do with anything? Maybe in Rey’s case but it’s not like she killed the guy. I don’t see how Kylo’s actions have anything to do with honor.
I knew someone in art school who drew birds. I would say she drew birds exclusively and daily; she liked birds, and thought they were beautiful. In a crit I pointed out that the paper she used in her drawings came from trees that might have housed real, actual birds - and thus the drawings didn’t really improve their lives. A more effective artistic act would be to plant trees, thus benefiting the actual birds. (I was really irritating in crit.)
My professor called me out and explained that there are two forms of art-making. Ritual art-making isn’t about benefiting society, at large; that’s the work of political art-making. Ritual practice is largely about attention; the attention that we give to things, without considering why, because we feel they deserve our attention. It’s very natural, almost unconscious or compulsive. It is a tool to exorcise our admiration. My friend was doing this for birds. I perceive Kylo as doing this for his enemies, and specifically, for their deaths.
Enshrining the bodies of dead foes–whether or not you do so to absorb their strength–acknowledges that they are important. It doesn’t make sense, as a gesture, if you don’t respect and value their qualities, their contributions. Things we don’t value…we throw them away. We don’t build shrines to them. That’s what I meant by “honoring.” It’s a ritualistic expression of esteem.
That is another reason I think this might be something Light Side ish. Kylo’s pull toward the light screams of ritual mandate - it’s an unconscious, compulsive call to practice. His inclinations to the Dark Side, however, seem to be made with a socio-political agenda in mind. He’s light by nature and dark by policy.
I’ve seen a few people suggest that the table of ashes is a sign of political practice, not ritual practice, and that it has an effective purpose of making him more intimidating to bystanders, or aiding his access to the Force. Those are good theories, too, and those would be situations in which Kylo isn’t really “honoring” the dead so much as using their remains to achieve a goal.
Hope this clarifies!
Thank you. I think this situates things a bit better. I’m not very familiar with Star Wars (I’m a new fan starting with TFA) so I don’t know much about the Force or the light/dark side in canon. Maybe this is a stupid question, but why couldn’t this ritualistic expression be associated with the dark side?
It certainly could be. My skepticism of that comes from a couple of things, though:
1. My perception of Kylo Ren’s relationship with the Dark Side as being largely political. Kylo Ren’s “enemies” became his enemies when he joined Snoke and the First Order, and he likely killed those enemies for political reasons. He didn’t kill them for the same sense of ritualistic release as…Vader, when Vader kills whatever imperial officer is laying around? For seemingly no reason - just this spontaneous and compulsive expression of emotion and preference. That’s what ritual practice looks like.
2. The consistent links between Jedi rituals and proto-Christian warrior rituals. That makes me think the ash-table shrine might be a Light Side thing.
3. The fact that Dark Side ritual practice would be…how can I explain this? @bomberqueen17 wrote about this church burning in Norway. That’s what Dark Side ritualism looks like. Aggression, destruction. Raze the earth, burn the temples, fight everyone (even death!) Strike your foes down with LIGHTNING! Even if Kylo Ren killed his enemies and incinerated them for ritual reasons, he wouldn’t have…you wouldn’t build a little altar and cherish and pray to it for Dark Side reasons. That’s not something you do to encourage anger and hate and passion in yourself. It’s something you do to find calm.
IDK, it’s theology, and it’s fictional theology, so it’s all really theoretical. I wouldn’t say there’s enough information to say anything for certain. I don’t think you can conclude that the altar is evidence of how “dark” or how “light” Kylo is. Or that he’s vicious, or vengeful, or mentally ill, or anything else. It’s just this random minor detail. It might as well be Millie’s litter box…
I have never strongly analyzed or empathized with the Dark Side much/at all so I’m always worried I’ll miss the point or something, but the nebulous understanding I have of it is that it’s definitely like– the chaotic kind of energy, as opposed to formal? Because you can get so much energy from destroying things– not only by releasing their potential energy etc., so like imagine you expend a tiny bit of energy toppling a column, and by so doing you can bring a huge roof crashing down– that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. And more so when it’s a roof other people cared about, so now you have all of their emotion about its collapse to feed off of. (Because the kinetic energy of it coming down is really the release of all the energy that was expended to build it, and those people’s investment in same.)
It’s so hard to control that kind of energy, and it’s not really a renewable resource. You can find another column to push, but they’re arguably finite, and in the meantime you’ve got all the opposition now of the people who cared about that roof. You may be able to feed off that indefinitely, but you have to expect they’ll try to hurt you too.
Kylo may believe that he killed some of those enemies ritualistically– especially if his first act was turning on former comrades, he may have believed he was destroying them to turn himself and not out of political motivation, but Snoke was absolutely using him politically if those opponents were, as hinted, the other Jedi trainees under Skywalker, and as shown, one of the Knights of Ren.
But I love that line– “light by nature and dark by policy”– I feel like that’s such a succinct summing-up of the tension the man clearly feels! He may *believe* that he is expressing himself truly with the Dark side, but if everyone he kills is to further Snoke’s agenda, then clearly he is only opportunistically feeding on their energy, and is not actually doing it out of, idk, purely ritual concerns, you know what I mean? Sorry I’m not very articulate about this just now. But I feel like that could explain some of the tension, how he complains of not being certain on his path. Like, he’d hoped to achieve something by ritually killing his father, but it wasn’t a clean ritual killing, it was a politically set-up killing to demoralize a military enemy. Snoke made him do it to prove his loyalty– telling him it would increase his strength, but really it just increased his dependency on Snoke.
millicentthecat:
animafantome:
millicentthecat:
animafantome:
millicentthecat:
Can I just remind everyone that the area of Jakku where Rey lives is called “the graveyard” and that, just for fun, she hoards and wears a helmet that she pulled off an actual decomposed person?
Keeping tokens to remember and honor the dead is not unusual, in the SW universe or ours. The only thing unusual about J.J.’s-barely-relevant-headcanon for Kylo Ren is that he honors the sacrifice of his enemies. He assigns meaning to their sacrifice, which is…an unusual level of caring and compassion, by our social and religious standards. It’s definitely ritualistic but…
IDK, sounds like some Light Side shit to me?
What does honor have to do with anything? Maybe in Rey’s case but it’s not like she killed the guy. I don’t see how Kylo’s actions have anything to do with honor.
I knew someone in art school who drew birds. I would say she drew birds exclusively and daily; she liked birds, and thought they were beautiful. In a crit I pointed out that the paper she used in her drawings came from trees that might have housed real, actual birds - and thus the drawings didn’t really improve their lives. A more effective artistic act would be to plant trees, thus benefiting the actual birds. (I was really irritating in crit.)
My professor called me out and explained that there are two forms of art-making. Ritual art-making isn’t about benefiting society, at large; that’s the work of political art-making. Ritual practice is largely about attention; the attention that we give to things, without considering why, because we feel they deserve our attention. It’s very natural, almost unconscious or compulsive. It is a tool to exorcise our admiration. My friend was doing this for birds. I perceive Kylo as doing this for his enemies, and specifically, for their deaths.
Enshrining the bodies of dead foes–whether or not you do so to absorb their strength–acknowledges that they are important. It doesn’t make sense, as a gesture, if you don’t respect and value their qualities, their contributions. Things we don’t value…we throw them away. We don’t build shrines to them. That’s what I meant by “honoring.” It’s a ritualistic expression of esteem.
That is another reason I think this might be something Light Side ish. Kylo’s pull toward the light screams of ritual mandate - it’s an unconscious, compulsive call to practice. His inclinations to the Dark Side, however, seem to be made with a socio-political agenda in mind. He’s light by nature and dark by policy.
I’ve seen a few people suggest that the table of ashes is a sign of political practice, not ritual practice, and that it has an effective purpose of making him more intimidating to bystanders, or aiding his access to the Force. Those are good theories, too, and those would be situations in which Kylo isn’t really “honoring” the dead so much as using their remains to achieve a goal.
Hope this clarifies!
Thank you. I think this situates things a bit better. I’m not very familiar with Star Wars (I’m a new fan starting with TFA) so I don’t know much about the Force or the light/dark side in canon. Maybe this is a stupid question, but why couldn’t this ritualistic expression be associated with the dark side?
It certainly could be. My skepticism of that comes from a couple of things, though:
1. My perception of Kylo Ren’s relationship with the Dark Side as being largely political. Kylo Ren’s “enemies” became his enemies when he joined Snoke and the First Order, and he likely killed those enemies for political reasons. He didn’t kill them for the same sense of ritualistic release as…Vader, when Vader kills whatever imperial officer is laying around? For seemingly no reason - just this spontaneous and compulsive expression of emotion and preference. That’s what ritual practice looks like.
2. The consistent links between Jedi rituals and proto-Christian warrior rituals. That makes me think the ash-table shrine might be a Light Side thing.
3. The fact that Dark Side ritual practice would be…how can I explain this? @bomberqueen17 wrote about this church burning in Norway. That’s what Dark Side ritualism looks like. Aggression, destruction. Raze the earth, burn the temples, fight everyone (even death!) Strike your foes down with LIGHTNING! Even if Kylo Ren killed his enemies and incinerated them for ritual reasons, he wouldn’t have…you wouldn’t build a little altar and cherish and pray to it for Dark Side reasons. That’s not something you do to encourage anger and hate and passion in yourself. It’s something you do to find calm.
IDK, it’s theology, and it’s fictional theology, so it’s all really theoretical. I wouldn’t say there’s enough information to say anything for certain. I don’t think you can conclude that the altar is evidence of how “dark” or how “light” Kylo is. Or that he’s vicious, or vengeful, or mentally ill, or anything else. It’s just this random minor detail. It might as well be Millie’s litter box…
I have never strongly analyzed or empathized with the Dark Side much/at all so I’m always worried I’ll miss the point or something, but the nebulous understanding I have of it is that it’s definitely like– the chaotic kind of energy, as opposed to formal? Because you can get so much energy from destroying things– not only by releasing their potential energy etc., so like imagine you expend a tiny bit of energy toppling a column, and by so doing you can bring a huge roof crashing down– that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. And more so when it’s a roof other people cared about, so now you have all of their emotion about its collapse to feed off of. (Because the kinetic energy of it coming down is really the release of all the energy that was expended to build it, and those people’s investment in same.)
It’s so hard to control that kind of energy, and it’s not really a renewable resource. You can find another column to push, but they’re arguably finite, and in the meantime you’ve got all the opposition now of the people who cared about that roof. You may be able to feed off that indefinitely, but you have to expect they’ll try to hurt you too.
Kylo may believe that he killed some of those enemies ritualistically– especially if his first act was turning on former comrades, he may have believed he was destroying them to turn himself and not out of political motivation, but Snoke was absolutely using him politically if those opponents were, as hinted, the other Jedi trainees under Skywalker, and as shown, one of the Knights of Ren.
But I love that line– “light by nature and dark by policy”– I feel like that’s such a succinct summing-up of the tension the man clearly feels! He may *believe* that he is expressing himself truly with the Dark side, but if everyone he kills is to further Snoke’s agenda, then clearly he is only opportunistically feeding on their energy, and is not actually doing it out of, idk, purely ritual concerns, you know what I mean? Sorry I’m not very articulate about this just now. But I feel like that could explain some of the tension, how he complains of not being certain on his path. Like, he’d hoped to achieve something by ritually killing his father, but it wasn’t a clean ritual killing, it was a politically set-up killing to demoralize a military enemy. Snoke made him do it to prove his loyalty– telling him it would increase his strength, but really it just increased his dependency on Snoke.
