Unpopular Fandom Opinion (singular, redux)

[krpalmer]

A fair while back, I decided to express an "unpopular fandom opinion," if with the resolution that I wouldn't do that sort of thing (at least, in so obvious and ostentatious a way) very often. Only a little while ago, I started wondering about making a post to my journal today, to mark in enduring fashion the "leap day"... and then the thought hit me to make an unusual post on this unusual day and express another "unpopular fandom opinion." This time, I'm saying that I don't quite agree with an idea that seems to run through the "secondary literature" of Star Wars, that of placing great emphasis on Jedi building their own lightsabres... it seems to me to load a great mystical weight on to the weapon, to the possible exclusion of actually dealing with good judgement, experience, or maturity.

I have an idea of where the general opinion came from, Darth Vader's line in Return of the Jedi: "I see you have constructed a new lightsabre. Your skills are complete." However, I don't see this as a case of "Luke builds a new lightsabre and his skills are complete," but rather as "it's because Luke's skills are complete (even if he isn't a full Jedi yet) that he can build a new lightsabre." Perhaps, of course, it's too fine a distinction. Still, one small detail I did find myself enjoying in Attack of the Clones was how, in the escalating end battle, Obi-Wan and Anakin are tossed spare lightsabres and away they go with no problems whatsoever...

Comments

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

I view the whole lightsaber thing the way you do, that it means your skills are complete if you are able to build a lightsaber.

Now the lightsaber enjoys talisman status at certain points of the film, i.e. Obi-Wan handing Luke Anakin's lightsaber in ANH, although the lightsaber has no special powers of its own.

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

That is a good point about "your father's lightsabre," which makes Luke's building one of his own a symbol of "reaching maturity/becoming his own person..." in his specific case. Of course, one point that I thought about adding to my post itself but didn't was that the EU may not be absolutely consistent when it comes to "building lightsabres" as something "necessary..." I remember, near the end of the "Thrawn trilogy," being excited that "the blue lightsabre is back!" (at the time, I suppose I just liked it a bit better and saw the green one as at most a necessary yet somehow unexciting replacement)... and then at the very end Luke hands it over to Mara Jade, and she apparently uses it for the rest of time with no particular importance assigned to it.

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's like giving your girlfriend your varsity jacket once you decide to go steady ;).

[may-child.livejournal.com]

and then at the very end Luke hands it over to Mara Jade,

No comment.

[may-child.livejournal.com]

We'll probably never know for sure, but it seems to me that the EU authors took that line in ROTJ and ran with it, making it more significant than it was really meant to be. Yes, Luke constructed a lightsaber between the events of ESB and those of ROTJ, but it seems, to me at least, that that was less a rite of passage than an act of necessity.

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

I can actually see it as being a "rite of passage" for him, but perhaps as a specific case blurred when everyone has to do it in the spinoffs... That may somehow fit in with my occasional suspicion that our entire culture has some difficulty "reading" things on anything other than a very "literal," "documentary realism" level.

[may-child.livejournal.com]

IMO, "as a specific case" is the operant phrase. Even taking into account that Lucas changed his mind, many times, about a lot of stuff in the 16 years between the release of ROTJ and the release of TPM, Luke's training probably wasn't meant to represent the "usual" path to Jedihood. One could make a reasonable case for Yoda and Obi Wan more or less "winging it" in the OT with regards to training Luke, in part because they were pinning their hopes on him defeating Vader and Palps.

That may somehow fit in with my occasional suspicion that our entire culture has some difficulty "reading" things on anything other than a very "literal," "documentary realism" level.

I think you may have something there.