Mirroring and Symbolism

Thanks! It wasn't intended as a "trilogy", mind you -- or was it?   I dunno. It was originally one post, but then, before I got to the third bit (the third post), I decided to break it into multiple posts, following Subtext's lead. A subtle clue to this end is hidden in the timestamps. Note that the first two posts are scarcely a minute apart, but the third was posted with more of a time delay, fifteen minutes later (because I was still writing it after submitting the other two).

But yeah, a trilogy is a neat structure, and having the Saga told to us in trilogies (and trilogies within trilogies) is somehow this mega act of largesse and genius that feels elemental, like a grand spell that was cast over us all. Three acts, things occurring in threes -- you name it, with this concept, you could spend years finding links and connections and trying to unpack it all.

Indeed, as I was writing this out, I just remembered that I made some posts on Star Wars in the past focusing on threes. They'd probably go very nicely in here. Specifically, in fact, I honed in on TPM (the acronym for starters is made of three letters). I mean...


There's a rhythm to everything in the Saga, often drawing on the seemingly unique, exotic power of the number three. And circles. Circles are another big motif, especially in TPM. And the first integer of the number Pi, a transcendental number, that is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, is 3. Indeed, Pi itself has fascinated human beings for thousands of years, and we still don't understand all its numerical characteristics.

Somehow, Star Wars is more than just some "Buddhist" or "Christian" film text. It's also markedly Platonic, or Pythagorean, and many Masonic and Illuminati-type aspects and symbols can also be found within. The telling is in the structure and the structure is in the telling.    


You can never go too far!!! And the well is inexhaustible. 

I don't know if you're familiar with the wonderful Lard Biscuit exegesis of the PT, but it was one of the first things I ever read that offered a robust defence of the prequels online, and it left a big impression:

(Archive link as the website is no longer available -- thank the Force for the Wayback Machine)

web.archive.org/web/20120129050027/http://www.lardbiscuit.com/cinema.html

Sole ownership belonging to webmaster Donald Trull, whose name I used to confuse with Donald Trump, way before Trump became President. Ah, those were the days...

web.archive.org/web/20120401233959/http://www.lardbiscuit.com/lard/lavidamanteca.html

Specifically, in his masterful, six-part analysis of the "myth and meaning" of AOTC (complete with prologue and epilogue):

web.archive.org/web/20120206053506/http://www.lardbiscuit.com/lard/shroud.html

Jumping to Part IV, titled "Luminous Beings Are We", which Trull aptly limns as "Descending into Episode II's complex symbolism":

web.archive.org/web/20120601143449/http://www.lardbiscuit.com/lard/shroud4.html

The opening paragraph begins:


I think that about nails it. Of finding meaning within Star Wars -- and intricate, paired-up, resonant meaning, at that -- there is no end. 


Could be. We could also work on fixing many of the broken image links in the previous 20-something pages. I think I have my own relatively intact copy of most pages affected by links that no longer bring up the visual goods. I mean, at the moment, the thread is decimated because so much of it is nakedly visual, and we don't have those images. But it's possible to edit posts indefinitely, and so, if the images could be gathered back up and uploaded to a new location, edits could be applied to those posts with the new links, restoring those posts to their former glory. This is honestly one of the greatest threads on the forum -- maybe, given the visual nature of Star Wars, the greatest. We really need those images back. 

Very fascinating analysis, Cryo. Threes and circles are definitely very important to Star Wars. "The circle is now complete" and all that. The circle motif in visual form is all over the films, and many things come in threes, such as what I call "The Three Ghosts of Vader," which is a riff on legendary comics writer Grant Morrison's "The Three Ghosts of Batman" concept: Maul, Dooku and Grievous as three prophetic precursors of what Anakin will become as Vader. I believe it was one of my earliest posts in this thread when I first mentioned this idea.

I've heard of Lard Biscuit, probably from the days on TFN, but I don't remember if I ever read it fully. I'll have to look into it again. That part you quoted sounds familiar to me, though. I might have been partially inspired by it to create this very thread, actually, along with Joan Breton Connelly's comments from the "Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed" documentary which I've quoted in my signature. I share both of their sentiments. A lot of the "mirroring and symbolism" found in this thread might be coincidental or subconsciously planted by Lucas, but I don't think that makes it any less valuable. Star Wars engages the viewer in the forming of the narrative, giving you many pieces like in a puzzle that the viewer can then arrange in their mind however they choose. By noticing these connections in the films, you can form many different images.

Thanks for the compliment on the thread, I spent quite a lot of time back in the day toiling away on it. You're right that many pages worth of connections are ruined because the images are gone. We could try to fix them, but it would be quite the undertaking. I'll see what I can do. But I think I'll try to focus more on dialogue connections and illustrating parallels through writing than purely visually from now on.

Thank you, Seeker. I just kinda winged that post a bit. But I sometimes prefer doing it that way, rather than "seeking" (no pun necessarily intended) third-hand material, including my own. I did steal slightly from an earlier post of mine on this forum, however, for the "turmoil"/"trimodia" bit.

Of course, one of the absolute best structural threes, in my opinion, is what stampid was talking about recently: 

From the "Small details that you missed or enjoy" thread in the GLE section:

Reply #115 (May 27) 
stampidhd280pro

Reply #116 (May 27)
Cryogenic

Importing the core observation from there:

Essentially, the Star Wars Saga -- that is, the George Lucas Saga (I-VI) -- resolves into a varied array of viewing structures, not the least of which is a triangular or triadic structure, with TPM at the peak (i.e., the pinnacle of the saga).

So, basically:

II III

IV V VI

According to a more recent podcast interview with the now-departed J.W. Rinzler, Lucas later recanted this heresy of his, doubling down that Star Wars is a 12-hour movie, with a firm beginning, middle, and end (Rinzler tried to get him to elaborate on the "interactive blocks" concept, but Lucas was adamant that he didn't want to discuss it). 

Rinzler captured something very special and absolutely critical in that quote. Perhaps Lucas was in a buoyant mood. It was the 8th day of shooting on ROTS (the quote dates to July 9th 2003), and it was the last day shooting on the veranda set, and the scene filmed was #55, where Anakin tells Padme about his dream.

Afterwards, the set would be destroyed, "in a matter of hours", in accordance with standard filmmaking procedure. But before that moment arrived, Rinzler was able to get Lucas to open up in the video village, where there was "ample time" for him to give his perspective on the Star Wars Saga.

It's strange to think that some of the more emotionally intimate and haunting scenes of the movie were actually shot first, on that set. I detect quite a bit of confidence and pride from Lucas in that quote: the unmistakeable satisfaction of an artist deep into his labour, already enjoying the fruits of his methods, pleased with his actors, with his crew, and at relative peace with himself (despite the big backlash to the prequels online at that time). It's actually quite something.

I think that maybe your thread works a similar way. There's something quite soothing about finding all these connections and resonances, and being in good company as they're shared out, inspiring the discovery of more connections and resonances, in a positive feedback loop. And all in quiet defiance of the turn-of-the-century, early-Internet narrative that the prequels are cinematic failures, and that the idea of an interconnected, intricate "Saga" is pretentious piffle. Quite clearly, they aren't and it isn't.

Lastly, I wanted to squeeze in -- EXSQUEEZE ME!!! -- one of the best condensations of the structural brilliance of the Star Wars Saga ever written onto the Internet, and it's by our very own stampid, from way back in 2010 on TFN (poetry in itself):


That was so good, as soon as I saw it, I added it to my "Bio" on my old profile (pre-2012, when TFN used different software). 

Of course, it was a long time ago, and I'm not sure if stampid still stands by what he wrote there or not. There's always more than one way to look at something, after all.

Yet, for me, it's still a cracking perspective.


Well, yes, it's all valid -- the Saga "responds" to more than one type of input/output. That said, there's something to the concept that "A picture is worth a thousand words", and nothing quite makes the point like one image juxtaposed against another, I think.

It probably sounds a bit hypocritical for me to say, mind you. You may have noticed, I'm a bit of a word freak.   However, let me let you in on a dirty little secret: one reason I didn't bother much with images in the past, when I was trying to make a point, here and even back on TFN, is that I was sometimes too lazy to fetch the frames, but also, I foresaw exactly this outcome (the image links all breaking and the discussion/thread being ruined in the process).

Image uploads just aren't reliable, while text has a better chance of sticking around. Images fade, words remain. Which is a perverse thing to say, given the visual nature of Star Wars. The Internet is somehow both supportive and destructive toward visual storytelling and visual expositing. I can't quite work out what is going on -- what sort of an era are we truly living in? Still, if you're now a little deterred from relying on images now, I understand. 

And when I wrote that, I still had no idea...

Courtesy of the B-B-C:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/ceqd55865pyo

(1:33) "There were three shots."

JOE-BI-DEN... DON-ALD-TRUMP...

I meant to mention in that post one of my favorite manifestations of the three and circle motif in Star Wars: The menus of the 2011 Blu-ray release of "Star Wars: The Complete Saga."



I always loved these sleek and simple menu designs, particularly the three rings spinning every which way, with the images from the films moving with them. It's very evocative of the interplay of images, themes and motifs in the saga. The AotC one is my favorite. The dance of images tells the story and reveals many of the themes, such as Padmé coming between Anakin and Obi-Wan and making them drift apart. I also love the part where the clone and Jango look at each other.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this one before, I very well may have, but it's still one of my absolute favorite "mirrors":





Vader kneeling before Palpatine for the first and last time. I don't exactly know what it is about the latter example, but you can absolutely sense the sheer terror through Vader's mask. Or that's how I've always interpreted it. Vader doesn't only kneel in honor of Palpatine, he kneels in fear of him.