{"id":18408,"date":"2014-12-06T06:00:42","date_gmt":"2014-12-06T11:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=18408"},"modified":"2014-12-03T21:59:03","modified_gmt":"2014-12-04T02:59:03","slug":"memo-to-disney-and-george-lucas-kill-jar-jar-and-the-midi-chlorians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2014\/12\/06\/memo-to-disney-and-george-lucas-kill-jar-jar-and-the-midi-chlorians\/","title":{"rendered":"Memo to Disney and George Lucas: Kill Jar-Jar (and the Midi-Chlorians)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"JarJar\"<\/a>Unless you live under a space rock, you’ve probably heard that next year, Disney and director JJ Abrams will re-boot the Star Wars saga, first unleashed upon the real world back in the 1970s by George Lucas.\u00a0 If you don’t care about any of that, then I have no idea why you are still reading this.\u00a0 Stop now.\u00a0 Go\u00a0 away.\u00a0 Go back to your much more productive and fulfilling life.<\/p>\n

But if you do kind of care a little bit, or if you’re like me and you spent a few years in your childhood scanning the stars, waiting for the Millenium Falcon to land in the football field next to your house and sweep you away to a galaxy far, far away, then I need your help.<\/p>\n

I need you to re-post this plea to Disney and George Lucas and anyone else who will listen.\u00a0 Make it go viral.\u00a0 Make them listen.\u00a0 Our message is simple:\u00a0 It’s time to kill Jar-Jar.\u00a0 And please God, it’s time to erase all memory of Midi-Chlorians.<\/p>\n

A long time ago, in a galaxy…<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let me explain.\u00a0 The Star Wars universe is a beloved example of what psychologists call a “paracosm.”\u00a0 It’s an imaginary world, a complex make-believe milieu that exists with its own internal logic, its own rules and natural order.<\/p>\n

Yes, there are characters — Luke, Han, C-3PO and on and on — but a huge part of the charm and the fascination is that the setting itself feels sort of weirdly real to lots of people.\u00a0 It takes on a life of its own, a shared existence, sort of like Narnia or Middle Earth or Oz.<\/p>\n

Even when the original Star Wars movies weren’t so fabulously great, you still felt like you were sort of — going there<\/em>.\u00a0 Those star destroyers were on there way from someplace, going to someplace.\u00a0 You didn’t know where the hell the “Kessel Run” went, but you wanted to find out.<\/p>\n

But after releasing the original trilogy of films, George Lucas began tampering with his paracosm in ways that freaked everybody out, and rightly so.\u00a0 He re-crafted the films, adding bits, changing key sequences, larding on new digital special effects.\u00a0 The “there” of his imagined universe, its texture and tone, became more and more muddled.<\/p>\n

Then he produced a series of prequel films that attempted to recast explain much of how his imaginary universe worked.\u00a0 He wanted us to believe that Darth Vader, one of the most evil villains in film history — a guy who murdered children and helped blow up whole planets –was really just sort of a whiny college kid gone wrong.<\/p>\n

Then Lucas kept adding more and more weirdly absurd and unfunny characters, including a vaguely racist Rastafarian-themed alien named Jar Jar Binks.<\/p>\n

He even ginned up a long, bizarre theological ramble in which the mysterious Force that empowered his Jedi knights turned out to be tiny “Midi-Chlorians,” sort of like sentient, ESP-powered bacteria.\u00a0 It turns out Lucas’ paracosm was being powered by a parasite.<\/p>\n