Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

There's a big push on at the publishing house to get a bunch of contracts completed by the end of June, so I've been working as many hours as I can in recent weeks, and I suddenly realized this morning that I can't quite remember the last time I had any creative energy left for my own life. I haven't even been keeping up with reading other people's posts on Live Journal, much less taking the time to jot down any of the thoughts that have -- very occasionally -- occurred to me.

So, my apologies to all of you whose brilliant, witty, agonized, or thought-provoking journal entries I've missed out on while I've had my head buried in authors' contracts or trying to track down addresses for domestic and international scholars who in too many cases turn out to be retired and/or dead. It's my loss, I know.

That said, it IS nice not to have to worry about rent and grocery money for a little while -- the "Up" side of all those late evenings glued to a computer terminal after everyone else in the office has gone home. And, to be honest, I don't find the work boring at all. It's almost like being paid to do those math and logic puzzles that I find so addictive . . . especially when I'm finally able to track down some hard-to-find person, or sniff out an error in the contract that everyone else had overlooked.

It's very seductive, to be able to use my mind and skills and make a valuable contribution to someone else's project, in which I have no personal investment aside from a paycheck and an occasional pat on the back. And, of course, it's far less risky and frightening than turning that same mental and creative energy toward my own work, which has been languishing for just as long as my online correspondence has!

Mea culpas and critical self-reflection now having been checked off my list of "things to do today," I can say a few brief words about the movies which I have managed to find time and energy for in the past weeks.



I've now seen 'Sith' twice in as many weeks, and I'm still impressed. This film is almost enough to make me forgive Lucas for inflicting Jar-Jar Binks upon the world. Almost.

As I watched the closing credits the first time through, I found myself thinking that George Lucas DID make 9 'Star Wars' movies, after all. You watch Episodes IV through VI the first time through, and you love them and think you know what they're about. But then, after you've suffered through Episode I, kind of enjoyed II, and been moved by the full-on operatic/Greek tragedy of III, IV-VI become three new movies: the same events and characters, but seen through new eyes, with the focus and viewpoint changed.

Anakin becomes, in many ways, not just the tragic hero whose greatness contains the seeds of his self-destruction, but also the victim whose sufferings buy his children the one thing he lacked that might have enabled him to resist the Emperor's seduction: a secure and loving home to grow up in.

However traumatized Leia was by the brutal destruction of her father and homeworld in Episode IV, and however stormy Luke's relationship was with his step-uncle Owen in his young adulthood and however much guilt he might have carried for not being there when his aunt and uncle were murdered, they were able to grieve and eventually move on, because they had that firm foundation of being beloved and cared for until adulthood to fall back on.

Anakin had nothing similar in his young life, after he was separated from his mother. However much Obi-Wan might have come to love Anakin "like a brother," it wasn't the kind of parental love and whole-hearted approval that Anakin craved. The Jedi model of master-pupil relations just didn't seem to permit Kenobi to give Anakin that.

Only Palpatine was willing to step into those fatherly shoes, and Anakin had no basis for comparison, no way to see through the lies and manipulation and realize before it was too late that the kind of "love" the Chancellor had for him was dark and twisted, a love that seeks to consume and control its object, rather than to nourish and liberate.

It wasn't until Anakin/Vader saw Luke resist and refuse to fall in with the Emperor's same old dysfunctional family games that Anakin/Vader was given the chance to see in his son what, in another lifetime, he himself could have been and to make a new choice based on that better vision of reality.

That makes his choice and sacrifice and his redemption all the more heroic, knowing how little he had had, compared to his children.

And, speaking of grief and vengeance (and the ability to make a choice between them), I'm glad I finally got around to seeing 'The Interpreter'. I usually find Sean Penn rather annoying, and I thought 'Mystic River' (the last movie I'd seen him in) was just horribly depressing, without much to redeem it. But I had learned that Nicole Kidman can really act, when she gets half a chance, so I decided to see the film and hope for the best.

Wow!

Not only was it well-acted (I even began to feel sympathetic toward Penn's character, eventually) and thought-provoking and suspenseful (as well as bloody, in places), but there was that marvelous line at the heart of the whole film: "The Koo believe that vengeance is lazy grief."

Way to sum up at least three books' worth of psychoanalytic theorizing about the relationship between mourning and warfare in one pithy sentence! Kudos all around.