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Saturday 
18 June 2005
Revenge of the Bootlegger
Revenge of the Bootlegger
A Chinese bootleg of “Revenge of the Sith”, translated back into English. Offbeat? Yes. Funny? Definitely! Accurate? Er, possibly, if you think that the Force can be used as a metaphor for modern political or religious belief systems.
Come, oh Padawan, let’s peel this onion.
| (courtesy of winterson.com). |
“The Backstroke of the West”? Why would a Chinese bootlegger translate the word “Sith” as “West”? That doesn’t make any…no, wait, I remember now…
I just got an image of Dubya in a dark hooded cloak. This vision is pretty common feeling on the web. Look at this, this and this. Actually, Google had over 18,000 results for the search phrase ‘george bush and emperor palpatine’.
Waitaminnit. Yoday sounds almost exactly the same even after being translated from English to Chinese to English again. Up with that, what is?
What is an augury? I think he’s supposed to be telling Anakin “Fear is a path to the dark side”.
Waitaminnit. What’s with the f word? Nobody in Lucas’ galaxy even takes a dump, much less a hump. Just how intimate is Anakin with the Emperor? Is that what the Jedi are really afraid of?
Maybe this is what the Star Wars world would be like if it were a weekly on HBO, or were written by Quentin Tarantino? You know - all that Jedi brotherhood could begin to take on a “I wanna get under your cloak”, Queer as Folk kinda vibe. “Feel the Force, my young apprentice. Reach around with your, er, feelings.” Oh yeah - cue that porno guitar baby…
It reminds me of that whole “Batman and Robin are gay” theory. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Waitaminnit. The Jedi are Presbyterian?!? I thought they were all a bunch of Buddhists. I had to look into this. The oxymoronically-named web site religionfacts.com describes American Presbyterianism like this:
[based] on hard work, discipline, the salvation of souls and the building of a better world. Presbyterians were instrumental in the movements for women’s rights, abolition of slavery, and temperance.
…okay — that sorta sounds in line with the peace-lovng, only-in-self-defense clan I have come to know as Jedi… They also sound a bit like Social Democrats…
Actually, I think many modern-facing religions would like to frame themselves in this way. This is certainly how I think the Jedi would want to see themselves. I’m not so sure they’ve pulled off the women’s rights part though - there seem to be only a few strong female characters in Lucas’ male dominated movie galaxy.
So, the wanna-be-Presbyterian, socially-democratic Jedi is on morally superior geography compared to the misguided, fascistic and essentially fundamentalist Sith Lord. This is a conflict between the Sith’s fundamentalist idealogy and the Jedi’s fantasy equivalent of the Buddhist middle way. Absolutism versus relativism, perhaps.
It’s unfortunate that some of the story of “Revenge of the Sith” seemed hollow, or rushed, or… I dunno… just not perfect. As one of those who has had this series in my consciousness since May 1977, I expected just a bit more of an emotional payoff.
In the end though (and even though Lucas must be tired of Star Wars by now), I think we were given something that George Lucas is good at giving: an adventure story that synthesizes and popularizes important themes from mythology and history.
I’m really looking forward to the English translation on DVD.
Other articles about movies and mythology
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Hello, I’m Jumbo, propietor of the original Flossblog (flossblog.blogspot.com) and I wanted to say hi to a fellow flossblogger. It looks like you’re from the NW. I flossblog from Burnside in PDX.
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hilarious stuff! i’ll link to this from my site when it gets back online next week.
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Thanks for the reciprocal link Jeremy! I hope you don’t mind that I grabbed copies of your “Backstroke” stills for hosting my own site. It is a habit of mine for most of my blog posts, just so the images don’t disappear unexpectedly. It seems that I downloaded ‘em just before your site went offline.
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“A State of Confusion, or Confucian”?
I giot this bit of spam today. I’m not certain, but I think it’s a Viagra ad…
“We oblige our clients; the man must be real in every respect!
Good wine needs no bush!
Quantity is transformed into quality!
The cheapest prices!
Get it now and forget about problems!
ENTER Have all delights using this wonderful product!
You deserve the best. All is pay less.”
This line alone is worth something:
“Good wine needs no bush!”
It’s like a hustler’s proverb! :)
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any chance you can upload the rest of the pics if you have them?