Apparently Dr. Stewart gave out a fake history syllabus one year. In which one of the essay questions was as follows:
Were the motives which drove Luke Skywalker to reject the dark side and those which impelled the United States into the War with Mexico fundamentally similar or dis-similar?
Anna and Phillip decided to answer it. See the full (and somewhat less coherent) entry here. I've edited this one slightly for grammar.
So that you don’t have to read the paper, we’ll give you our thesis up front: X-wings are cool. This was the driving motivation for both the war and Luke. So, yes, their motivations were identical, and that means that they were similar.
Luke rejected the dark side of the force because he recognized the inherent coolness of X-wings. X-wings were central to family life. Everyone in the New Republic would gather round the X-wing for family vacations and to start the barbecue. Lasers are good at starting fires. Yay! Fire! The prominent role of X-wings at barbecues led to their becoming a symbol of the local communities that used them to start fires. Yay! Fire! To keep the spirit of community-mindedness alive and well, Luke rejected the dark side of the force, because no dark jedi can fly X-wings. The coolness of the X-wing propeled him to the height of stardom, which allowed him to create a new galactic order conducive to the re-establishment of communities. Besides, the Emperor was creepy (see "secondary motivations").
The United States fought with Mexico primarily to get its hands on California. Texas was a diversion. Santa Anna knew the swankiest movie-making community would be established there, and so did Polk (though we don’t know why). Santa Anna wanted the money from the movies, and his actions would have led to Star Wars being produced in Spanish. Polk wanted Star Wars to be in English. Who ever heard of "Guerras De la Estrella"? This fear led the US to conquer California because X-wings are still cool, even 130 years before Star Wars was created. Besides, can you see George Lucas speaking Spanish? I don’t think so. An even scarier thought: Jar-Jar Binks in a Sombrero. Clearly, something needed to happen. And the US government with its usual stunning efficiency decided to save the world, and pretend that someone cared about Texas.
The secondary motivation that both Luke and the US had was that their nemeses were annoying and creepy. Mexico was annoying; Vader chopping off Luke’s hand was annoying. Santa Anna was creepy; The Emperor’s make-up job was creepy.
The moral: Muppets always beat the grim reaper. Yoda was clearly more entertaining than Vader or the Emperor. Backward’s speaking is much funnier than lightning coming out of your finger-tips, as cool as that is.
Watching "Guerras De la Estrella" might be cool, but an "Ala X" would never be as cool as an X-wing.
In conclusion, we are still in amazement at the coolness of X-wings; An X-wing in Spanish would not be able to compare. Also, Yoda is still cute, California is itself, and we are still laughing over it. Mexico loses, Luke wins. ‘nough said.
Sources cited:
A few random websites; all Spanish translations courtesy of Babelfish.
No comments:
Post a Comment