Context Matters, or, Why I Didn’t Hate That One Thing in The Rise of Skywalker That I Was Expecting to Hate

I wanted “Middle Chapter Romance” to conclude my thoughts on this ship and just take The Rise of Skywalker as it came. Whether the end result was what I wanted or not, I planned to let it be. I don’t like talking about this. I’d much rather talk about “Twin Suns”. But, alas, The Rise of Skywalker made a set of decisions so incongruous that this topic is back gnawing at me, and I will have no peace until I’ve processed it all.

So.

That kiss.

You may recall that I have a special place in my heart for Larma D’Acy. If anyone deserved to get her girl, it was our gallant Commander. Yes, D’Acy, please cause a scene.

Nevertheless, this is exactly what we all expected when J.J. Abrams promised us LBTQIA+ representation in Star Wars. A minor character has a blink-and-you-miss-it moment of queer affection, and the filmmakers all pat themselves on the back for being so inclusive and progressive.

Of course, this isn’t the only kiss in the film, nor is it the one I aim to discuss in this article, but it does tie in to my reaction to the kiss between Rey and Ben. I don’t hate the Rey-Ben kiss as I would have expected to, but it still has me baffled and even angered. It’s all about the context.

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Second Look: Middle-Chapter Romance – How The Last Jedi Holds The Empire Strikes Back and Attack of the Clones Accountable

Second Look is Eleven-ThirtyEight’s biannual tradition of highlighting some of our most interesting pieces from recent months. Every day this week you’ll find a different older piece back on our front page for another moment in the spotlight. – Mike, EIC

As regular readers of the site may know, I do not interpret The Last Jedi as romantic. However, I understand many of the reasons why others do, even if I don’t agree. Romance has always been a part of Star Wars, and many relationships end up being mirrors of each other. For my part, I can read romance into The Last Jedi from that angle, though it’s not necessarily a positive spin. With parallels to the previous Star Wars romances visible, I can see this film as a commentary on The Empire Strikes Back and Attack of the Clones.

Movies are a type of communication. And like any type of communication, movies can communicate their ideas well, poorly, or anywhere in between. So when I speak about how the two previous “middle chapters” of Star Wars fail in their romances, I am not discussing the idea of Anakin or Han as romantic leads, nor am I critiquing fans who see either of them (or Kylo) as just that. I’m discussing how the film communicates those ideas of romance. This is a Doylist discussion.

The Last Jedi in general is a wonderful exercise in Watsonian and Doylist interpretations. “Watsonian” is from the universe: John Watson explaining the events of his adventures with Sherlock Holmes. “Doylist” is from the meta: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle explaining why he wrote those events.

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Middle-Chapter Romance – How The Last Jedi Holds The Empire Strikes Back and Attack of the Clones Accountable

As regular readers of the site may know, I do not interpret The Last Jedi as romantic. However, I understand many of the reasons why others do, even if I don’t agree. Romance has always been a part of Star Wars, and many relationships end up being mirrors of each other. For my part, I can read romance into The Last Jedi from that angle, though it’s not necessarily a positive spin. With parallels to the previous Star Wars romances visible, I can see this film as a commentary on The Empire Strikes Back and Attack of the Clones.

Movies are a type of communication. And like any type of communication, movies can communicate their ideas well, poorly, or anywhere in between. So when I speak about how the two previous “middle chapters” of Star Wars fail in their romances, I am not discussing the idea of Anakin or Han as romantic leads, nor am I critiquing fans who see either of them (or Kylo) as just that. I’m discussing how the film communicates those ideas of romance. This is a Doylist discussion.

The Last Jedi in general is a wonderful exercise in Watsonian and Doylist interpretations. “Watsonian” is from the universe: John Watson explaining the events of his adventures with Sherlock Holmes. “Doylist” is from the meta: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle explaining why he wrote those events.

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An Element of Redemption – What The Last Jedi Tells Us About Grace

There was a moment in my first viewing of The Last Jedi in which I went “Welp, there goes my credibility. The website is never gonna let me write for it ever again.” Understand, I’m not much of a theorist. I’m better at reflective analysis, and overall, I prefer it. It keeps me from being disappointed that my Snoke theory didn’t work out.

Nevertheless, I tried my hand at theory in my first guest piece here at Eleven-ThirtyEight, ending on a claim that Finn would become an iconic Star Wars archetype – the arbiter of compassion – and would become a mentor of sorts to Rose. I was certainly wrong about that.

Yet somehow here I happen to be, on staff at the very site of my blunder. It’s a small example of some evergreen Star Wars discourse. We discuss frequently the nature of redemption, especially with our most recent antagonist, but this is a broad topic. One person may use “redemption” to mean forgiveness, while another uses it to mean recompense, and a third will use it to mean repentance.

Repentance is not the same thing as recompense, and neither of them are remotely similar to forgiveness, and yet all are invoked to build this idea of redemption. In my understanding of it, redemption is not a concept that stands on its own, but rather is comprised of many elements that weave together. One of these elements is grace.

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Aceing It – Vi Moradi and Queer Representation

Ben Wahrman: On the day Star Wars – Galaxy’s Edge: Black Spire was released, there was a good deal of hullabaloo on Star Wars Twitter about it, including a lot of posts by the author Delilah S. Dawson during a promotional tour through Galaxy’s Edge in Orlando and other nearby locations. But one string of tweets by Elizabeth Schaefer, Del Rey’s lead Star Wars editor, caught a lot of attention and a lot of appreciation. In her short thread, Schaefer notes that it was an idea of Dawson’s that the main character of Black Spire, Vi Moradi, would “come out” as asexual. Schaefer shared her appreciation for that decision and direction for the character, as she herself is asexual and feels the representation is much needed. Considering the traction her tweets gained, she was not alone in that.

After I saw these posts, I knew that my fellow contributor Abigail would have feelings about Vi and who she is. And I wasn’t wrong! I had a lot of thoughts and feelings of my own, so we decided to jointly discuss both of those things and talk about Vi as both a character and as a representative of the asexual community, as well as the wider issue of the representation of asexuality in Star Wars and media at large. We’ll begin by talking about our introductions to Vi before the advent of Black Spire.

When I read Phasma, Vi stood out to me as a character that a lot of work and heart had been poured into. For a book that was ostensibly all about, well, Captain Phasma, the team of Vi Moradi and Captain Cardinal stole it from her almost wholesale, despite them being more of a factor in the framing story than in the main flashback narrative of the book. Vi always struck me as a charming, fun character and I certainly hoped to see more of her after Phasma, but I never would have guessed that she’d wind up with such a large presence now, a featured character at the theme park and with a whole novel to herself.

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