[JW Wells]

so now id like to tackle my favorite subject, the sith.
the word 'sith' refers to a race of giants from greek mythology that destroyed each other by throwing boulders. this goes a ways in explaining why there can only be a master and an apprentice; otherwise the sith would expend all their energy fighting amongst themselves.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Interesting, never heard that one before. Do you have a reference for this?

[xenduck]

Interesting, never heard that one before.  Do you have a reference for this?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

i learned about this a long time ago, searching for 'sith' on the internet now gives you tons of star wars sights rather than anything greek. ive been trying to piece the story together from tiny tid bits. just from memory i can tell you the giants are known as gigantes, they are the sons of ouranos and gaia. angered by the imprisonment of the titans, the gigantes threw rocks at the gods and wound up killing each other. the place where this supposedly happend is debated, but most contend the legend orginated in the country of sithonia, where there are large rock formations. which is why i had heard the gigantes refered to as 'sith'. im looking for conformation on all this and ill let you all know what i find. of course, any help would be appreciated.

This post has been edited by xenduck: 03 June 2005 - 05:47 PM

[xenduck]

here's some websites i found.

http://www.chalkidik...gy_history.html

http://galactic-voya...s...Origin!.htm

http://www.theoi.com...s/Gigantes.html

This post has been edited by xenduck: 03 June 2005 - 06:05 PM

[xenduck]

here im ripping off my own post from another thread. i add it because i think it fits my topic perfectly and because im too lazy to re-write the same idea.

further, i know i have brought up plato's republic in other threads, and while a know his republic and lucas' are vastly different, you will notice that plato's concept of the 'gaurdians' is almost identical with the jedi. they are born communaly (without a family) they are special trained to perserve order, and are allowed special advantages. but more than that, they are told from birth that everyone is endowed by the earth with one of three elements (gold, silver, and i think, bronze). the gaurdians, being imbued with gold, have a right to rule over the 'lesser' citizens. the important diffrence here is that the element myth was known to be just a myth, but the midichlorians are real (in the story) and offer proof of a jedi's 'higher calling' to protect and serve society.

[Jaded Wolf]

Here's the best ref I could find, looks like "Jidai Geki" in terms of film means what "period piece" does here in the States.

Frankly, the appeal of Star Wars used to be that it was so sparse.  A simple story, clearly identifiable sides, enough empty room around them for the viewers to fill in the details.  It's more cluttered now, but it is not, nor has it ever been, profound.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It is a simple story, but you can also draw so much stuff from it. I believe Lucas had that in mind when creating Star Wars, though it was not the driving force, no pun intended, behind it. I look at the fall of the Jedi order and in my church life relate it to the church. Qui-Gon was rejected for stepping outside the boundaries of the Jedi order, but yet we find out that Qui-Gon might have been right. If the Jedi Order had opened their minds a little, then they might have stayed around a little longer. Then again, we might never have the movies we have before us. In either way, I see the church sometimes as this failing order refusing to open their minds to the way people are nowadays. I know I am speaking all religious here but if I can tolerate someone saying Jar Jar should get anal rape on these posts, then I think I can speak freely of my beliefs. Whatever the case, I see so many comparisons with the Star Wars saga as well as any other movie. That is what makes good storytelling. When you are able to write a tale that can be translated on so many different scales, then you have written a great story.

[Mnesymone]

Replying here to the thing about the sith in relation to the Gigantes and the Hekagigantes or Hekatoncheires, the name sith is most likely taken from soabahn-sith, a vampire-like legendary creature from Northern Asia, particularly china. Described as being blind in conventional terms, soabahn-sith see the breath of human beings and are virtually indestructible save by certain holy sigils and virtually inexorable except they are repelled by sticky rice - Sithon, brother of Triton, has little if nothing to do with the giants or with the sith - and seeing as Xenduck's links confused the Gigantes and the Hekagigantes for the same thing I think it can be disregarded - the hekagigantes were hundred-handed allies of the gods, while the gigantes, from whom we get the word giant, were serpent-footed enemies of the olympians.

[xenduck]

sithonia is named after sithon. sithonia has geological formations that were explained by the people living in the region as rocks thrown by the gigantes at the gods. that is the connection between sithon, the gigantes, and the star wars sith.
that being said, i have no way to know if thats what lucas had in mind when he wrote about the sith. your theory maybe perfectly accurate, or they both could be inspirations. i did a web search and couldnt find any sights for the soabahn-sith. i am very interested in learning about them.

This post has been edited by xenduck: 05 June 2005 - 07:40 PM

[DarthTherion]

Xenduck, I really appreciate a topic like this. There's quite a bit of depth beneath the surface of star wars, even the silly prequels.

Just a quick question -- do you really think Nietzsche would support Emperor Palpatine or that Palpatine really embodies the will to power? As I understand it, the will to power is a will to self-overcoming, constantly reinventing the self and refusing to bow to the mores of society. The processes of life are manifestations of this will -- in fact, there's even one passage in the Gay Science where Nietzsche says that mindless violence and domination are usually signs of weakness, not power.

Nietzsche *hated* the idea of a Totalitarian state. He hated nationalism. And he intensely disliked his countrymen.

The true ideal of Nietzsche, the "ubermensch," is a passionate individual who is capable of controlling ("overcoming") his passions. Seen from this perspective, both the Jedi and the Sith are lacking. The Sith are pure passion, acting from their emotions without sufficient restraint or self-discipline; the Jedi have degenerated into dogma, imposing rules on their adherents and insisting on "moral" behavior. They deal with passion by attempting to stamp it out, rather than employing it. Nietzsche loathed morality, since it is merely the values of the herd -- the common man -- that are endorsed by society. It stifles individuality.

The Chosen One, then, I suppose is the Ubermensch who liberates the Force from the limited, stagnant interpretations foisted upon it by the Jedi and the Sith.

[xenduck]

hey, thanks for reading and replying everyone!

darth therion, you are right about neitzsche's trying to instill a feeling of self-improvment and discipline. but also he says that it is natural for man to seek dominion over his enviroment. that in the past, it was not looked down upon for men to fight and argue their way to the top. seeking power is an innate driving force in human kind, one that should not be repressed becuase it compels us to excel. he lamented that now, in the age of democracies, that even our leaders are nothing more than 'servants' or 'slaves' of the people. and the people are weak and stupid. to his mind, such a government (or possibly any government) is a crime against nature. in the end, i dont think nietzsche would agree with palpatine's greedy motivations; but i do think that palpatine would agree with neitzsche because, to palpatine's mind, he is disciplined and wise. star wars asks us to see two diffrent views of both sith and jedi orders. we get the sith's view of the jedi, and the jedi's view of the sith. who should we believe?

"He shall be greatest who can be loneliest, the most concealed, the most deviant, the human being beyond good and evil, the master of his virtues, he that is overrich in will."

-from 'beyond good and evil'

[xenduck]

a brief note on maul and tyrannus

i think baudelaire summed up the sith, and especially maul, when he wrote about satan:
"O first of exiles who endurest wrong,
yet growest, in thy hatred, still more strong."

there is virtually no background (in the movies) for darth maul. that being the case, i dont mind making observations about his charcter based on his appearence. this is a man who is bad-ass and hard-core. tattooed all over his entire face (and possibly his body) maul has 'given' himself to the darkside. i think it is obvious that maul represents a demonic character; but what are his motivations? he seems to have been raised by darth sidious, trained from a young age, so i imagine that his hatred for the jedi comes primarily from upbringing. he was acting out a series of behaviors instilled in him at an early age. this being the case, i am tempted to regard him as more of a tragic figure than a villianous one. all the better, so that he doesnt undermine the menace of the phantom. and it makes him a clever contrast to darth tyrannus.

not only maul and tyrannus opposites in their age, but also their convictions. tyrannus is an odity in that unlike the other sith, or villians in general, he is not scarred, deformed or mutilated. tyrannus was once a jedi, he has become disgruntled, by what we dont know, but his age, social status, and disenfranchisement make him the percfect seperatist leader. i see tyrannus as the incarnation of machiavelli's 'prince'. the leader who must 'enter into evil' to bring about a greater society. i feel that tyrannus believes that the republic has fallen apart and changes must be made. (we dont know how much of sidious' motivations he shared.) he knows that more talking will not achieve anything, he believes that you have to get senators by the balls to make their heads and hearts follow. the clue to this is that he doesnt 'look' evil. generally (not always, but generally) lucas shows his bad guys as unmistakably bad. who questioned the evil of darth vader when he stepped aboard the blockade runner? yet tyrannus, while aged, is quite dapper and sophisticated. that hints to me that he is not meant to be evil, but only entering into evil in order to save the republic from itself. padme seems to share his view in ep III when she suggest (sounding like a seperatist) that she and anakin are on the wrong side.

judging by anakin's 'naming ceremony' i have to assume that 'tyrannus' was a name given to dooku by sidious, thus showing what sidious planned for him, yet dooku is known almost exclusivly as 'dooku'.

well that wasnt as brief as i hoped. there is so much i want to go over. next up: why count dooku felt the republic had to fall.

This post has been edited by xenduck: 06 June 2005 - 05:35 PM

[Mnesymone]

Dooku is, when you think about it, a much cooler character than any of the other villains. His loyalties to Sidious are imperfect - or else he would not have told Obi-Wan about him, nor would Palpatine have had him killed - evidently he shares a considerable bond with Palpatine. Both Dooku and Palpatine feel that the republic is failing, but whereas Palpatine is a dedicated Sith who feels that the republic can be reformed into the New Order internally, Dooku is more of a Dark Jedi who feels that only by creating the New Order (his separatists) outside of the Republic and preparing to wage war to defend his growing nation can the New Order arise. Of the two, Dooku is the less evil - he is essentially an honest character, who feels that extreme measures are called for in extreme times, is quite proud of the strength the Dark Side has granted him and he fights, apparently, for the greater good of the galaxy.
Dooku, though he is Sidious's apprentice, is equal (or near enough) in power to Sidious, and since Sidious has betrayed his master as all traitors do he fears treachery - thusly he has Anakin kill Dooku.
A few more things - Dooku is only willing to turn to Sidious for aid when he needs it the most - say after the defeat of his droid army at Geonosis when he needs to get the Geonosian Death Star schematics somewhere safe. Also, it would have been far better for the Jedi, the Republic and the Galaxy if of the warring master and apprentice, Dooku had won.
However, for all Lee's fine acting, poor dialogue and limited screentime serve to constrain such a potentially interesting villain.

One entirely irrelevant point: Syfo Dias is not Dooku, seeing as Dooku is called Dooku by Yoda who knew him personally and Tyrannous by Jango and Sidious then he doesn't have or need another name. However, since Syfo was killed before TPM ("I was under the impression he was killed before that") - is Syfo Plagueis? Just a question.

[xenduck]

The republic had to fall. And where it landed was just as certain.

Count dooku was a political idealist. A man who felt drastic measures needed to be taken. His means are difficult to justify sense we don’t know what his ends were. I have tried to portray dooku as a machiavellian, a man who knows that talk is cheap. So I look to machiavelli to tell me why the republic had to fall. In the prince, machiavelli speaks of the turning of the historical wheel, an unescapable cycle that people, and societies, frequently fall into.

“Virtue breeds quiet, quiet indolence, indolence disorder, disorder ruin; and similarly out of ruin order is born, from order virtue, out of this glory and good fortune.”

Dooku seems to be trusting in the hope that after the war; where the greedy and squabbling will be purged, peace and prosperity will return. Palpatine dramatically understates the problem when he says that “the republic is not what it once was.”the republic, based on the esteem of the jedi, was once a golden beacon of freedom and equality, now it is little more than a gilded veneer of its former glory and good fortune. History is fraught with idealistic governments that failed to achieve their aim, and wound up the worse off for clinging to their illusions.

Disillusioned by his own society, Jonathan Swift writes in gulliver’s travels “That laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding and eluding them. I observe among you some lines of an institution, which in its original might have been tolerable; but these half erased, and the rest wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions.”

In the republic, Plato expounds on what he sees as four imperfect societies; timarchy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny. The man who lives in a democracy “reckons his way of living is pleasant, free and happy... who believes in liberty and equality.” but democracy is flawed in that liberty is its objective yet “an excessive desire for liberty at the expense of everything else is what undermines democracy and leads to the demand for tyranny... a democratic society in its thirst for liberty may fall under the influence of bad leaders.”

As I see it, the republic was bound to fall, palpatine was an opportunist. The sith had been patiently waiting for the time when the republic was weak from corruption. They knew that time would inevitably come. Jared Diamond says in guns, germs and steel, that “it remains an open question how wide and lasting the effects of idiosyncratic individuals on history really are.”

if we can know anything about the galaxy based on the Earth, then with or without the sith the republic was doomed, but, like the phoenix, it was bound to rise again.

The republic, in an attempt to preserve all it once stood for, destroyed itself. In a clockwork orange, Anthony Burgess sums up the issue succinctly by writing,

“They will sell liberty for a quieter life.”

[xenduck]

the unconscious star wars

PART 1:

this just in. i am currently reading man and his symbols, a collection of works by jungian psychologists, collected, edited and introduced by jung himself. in it, Dr. joseph henderson writes about the archetypal myths, the template that virtually all cultures seem to follow in their hero myths. (he includes cambell's work).
while reading it, i couldnt believe how it fit perfectly with anakin's story in the PT and partially into the OT. here are a few excerts:

"over and over again one hears a tale describing a hero's miraculous but humble birth, his early proof of superhuman strength, his rapid rise to prominence or power, his triumphant struggle with the forces of evil, his fallibility to the sin of pride, and his fall through betrayal or a "heroic" sacrifice that ends in his death."

anakin had a 'miraculous' and humble birth. luke had to be special to 'normal' people, but anakin needed to be special among jedi, that was what made the midichlorians important, and they helped to validate his immaculate conception.
he quickly is identified as a unique individual, and this uniqueness is what lead to his down fall through excessive pride. henderson goes on to relate the "four distinct cycles in the evolution of the hero myth" as set forth by Dr. radin. they are: trickster, hare, red horn, and twin cycles.

"red horn, the third of this series of hero figures,... he meets the requirements of an archetypal hero by passing such tests as winning a race and by proving his ability in battle."

surely the comparison to anakin is plain. anakin's abilities are first demonstrated by his winning of the pod race, and then later by his martial valour in the battle of naboo and genossis.

if the PT is the red horn cycle, then it is natural that the OT would be the twin cycle. again, the comparison is clear. henderson (by way of radin) had this to say about the twins, "the twins...orginally united in the mother's womb, they were forced apart at birth. yet they belong together, and it is necessary-though exceedingly difficult-to reunite them." the twins are indeed seperated at birth in ep III and it takes three more movies to reunite them as twins.

finally, in ep VI we see, as vader might put it, 'that the red horn cycle is now complete.' henderson says, "in both the red horn cycle and that of the twins, we see the theme of sacrafice or death of the hero as a necssary cure for hybris, the pride that has over-reached itself."

anakin fufills both versions of the archetypal myth. as anakin, he is 'betrayed' by obi-wan and the council, then 'dies' for his over-confidence. vader makes a heroic sacrafice, resulting in his demise, when he saves his son from the emperor. this act of redemption gains him a spot beside yoda and ben. anakin had been consumed by the darkside, but eventually he triumphs over his inner demons. as jung, speaking both mythicaly and metaphoricaly, says in the frist chapter, "the hero, although he has been devoured by a monster, appears again in a miraculous way, having overcome whatever monster it was that swallowed him."

[xenduck]

the unconscious star wars

PART 2:
*xenduck nods to the council* i have no doubt that vwing's post of the rolling stones article was the will of the force. when i read the interview, lucas provided me beyond my fondest hopes with justification for my comaprisons with the jungian archetypal hero. in the article lucas says,

"Before I became a film major, I was very heavily into social science, I had done a lot of sociology, anthropology, and I was playing in what I call social psychology, which is sort of an offshoot of anthropology/sociology-looking at a culture as a living organism, why it does what it does."

hmmm. jung was the prominent cultural psychologist of the last half-century, in that same time period lucas was studing cultural psychology. it is no great leap to imagine that lucas was very much aware of cambell's and jung's studies of the hero myths. this became more evident in a later paragraph from the interview,

"I had also done a study on, I don't know what you call it, I call it the fairy tale or the myth."

no one can say without a doubt that lucas was making the story up as he went. lucas was working from an ancient template, anakin follows the hero archetype even better than luke. it is concievable that lucas had a clear idea of anakin's story back in '77.
like other great writers of the past, lucas was consciously tapping into the collective unconscious. how else do you explain the star wars phenomenon?

This post has been edited by xenduck: 14 June 2005 - 07:41 PM

[xenduck]

i did some research and came up with a few more names of some signifigance. a couple of the name backgrounds are inconclusive and are only vague extrapolations. but hey, at least i learned somthn!


palpatine: at first i thought the name refered to the word 'palpable', but i dont think that really fits. more likely, it is derived from 'palatine'. as in the most important of seven hills around which rome was founded. palatine is where we get our word palace, indeed, it was the site of many imperial palaces, including ones built by tiberius, nero, domitian, and i think augustus. palatine later become a title for various executives, including sovereign feudal lords.

mace: a mace is a well known weapon (usually blunt). but is also can be a type of scepter, a staff displayed as a sign of authority in a legislative body. this suites mace windu since he is clearly the first or second highest 'ranking' jedi on the council.

plo koon: in the book making of ep I, creature design effects supervisor nick dudman is quoted as saying. "I decided to call one of the jedi plonkoon, becuase we called my son that during the first year of his life...george crossed out the 'n' and plo koon was born!"

shaak-ti: in hinduism, a shakti is a female incarnation of divine power. shakti is a mother goddess, the creator of the universe. the shakti are the polar opposites of the 'male-concrete' divine powers. they are the abstract element of the cosmos. the term shakti can be used to refer to the spiritual partner a spiritual leader. a relationship often without the emotional/sexual aspects of marriage (this idea suits the jedi code).

sebulba: this is a stretch, but the name sounds like xibalba (SHEE-BAL-BAH), the name of the mayan underworld. according to some accounts, xiabalba is filled with wierd, impish creatures...like dugs?

ki-adi-mundi: in star wars and philosophy, walt (ritoku) robinson writes, "one jedi master is named 'ki-adi-mundi', which seems to be inspired by the name 'aikido'." another stretch, but no one can deny the martial qualities of the jedi nor the spiritual connotations of the martial arts.

well, i hope everyone is enjoying this topic as much as me. is it perhaps too dull or tedious? let me know what you think!

This post has been edited by xenduck: 18 June 2005 - 01:30 PM