knightess

"etymologynerd" is at it again and this time i do feel i have to say something. the disability advocates have it covered on addressing the impact, but there's also a serious problem with the linguistics.

in a video shared on may 16, adam aleksic begins by saying: "i think we have to accept the fact that the 'r-word' [retard/retarded] is permanently coming back and it's functionally changed meanings to no longer directly refer to disabled people."

this first sentence alone betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of language change in several points.

this word never went away. what we're seeing now is an attempt at re-normalization by people who sense that they will not be socially punished by openly using this term.

we actually don't have to "accept" its return to mainstream use. for decades, disability advocates have worked to inform the public of the harm caused by casual use of this term. the harm has not disappeared, and neither will this advocacy and its impacts.

now i'm just mad. how tf does it NOT refer to disabled people? the entire point of a pejorative term is that it negatively invokes comparison to a person, group, etc. the assertion that the r-word has changed meanings is categorically false. at most, its primary context has changed from clinical to casually pejorative, but the insult fundamentally rests upon the original reference.

he goes on to refer to the "euphemism treadmill," another concept he misrepresents by extending the metaphor to say that terms which have been sufficiently distanced from their original reference are no longer pejorative. to quote: "...once we sufficiently distance a word from its historical usage, it stops taking on the same offensive power and just becomes colloquial instead."

which... what? what the fuck is he talking about? the words he uses as examples – idiot, imbecile, and moron – are definitely still offensive, if perhaps less impactful. "just becomes colloquial instead" is a nonsense phrase. are offensive words not colloquial? the only english word that comes to mind as having changed so much in definition as to no longer be offensive is "nice," which has been shifting in meaning for more than 700 years and was never a weaponized clinical term.

he ends by saying, "it is undeniably true that the people who are afraid to say the r-word right now are going to get old and die out, while younger generations keep saying it with no knowledge of where it came from." again, fundamentally misunderstanding language change in society over time. it rests on the assumption that we're all going to start or re-start using this slur and never have a conversation about its harms, which just completely ignores both the abovementioned disability advocacy and the fact that people tell each other not to use offensive words. you think i'm just not gonna teach my kids that using slurs is bad??

the whole video is devoid of both empathy and an understanding of long-term semantic change.

A lot of stuff that's considered canon in star wars is actually kind of ascended fanon. Like, if you really dig into it, it's remarkable how much of the lightsaber-juggling, movie-retreading atmosphere of pop culture/the expanded universe Lucas incorporated into the prequel trilogy, likely without realising.

Example: Strictly according to the original trilogy, does Master Yoda possess a lightsaber? I would say no. It is significant that in a film, where every shot is deliberately planned, we never see a lightsaber in relation to Yoda, and the one time he acknowledges Luke's it is dismissively; "Your weapons, you will not need them." By implication, Yoda is a Buddha to Obi-Wan's warrior monk. Yoda is a teacher and a mystic, but he is not a warrior.

Force lightning is another of these things. You go back to the original trilogy, and there's a sense that the Force and what you can do with it is very personalised. Nobody but Palpatine throws lightning, not even his apprentice, and in turn nobody but Vader chokes people to death. Luke does learn the mind trick introduced by Obi-Wan, but that's part and parcel with Luke's growth into a compassionate warrior-philosopher who tries to solve conflicts nonviolently. Force Choke is not 'a dark side force power', it is Vader's power, a manifestation of his crushing authority and smothering presence.

Likewise, Force Lightning is not 'a dark side power', and it is not generic lightning. It is the Emperor's power, characteristic of his cruelty, his sadistic delight in corrupting and hurting other people. We can see this in how it is used. Force Lightning does not split steel or blast people off their feet or blow things up, like a real bolt of lightning - it transfixes Luke in agony, sends him reeling to the floor with torturous pain until he screams for his father's help.

Sci-fi is focused on what it would mean for a setting if physics were different or a new continent was discovered or some other new power were introduced to the world and made generally available; "Good sci-fi predicts the car and great sci-fi predicts the traffic jam". There is something like amorality in sci-fi working out the consequences that are likely, logical, or possible, and one of those is often mass interest and mass production.

Whereas fantasy is focused on what it reveals about a character to have new power, and so we see that the Emperor uses the Force to fry people, whereas Obi-Wan uses the Force to avoid a fight with stormtroopers, telling us what kind of people they are. Fantasy is more focused on the moral aspect of how people choose to act, and because the specific powers are statements about a specific person, they can't be made on an assembly line and rolled out to everyone.

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because the specific powers are statements about a specific person, they can't be made on an assembly line and rolled out to everyone.

Finally!

Someone has put it in to words!

I always felt there was something off about the way the jedi where written in the prequels, but I couldn't quiet put my finger on it

Just that it felt bad and wrong

This is it

The jedi Temple in the prequels is basically just a giant conveyor belt

"...in turn nobody but Vader chokes people to death..."

This is strictly true, but we do see one person other than Vader use the force to choke someone: Luke, when he enters Jabba's palace and semi-throttles the guards to get through to Bib Fortuna.

Now, per the text of the films, Luke hasn't ever seen Vader choke anyone like that. He didn't learn it from his dad. But at the start of Return of the Jedi, he is in a rather ambiguous place, throwing himself fully into his idea of what a Jedi Knight should be and kind of dancing on the edge of the Dark Side of the Force because of it. He's being reckless and full of himself, making decisions on everyone's behalf and generally wanting for the kind of grounding Yoda and indeed Han previously provided.

And using the Force to bully his way past an obstacle like this is very pragmatic. He's not killing the Gamorans, he's simply fending them off as expediently as possible (bearing in mind that their hog-like coding suggests creatures it is not possible to hold a coherent argument with). It's effective and it's quick. Which as we all know is not really a great adjective to be using when it comes to the Force.

So we get this moment when we see Luke acting like a light-weight version of Vader. He's even framed that way, sweeping into the building with his cloak billowing. Only, of course, we also know it's in a good cause, that this is the guy we've been following since the start, that he's there to rescue his friends. So perhaps we should give him a pass. After all, isn't it extremely urgent, now the more subtle plans have failed, to extract everyone from peril? Isn't it good to take the expedient path, just this once . . . ?

Yeah. No. Remember where this film goes, where Luke ends up, what he has to actually do to prove himself a Jedi. There are no good and easy paths, and it's a really bad sign if somebody starts using the Force in the way Vader does, regardless of their reasons.

he's come so far 🥹

I turned them into individual transparent pngs if anyone wants those premade!

Various K/S pins, 1970s-80s