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*                                                            *
*                         CYBERSPACE                         *
*         A biweekly column on net culture appearing         *
*                in the Toronto Sunday Sun                   *
*                                                            *
* Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer                                  *
* Free for online distribution                               *
* All Rights Reserved                                        *
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I have a friend who went to see the new Star Wars picture on 
opening night. If /The Phantom Menace/ had been a better 
picture I might have been jealous. I ended up spending opening 
night in a jazz club in Chicago embarrassing myself.

My friend takes /Star Wars/ seriously. He made his own Boba 
Fett costume. He hates Ewoks on principle. The principle being 
Ewoks were nothing more than an obvious attempt by George Lucas 
to sell plushy toys to kids too young to understand the power 
of myth subtext stuff Joseph Campbell (see www.jcf.org) yapped 
about on PBS. Ewoks are Teletubbies with spears.

My friend, of course, hates the new Jar Jar Binks character. 
All true Star Wars fans hate Jar Jar, despite that the 
computer-animated character seems to be Lucas' pride and joy. 
Where Ewoks were an attempt to sell toys to kids, the Jar Jar 
creature (a member of the amphibian "Gungan" race) seems more 
of an attempt to sell Industrial Light and Magic's technology 
to other film makers. 

Each screen appearance of Jar Jar screams "Planning a Sci Fi 
film or corporate video? We at ILM can do this and more to make 
your next project a success!"

All the hype built up by netizens prior to /The Phantom 
Menace/'s release seems to be channeled post-release into an 
all-out effort to vilify Jar Jar. It's like the outrage the 
English heaped on Queen Elizabeth following the death of 
Princess Di.

The net hasn't seen such a massive outburst of vituperation 
since the days of the Green Card Lawyers (the famous duo who 
terrorized netizens with their email spams back in 1994).

Netizens are bringing to bear the full and mighty power of the 
Internet to denounce and devise the demise of the miserable 
Gungan. Someone has started an anti-Jar Jar web ring. 

A good jumping off point for the web ring is the Die Jar Jar 
Binks, Die page at 
www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Heights/5927/jarjar.html. You'll 
notice a lot of colourful and violent anti-Jar Jar imagery at 
this site. Actually, pretty much every anti-Jar Jar site has 
images of the Gungan being blasted, hacked, burned, hung, run 
over by banthas, nailed in the proper Roman fashion to beams of 
wood, and/or in the cross hairs of a rifle scope. The Die Jar 
Jar page features a rather excellent graphic of Binks carved up 
like an Easter ham. 

Unlike the days when netizens used the ASCII-based net.news to 
gripe about the Green Card Lawyers, netizens are employing some 
sophisticated technology to vent their frustrations over Lucas' 
fumble. Photo editors, MP3 sounds files, and interactive 
Shockwave animations are being used to spread the message of 
Gungan hate.

You'll find an MP3 song at www.getbot.com/jarjar titled, 
predictably, "Jar Jar Must Die". It's worth a cheap laugh and 
it's, mercifully, less than two minutes long.

The pages at www.diediediejarjar.com and www.jarjarsucks.com 
feature several text-based and multi-media archives of anti-Jar 
Jar material. The Jar Jar Sucks page tries to give the pro-Jar 
Jar camp some equal time, however. Ah, balance. One Jar Jar 
lover notes he hated Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio but that's no 
reason to get all bent out of shape.

Probably the ultimate expression of hate for the Gungan can be 
found at the Jar Jar Torture Engine
(www.hecklers.com/jarjartorture/index.html). 

Using several exquisite tortures, based on Star Wars technology, 
you can punish Jar Jar for ruining the film two generations
of techno-geeks have lived for.

There, feel better now?

    Source: geocities.com/lapetitelesson/cs/text

               ( geocities.com/lapetitelesson/cs)                   ( geocities.com/lapetitelesson)