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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 *
* Direct comments and questions to: *
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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?
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