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"See
that right there-see that fear in your eyes! That's
what it's all about!" Alas… bedeviled
chimeras from the dark side. Nebulous glimpses
into the abyss of a doom laden future whose dire
destiny peeks its horrid face out in the form
of an ejaculatory utterance that blares violently
through the slim lining of a fissure. The utterance
belongs to Bishop in Ernest Dickerson's epic film
Juice as he taunts his friend with the impendent
death that awaits him down the menacing barrel
of a handgun. The fissure extends itself beyond
the movie screen. It is a quaking gorge laid atop
the existential landscape that is the life of
our dearly departed Tupac Shakur. And in the awry
tonalities that spawned from its abysmal base,
we bare witness to a flash of potent horror diffracted
through the aperture of genius that Pac bequeathed
us via his varied career as rapper, actor and
revolutionary. His violent proclamation, made
thru the character Bishop, seemed to personify
the dualistic mentality that would plague his
personal life and haunt his career. Many say that
he went on to live out the allegory of Bishop's
character through his real life character of Tupac,
the rapper. A surface perusal of the final destinations
of both Tupac and Bishop (and the crime scenes
surrounding their eventual deaths) lends much
credibility to this theory. Both went out in a
blaze of bullets and glory with multi-layered
gang warfare left in the periphery of their murders
along with the corpses of their close friends
not far behind. Whether or not art imitates life
is an entirely different debate. But one thing
we can almost be sure of, the words that came
forth from Tupac-ahem, Bishop's mouth in big screens
across America in 1992 were clearly a warning…
of things to come.
Now flash with me if you will, to a long time
ago in a galaxy far, far away… a hopeful
young aspirant, a child of prophecy destined for
greatness sets out to approach the throne of Self
Mastery. He is an illumined one haunted by darkness;
enlightenment forecasted in his near future with
the grim shadows of death and fear, anger and
hatred looming just as closely in his past, clouding
his present. Such is the troubled nature of his
path. Hs situation is unstable, his future unknowable.
Unless of course you're George Lucas and you know
that Anakin Skywalker is bound to one day become
Darth Vader, the quintessential villain of all
villains. But it doesn't take an avid Star Wars
fan to know that Anakin has a strong tinge of
the dark side in him. We can flash to Episode
II and witness his overly cocky manner or perhaps
that brash slaying of the Sand People in response
to the death of his mother, for instance, as tell-tale
signs of a path with great potential to go askew.
(Note to the young Jedi: that lack of humility
and desperate need for control might cause you
to trip up on your karmic shoelaces one day buddy.)
Well in George Lucas' Episode III- Revenge of
the Sith, everything comes to a helm as all of
the intricate dramas laced into the epic Star
Wars series finally come full circle. Anakin's
crackling fissure, and the entire Star War's galaxy
for that matter, gives way to a horrific abyss
and the latent evil beneath unveils its morose,
ugly head. The hints of things to come, wars and
rumors of wars, brother pit against brother-they're
all present baby in fullullullullullullullull
effect!
The third leg of the saga's first half (Episode
III is actually a prequel to the first Star Wars
which debuted in the 70's) starts off with a more
matured Anakin who, despite his now doubled power,
is still in the shadows of his mentor Obi Wan
Kenobi. Looming in the periphery of the main plot
of impendent dark side forces lead by separatists
Count Dooku (whose scrappin' skills have remained
nearly impeccable for this episode), General Grevious,
and the newly corrupted Chancellor Palpatine (who
has pulled a G-Unit-esque coup of sorts dubbing
himself Emperor with plans to instate a Galactic
Empire), is the equally ominous subplot which
consists of threatening portents visiting Anakin's
dreams. The nightmares hold ill forecast for the
future of Anakin's now wife and baby-mama-to-be,
the rightly portly Natalie Portman. Long story
short, Anakin is accosted by the proverbial internal
battle of "morals", the age-old right
or wrong, good vs. evil thing. On the one hand,
he can lay his faith in the hands of the cosmos
and let nature have its way (which may very well
include the fatal fruition of his nightmares and
the sealing of his wife's fate to death during
childbirth), or he can opt out of the vulnerability
of his present situation by cutting a deal with
the devil… err the "dark" side
as the forces of evil are dubbed in Lucas' mythology.
Enter Chancellor Palpatine, the all seeing and
knowing, the malicious embodiment of the Luciferian
principle in the Star Wars saga.
For the sake of Lucas' mythology, the Chancellor
serves as the inverse of Morpheus beckoning Anakin's
Neo back into the Matrix as it were. All he has
to do is agree to acquiesce to the "dark"
side of hatred, anger and control, rather than
continue to submit to the virtues of humility
and hope that design the path upon which he already
walks. This is where the schism of dark and light
play upon the senses of young Anakin and pull
him into a cataclysmic drama to which we all get
the privilege of baring witness. Remember that
Anakin that, as a teenager slaughtered the Sand
People in supposed retribution for his mother's
death? Recall that furiously proud young warrior
whose willful ambitions as a rida-ahem, jedi,
even Yoda, Obi Wan and Mace Windu combined found
nearly impossible to assuage only one episode
ago. Well he ain't gone nowhere and with his powers
doubled and the stakes of his life potential and
problems raised to match, he is just as, if not
more hell bent on being the man in control than
ever before. When I look at it this way, I find
it hard to imagine Anakin taking anything but
the blue pill. He eventually goes for the proverbial
okie doke and we finally get to witness the antecedent
storyline that played out and lead us to the circumstances
of Episode 4, which is actually the first episode
of the first trilogy (remember this is a prequel-do
the math people, the math!)
And I must say, while the writing for all of the
episodes has been a tad antiquated Disney for
my taste (I mean I don't know if Lucas was intentionally
trying to remain consistent with the currents
of cool prevalent some 20 to 2000 years ago, but
the characters' dialogue of the new series have
been totally incongruent with anything resembling
all of the cynical virtuosity and savvy sarcasm
of modern day panache… good sci-fi with bad
writing is kinda like a cinematic representation
of an 89 Civic sittin' on 24 inch chrome…
feel me); but the experience of watching the saga
unfold like you knew it would, bearing witness
to the filling in of all the detail-well that
was just swell guy!
Yet at the same time there was something hauntingly
eerie about watching the unfolding of something
you knew would happen but were disheartened see.
Something like ancient prophecy you were indoctrinated
with in Sunday school lessons all through childhood
and then boomeranged back into your present over
a live CNN broadcast. Yeah, whoever knew we would
live to see the world crumble in front of our
eyes, the biblical "wars and rumors of wars",
the drowning of a prominent American city, or
the fall of the towers most symbolic of Western
imperialism left as smoldering personifications
of (sci-fi author) Samuel Delaney's novel of the
same name. But such is the nature of the times
we live in. I'm thinking of a Saul Williams' poem,
"Coded Language", where he says something
to the effect that now is a time when we are experiencing
"the lessened distance between thought patterns
and their secular manifestations". Indeed.
The metaphors and symbolism in this movie are
so blaringly obvious and pertinent to today's
reality that it's almost trite. (Makes you wanna
challenge yourself and expand that sci-fi collection
quick-hint hint…) There's a scene where the
"dark" side, spearheaded by Chancellor
Palpatine has besieged the Galactic Senate and
he is addressing them, issuing portentous edicts
against any and all defectors from the newly empire.
I had a group of friends who saw the movie before
me and as they beheld this scene they all vomited
one single chorus in unison: "George Bush!"
With allusions that obvious you can guess where
this movie landed the other George-Lucas. Yup,
right there on the "black" list with
Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, (the other)
Michael Moore and all the other white "anti-pats".
Lucas' far left leanings and precise mythological
and societal referencing come as little surprise
as the guy has been rumored as having noted "conspiracy"
theorist, err, researcher rather, Jordan Maxwell
as a friend.
But I digress, I was discussing Suge Knight and
Darth Vader-I mean Tupac and Anakin, innocence
lost and the wilting of gregarious grapes into
the wretched raisins of wrath. As Anakin slowly
acquiesces to the dark side, we bear witness to
the reverse alchemy of good's transmutation into
evil. It was truly a harrowing visage to behold
as that poor young man allowed himself to give
way to one reign of the dark side, and then another,
and then yet another. It was as surreal as watching
the life of our dearly departed Tupac unfold before
us as he was transmogrified from brilliant African
warrior into lost confused thug nigger. I never
imagined in my wildest of fantasy that Pac would
exit from us as suddenly as he did. Bereft of
a final farewell or any semblance of closure,
he just vanished as absolutely as the incessant
declarations of impendent doom that he made leading
up to his actual death. And yet, the blaring warning
signs were there the whole time. He was a warning
sign. A blaring alarm of a testimonial to the
entire human community and most specifically to
his particular family of blacks and Americans
to wake the hell up because Armageddon wasn't
on its way, the 2pacalypse was now! Perhaps the
same ardent fury seared through Anakin and singed
any possibility of patience in the young man.
Maybe that's why "even [his] teachers couldn't
reach [him]". But in the end the blazing
arrow burns and withers into ashes before it ever
hits its target.
It seems that such is to be the case for many
a hopeful and promising young initiate. As Anakin's
self-absorbed passion turned itself negatively
inward upon himself, due to his desperate desire
for control (the nexus of his failure), we see
so many other fallen angels and misguided martyrs
reflected in the prism of his mythological downfall.
His passion literally eats him alive as we watch
him burned limb from limb and dwindled into the
mechanical robot of a peon that is to become Darth
Vader, underling of the diabolical Empire. His
example sits inside of the lens of Western cinema
as yet another allegorical aperture through which
we may more finely hone our vision of the real
life motifs and human symbols of our culture.
In the fledgling wings of his short lived flight
towards greatness, and the eventual icarus-esque
singeing of those wings and descent into perdition,
so many heroes of earthen culture and myth can
be recalled. I saw Kerouac hemorrhaging to death
in a lonely hospital, Hendrix drowning in a puddle
of his own vomit (the perfect metaphor), Gibran
dissolved into hapless tears of humiliation in
front of a crowd of expectant admirers, Mishima's
slit bloody viscera and spewing guts erupted over
the defiant crowd at his public seppuku, Yeshua
Ben Joseph noosed to the infamous cruxifix, Holiday's
entropic frame swallowed nearly whole by the vacuum
of heroin addiction, Cobain's exploded skull,
Pier Pasolini's charred corpse, both Christopher
Wallace and Tupac's bullet riddled bodies bloodletting
the Western night. Depending on what spectrum
of the lens one looks through however, Annakin's
ultimate fate may make the aforementioned ancestors'
appear enviable. Hitler did, after all, begin
his career as a murderous tyrant, as an art student…
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