Firstly, check out the utterly brilliant VW advert, here, then come back, I'll be waiting.Great wasn't it? Makes you wonder what life was like before YouTube. Did you check out the Thor advert too? Go on, it's as good. Don't be too long as I do have something important to discuss.
Seen them both? Great, let's kick off.
"Do or do not. There is no try." Yoday imparted these words of wisdom to young Skywalker in Empire when he was trying to lift the X-wing out of the swamp.
I would argue that's an incredibly damaging piece of advice to give a jedi in training, or anyone for that matter. In fact, the opposite is MORE important.
Let's say to try and build a Death Star to, y'know, rule the galaxy or something. To bring order to it and make sure everyone pays their taxes, unlike those bloody cheapskates in Naboo. Then some punk-ass kid blows it up. After all those years of effort! The ingrate!
So what, you build another one. You don't sit there moaning that it's not worth the effort, you tried once and failed, no point doing it again. No, you get out of your isolation chamber, put on the bad-ass helmet and you BUILD ANOTHER.
Which also gets blown up. Some people.
Not everyone can DO, but everyone can TRY. And the more you try, the more likely it is you will DO.
The Star Wars legacy carried a dangerous message as it expanded. First, you had Luke, innocent farmboy who, by effort and TRYING, became the hero of the galaxy. then, as the series expanded, we discovered he was the Chosen One, it was his DESTINY, to be what he was. It's all down to those bloody midi-chlorians. You can try as hard as you like, but if your midi-chlorian count is too low, forget it. Better just get behind the bar at Mos Eisley and leave the hero stuff to the CHOSEN ONE.
I hate that. I'm a republican (not in the let's go shoot a moose kind of way, after all what has a moose every done to me? but in that, c'mon, this is the 21st Century and we've still got a monarchy? WTH?). It implies status is something your born with (like midi-chlorians), that role and most of all, POTENTIAL, is not defined by effort, by hard work or by perserverence, but by pure, stupid, blind luck. It's utterly passive and the thinking of a small child, that deep down they're a prince or princess and sooner or later their real parents will come and collect them and they'll have a perfect life in a palace with servants and everything with no effort at all. What's a shame is that a lot of grown ups and people who should know better believe that too. Lottery tickets are a grown up version of that wish-fulfillment.
Look at the kid. Does he give up? No, he tries and tries and eventually, gets the car to come ALIVE. What's funniest is the dad, thinking he did it by pressing the button. Yeah, as if.
1 comment:
Its like this anime I watch. The MC is this big screwup, things that should be easy he just can't do. He has to wrok 10 times harder than everyone else and despite being put down all the time he tries and tries until he gets it right. The inspiring thing was that despite being below average in the skill area all you need to do is work hard and you'll achieve your goal but then we find out 300 episodes later that he's the son of one of the greatest fighters ever so he was "destined" to be great.
So what about all the hard work? :/
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