We all wound up on Tatooine...
today's icon
Livejournal is doing weird things I don't understand! I can't make an lj-cut! Arrgh!
I am so confused.
Hey, Erin. What kind of week has it been?
Whoa. LJ is being so weird.
Anyway, I don't have much new to say this week. Still stressed, still super-busy, still can't wait until break which seems to be taking it's sweet time coming. I did finally finish Child of the Holy Grail, the last in Rosalind Miles's Horrible Guenevere Trilogy, the series that made me revise my notion that I like all Arthurian literature. The only character I liked in this particular book was Galahad, and he was dead halfway through. And Ros for reasons of her own decided to rewrite the WHOLE ENDING OF ARTHURIAN LEGEND. I mean, Arthur still dies and all, but Guenevere does not join a nunnery and die but instead becomes High Queen of Britain and has babies with Lancelot even though she's like FIFTY. Somebody explain this to me. Somebody explain to me how this series is classified as historical fiction. Because-- bullshit. Marion Zimmer Bradley did more research than you, Rosalind Miles, and was more accurate, and she's still fantasy. But because you wrote books set in Tudor England you get all your books classified as historical fiction, even this crap. Which might lead some poor ususpecting person to think that your crap books are good. Which besmirches the whole reputation of Arthurian legend. Almost all of this subgenre is located in the fantasy section. And the one series that breaks through into the "legit lit" section-- the one series-- is this series? Why, of all books, these books? WHY?
I have now started Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife which, if not better literature, at least is more entertaining and does not make me want to stab myself in the brain with a fork. I'll probably talk more about it next time, so I'm also saving my new Pride and Prejudice icons for then. I have some new Star Wars icons I'm putting at the end of this entry.
Oh! I also saw The Vagina Monologues here last night, and I'm really proud of all my many friends who were in it. It's a really good show and pretty awesome, but all the same it takes more guts than I have to actually be in it. So kudos to all those people. Because I know the directors, I got to work the house lights last night! It made me feel really powerful-- I made it dark when the show started, and light for intermission, and light at the end of the show. And I did it right every time. Go me! The show went really well-- it was at least as good as last year.
I found this in an old study abroad magazine I was going through looking for articles to cut out as props for Search for Signs. The article is about Tunisia, and this particular section is about how they shot some Star Wars there.
"George Lucas recognized the charms of southern Tunisia back in the 1970s when he filmed parts of the original Star Wars movie here. He used the village of Matmata for the site of Luke Skywalker's home planet. This was idea, as the inhabitants had created a lunar landscape by building their dwellings directly down into the ground. From a distance, only the occasional pock marks of an open courtyard mark the landscape. [...] Lucas was sufficiently taken with the area that he returned for the filming of A Phantom Menace [sic] in the late 1990s. We visited the site of Annakin [sic] Skywalker's home planet at Ksar Haddada (a multi-lingual sign outside the ksar details the filming), another other-worldly landscape; this time a collection of humped multi-storeyed adobe-like dwellings."
Yes. That's right. The "charms of southern Tunisia." I know.
Dear Old Study Abroad Magazine, George Lucas did not choose this location for its charm. Lucas chose this place because it's a desolate wasteland. It's Tatooine. "If there's a bright center of the universe, you're on the planet it's farthest from." It's the miserable desert planet everybody wants to get the hell off of, but everybody unfortunately keeps coming back to. "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." Luke's aunt and uncle are moisture farmers. They have to farm moisture. This does not sound like a charming place. I applaud your efforts to make it sound so, but no. And Anakin Skywalker's home in The Phantom Menace is that same planet, ruled by crime lords and boasting a good market in slaves. Lucas did not return to Tunisia because he was "taken with" it. He returned because it made a good desolate wasteland. Love, Erin.
And now, not behind a cut because I can't make one, icons.
These pictures reminded me of each other.
The text is from the cheesy "tone poem" add campaign for TPM.