Resistance is Futile

Despite being really, REALLY excited for it, it took me over a week to get through The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. I would watch an episode, then stop, then a couple days would go by, then I might get through one or two. It took me a little bit to realize why I was having such an issue.

I loved seeing that kind of puppetry again. I loved the background details.

One of my favorite bits was the book eating library dude.

I loved how so much is done with so little. Small or no movements convey really big ideas and emotions. It is an art of storytelling, and I loved seeing it.

But I finally figured out what was bothering me. The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance is a ten episode walk towards genocide. All the Gelflings die. They are systematically exterminated by the Skeksis. In The Dark Crystal (1982) there are only two Gelflings left- Jen and Kira. So Age of Resistance, with its hopeful tone, and gathering of the clans to resist the evil Skeksis, is pointless. We know they fail. We know their stories all end. We know darkness spreads across the land, and nothing stops it. No one can stop it.

So that's why I could not binge all the episodes in a single day or weekend. That is why I kept starting and stopping. I knew how this ended and I had no desire to watch genocide in slow motion. The show does its best to totally ignore this fact. The final episode ends on a hopeful note, with the Gelflings who have finally come together defeating the Skeksis, finding the shard of the crystal that will restore Thra, and celebrating. Aughra, the living symbol of Thra comes back to life, in a shining example of how righteous their cause is. How assured their success, their triumph over the Skeksis' evil.

But it is all a lie.

I love that a whole new group of people, families and children, are experiencing the magic of The Dark Crystal through this show, but I wonder what their reaction is or will be once they move from Age of Resistance to The Dark Crystal and realize they've been betrayed. That it was all for nothing. That the Gelflings and Podlings that helped them all died. That the very planet they lived on died. That almost all knowledge of their culture, and customs, died with them.

When Rogue One (2016) came out I was not super excited, mainly because I did not understand why we needed that story. We already knew how it ended, so I didn't get it. The movie is beautifully shot, and some of the characters we meet are great, and different, but not only did we not need the story because we already know how it ends, but I did not need to spend two hours and thirteen minutes getting to know characters, only to watch them all die in the end. And frankly, I still do not understand why that does not bother more people.

Maybe the last few years have made me bitter and jaded. 

But to blame it all on the political situation of the last few years is naive and ignorant. The later half of the 20th century is defined by genocide, by seeing portions of the global population as less then, not human, not worth saving.

• Genocide in Cambodia 1975
• The Somali genocide 1987-1989
• The Bosnian genocide 1991-1995
• The Rwanda genocide 1994
• The Darfur genocide which began in 2003
• Genocide in Syria 2011
• Genocide against Yazidi people in 2014
• The Rohingya Genocide in 2015

It is not a bug it is a feature.

And the sad truth is, I'm pretty sure I'm missing some. In the United States we don't seem to care when people are decimated, destroyed, around the globe. These events get mentioned after the fact, barely reported in the news. Interesting if someone makes a movie for an American actor but generally not something that registers.

But these horrific actions no longer just occur across the globe, in spaces that the US can ignore. Actually, that's not true. Despite the hashtag activism, in the Untied States there are still children kept in cages. These numbers are not doing down with public awareness, they're going up. Children are dying. People are denied basic human needs. The conditions are worsening. Almost as if the public scrutiny and disgust has no effect. 

The government is sending people to their deaths.

Even if these children survive, they will suffer a lifetime of trauma because of these experiences.

In 2019 we're having to argue, actually argue, that Nazis and white supremacists are bad. Not a side that needs to be heard, not a differing viewpoint, BAD. EVIL. HATEFUL. Dangerous. Hate crimes are on the rise. 

Citizens, particularly young, Black men, are killed by the state, by police, in what should be an alarming manner. 

Newspapers report on these stories. Some sections of the government hold hearings. And none of it seems to matter. It all keeps moving. The gears of the machine grind on.

I was six when I first saw The Dark Crystal and the Skeksis terrified me. I remember having nightmares. The Emperor's death scene was scary, but it was the Chamberlain that scared me the most. Maybe because he was active, maybe because that "mmmmm" was just creepy as hell. Maybe because he stalked Jen and Kira.

While the Skeksis terrified me they were not the thing that haunted me about the movie. There was always one thing that I never understood, was never able to grasp.
The Mystics are presented as kind, gentle folks. They raise Jen, they live in peace. While the deaths at the beginning now seems to clearly link the Mystics and Skeksis, my six year old mind missed that.

The thing that haunted me, the thing both six year old and forty-three year old me does not understand is how this could happen.

At the end of the movie the Skeksis and and the Mystics join, they become what they were meant to be, restored to their former selves.

And no justice is done.

The Skeksis decimated the planet. They exterminated the Gelflings. They committed atrocities, torture. They enslaved the Podlings. And nothing happens to them. The UrSkeks mention their arrogance, blaming it for their split, but they skip right over the atrocities. The murder. The torture. The Skeksis get a pass and that never sat right with me, then or now. 

When I finished Age of Resistance I rolled right into The Dark Crystal to see if it changed my mind. It did not. As a child I did not understand how a group can commit such horrific, monstrous things, and get away with it. As an adult I realize that this is how it works. If you have money, and power, and privilege, then you can rewrite the truth, act with impunity, and there is no one to stop you. There are no consequences. There is no reckoning, no justice.

I don't know if I see a way out anymore. I don't know how people have faith that it will work out. I teach, so I experience on a regular basis what the world can be, the promise of possibility. I just don't know if it's enough anymore. The machine is vast, the system is rigged, the mechanism of checks and balances seems broken.

I hope I'm wrong. 

But I worry that the general populace is watching people throw their bodies against the gears from a distance. That it's watching genocide in slow motion. That even IF there's a future where the atrocities stop, that there will be no justice. No consequences.