The most revolutionary character in the Force Awakens....

While the character of Rey, played to perfection by Daisy Ridley, is an important step forward in terms of female representation in the Star Wars universe, aside from her gender, she is actually rather traditional in the KIND of character that she is: she is our chosen one, our Luke Skywalker,  the ordinary person who discovers that they were destined for greatness all along. Even her reluctance to embrace her destiny is part of a formula straight out of Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces.
There has been a recent trend among children's films (and, ultimately, that's what Star Wars is at its heart) to reject this kind of 'chosen one' narrative.

One of the best things about The Force Awakens was the way that it gave us all the familiar elements of the original trilogy while also introducing new elements. I contend that, in addition to Rey's more traditional epic hero, the film also gives us an example of this new kind of 'not-so-chosen-one' hero. I am, of course, talking about Finn. He is unique among the heroes in Star Wars films because of one simple fact: he's not particularly good at anything.

When we first meet Luke Skywalker, he is already an excellent pilot strong in the force; when we first meet Han Solo, he is a skilled smuggler and pilot who isn't afraid to shoot first and ask questions later (sorry, GL, Han shot first).  Sure, he could be cocky and reckless but, more often than not, it seems to work out in his favor. Even Leia is a tenacious, strong-willed leader who is just as good in a fight as her male companions.

When we first meet Finn, he is a stormtrooper but a completely ineffective one (granted, he's only ineffective because of his unwillingness to slaughter unarmed villagers.... still...). Later, when he frees Poe Dameron, he does so not out of bravery or moral principle but because of the simple reason that he needs a pilot and could not escape on his own.  When he first encounters Rey, he begins to rescue her from attackers before he realizes that she is a far more competent combatant than he is; shortly after this, she is successfully able to overtake him. He isn't particularly brave and his more heroic actions seem to be motivated by his fondness for Rey--- even then, his actions fall short: by the time he and Han show up she has already managed to rescue herself.  He wields a lightsaber twice in the film and loses both times (even whiny little Luke Skywalker managed to be 1-2 in lightsaber match-ups).

Of all the characters in the film, he is the one who doesn't seem to have a destiny set before him; it is up to him to figure out what his journey will be.

Happy 25th Anniversary Nevermind!

For a long time, my favorite Nirvana album was actually Unplugged in New York; I felt that, even more than their final album In Utero, it represented 'What-Could-Have-Been'.  There was a time in my generation that it felt like Nirvana might be our Beatles--- Unplugged in New York could be seen as their Rubber Soul in that sense.  It showed the beauty of what lay beneath the noise and distortion. However, over the years, Nevermind has claimed the mantle of, not only the best Nirvana album, but also the most culturally significant.

I would love to say that I was an early adopter, that I was one of the cool kids who was immediately transformed the first time they heard the opening chords of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" but I was not.  My first reaction when I saw the video on MTV one afternoon was "What the fuck is this shit?  What's that guy saying?  He can't sing. He can't play guitar. Did he just say albino? Teen Spirit? Like the Deodorant? (years later, I would learn that was, in fact, the origin of the title)."  Let me tell you a little something about 14-year-old me.  A year earlier, his favorite music was Phil Collins and Genesis. He had only recently adopted hard rock as his preferred genre of music.  His favorite bands? Guns N' Roses and Def Leppard.  Like most hard rock fans at the time, I didn't quite know what to make of Nirvana.

Here's the thing though:  it didn't matter what those hard rock fans thought of Nirvana.  They didn't have to appeal to us because they appealed to everyone else.  A year later, EVERYONE loved Nirvana--- the cheerleaders who were primarily into Paul Abdul and MC Hammer, the football players who would blast Garth Brooks from their pickup trucks at the homecoming games, the metalheads who wore  Slayer and Megadeth t-shirts, kids who had never really even cared about music before; Nirvana was the great equalizer.  Throughout the 80s, aside from mainstream pop, hair metal had become the most popular and profitable genre within the music industry.  By the early 90s, it had also become the most boring and predictable.  What Nirvana managed to do was to show people that there WAS another option out there; alternative rock (AKA college rock, AKA underground rock, AKA modern rock) had been around since, at least the 80's, but Nirvana finally broke it into the mainstream.

Ultimately, Pearl Jam would prove to be more popular (in terms of record sales at least) but, still, Nirvana was the band the  busted the door wide open for all those 'Alternative' acts.  It represented a shift in the culture as well; a lot of those clean cut football players from freshman year had grown their hair long and were playing guitar by the time they were seniors.  Preppy cheerleaders started wearing flannel and dying their hair.  It wasn't ONLY Nirvana--- but that was certainly the band at the center of the storm.

Lastly, it is just a great album; it is simply Kurt Cobain's best batch of songs. Many critics have tried to say the album was 'too polished' but, in part, that's probably what helped make it accessible to so many people.   And, at the end of the day, isn't that what makes a work of popular music great? Its ability to appeal to the largest demographic possible? The critics and the general populace, the jocks and the nerds, the metalheads and the punk rockers, the cheerleaders and the stoners?

Here's the video for Smells Like Teen Spirit