I was sitting in the TV room of my aunt and uncle’s house down in Hingham. The room was in the basement and thus shrouded in shadows. My cousin was sitting there with me. We were watching Return of the Jedi. When Luke fell into the Rancor pit, I did what I always do.
I left the room.
It was too dang scary for wee Brad!
Over the years I grew brave enough to stay in the room during the scene. But with my eyes covered. (My lower frequencies are muted, so the rumbling of the Rancor was beyond my ken.) Slowly, I began to watch snatches of the scene. Slowly those snatches grew longer. Eventually, at an age that will remain anonymous, I was able to watch the whole thing. Now you may be thinking, “How many times did this Mr. Wimpy watch this dang movie?”
Dozens.
Before there was Harry Potter, there was Star Wars. The…enthusiasm with which these fandoms embrace their fictional world-of-choice makes sense when you realize “fan” is short for “fanatic”. I’d say Star Wars is my guilty pleasure but I’ll be damned if I’m guilty about it. I’ve been a librarian for too long to yuck someone else’s yum. And I expect like treatment in return. Why should sports fans be the only socially acceptable fanbase?
Through the 80s and 90s there were only three movies. Movies I watched over-and-over-and-over. It got to the point where It didn’t matter that there weren’t any closed captions, that I didn’t have any hearing aids. I knew those movies verbatim. The ADA was passed in 1990, and it took TV manufacturers and VHS tape producers to catch up and make with the captions. So I had to watch the movies repeatedly to overcome the lack of accessibility. It was most assuredly not hard work. But for those times when I needed a break from said work, I could pivot to more DHH-friendly mediums.
In the years leading up to 1999’s The Phantom Menace, Lucasfilm wasn’t sitting on its laurels. There were books and comics and video games and toys galore. Lucas was the one who pioneered the toy tie-in to movies. “Fox let Lucas pass up an additional $500,000 directing fee in return for keeping licensing and merchandising rights for himself — a decision that would cost the studio billions.” (Source)
While that idea was original, the Star Wars story isn’t. It’s the classic chosen one trope that goes back to a long time ago (but in this galaxy). In fact, Lucas is on record as saying that he took inspiration from Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress. He also mentioned Joseph Cambpell’s The Hero with 1000 Faces. Of course, I’ve watched the movie and read the book.
The movie was…interesting. It wasn’t the first Kurosawa movie I’d seen. I watched his take on Shakespeare’s King Lear in college. I loved that one. This one, though, wasn’t so much inspiration for the chosen one trope as it was for C-3PO and R2D2. The two comic relief characters in The Hidden Fortress did remind me of the Droids I was looking for.
The book, on the other hand, was phenomenal. It shows how the various myths of the ancients connect us. The hero’s journey is repeated again and again throughout history. The changes, the differences, are but societal trappings. They’re not important, they just dress the heroes, both immortal and mortal, in clothes their society will understand. This interconnectedness of the world sounds an awful lot like The Force, doesn’t it? As Obi-wan says: “It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.” That, in turn, sounds an awful lot a core tenant of Buddhism.
Buddha nature.
Buddha nature is something innate in all of us. Some Buddhist scholars call it “the indestructible drop”. Those same people see all sentient beings as part of the same ocean. And how do you distinguish one drop in an ocean from another? We are, not just humans but all manner of life, bound together in this ocean of interconnectedness.
The shades of Buddhism that colors The Force don’t stop there, either. The Light and The Dark sides of The Force call to mind the white and black Yin-Yang symbol. Then there’s this little bit of wisdom; “Attachment leads to jealousy, the shadow of greed. Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.”
I can very easily trace that to The Four Noble Truths: Life is suffering; attachment is the cause of suffering; there is an end to suffering; The Noble Eightfold path leads to that end.
This exposure to such philosophies at such a young age no doubt played a part in my becoming a Buddhist. But I’m not going to give Lucas’ connections to Eastern thought full credit. He was telling a story. I went off and read books by rinpoches and roshis. I attended dharma talks and listened to podcasts. I learned that my beliefs weren’t from a hokey religion and there were no such things as laser swords.
Julie and I are storytellers, too. Julie and I are connectors, too.
We use our show to prove there’s no one way to be deaf, while at the same time building a community of empathy. While each of our hearing loss stories are different, each of our hearing levels are different, we’re all struggling just the same. We’re all connected by the waters of this struggle. This post may seem far afield from our purpose. But it’s not. We’ve stated from day one that we’re more than our hearing loss. Every week we show this by book choices. This week, we’re showing this through fandom choices. This was a geeky get-to-know-us post.
But what about you, dear reader? What’s your fandom of choice?
I’m told there’s no try.
I must unlearn what I’ve learned.
Deafness affects all.
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