The Angel of History Faces Backwards
In moments of severe regression, such as during a medicine journey, or in certain dreams, I will have the strangest feeling as if I had been transported into the aesthetic stylings of the movie The Empire Strikes Back (1980). This gives me the uncanny impression that this movie has, somehow, organized my psyche in ways that I am not fully conscious of. The first movie that I recall ever watching was the Return of the Jedi (1983). Stuffed into a crowded living room I must have been four years old, terrified by Jabba the Hutt and just absolutely mesmerized. This has created the highly weird effect in which, in memory, there is no separation between the world and Star Wars. Subsequently these movies have a profound effect on me to this day. Just as I was mesmerized as a child, any of the original Star Wars movies (but none of the more recent ones) can even still put me in a trance. My attention becomes rapt. I am transfixed by them. As you can imagine this makes it very difficult to view these movies with any kind of objectivity; while I can regard them critically, understanding that they are fantasy space operas built from samurai movie tropes, Joseph Campbell junk (Jung) archetypes, and all taped up with a chintzy Daoism (Obi Wan Kenobi is Alan Watts), should I encounter these movies playing in the wild, the enchantment is immediately reactivated and I become my 4 year old self again, unable to turn away. What exactly is happening to me?
The Angel of History Faces Backwards, 2020, photograph by author
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