Listen to the Rain

On Juneteeth, worldbshiny invited me to watch Tilikum, which she had seen live two years ago and which (as the link indicates) was being broadcast again as a fundraiser for the Let Us Breathe Collective. All I knew going in was that it was about the killer whale at SeaWorld who was...well, let's borrow modern language and say that there were three orca-involved deaths, and I only knew that because I looked it up on Wikipedia. I described it as "powerful" later, and I'll stand by that. I was surprised how directly the metaphor applied when black actors played the killer whales--taken from their homelands and transported to a new world where they aren't free to move around, imprisoned in tiny cells, and forced to work without pay, with a white man (representing the white power structure) frequently talking about how Tilikum is his investment and will do what wants or else, and a white woman (representing the white savior narrative) arguing that Tilikum needs more space and light and air while also still training him in a specific trick that she wants to perform mostly for herself.

The other three orcas had no spoken dialogue, instead being performed by drummers, with specific sequences having specific meaning. Since the whales are all from separate pods, Tilikum can't understand them at the beginning, and part of the play is him learning to speak with the other orcas. It took about half the play for me to understand why these sequences were included , but afterwards worldbshiny pointed out that each of the other orcas had a slightly different set of instruments they were playing their songs on. There was a lot about communication in the play--about Tilikum learning to speak to the other orcas, after which their dialogue is displayed as supertitles during the drumming; about Dawn assuming she knows everything that Tilikum is saying without actually ever listening to him; and about the SeaWorld owner using communication as a weapon, constantly pushing boundaries and then pulling back with that "I'm only joking!" attitude, or the beginning and ending where he tries to tell an inquest how rare orca-involved deaths are as a means of avoiding any meaningful reform and continuing the current power structure indefinitely.

worldbshiny talked about Tilikum's sound design and how effective it was in person, where the drums were echoing off the walls and different orcas speaking came from different directions, or how the crowd noise didn't drown out some of the actors' lines, in a way that just can't be replicated when watching a single-camera video of the performance. Something that we'll have to get used to in the Plague Year, I think, since indoor performances seem like a bad idea for a while.

As the link indicates, it was one night only, otherwise I would recommend it. But if it does come back on streaming, definitely watch it.

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On Sunday, sashagee and I watched The Mandalorian after she was astonished that I, a fan of Star Wars, had never seen it. I had seen all the Baby Yoda memes, and "this is the way" and so on, but other than knowing it was a space Western about a guy who never takes off his helmet because of his religious convictions and that people had said it justified the existence of Disney+, I didn't know much else.

Turns out it's a lot like Cowboy Bebop, so.

sashagee described the best parts of Star Wars as being "bar fights on garbage planets," and it definitely has plenty of those. We were talking about how Star Wars is best when it's run-down and lived in, when the advanced technology is about to fall apart and seems like so much of a part of the world that when krill farmers on a backwater planet have droids helping them but also live in stick-and-mud huts, it seems natural. When most planets Mando visits are wastelands, with small towns or hermits living in the wilderness and civilization is far away, well, that's the best part of Star Wars. There was a lot going in with the prequels, but one of the things I personally disliked was that all the technology was shiny and new. A 50s diner instead of a dusty saloon. There's a quote about Firefly, about the two most important images being Mal eating instant noodles with chopsticks out of a tin cup and a bar fight where a patron gets thrown through a window, but the window is a hologram. For The Mandalorian, it's a barfight where the bartender is a droid.

I really appreciate when Star Wars takes a departure away from the Skywalker saga and tries to tell stories with other characters that aren't about Jedi, the Force, Darth Vader and his legacy, and so on. I saw Rogue One a while ago and the parts of it that I liked the least were the parts of it that tried to desperately forge connections between the original trilogy that weren't necessary and actually made the story worse ("This is a consular ship... we're on a diplomatic mission" when Vader literally followed them after they stole the Death Star plans ). The Mandalorian delves back into the jidaigeki to Western pipeline that inspired Star Wars, so there's an episode that's a version of The Seven Samurai and the basic plot is pretty similar to Lone Wolf and Cub. The New Republic is only mentioned and X-Wings don't show up for several episodes. It's all about space bounty hunting, which, much like Cowboy Bebop, just doesn't pay.

Also, Mando's acting is amazing considering he never once shows his face!

We got through "The Prisoner," so there's only two episodes left. I'm really looking forward to them!