Poe and Holdo: Balance and Failure
Jan. 12th, 2018 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wingedbeastThis is going to be about "Star Wars: The Last Jedi". There will be spoilers. Warning given cut to follow.
I've heard a range of complaints with regards to "The Last Jedi". On one end, there's a complaint I can't argue with, which is that the "code cracker" character shouldn't have known about Holdo's plan. On the other, there's the complaint about Leia's use of The Force, which I find a bad complaint as the main trick to using The Force is realizing that you actually can.
For this, I'm just ignoring the complaints about women and persons of color on the screen. Those are well beyond the range and I'll trust my audience to recognize those as invalid.
But, there's a sweet spot, a complaint about the movie that has just enough validity and a response that stays just shy of completely answering it that I think it merits some deeper discussion.
If you're reading this far, I hope you've already seen the movie, spoilers really begin here.
Poe, our brash young, heroic pilot commits mutiny, thinking that Vice Genaral Holdo's only plan is one of panicked cowardice. Only after this mutiny is carried out and then thwarted is Poe told that there is a plan, a good plan. Why didn't Holdo just tell him?
The response that I've seen is a combination of two factors. One is that, she being the Vice General and he being a recently demoted fighter-pilot, Holdo had no obligation to tell him. The other is that Poe's first action towards Holdo is one to indicate that he might not be in a rational frame of mind, seeking fault with her rather than seeking to do his part in her plan.
I agree with both parts of that. But, I don't find it satisfying.
There is a better answer within the two themes of the film. And, if the title of this post doesn't give it away, the themes are balance and failure.
When Luke explains to Rei what The Force is, a key element of the lesson is balance. Violence and peace, birth and death, Light and Dark and between it all, balance. This is also brought later on as Snoke explains the existence of Rei. As Ben Solo/Kylo Ren becomes powerful with the Dark Side of the Force, so rises Rei to be his Light counterbalance.
Yet, the balance isn't enough. Kylo Ren still fails, repeatedly. And, his failure is the result of a Light Side based failure of Luke's.
There are many balanced sides in this, with balance being maintained between the two, but the two still failing. For example, relationship with the Past. Kylo Ren suggests letting it die, killing it if need be. Luke tried to resurrect it. Neither one had good results.
So, we look at Poe and Holdo. It's important to note that they're on the same side. They have the same goal. The fact that they're in the same organization means that together, technically, they're in balance. But, individually, they are out of balance. And, so they both fail.
Poe is brash, ready to lash out. Put charitably, he is a man of action. And, that action cost the Resistance all their bombers to take out one Dreadnought. Any immediate positive results from that couldn't have been reasonably expected by Poe. The negative consequences, however, are obviously a Resistance that has a severe offensive limitation.
This isn't a one-off. Poe's first action when Holdo takes command is along the same lines. He barges in and demands to know what plan there is. Later, when a plan is presented to him, his first thoughts of response are "blow it up?".
We can think of Poe as resperesnting something akin to Yang in the Yin/Yang dynamic. He is active, but not very contemplative.
Now, let's take a look at the story from Holdo's perspective. She comes onto the screen in the tradition of Mon Mothma. Robed, regal, not really looking like a military commander to our perspective. She has a plan. This brash young guy comes in and demands to know her plan. And, that's not a good thing for him to do.
Let's do a little translating. Poe, in a manner that, yes, is rude and jumps above his station, asks to know that he is playing part in a valid plan.
Vice General Holdo doesn't give him that. She states his recent demotion and then repeats one of Leia's lines in a manner that can't fit original context. The line is "Hope is like the sun, if you only believe in it when you see it, you'll never make it through the night." It's a frequently used line and Poe even finishes it for her. But...
There is a good context for that line, when you're reminding someone to have hope when it seems hopeless. But, Holdo's not asking Poe to have hope in general or hope that there is a way to survive the current situation. Holdo's asking Poe to have faith in her. So, that means her line needs translation as well, at least as far as I would hear it from Poe's perspective.
What I would hear is "I insult you and site an obligation, on your part, to have faith in me. I will not mention, though it is obvious upon reflection, that said obligation on your part actually relieves me of obligation to live up to that faith."
She does have a plan. And, yeah, it's a good plan. But, as Leia would later say, she isn't interested in looking like a hero.
The Yin virtues are on display. She is contemplative, quiet, planning, ready to be passive when the situation requires.
Both, of course, fail.
Poe acts without thinking. He sees no plan and, later, jumps to a conclusion. Holdo, doesn't act enough. She doesn't communicate that she has a plan and, when part of the plan is discovered, doesn't communicate enough to indicate that there's more than the obvious surface read thereof.
Balancing each other out wasn't good enough. Because both couldn't have a necessary amount of balance within themselves, people died that didn't have to.
What Poe could have done better is obvious. He could have held back from the pressed attack, leaving a defensively wounded Dreadnought and maintaining Resistance offensive capacity. He could have communicated his other plan up the chain of command. He could have... not mutinied but, by that point...
Holdo, whether she has interest in looking like a hero or not, has an obligation. As an acting General, it is her responsibility to communicate, to those under her command, that she has a plan and that she is acting in their best interest. That wouldn't require that she tell Poe her plan. Considering that they were being tracked through subspace and she didn't know what that would require it was entirely possible that there was a mole on the ship.
Also on the ship was a former Storm Trooper and an engineer with the combined knowledge to produce a theory of how the tracking occurred with a high degree of likelihood. I can think of no reason why Holdo wouldn't call her best engineer and the ex-First Order janitor (a very good source of layout information at least) to give some possibilties. If for no other reason, maybe the technology that enabled tracking through subspace also made their cloaking devices useless.
In fact, her plan took a lot of risks with other peoples lives as it was. I do credit her readiness to sacrifice herself, but that took the assumption that nobody would do a quick scan for cloaked vessels. The more time they operated without a plan, the more time the First Order had to suspect such a plan.
By looking for this option, by being ready to come up with that second plan, even as a bit of theater for the lower ranks, Holdo would have been giving her own plan more room to succeed.
This doesn't make either character bad. It simply means that the them had an imbalance, specifically in how they related to heroism and accomplishment. Poe saw it in terms of massive destruction and Holdo saw it in terms of the silent, yet perfect plan. Neither saw the full picture or the full necessity of the other, therefore both took part in the failure that cost lives.
That isn't the end. It's not just failure, but how you respond to failure that becomes the important matter. We have seen how Kylo Ren responds, by becoming enraged and doing the same thing harder and harder, even as he makes pretensions to killing the past.
This is the middle movie. The point is that they've mainly failed and lost. It's going to be in the third that we see how they learn from failure so as to not repeat the same mistakes. Hopefully, part of what they'll learn is how to learn from each other to balance themselves.
I've heard a range of complaints with regards to "The Last Jedi". On one end, there's a complaint I can't argue with, which is that the "code cracker" character shouldn't have known about Holdo's plan. On the other, there's the complaint about Leia's use of The Force, which I find a bad complaint as the main trick to using The Force is realizing that you actually can.
For this, I'm just ignoring the complaints about women and persons of color on the screen. Those are well beyond the range and I'll trust my audience to recognize those as invalid.
But, there's a sweet spot, a complaint about the movie that has just enough validity and a response that stays just shy of completely answering it that I think it merits some deeper discussion.
If you're reading this far, I hope you've already seen the movie, spoilers really begin here.
Poe, our brash young, heroic pilot commits mutiny, thinking that Vice Genaral Holdo's only plan is one of panicked cowardice. Only after this mutiny is carried out and then thwarted is Poe told that there is a plan, a good plan. Why didn't Holdo just tell him?
The response that I've seen is a combination of two factors. One is that, she being the Vice General and he being a recently demoted fighter-pilot, Holdo had no obligation to tell him. The other is that Poe's first action towards Holdo is one to indicate that he might not be in a rational frame of mind, seeking fault with her rather than seeking to do his part in her plan.
I agree with both parts of that. But, I don't find it satisfying.
There is a better answer within the two themes of the film. And, if the title of this post doesn't give it away, the themes are balance and failure.
When Luke explains to Rei what The Force is, a key element of the lesson is balance. Violence and peace, birth and death, Light and Dark and between it all, balance. This is also brought later on as Snoke explains the existence of Rei. As Ben Solo/Kylo Ren becomes powerful with the Dark Side of the Force, so rises Rei to be his Light counterbalance.
Yet, the balance isn't enough. Kylo Ren still fails, repeatedly. And, his failure is the result of a Light Side based failure of Luke's.
There are many balanced sides in this, with balance being maintained between the two, but the two still failing. For example, relationship with the Past. Kylo Ren suggests letting it die, killing it if need be. Luke tried to resurrect it. Neither one had good results.
So, we look at Poe and Holdo. It's important to note that they're on the same side. They have the same goal. The fact that they're in the same organization means that together, technically, they're in balance. But, individually, they are out of balance. And, so they both fail.
Poe is brash, ready to lash out. Put charitably, he is a man of action. And, that action cost the Resistance all their bombers to take out one Dreadnought. Any immediate positive results from that couldn't have been reasonably expected by Poe. The negative consequences, however, are obviously a Resistance that has a severe offensive limitation.
This isn't a one-off. Poe's first action when Holdo takes command is along the same lines. He barges in and demands to know what plan there is. Later, when a plan is presented to him, his first thoughts of response are "blow it up?".
We can think of Poe as resperesnting something akin to Yang in the Yin/Yang dynamic. He is active, but not very contemplative.
Now, let's take a look at the story from Holdo's perspective. She comes onto the screen in the tradition of Mon Mothma. Robed, regal, not really looking like a military commander to our perspective. She has a plan. This brash young guy comes in and demands to know her plan. And, that's not a good thing for him to do.
Let's do a little translating. Poe, in a manner that, yes, is rude and jumps above his station, asks to know that he is playing part in a valid plan.
Vice General Holdo doesn't give him that. She states his recent demotion and then repeats one of Leia's lines in a manner that can't fit original context. The line is "Hope is like the sun, if you only believe in it when you see it, you'll never make it through the night." It's a frequently used line and Poe even finishes it for her. But...
There is a good context for that line, when you're reminding someone to have hope when it seems hopeless. But, Holdo's not asking Poe to have hope in general or hope that there is a way to survive the current situation. Holdo's asking Poe to have faith in her. So, that means her line needs translation as well, at least as far as I would hear it from Poe's perspective.
What I would hear is "I insult you and site an obligation, on your part, to have faith in me. I will not mention, though it is obvious upon reflection, that said obligation on your part actually relieves me of obligation to live up to that faith."
She does have a plan. And, yeah, it's a good plan. But, as Leia would later say, she isn't interested in looking like a hero.
The Yin virtues are on display. She is contemplative, quiet, planning, ready to be passive when the situation requires.
Both, of course, fail.
Poe acts without thinking. He sees no plan and, later, jumps to a conclusion. Holdo, doesn't act enough. She doesn't communicate that she has a plan and, when part of the plan is discovered, doesn't communicate enough to indicate that there's more than the obvious surface read thereof.
Balancing each other out wasn't good enough. Because both couldn't have a necessary amount of balance within themselves, people died that didn't have to.
What Poe could have done better is obvious. He could have held back from the pressed attack, leaving a defensively wounded Dreadnought and maintaining Resistance offensive capacity. He could have communicated his other plan up the chain of command. He could have... not mutinied but, by that point...
Holdo, whether she has interest in looking like a hero or not, has an obligation. As an acting General, it is her responsibility to communicate, to those under her command, that she has a plan and that she is acting in their best interest. That wouldn't require that she tell Poe her plan. Considering that they were being tracked through subspace and she didn't know what that would require it was entirely possible that there was a mole on the ship.
Also on the ship was a former Storm Trooper and an engineer with the combined knowledge to produce a theory of how the tracking occurred with a high degree of likelihood. I can think of no reason why Holdo wouldn't call her best engineer and the ex-First Order janitor (a very good source of layout information at least) to give some possibilties. If for no other reason, maybe the technology that enabled tracking through subspace also made their cloaking devices useless.
In fact, her plan took a lot of risks with other peoples lives as it was. I do credit her readiness to sacrifice herself, but that took the assumption that nobody would do a quick scan for cloaked vessels. The more time they operated without a plan, the more time the First Order had to suspect such a plan.
By looking for this option, by being ready to come up with that second plan, even as a bit of theater for the lower ranks, Holdo would have been giving her own plan more room to succeed.
This doesn't make either character bad. It simply means that the them had an imbalance, specifically in how they related to heroism and accomplishment. Poe saw it in terms of massive destruction and Holdo saw it in terms of the silent, yet perfect plan. Neither saw the full picture or the full necessity of the other, therefore both took part in the failure that cost lives.
That isn't the end. It's not just failure, but how you respond to failure that becomes the important matter. We have seen how Kylo Ren responds, by becoming enraged and doing the same thing harder and harder, even as he makes pretensions to killing the past.
This is the middle movie. The point is that they've mainly failed and lost. It's going to be in the third that we see how they learn from failure so as to not repeat the same mistakes. Hopefully, part of what they'll learn is how to learn from each other to balance themselves.
