If I am having troubling with an exercise and need to slow down or relax I find that I am often holding a green saber. Guardian blue seems like a good color for someone setting out to master a new discipline. In the Star Wars universe red is a very loaded color, and I experience those associations on an almost subconscious level every time I pick up my weapon. The cognitive dissonance between what I see in my hands and my goals are as a martial artist become a bit much. They just don’t feel “right.” I don’t feel right. Yet I would never practice forms with a red blade at home. If I am working with someone on a choreographed piece and they need me to be “the bad guy” I will turn my saber red. It seems that there are certain colors I never use. How important are the stories, myth and discourses that I have been exposed to in my understanding and actual experience of a weapon?īefore practicing my forms, drills, or sparring, I must choose a blade color when I activate my lightsaber. Yet I often wonder whether it all boils down to purely material factors. We must accommodate the new possibilities that the materiality of a sword or a spear make possible. Weapons of any kind have a disciplinary effect on the movement of a martial artist. How many other training tools must be “fed” on a regular basis or they simply refuse to work? And while my Pilgrim has worked wonderfully from day one, the addition of electronics (that can have a mind of their own) and eccentric hilt designs conspire to give most lightsabers very definite “personalities.” That tends to be a quality that one becomes progressively more aware of as you use them. It is hard to think of a more obvious exercise in “embodied intertextuality” than choosing your blade color at the start of a training session.Īt times it almost seems like this lightsaber is alive. These include a rich guardian blue (as seen in the prequels), ice blue (more like Luke’s saber in A New Hope), green, a golden yellow, an almost neon red and finally a violet purple (for the Mace Windu fans). I also ordered mine with a RGB tri-cree LED which, when paired with the standard Spectra Blade Control board allows the saber to cycle through six blade colors. It has a single (lit) activation button which can also be used to manually trigger the “blast deflection” and “lock up” effects that some individuals like. This not to suggest that the Pilgrim is lacking in features. The Pilgrim manages to keep its visual appeal with a parkerized grip that offers the look of leather wrapping with none of the maintenance. I like to think that they look elegant, but it is how they feel that is critical. Like many of the martial artists in the lightsaber combat community, I prefer simple, almost minimalist, hilts. Extra buttons, retro-switch boxers, large “emitter windows”, thin nicks and the like can make for a visually impressive weapon, but one that is also uncomfortable in the hand. To remind their owners of this fact even sabers that are not prop replicas tend to have all sorts of accouterments that get in the way of actually using these hilts in training or sparring situations. These are, after all, artifacts that come from a technologically advanced civilization in a galaxy far, far away. The good folks at JQ Sabers have produced a weapon that is compact enough to easily wielded with a single hand ( for those Makashi users), but with enough length that it can accommodate double handed techniques.ĭesigning (or possibly marketing) a saber like this is more difficult than it sounds. Named the “Caliburn Pilgrim” the hilt is just under 10.5 inches long, with a svelte 1.25 inch diameter. It is, after all, the quintessential fencer’s saber. Nor am I alone in this. Darth Nihilus, my lightsaber combat instructor, was just telling me how much he wanted the particular model that I am currently looking at. And I say that as a practicing martial artist and student of history who is currently surrounded by antique swords and knives. I understand his sentiment as it is one of my prized possessions. There is one sitting on my desk right now. Critical theory and the laws of physics aside, he still wants one. Wetmore concludes one of the first truly scholarly discussions of the lightsaber with a candid admission. Vinci (eds.) Culture, Identities and Technology in the Star Wars Films: Essays on the Two Trilogies. “’Your Father’s Lightsaber’ The Fetishization of Objects Between the Trilogies.” in Carl Silvio and Tony M. This is not bad for something that defies the laws of physics and cannot and does not exist. They are the ultimate commodity: a nonexistent object whose replicas sell for hundreds of dollars. “The lightsaber has become an important touchstone, both within the films and within our culture…They serve as a source of identification and identity.
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