Star Wars: The Exhibition Strikes Back

“Boom”

I think I’ll start with:

I went away and now I’m back. And that means more school. That means more LPP’s. AND THAT means we did another project. One of which I did half while away and half when I got back.

We did an exhibition. A Star Wars themed exhibition. And since reading about my projects is what this Learning Portfolio is all about, I’m going to assume that you’re interested or obliged to hear about it.

 

Star Wars Questions–
For this project, we had to choose Star Wars related inquiry questions to make a project about.

The first step for this was to brainstorm question ideas.
Some of the ones my family friends and I came up with were:

-Are droids like people with rights or are they just computers who can be used as slaves?
-Was Darth Vader really a good guy or a bad guy?
-Who is the most important droid in the series and why?
-If the Jedi mind trick was possible, would it be right to use it?

I asked some family friends who are big Star Wars people if they had any ideas for questions.
They did, and in the end I used one of theirs as my final question.

The next step was to judge our list of questions and see if they were open or closed questions.
A closed question would be a “yes or no” question,
While an open question could be discussed in a conversation and have two sides to look at.

So we did, and most of my questions were to be considered “open”.
However some of them I see now wouldn’t have made good projects.

The next step, was to have the question approved by Ms Willemse.
To do this, you choose the question you think is the best out of your list, and pitch it to Ms Willemse. If she says “yes” YAY YOU HAVE A PROJECT QUESTION! If she says “no”… well dammit now you need to find a better question. That can be a hard thing to do with these projects… at least you have a list right?

The question I pitched to Ms Willemse first was:

If the Jedi Mind Trick was possible, would it be right to use it?

And her answer was (yay for me) yes.

WHOOP WHOOP I HAVE A GOOD QUESTION!

Now all I had to do was find a way to do this project partly over seas and have it ready for display two days after I got back… well okay then.

At least I had a question.

 

What Do I Do Now?!–
You make a project… duh!

No.

How do I make a project without information or anything just like “oh here’s a blank poster board enjoy!”. No. I need to research stuff.

So what do I research???

Stuff.

Stuff like:

-Cults
-Brainwashing
-Mind Control (I learnt some interesting things researching that… so watch out people)
-If certain things said certain ways can convince people of doing things they don’t mean to do (Mind Manipulation)
-How the Jedi Mind Trick is used in the movies.

Awesome yay research! Funnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn… yeah that pool looks inviting, can I stop doing school work now?

In all seriousness, this research was actually interesting, so I didn’t dislike doing it that much at all… but that pool was really inviting so it was harder to concentrate.

Who makes their work space looking over a pool?! Seriously how do you even get work done on hot days when theres a giant blue bucket just waiting for you instead? Arg! (I got work done don’t worry I just ignored the blue glow of the pool right outside the window).

 

Cults, Brainwashing and Mind Control–
Ever tried to control someone’s mind?

Don’t lie yes you have. Everyone did at least once as a kid.

When I was in maybe… prep, I was told that brainwashing was when you rub the top of someone’s head really hard until it hurt. That was not true, that’s a noogie.

 

Brainwashing is a form of mind control or mind manipulation. It’s where you put thoughts into peoples heads against their will or without them noticing.

The most common way of doing this is repeating one idea or belief over and over until it’s drilled into peoples minds. Eventually they forget that they ever thought any differently and agree to what you’re saying. 

Brainwashing, as a form of mind control is sometimes associated with cults. An example of a cult that has been accused of Brainwashing is The Unification Church (link to wiki) aka The Moonies.

The Moonies started in 1958 by a man named Sun Myung Moon. Their current leader is a man named Hak Ja Han. Back in the 70’s, they were accused of brainwashing, and all this time later, they still haven’t decided weather this happened or not.

For the heck of it, I’m going to give a mind control psychology trick:

If you make eye contact with people while you talk to them, and hold it a second longer then you should, they are more likely to like or respect you.

^Credit to Melanie for finding this^

 

The Actual Exhibition–
I returned from the heated sunny death continent known as Australia, two days before the exhibition. Somehow, I managed to stay awake for the exhibition and I managed not to scare too many people away.

For our presentation, we were split up into two different groups. The light side, and the dark side.

I was in the light side.

STOP LAUGHING IT’S NOT THAT HARD TO BELIEVE OKAY.

The dark side was located in the library (ooooh scary literature!), while the light side was located in the main PLP room.

For the light side, we decorated our room as the rebel base on Crait.
All icy and REALLY COLD. For an idea of how cold we made our room: we had the windows open while we were presenting… IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF DECEMBER IN CANADA. It was really cold.
For some reason everyone was eating dark side popsicles while walking around, including the presenters! So we were cold.

We had the light side split up into three groups for three parts of the room.

 

Philosophical
Scientific
Technical

I was in the Philosophical group along with
(LINKS TO BLOGS)

–Kai
–Emily
–Luciano
–Melanie
–Grace
–Emerson
–Logan
-ME

We presented and presented and presented, and then we de-decorated.
While over the two days before the exhibition everyone worked their tails off decorating the room they were working in, it only took about an hour or so to murder the decor. While we only took everything apart and recycled what we could and threw out what we couldn’t… it would have been way more satisfying to have a giant bonfire the last day of school somewhere and burn all of it.

The exhibition went well in my opinion. Everyone worked together to do what we could to make the exhibition as fabulous as possible.

Cold, sleep deprived and crazy as we were, we pulled it off. At least I think we did.

 

But What About The Project That YOU Did?! The Jedi Thingy One.–

The Jedi Mind Trick was used multiple times throughout the Star Wars series.

But that doesn’t mean it should have been.

For my project I was looking at if the Jedi Mind Trick (putting thoughts into peoples minds and controlling them) was real, would people use it in a way that was Morally Correct?

For my project I looked at both how people would use it for good, and how they would use it for selfish or bad reasons.

While there are people out there who would probably use it for good;
Convincing people of ways to help the environment and stuff like that… but there are people in this work who would do things like:

“You will help me start World War lll”
“I will help you start World War lll”

“We are over everyone else. You will help me make them bow down to us”
“We are over everyone else. I will help you make them bow down to us”

“The world needs some chaos. You will help me do that”
“The world needs some chaos. I will help you do that”

And things like that.

If the Jedi Mind trick was real in the past we could have stopped WARS. We could have stopped slavery, racism could be so much less.

“Everyone is equal. You don’t want to make people who don’t look like you do what you want”
“Everyone is equal. I don’t want to make people who don’t look like me do what I want”
No slavery.

“You don’t want to hurt people because they don’t believe what you believe”
“I don’t want to hurt people because they don’t believe what I believe”
No World War ll.

“You do not want to assassinate the Archduke”
“I do not want to assassinate the Archduke”
No World War l.

And how we could use it today:

“You are not the president of the United States”
“I am not the president of the United States”

“Everyone is equal, no matter the race, sexuality or gender”
“Everyone is equal no matter the race, sexuality or gender”

The thing is, while this is great and everything, there’s one problem with how the Jedi Mind Trick works.

It’s mind control. And there’s a great example from the Star Wars series that will help me with my next argument

In that video, Obi Wan convinces a drug dealer to go home and re-think his life. And yes, that’s great. One less drug dealer on the streets (something the world right now could use). But he just took away the guys ability to use his own mind. To make his own decisions. Obi wan took away the will power and ability to think for ones self from the drug dude. And while it was meant for good, he was forcing his ideas on another being without them being able to stop him.

I was looking at that I was thinking, people in our current world are… well, selfish.
If the Jedi Mind Trick was real, people would be convincing their teachers that they deserved good grades without doing any work;

“You saw my assignment and thought it was worth an A”
“I saw your assignment and thought it was worth an A”

Soon, the world is full of lazy, dumb people (dumber even then now). And then people aren’t working, the economies all die and the world goes up in flames.

 

What Did I Make? Wellllllll….–
You know those big square cardboard things… Poster Boards?

I made one of those. Gotta show my work somehow!

I started with a white poster board and went on from there.

Because I only got back to Vancouver two days before the exhibition, I needed to have a physical part of my project that was easy to make in a short amount of time, but still a good way of showing my work. For me that was a really big poster. I had all the information for it ready for printing and cutting out as soon as I got home from the airport.
And thats what I did. I knew that I couldn’t bring a poster, or anything really across the ocean on 18 hours of travel, so I did my best to create a project that I could make when I got back would still be good and exhibition-acceptable.

I think I did okay. It would have been better if I had the time to make something more… fabulous. But planes are rocky, destructive and annoying. And it just wasn’t going to happen. So I made a cute lil poster and did what I could. I think I pulled it off, during the presentation I only messed up what I was saying about 4 times!

 

 

Did You See The New Star Wars Movie?!–

To complete our Star Wars exhibition unit, our teachers took us to go see the new Star Wars movie The Last Jedi.

We went to this really fancy theatre with reclining leather chairs and it was in 3D it was awesome. The theatre was pretty much all PLP students it was great.

 

It was a great wrap-up to our unit, and I think everyone enjoyed it.

This unit brought friendship between the grade 8’s and 9’s and a learning experience to all.

I think its safe to say, we all got sick of the Star Wars theme song by the end.

 

Thanks for reading, AND DON’T JOIN THE DARK SIDE!!!