Portland, Oregon, has reached the middle at a national moment in developing racial justice and surveillance since President Trump sent federal agents to the city. Although they were apparently sent to protect the demonstrators’ federal courthouse, they far exceeded this limited dominance and local leaders say their presence and tactics have ignited, they held back violent protests in the city. A special force made up of several other government agencies, ranging from immigration and customs control to the Coast Guard, apprehended citizens on the streets and in unidentified vans without probable cause, beating nonviolent protesters and now testing relations between the federal government and cities. states.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler called the deployment “an attack on our democracy.” Oregon Gov. Kate Brown accused officials of “provoking politically purposes” as President Trump follows Joe Biden in the polls.
Music has played a role in many national protests for justice in recent months, however, on Friday, a Portland protester executed an unusually brilliant movement of musical political theater. As officials approached the protesters and began feeding the crowd, one of the protesters lashed out at “The Imperial March,” the theme of Star Wars’ Darth Vader, the world’s second-largest film franchise. In just nine notes, this undeniable action well transforms federal agents, in real time, into dark-side henchmen.
This music-loving app is extraordinary. While it’s common for protesters to use music to characterize their own struggles, and even resort to broader cultural references to do so, such as the song “Do You Hear the People Sing” from the musical Les Miserables, which is a call this year for protesters in Hong Kong: it’s another thing to use music to characterize the scene itself at a genuine time and attract warring parties. Arrange voluntarily or not, in your story, that everyone can see and hear.
This strategy has proved effective because “The Imperial March” is one of Star Wars’ iconic leitmotiv maxims. We associate those recurring musical words with the characters and themes of the story, and even at times in our lives. John Williams, whose memorable soundtracks have earned him a fortune of $100 million, theorized in a recent interview that our maximum primitive reaction to a leitmotif “has to do with the survival or coverage of the organization’s identity.” He incorporated leitmotives as “The Imperial March” into the films to extract “something earlier from the cultural salts of our brain, memories of lives lived in the past.”
For the more than 150 million Americans who have noticed Star Wars, “The Imperial March,” in just nine notes, it tells them everything they want to know about what’s going on in Portland.
It would probably be unwise to ask one of those federal “assault soldiers,” as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called it in a recent tweet, if Darth Vader’s theme as a soundtrack to his advance on civilians made them think twice about who they were serving. Last week, a Navy veteran who asked a federal officer if he thought he had a good reputation in the Constitution broke his hand. But one can’t ask yet.
As Williams said of his Star Wars leitmotivs, “We hope those references make sense to enthusiasts and identify the hearing connections we need them to have.” For one of the many enthusiasts who shared the dramatic photographs on Twitter, it’s a “right soundtrack.” It’s the Rebel Alliance. »
I am the founder and artistic director of the Jerusalem Youth Chorus, an Israeli-Palestinian music and debate project. He revered to be part of Forbes 30 Under 30
I am the founder and artistic director of the Jerusalem Youth Chorus, an Israeli-Palestinian music and debate project. I had the honor of being on the Forbes 30 Under 30 music list in 2017 for these paintings on strengthening paintings and conflicts of the music network.
I’m also a founding spouse of Raise Your Voice Labs, a newly created social enterprise that is helping to transform teams to create brave spaces to have the discussions that matter and include new visions of the network in songs.
I graduated from Yale with a bachelor’s degree in music and foreign studies and have been a component of dozens of musical ensembles of global styles, adding the Yale Whiffenpoofs. I’ve been living in Washington, D.C. lately.