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Star Wars as Pulp Sci-Fi
mikelove writes "Salon has an article arguing that Star Wars owes its origins to pulp science fiction and not Joseph Campbell-esque mythology. Finally SOMEONE is realizing this... Also makes the suggestion that Lucas/Kasdan didn't really write The Empire Strikes Back, which makes a certain amount of sense when you compare it to Lucas' other screenplays."
to see Jar Jar Binks beaten to a pulp. Does that add any evidence to the theory?
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
I don't see why someone wouldn't have already claimed that lucas didn't write ESB. I'm pretty skeptical of the article as a whole.
__________________________________________
Take comfort in your ignorance.
Grandmaster Plague
The article makes many good points, and highlights the lack of success of GL's other films. It's no big surprise that Lucas is not considered a gift to screenwriting. There's no shame in it. He should really consider sticking to the production/direction/story idea side of things, and let others flesh out the script...
It does sadden me that a number of otherwise smart people make such a big deal about the Star Wars franchise. It's not like I have anything against epic geek entertainment: LOTR was fucking brilliant.
We let people say they "borrowed" from great works because it makes us feel better about liking the pulpy pop-culture end product.
i.e. Madonna says she borrows from Mozart.
i.e. Lucas says he borrows from "mythology"
Blah blah grump grump grump. Cheating grump bastard. grump grump grump. Buckets of money. Grump grump, lack of appreciation for true source of inspiration. grump complain whine grump.
Some people take entertainment way to seriously.
air and light and time and space
It doesn't matter the source or inspiration for the Star Wars movies, just as long as they're enjoyable and worth the nine bucks' admission price.
Why overanalyze it? It just ruins it.
If I weren't nailed to the penis, I'd be pushing up the daisies!
Star Wars was just a rewritten Japanese film about a Samuari. The movie was titled Hidden Fortress
Thank god for the Japanese, or we might have Howard the Duck part V.
Just look at it, he's attacking the fans, Joseph Campbell's work as a whole (unrelated to Star Wars), various other random works of sci-fi, and I don't even know who Stephen Ambrose is but he doesn't seem to have anything to do with Star Wars. The author is just venting spleen in general and happens to have focused on Star Wars.
I heard the only reason he made the third one was because Temple of Doom was so bad and he was ashamed.
Of course, I have come to doubt that story, as I no longer feel he is capable of feeling shame.
What Would Jesus Do
(for a Klondike bar)?
A good companion to this article is another Salon Article that ran in 1999 by David Brin. Excellent read on why Star Wars' morality sucks. :)
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I think we once had this site up on slashdot (too lazy to check). It definitely draws the connection between Star Wars and Pulp Fiction.
But I've always felt that the whole nine movie plan was a bit of revisionist history after people didn't get the "Episode IV" joke-cum-homage to old time serials ("...our story so far:"). Maybe I'm just looking for evidence of my own crackpot theory, but the movie is full of stuff like that: irising in and out, deliberately clunky cross screen fades, villains in crazy costumes, hysterical cliffhangers (the compactor scene mentioned in the article for instance)...it's all from those fun old serials. Doesn't lessen the impact of the movies for me, but by the same token, the Campbell/Jung stuff doesn't increase it.
"Slashdot is about legos and staplers." -Cmdr. Taco
Star Wars is pulp sci-fi. And it is Campbell-esque. Just like The Matrix is high-budget pulp sci-fi, draped with overtones of Buddhism and Christian mythology. Geez, why do people have to be so binary?
Campbell's ability to generate whirlwinds of cross-cultural references makes his chatter sound tremendously erudite [...] but once the dust settles it's hard to grasp the point of it all.
Dare I say it, this Steven Hart fellow looks to be using the Lucas/Star Wars aspect as a cheap hook to gain a wider audience for his anti-Campbell viewpoints.
And as thousands of /.ers bang on Salon's servers, you gotta admit -- it worked.
A troll on Salon? [cough-horowitz-cough]
Some blowhard jackass out to pad their self esteem by panning someone else's work? [cough-wagner-au-cough]
The hell you say!
Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
> I don't see why someone wouldn't have already claimed that lucas didn't write ESB.
Perhaps because...
1. Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan are credited for the screenplay and Lucas is not? So to the public, there was no controversy as to who wrote it.
2. Leigh Brackett died after writing the initial screenplay, before the movie was made, so she wasn't around to contest claims made by Lucas and Kasdan.
3. Lucas and Kasdan wrote ROTJ. The weakest film of the original three.
4. Lucas wrote Phantom Menace. The worst of the four. Brackett's mysterious pseudo-spiritual Force from ESB becomes something you might get in your breakfast cereal in TPM. "Wheaties: Now fortified with midichlorians!"
Lucas didn't start making grandiose claims about myth-making until he had a hundred million dollars in his pocket. At that point, you spout whatever claptrap you like and the adoring public eats it up.
Later on, TPM woke up the adoring public, causing them to re-evaluate their earlier adulation. "Hey, Lucas isn't as great as I thought he was!"
Remember, Lucas borrowed from all the sci-fi of the day and a TEAM of artists created the Star Wars look and feel. Lucas is no visionary.
Joseph Campbell is a scholar of mythology and heroic fiction, and has published a number of books on the subject. His main point (and here I distill overmuch) is that there are certain classic heroic/mythic themes that ring a chord across all cultures.
You are correct that John W. Campbell was the editor of Astounding and Analog in its heyday, and did much to further the careers of the likes of Isaac Asimov, Gordon Dickson, Frank Herbert and numerous others. But the reference to Joseph Campbell was correct.
-- Alastair
- Star Wars Holiday Special
- The Ewok Adventure
- Ewoks: The Battle for Endor
Of course, an honorory Golden Turkey Award has to go out to the slop that was Star Wars I: The Phantom MenaceStar Wars, love it to death, really isn't even pulp sci-fi, it's a trite story with sci-fi trappings that could just as easily been a fantasy, or a western or whatever. It just happens to have a sci-fi-ish skin. Technically sci-fantasy even, since the science aspect isn't even considered. But I still love it, love the sci-fi skin, love how campy it is even. Hell I even love Episode one, well, sort of at least.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
I still think Star Wars is a fun film. There is no shame it being influenced by the likes of Frank Herbert.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
He has a point.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I don't see any sense at all to describe it as "pulp sci-fi" rather than mythology, because pulp sci-fi is also based on mythology. So are comic books, which I think are the best source for new myths. So are westerns. So is fantasy. Pretty much everything where the protagonist has a quest to defeat evil is based on mythology.
Not everything is mythological. Detective stories, where the protagonists' goal is to restore the status quo, are not mythological. Nor are comedies or romances that are purely personal. However, drama where an external conflict mirrors an internal, personal confict is all myth, almost by definition.
The only question is what Lucas had in mind. This has become obfuscated with time. I have the advantage to be 40 years old, and so I remember what the interviews said. Basically, Lucas' money from THX-1138 was running out, and he didn't want to get a job. So he made Star Wars. He based it on westerns and war movies, particularly the 1930 WWI movie "Hell's Angels."
Then it became popular beyond his wildest dreams. The idea that it would be part of a trilogy of trilogies came later. The "Episode IV" wasn't on until it was re-released. Joseph Campbell picked up on Star Wars as a way of teaching mythology. He could have used any of hundreds of pop culture references, but Star Wars was succesful on an unprecedented level. I'm sure that Lucas had heard of Campbell, but the mythology really is in Star Wars because that's what people do when they make certain kinds of arts.
Nothing that I've read about Campbell in any place other than the masturbatory presses that produce quasi-intellectual asides within E! and People lauds him in any sense for his belief in the World Myth.
His vision was that there was a sort of primal myth, variations on which were the substances of our myth.
He left it open to the god-like powers of the Interpreter-of-Myths (himself in his writings) to cram other myths into his distinctly Western, Judeo-Christianic views. While the "Water-Jar Boy" myth can be made to appear to fit into those characteristics, the actual meaning imparted by it within the group of people who tell it is far removed from Campbell's heavy-handed re-interpretation.
For myths that spring from the Western Classical and are influenced heavily by Judeo-Christianity, his analyses can be held as valid in most permutations of the more popular myths. Though a sufficiently creative interpreter can make them *appear* to, by re-locating them into the Western Sphere of Thought.
A bit dishonest, to say the least, though Campbell himself never seems to have realized this. (Those of his students who emerged beyond the fun-filled days of smoking weed and having deep conversations, however, did. And wrote extensively about it.) This is not to suggest that Campbell's impact is unimportant -- he did a tremendous amount of work in collecting and (occasionally mis-) cataloguing existing myths, and as I mentioned above, his interpretations remain largely valid for a particular subset of mythology.
Anyway, the point being that of course Star Wars fits his vision -- everything does. It's one of those annoying little self-enclosed bits of ignorance. All pulp science fiction fits it, too. Of course, it's all up to who is doing the interpreting!
It is a bit valid, too, for a lot of sci fi -- most of it is heavily influenced by Classical and Christian mythology.
Sorry this post is a bit disjointed, I'm debugging in the other window.
To Summarize: Campbell's system can be made to contain any myth within it; this is due to a flaw in Campbell's system. Star wars can be made to be contained within it. Milking that gave George Lucas some intellectual credibility with the uninformed. It also gave Campbell some recognition (and he did deserve some, make no mistake.), and perpetrated a sort of urban myth about George Lucas toiling by candlelight to reproduce ancient mythologies in space.
Pah.
The examination of Lucas' sources was interesting, but the rest of this article seems to be a bit too vitriolic, and contained absolutely zero in the way of new information or refutation.
He didn't even have the grace to properly explain and debunk Campbell's theories, which I think he should have, because I found his point to wander away from time to time due to a lack of support.
-l
I couldn't agree more. It's not just pulp sci-fi, either, something the author touches upon but doesn't follow up on with his "Rocky" comparison.
Most stories, of *any* genre, are based in some way on the archetypes found in ancients myths and epics. These stories contain basic elements found in just about *every* story told ever since.
Star Wars is based on theses myths and epics - Gilgamesh, Beowulf, etc. - as much as it is based on all the wonderful pulp sci-fi of the twentieth century. The debate is kind of pointless: if you want to see Joseph Campbell-style myhtological influences, they're there. If you'd prefer to think of Star Wars as an outgrowth of pulp sci-fi, that's just as true.
And here's to hoping Episode II makes up for the sins of Episode I. Lucas' last chance, I'd say.
Allegation of plagarism aside, Lucas did create a Campbell-esque saga. The point that Campbell was making in his books on myth was that humans are and have been telling the same stories over and over again since the beginning of recorded history. So whether or not Star Wars was original, it did follow the cycle of myth as did the works on which it based on--or copied from. The reason the movie followed the cycle points to something fundamental about human nature or so Campbell beleived.
"Well, maybe a second question: will the 'real' writer ever come forward, or is this a topic for another conspiracy theory???"
more than likely not, as he probably killed himself after seeing what an atrocity he unleashed upon the masses with ep. 1
the story i've always heard was that lucas wrote an entire "play" that was 9 acts long, and when he went to fox to sell his story, they were like "great! but it's too long, try and cut it down" - so he put "act 4" into production....
...so in theroy, he did write a grand epic, it's sitting somewhere, we'll just probably never live long enough to see the true 9 act script.
moox. for a new generation.
Before I go off on a rant, the article makes some valid points -- people have taken the Lucas/Campbell association way too far.
But then, the whole point of Campbell's research wasn't something you would go dig into and then use in the first place anyway; the point was that there were certain archetypal myths that people have always enjoyed. Lucas didn't need to have been familiar with Campbell's work or ancient Greek legends to have done something that agrees with Campbell's research! In a sense, as someone who'd studied a half-century of cinema (focusing on the good ones), he couldn't help himself but to follow it, subconciously.
Let's not replace one form of idiocy with another when we backlash against the first kind, k?
big deal, Art is built on other art. hell, are you going to sue Goya for Plagerising the image of venus when ever he depicted lady liberty?
come on people, he took the concepts from 20th century sci-fi and made them into somthing entirly its own. that is not plagerism.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
The ripoff^h^h^h^h^h^hborrowing is obvious to anyone who has read any science fiction. Two of the movies feature sandworms -- the skeleton of a wormlike (or snakelike, worms being inverterbrates) creature in Ep IV, and the mouth at the bottom of the pit thing in Ep VI. Borrowed from that other (and earlier) classic desert planet, Arrakis (Dune).
It wouldn't be hard to find classic SF precedents for everything in Star Wars -- the difficulty might be in arguing which precedent.
But so what? Robert Heinlein admitted to swiping many story ideas from classic literature, "you just file off the serial numbers". (He also said that there are only four or five basic story ideas, the rest is detail.) The Star Wars movies are fun if you don't take them seriously, and thats worth a few entertainment dollars.
-- Alastair
The real writer is well known. The real writer is nothing much either. Episodes V and VI were to large extent written by Thymoty Zan and fixed by a slew of other people for production. In all cases they have drawn heavily on earlier pulp fiction and the first books in the Dune series. Actually, T.Z. is pulp fiction as well so...
Personally, I think T.Z's fiction sucks eggz but this is a matter of taste so I digress.
This topic has largely been discussed in an interview with David Brin on this subject a few years ago on Slashdot. Sorry, no URL, find it yourself.
The conclusion of that interview was:
Lucas is well known for the fact that he cannot stand any greateness but his own. He usually chooses collaborators that do not have a name in the field so that they do not stick near his name on the credits. He is the king of mediocrity. He is continuing this tendency even now. Just think about episode I. Out of all possible Sci Fi writers out there to hire Terry Brooks. After even his fans could not stand him any more because of the endless repetition of look-alike bland characters in look-alike bland books. All characters in Episode I are so T.B. it makes me want to puke. Just look at the so called "queen". Everybody say "shannara" and "magic kingdom for sale" please... Ugh.... yuk... Bleah...
At the same time there are brilliant Space Opera style Sci Fi authors out there. David Brin (Uplift), Yain Banks (Culture), Peter F Hamilton (Night's Down). All of them are capable of taking a topic and developing it into a whole universe for years.
But Lucas is not going to hire them. First it will decrease HIS credit and HIS ego. Second they will be able to draw on the Star Wars audience which he jelously guards as his prime revenue source.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
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Oh, Lucas said that dozens of times...after Campbell adopted Star Wars as his pet example of Themes of Mythology in Popular Culture. You won't have any trouble finding such quotes, but I'll bet money that you won't be able to find one that predates Campbell's original ruminations on the topic.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
I think people confuse Star War's excellent execution with its story. Lets face it, the story is very basic, nothing new. However, the characters are all believable, we care about what happens to them, etc. Its quite simply a well executed simple story. It would be insulting to compare this simple plot with scifi masters such as Asimov, Clarke, etc. Even though Star Wars may have an epic feeling to it, I think it lacks the complexity found in scifi. Scifi stories question our assumption of things such as society, social conditioning, technology, morals, etc but Star Wars really did not (as was not intented) to do any of these. Much like most Stephen Speilberg or Jerry Bruckheimer films, what you see is what you get; these movies are intended for the general audience and hand everything to you on a silver platter. Don't bother trying to find deeper meaning in them, just enjoy them for what they are: entertaining movies. If you want to examine humanity through film, watch a Kubrick, Aronofsky, etc film.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
- The hero's mother is a royal virgin (we'll find out soon enough, I guess)
- His father is a king
- The circumstances of his conception and birth are unusual, and
- He is reputed to be the son of a god (close enough, I'd say)
- At birth an attempt is made, often by his father or maternal grandfather, to kill him, but
- He is spirited away, and
- He is raised by foster-parents in a far country (you know, a far, far away kind of country)
- On reaching manhood, he returns or travels to his future kingdom
- He of makes a journey to the Underworld, or the shades of the dead may visit him (the latter is obvious, I think the former is a bit more of a stretch
- AFter he triumphs over the king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild beast,
- He marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor, and
- He becomes king
the rest of it goes on about how his life ends, which isn't really relevant I suppose. Anyway, with a strech or two here and there and a bit of a twist with the whole princess thing, the trilogy pretty much hits every single point.Personally, I'd say it's more of a case of not being that original, rather than direct "borrowing" - people couldn't come up with anything new for millenia, and Lucas just isn't all that special.
sic transit gloria mundi
Hm, I was pretty sure it was Flash Gordon (ooold sci-fi show) that the first Star Wars came from. You have Ming (Darth Vader), you have OB1-kenobi, you have Luke skywalker, you have OB1 going into the evil fortress and shutting down the defence shield from within... I forget if the Force was there or not.
Someone who has Flash Gordon memorized in their head, please post a better reply.
BTW, it is still appropriate to say that the work is related to Jospeph Campbell's, just as it would be appropriate to say that it was related to, say, Jung. That's because Joseph Campbell and Jung lay claim to wiiide territory and deep waters- pretty much anything in the realm of Myth, which includes Star Wars.
What is it about Salon and this gigantic anti-Star Wars bent? David Brin's article from a couple years ago was seething with resentment -- he was clearly REALLY annoyed that Star Wars, which is space opera (not hard SF) was so insanely popular. "True SF is the only way to salvation, not this populist trash! Curse Lucas for his success!" He went off on a rant about how Lucas's morality was going to destroy Western civilization or something.
Now we've got another guy ranting about Star Wars's faults.
Hey, dickhead -- it's a MOVIE. Sit back and enjoy it -- it's not worth having an embolism over.
Incidentally, Lucas and Kasdan DIDN'T write ESB -- but this is not news. Kasdan and Leigh Brackett did. Lucas had the story credit, but Kasdan and Brackett were the WRITERS. Who's claiming that Lucas co-wrote ESB?
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
influenced is going easy on him, he more or less ripped off kurosawa's movies. Same Editing techniques, same composition, and an eerily familiar plot structure that combines hidden fortress, roshamon, seven samurai and any other pre 1970 Kurosawa film. Lucas tends to downplay this by saying "influenced". But this kind of stuff really only seems to matter to film buffs and film majors. I just don't like how Lucas is considered to be one of the "great directors" when all he does is copy movies that were made 20 years prior. I take star wars for what star wars is, a updated version and mutation of kurosawas films of the 50's and 60's. Albeit a "last man standing" of the sci-fi genre =).
Did you know that he actually believes that midiclorians (or whatever the fuck they are) are real? I remember reading an interview with him in Entertainment Weekly regarding "The Force" and his personal beliefs when Episode I was released. The man has taken his own fiction (which isn't his own, but that's excusable, at some level every creative endeavor is derivative of something) and turned it into his reality.
That and his fucked up, screw the people who made him (uh, that would be you, fans), sales and marketing techniques.
I give Lucas as much credit as I give to the craxy old man who wanders around downtown screaming. It might surprise you to find out that I give the screamer more credit that you might think.
The middle mind speaks!
Regardless of the "actual" origins of Star Wars, the film (and Empire and Jedi) touches a nerve. We live in a society where the only way to be a hero is to get lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time (a firefighter in NYC on 9/11). It isn't a profession.
So, most of us are sadly lacking in the rites of passage department. We seek out meaningful adventure in fantasy. Through Star Wars we could live vicariously, and go through the classic struggle that Luke went through. Campbell or not, it's still a hero's quest.
Don't forget the Cantina lightsabre scene, which
has an uncanny resemblance to the street scene in Yojinbo.
Watching Kurosawa is a must for any true SW fan,
and his best films (Yojinbo, 7 samurai) are better than SW, most of them are better than PM.
Oh, and the nerve of accusing The Matrix of ripping off Nueromancer and then mentioning Blade Runner in the next sentance! Ridley Scott defined the look of cyberpunk thankyou... and even he was borrowing from others. A bit of Omega Man, a touch of Babel 17, some Felinniesque visuals, with just a sprinkle of A Clockwork Orange for good measure.
It's been said over and over again for nearly three millenia (and probably longer), but the Preacher of Ecclesiastes is still right: There is nothing new under the sun.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
I find it hard to believe that the author of the Salon article, or the authors of many of the "me too" responses about the problems of Star Wars, or of the lack of respect to the original source, have ever sat down and worked on creating more than just a short story. Creating a world, like Lucas has, is not easy. There are MANY influences, operating on many different levels. To believe otherwise is as simplistic as believing that Santa Claus must exist, since there are presents around the tree on Christmas morning. George Lucas has long acknolwedged the sources of his inspiration, such as comic books and pulp novels. But something as complex as a series of movies based in a consistant world does not have one source or inspiration.
While Lucas may have been inspired by the Lensmen, that is not to rule out other levels of inspiration. As J. Michael Straczynski has said, in regards to his creating and writing most of Babylon 5, you can't consciously think on an archetypal level, otherwise, you keep second guessing yourself. Many writers who are strongly focused on creating a universe of their own are often, consciously, or unconsciously, in touch with the archetypal structures and characters which show up in Star Wars, Babylon 5, and even in other movies and books.
I don't see why it is impossible for Lucas to draw inspiration from multiple sources. To suggest otherwise is silly. I couldn't help feeling that the author of the Salon article, and several posters here, are doing nothing more than showing a snob attitude, as if to say, "Hey, this is no good." It's as if people can "prove" their elitist tastes in culture, art, and intellectualism by arguing against something popular.
Star Wars is what it is -- a series of movies that is a heck of a lot of fun. It is also a thinly veiled morality play. The fact that it is one does not deny the ability for it to be the other as well. Look at Hamlet. It was written to make money, to compete with The Spanish Revenge Tragedy. MacBeth was similar -- on one level these plays are to give people a sense of fun and adventure. MacBeth, at a simple level, is also little more than swords and ghosts, at a deeper level, it is a morality play, and even deeper it is a fascinationg insight into the workings of the human mind. Shakespeare had to make his plays popular so people would pay to see them. His plays work on many levels. The same is true with Hitchcock's best movies, and the same is true of Star Wars.
I think the bashers, both here and on Salon, are more interested in showing off by bashing something everyone else likes, than they are in just getting a life.
There's a difference between I Am Serious About Making A Fun, Dumb Movie serious and This Movie Is Not A Dumb Fun Movie But Part Of The Great Tradition Of Epic Storytelling, And I Am A Latter Day Homer serious.
D'oh!
;-)
Better yet, compare the Kurosawa versions with their American remakes:
Seven Samurai vs. The Magnificant Seven
Yojimbo vs. A Fist Full Of Dollars
Hidden Fortress vs. Star Wars
I guess Lucas' ego grows in proportion to the profits from this franchise. Hey, anybody notice how much Episode I crap is still stuck in toy stores?
This article provided some interesting suggestions to the origins of the science fiction mythology of Star Wars.
;-)
However, the article was majorly flawed in suggesting that merely because the characters, locations, and plots in the films resembled those of previous science fiction novels, George Lucas MUST have ripped them off. While the similarities are striking in some instances, the argument is nonetheless groundless in that there are no direct connections proven between Lucas and the other works. We don't know if he has indeed ever owned or read the works in question, or discussed them with someone who has.
In short, the argument wouldn't hold up in a court of law.
Second, the author misses a major point by making the implicit assumption that the written medium is equivalent to that of film. Even if Lucas had ripped off the cited works entirely, he had still created a new, and powerful work, portrayed on film. There are numerous examples of direct adaptations of books where the film had quite an artistic integrity of its own right ("Dr. Zhivago" and "Remains of the Day" pop immediately to mind), and others (ie, "The Matrix") which blatantly stole from other works, but nonetheless were an outright success in and of their own right.
In short, I think the author of the Salon article secretly wishes he had one tenth the success of Lucas.
Bob
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
Not being the Cambell expert that this guy claims to be I might be wrong. But, wasn't Cambell's whole thesis that Star Wars draws on deep cultural refrents so old and so universal that they appear in everything?
:)
Therefore, even if Lucas is full of it, even if his whole friendship with Cambell (which started after the first movie came out not before) was a scam, and, even if he did copy it from old movie serials and pulp mags such as Flash Gordon isn't Cambell's thesis is still correct? Hasn't he just drawn on the same shared mythos as the rest of us?
To my mind, the only one "blinded by snobbery or the need for self-inflation" here is Steven Hart who seems to be taking the whole discussion waaay too personally.
Although, I do agree that Lucas is kind of a Gasbag
Hidden Fortress is a rip off of an American Western staring John Wayne called "The Searchers." John Wayne is quite young in it. Rent it or buy it if it is on DVD. It is totally worth it and is one of the best pieces of American Film making from that time period. John Wayne plays a Luke Skywalker type character who decidedly drifts to the dark side!
Akira Kurosawa was the director of Hidden Fortress. John Ford was the director of The Searchers (1956).
The link to Pulp Fiction for Star Wars was researched ages ago right after the movie was released. Actually there are more ideas stolen from WWII films in Star Wars than their are from Pulp Fiction as far as I am concerned. The cockpit of the Mil. Falc. is ripped straight from that of a B-25 Bomber and the Cantina scene is film noir in color!
Enjoy!
When Starlog gets their index page set up, I'll be able to look for that issue -- maybe it was May of '77 -- that had Star Wars as its cover feature -- it's the one with the X-Wing being strafed and the logo in purple. I bought that at a supermarket way back when I was fifteen, just a couple of weeks before the movie came out.
In it, Lucas describes his long-simmering idea for an action story that drew inspiration from the Saturday morning serials (science fiction and Western genres both) of his own youth. I didn't read about this mythology masturbation until a whole lot later -- well after the trilogy was finished, IIRC, and after Joseph Campbell became a household name thanks to the Bill Moyers interviews on PBS.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
the roots of George Lucas' empire lie not in "The Odyssey" but in classic and pulp 20th century sci-fi.
Is there anything wrong with that? Homer's Odyssey *is* the fantasy pulp of the 8th century BC. Opera was the equivalent of, well, soap operas and even Shakespeare was just popular entertainment. Only much later they have been canonized as "high culture".
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Frankly lots of people have made the connection between star wars and old pulp fiction rags long ago. You can see it just from the titles. And incidentally, from this perspective, episode 2's title makes sense. Just add some exclamation points and imagine them on the covers of Shocking Tales! or something.
The Phantom Menace!
Attack of the Clones!!
?
A New Hope!
The Empire Strikes Back!!
Return of the Jedi!
That said, paying homage to something is not the same as ripping it off. Just because there's a connection doesn't lower the value of the movies(or raise it, for that matter).
hot foreign sheep.
Hundreds of millions are being spent on promoting the "Star Wars" series in every form, fawning pieces on Lucas are broadcast on "60 Minutes", and local newscasts are going to have a camera crew around to watch the people waiting in line for weeks outside the theaters.
Uh yeah, but thats all just business. People seem to like the whole starwars franchise and Lucas will wring as much soggy cash as he can out of the thing before it implodes in a jarjarbinksian mush of uncoolness.
air and light and time and space
Maybe the problem is that I was 13 when I saw the movie... and I had a crush on Leah Thompson, and the movie took place in Cleveland (where I live)... but I thought Howard the Duck was "entertaining." Who can forget the bachelor duck reading about hot chicks in PlayDuck, or the principal from Ferris Beuller turning into an alien and sticking his tongue in the cigarette lighter socket to "power up?"
Howard: "Where am I?"
Leah: "Cleveland."
Howard: "What a name for a planet."
Leah: "Are you lost?"
Howard: "Do you think if I had a choice, I'd be stuck in CLEVE-LAND?"
Guess you had to be there.
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
That Mr. Lucas has been retelling stories that have always been dear to our hearts. Yes, we knew that they weren't Original, and sure, the anthropologists among us said it was just a standard myth...but it was a *good* retelling of those stories, and it helped put the Magick back into life when the world's concept of good culture was bad dance songs and and recycled art work.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
I could not agree more with this article. Star Wars and the whole industry it has spawned are maggots on a dead dog. Star Wars is a mediocre movie at best, "ESB" is modestly good, and the rest suck bilge water from the straits of Panama.
Sure, I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced venison when it first came out, but i was 12 years old, so I have an excuse. Now I don't have any problem with people enjoying a simple action movie. My problem comes when people pretend that it is not only more than a simple action movie, but that it is right up there in the literary pantheon.
It doesn't even measure up decently with its literary kin like the eminently entertaining works of Dumas, Sabaitini, and Hope. It's dreck. It's pretty dreck. It's vapid, predictable, and dull.
I'm not trolling here. I really think that the Star Wars franchise is a boring pile of cliches, and it is a source of perpetual wonder to me that people go ga-ga nuts over it.
I believe Steven Spielburg once said that there are only 4 movie plots:
Man vs. Man
Man vs. Nature
Nature vs. Nature
Dog vs. Vampire
Why can't people admit it - when they saw the original StarWars they loved it because they were kids at the time. Today's kids loved "The Phantom Menace" and will no doubt love "Attack of the Clones" but for those of us who saw the original as kids the magic isn't going to be there because we're not kids any more.
The author of the article suggests that this was invented by Lucas afterwards to make his flick into more than it really was. The fact that Lucas has emphasized the Campbell influence so many times supports rather than disputes this thesis.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
The first glimpse of Skywalker's desert homeworld, Tatooine, evokes the setting of Frank Herbert's 1965 novel "Dune"; Lucas even throws in a shot of a skeletal desert serpent reminiscent of Herbert's gigantic sandworms. The amazing visuals suggest an eye nourished by the magazine art of Frank R. Paul, John Schoenherr, Kelly Freas and Chesley Bonestell.
The giant-skeleton scene is nearly identical to a scene in the 1966 film "One Million Years BC."
In 1MYBC, John Richardson portrays "Tumak", a caveman who is expelled from his tribe, and wanders through the desert. En route to discovering Raquel Welch's tribe of blond-haired, blue-eyed cavemen, he passes by a giant half-buried skeleton. Once you've seen both films, the homage is unmistakable. Similar skeleton, identical visual composition, even the MUSIC sounds similar.
To name five off the top of my head. Sci fi is a distinct genre, worthy of respect like other genres. It is not just fantasy, nor is it Westerns with the serial numbers filed off. A lot of what is called "science fiction" is ill-disguised fantasy
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I was pleased to see someone else who instantly recognized Coruscant as equivalent to Trantor. I don't expect to see the Foundation Trilogy on film in my lifetime, so it was nice to see some Trantorian establishing shots, by any name.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
If you've never read any mythology before then Campbell is interesting because of the breadth of his knowledge and the number of enticing references to sprinkles throughout his work. But don't, for God's sake, take any of his interpretation in the least bit seriously.
-- SIGFPE
There is nothing new under the sun.
Yes!
Honestly, folks, what we have here is an over-intellectualized pissing contest over who is more "cultured."
bzzzt
"I'm sorry, that's incorrect, but thanks for playing"
ALL entertainment borrows from other entertainment. Some well, some poorly. Over time, a collection of "archtypical" stories has emerged.
They're fun to compare. But other than that, it's no big deal
Move along. This isn't the topic you're looking for.
Kurosawa was an egotistical jerk (I give you the Tora! Tora! Tora! fiasco) who probably revelled in this, but he was a hell of a director. No one ever filmed rain and horses better. Not even John Ford on the horses. IMHO, Kursosawa's best effort was Dersu Uzala. When we see Lucas stealing long focal length landscape shots from this flick, it will be official: he will be declared a no talent ass clown.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Campbell never advocated any 'world myth,' certainly never any primal myth which supercedes more concrete folk wisdom/religion. I fail to understand where you intuit Campbell's "Judeo-Christian beliefs."
_Hero w/ 1000 Faces_ shows up on a lot of creative writing syllabi, but Campbell's real masterwork is the 4-vol. _Masks of God_, an extensive survey of mythology from cave paintings to James Joyce. His point, made there and elsewhere, isn't that there's one myth--a misunderstanding perpetuated by lazy readers of _1000 Faces_--but *patterns* in the way people come to grips with the world. Jung called them *archetypes* and believed they were hardwired into the brain; Campbell is less certain. Common ground is equally found outside the gray matter: every creature has seen the sun rise in the east and set in the west, seen the moon go through its cycles, the stars glide through predictable paths. That the patterns of life are reflected in the patterns of myth is not due to the superimposition of any "uber-myth," but instead to the commonalities of life on this planet.
It takes Campbell two volumes to get to "Occidental Mythology" because that's where it comes in the timeline. By the time you get there with him, you be hard-pressed to extract any sense of a "Western, Judeo-Christian" view. Quite the opposite. The advent of Zoroastrianism and Christianity are something of disappointment to the writer, a time when the forgiving cycles of the regenerative world circle were forsaken for a doomed and transitory world which must be redeemed by the righteous. And here you do get some sermonizing, the same Campbell offers whenever discussing the west: don't take yourself so seriously.
He's also wont to stress that mythmaking isn't a conscious process; nobody sits down and dreams up a religion--and that's my personal beef about this whole Campbell/Lucas 69. Lucas treats Campbell's scholarship like a paint-by-numbers kit, or a cake mix: a dash of virgin-birth, splash of transformation, et voila. It happens all the time in those creative writing classes, but only Lucas had the press agents to make it stick. You always hurt the ones you love.
But that's an old old story, now in'nit.
Star Wars fits neatly into the genre of "Space Opera", with a slight hint of science fantasy thrown in.
Popular themes, concepts and story lines get reused. Here's a suprise, great concepts like the wise old master, the invincible hero, the hot-shot loner, the evil villan behind the mask. All of these concepts were used long before Star Wars and long before Asimov and popular s.f.. The Star Wars movies were not some sort of mythical awakening, they are entertainment. And ready for this, so was the s.f. that preceded it. And the myths and legends that preceded that, guess what that was? Entertainment. Yes ladies and gentlemen, with the exception of a few pieces, very little writing is written with anything more than a simple moral or goal in mind. No one set's out to write a world changing piece, they set out to write and make a story that get's their view and opinion across. What makes something revolutionary is when it's done well enough to appeal to enough people to make them want to follow the moral or lesson of the story.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
I agree that many of the "Star Wars"/myth correspondences are pretty streched. However, the Salon writer stretches things just as thin. Tatooine as Dune? Why, because they are both deserts? Common, why don't you compare it to Lawerence of Arabi The skeleton in the desert like a sandworm? Sure, only a completely different shape.
His comparisons to the Lensman series are better, though the disdain in which he apparently holds it would seem to mitigate against his conclusion that Lucas should credit the pulps.
Anyway, the point being that of course Star Wars fits his vision -- everything does. It's one of those annoying little self-enclosed bits of ignorance. All pulp science fiction fits it, too. Of course, it's all up to who is doing the interpreting!
And this is exactly what makes mythology so powerful. Look, you can analyze the cannon of every traditional or popular story in the world, and they essentially break down into 7 to 12 types, depending on who you ask and how fine a sieve you run them through. Why do we find adventure stories interesting? Because of a deeply-rooted (I would venture to say pre/sub coscious) affinity for adventure. Same goes for romance, mystery, comedy, etc.
I've seen some amazing foreign language comedy that almost made me piss my pants without understanding a word. There are certain things that speak to people more or less universally.
These basic tropes of culture (not just entertainment... this is where values really do come from) bear out certain commonalities between disparate peoples. The details, the styles, the appearances, these things change from time to time, from civilization to civilization. Of course anyone seeking to observe this will be prejudiced by her/his origin culture, but that doesn't make the investigation invalid. It's just heisenberg's uncertainty principle operating on the social and metaphysical level.
Campbell's system can be made to contain any myth within it; this is due to a flaw in Campbell's system.
You might also argue that this is the strength of Campbell's work.
The great Pulp stories, the great westerns and crime novels, they are the most mythic of all: they just tend to be rush jobs with poor attention to detail and not a lot of staying power. Of course Star Wars draws from the same sources. or at least the first film does... my contention is that Lucas struck gold once and then turned from prospecting to strip-mining in short order.
The difference between Star Wars and Pulp is the level of detail, craft, and emotion that is invested in it. Star Wars (the movie, not the franchise) looks dated today because of the 70s hair cuts, but other than that the story is still iconic in its power.
You must understand that this forum is not the best place to discuss such things. Many people here love Star Wars for the tech-whizbang factor, droids, lightsabers, x-wings... all the things self-respecting geeks are into. That's why they stay fanatical. But what I think you and I are addressing is a much deeper and more substantive issue.
When the first movie broke in '77, the people who freaked out about it were from all walks of life. It touched a chord, not by being above average SF, but by presenting something that people could believe in. This was my experience seeing it as a child, and it's backed up by the stories my mother told me about seeing it in the theaters. Contrary to everyday life in the Regan era, here was a representation of simple, humble values that triumph over avaristic megalomania. Growing up in an agnostic household, I was one of the many who looked to mythic stories such as Star Wars and the work of Tolkien to hand down a basic set of morals and values, and since I think I turned out ok, I have to be greatful to some extent to these authors and filmmakers.
But my gratitude has limits. Since striking gold with the first film, Lucas has been more and more aggressively humping the fantasy for every dollar it's worth. I think the perfect representation of Lucas's change can be found in the Phantom Menace, during an Exchange between Young Obi-Won and the Computer-Generated Flying Junk Salesman. Obi-Won has been trying to use his Jedi Mind Tricks(tm), and the CG character says, "haha, the force doesn't work on me. Only Money."
That about says it all.
Howard Dean for president
Read the article. Prima facie nothing, it's a bit deeper than that.
The corruption and mistakes in the Federation can be addressed and fixed from within. The Federation is democratic, and sometimes the democracy even works well. Contrast to Star Wars, where there is no recourse against tyranny except rebellion. The democracy portrayed in Episode 1 is a shambles.
The villians in Star Trek use subterfuge and are not always easily discernible by their actions and outfits. Some of them have understandable motives, like self-preservation or stealing better technology for their species. Contrast to Star Wars, where the villians wear sinister outfits and have openly expressed plans to conquer the galaxy simply for its own sake.
The actions of the main characters in Star Trek are not above the law and do not supersede normal mortals. People are court martialed, and the prime directive is important. Contrast this to Star Wars, where the redemption of Darth Vader for saving his own son redeem him from the murders of thousands of innocents, including the destruction of a planet (Alderaan). There is no scale.
The heroes in Star Trek are the human ideal, but not truly superhuman (with exceptions like Data, who is still not perfect or the main character). Star Wars Jedi Knights and Sith are technologically and physically superhuman. No normal man could defeat a jedi in a fight, in piloting, or engineering.
Brin makes a good argument that Lucas is bombarding us with propoganda in favor of aristocracy. That may not be an expressed intention, but that is the result. Star Trek is certainly idealistic, but it favors democracy.
What liberal arts majors who read too much call "monomythic elements", us normal people who just watch movies all "cliches". Without a french accent mark, mind you.
I am not saying it is correct...
Click here or here.
I love Star Wars. I had all the toys as a kid. I played the video games (X-Wing/TIE Fighter, JediKnight, etc) in college. I saw The Phantom Menace on the day it opened (without camping out or waiting in some huge-ass line).
It's still just a movie. I liked watching the movie. I will see Attack of the Clones. Maybe it will be suprisingly good. Maybe it will be a little disappointing. For me , it will still be fun. Entertainment. If you don't find it fun then don't go watch it. If you don't find it fun then why waste a bunch of time publishing an article to convince everyone else of its flaws?
I didn't really like The Matrix. It wasn't bad, I just didn't like it. So I didn't go see it again. I did not spend a lot of time trying to convince people that did like The Matrix that it sucked simply because I didn't like it.
Gee, you think?
"No Luke, I am your father."
"To keep you safe from the emporer, your twin sister [who you french-kissed in an earlier episode] was separated from you at birth".
And how about those droids that just keep coming back to the same circle, over and over again, by coincidence.
Finally SOMEONE is realizing this...In other news, somebody finally realised the world was round, the Sun rises in the east, and the oceans are rather wet.
This guy could write the dialog for comic-book-guy on The Simpsons.
"And like that
An interesting page that talks about some other Star Wars influenced stuff in a far less sensationalist way:
http://www.jitterbug.com/origins/other.html
e4 e5
No, it didn't say "Episode IV" or "A New Hope" in the original. That was later, just like turning the original Jabba The Hut from a not-very-memorable-in-person Casablanca-like Fat Man into His Green Jabbaness was also a revision after "Revenge Of The Jedi" was so wildly successful.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It should be the Matrix. Ok David Brin was kind of on target but at least some of the things he said can be argued against: the Rebel Alliance seemed to be an alliance of all races and beings in a republic (sadly the movie is a little too much *Zap* *Boom* *Bang* to focus on this). And at least they were only attacking known military installations (the Death Star, the Star Destroyers, etc) instead of blindly razing citizens (ala some terrorist folk we know).
But now the Matrix. Damn... ok, maybe it is JUST because so many people gush about it... but what about the morality of this movie?
Morpheus points out explicitly that they are killing people even if the Matrix is virtual. That even though these nameless Redshirts and slobs are just doing what they're told because they are a part of a group hallucination it is ok to murder them en mass in extremely violent and callous ways why...?
Because we are righteous? We are doing the best thing? We are destroying the evil dictators (in the most round about way possible)?
Tell me, did Trinity and Neo have to go through the bottom floor? Did they have to kill 30 or 40 guys? Especially when they end up grabbing a Bell Huey anyway? "Who cares! They're nameless spear-chuckers! In the end their sacrifice won't be in vain!" Sounds a little: "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."
And then what about the evil tyrannical machines (beyond the FUD ludditism of the movie)? They specifically said that human beings couldn't live in a utopia so they made the Matrix the way it was.
"So?" the leather-clad hippies retort. "Where was our choice in the matter?"
What. Like the same choice you gave those SWAT guys? And the fact that the Agents possess normal humans doesn't stop Neo from blowing all them fuckers away. "Yeah! Coool!!! Bla-dow!!!" Yep, no ethical quandries here!
"But they eat people!!" Oh Jeezus. And like, when it's all over, people can just do whatever the hell they want? Anyone here get their food, house, and shelter for free? Anyone out there going to live forever that I don't know of?
And when they win: Earth is a barren wasteland with no sun and no way to support the billions of freshly freed humans (well those that survive the blazing machineguns of the "Freedom Fighters"). "Gee, thank you!" They'll all say. "This is much better!"
The only moral of the entire movie is this: Man is paranoid and reactionary. When he is not in control of his own destiny (no matter how self-destructive) he will violently lash out, blindly ignoring the consequences.
What is music when you despise all sound?
That excluding the occasional mystic references that didn't have a whole lot to do with the overall plot, the original Star Wars was a Western. Young man on the frontier, parents slaughtered by the bad guy's gang, learns to be a gun-fighter from the grizzled, philisophical old man, teams up with a callous drifter (with a heart of gold in the long term), uses new-found skills to beat the bad guys, gang leader escapes just in case there's enough money to make a sequel, townspeople have big celebration and make him the marshall.
The Pope: Still Catholic (P.S. Noam Chomsky is a Knob)... by David Horowitz
Don't Look Now, But Bears Are Defecating in the Woods! ...by Amy Reiter
Water: It Sure is Wet... by Garrison Keillor
Special mp3 Audio presentation by Armistead Maupin: "Hail Unto Me, I've Recently Observed That the Sky is Blue."
Jackbooted Republican Thugs Will Have You Shot and Killed in the Dark Future -- Oh, And Today is Wednesday... by Tom Tomorrow
... and they want you to pay $30 a year for this stuff.
Funny how there was John Brunner 20-30 years earlier...
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
Distillation of this article:
"Star Wars sure is commercial. Boy, I sure am clever for knowing about E.E. 'Doc' Smith and Lensman, you clueless sheep. Everything good about Star Wars is the responsibility of someone besides George Lucas, because he sucks and stuff. I liked 'Rocky' better."
In spite of Brin's very perceptive rant, referenced by other articles here, there's more distinction between good and evil in Star Wars than most movies of the time - compare it to, say, The French Connection and other Watergate-era movies, where the protagonist isn't particularly better than the Bad Guys.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
No matter what I knew or did not know about Campbell (I actually know very little), this would only convince me that the author wanted me to hate Campbell. You don't even get a good picture from the article exactly why he hates Campbell so much, just that he really, really does.
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
This is fine. I'm not one to push religion in anyone's face and I certainly think men should be free to make rational decisions about the universe, free of superstition and nonsense.
That said, Dick was one of the most spiritual and Christian of all scfi-fi writers. His work simply reeks of Christianity. Don't get me wrong, PKD is one of my absolute favorite writers. I especially love his mainstream stuff. Milton Lumpky territory is unadulterated genius, Mary and the Giant is wonderful, and few novels are as much fun as Confessions of a Crap Artist.
Don't you have trouble reconciling the whole Freedom From Religion schtick with a love for such a blatantly Episcopal writer -- one who practiced in a field where Agnosticism remains cool?
"Our war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives." --Tyler Durden
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The author of the article points out in great detail how similar Lucas's series is to that of E. E. "Doc" Smith's classic space opera Lensman series. However, he then states that while Lucas's dialogue was unpronounceable by his actors, Smith's words were unreadable.
Perhaps I need to go back and re-read the Lensman series again. I haven't read it in about 20 years, but the last time I read the series, I thought it was corny fun. It's truly cheesy in many ways, but it's completely unpretentious about its cheesiness, in spite of the grandiosity of the plot. A space opera even occurs within one of the books as a form of entertainment for the characters.
Regardless of the criticism of both series, I think both series represent good fun when they're at their best. Lucas's series definitely has more downs than ups so far, but the ups have been terrific.
I believe the article missed the real point in its attempt to expose Lucas's mythology pretensions. All great stories are simply retellings of the same seven basic plot types. It should come as no surprise that one can find parallels between Lucas's work and stories from mythology or from the recent dimestore pulp magazines and novels. Lucas is no great screenwriter, but Star Wars *does* borrow heavily from many other influences. If he stole from pulp, then he stole from mythology because pulp stole from mythology.
Shakespeare certainly didn't make up any of the stories he told. Virtually all of his plays were based on well-known stories of the time. His genius was in stripping the stories to their essential themes and then dressing them up again. Shakespeare's stuff is contemporary today for that reason.
The ancient Greek playwrights basically told the exact same stories over and over, yet we still regard Sophocles as one of the greats because his version of Oedipus Rex stood the test of time.
The greatness of Lucas's work isn't whether it's original or where it draws its influences. It's in how quickly the audience can immerse itself in the story and how enjoyable and memorable the storytelling ultimately is. SW:ANH, while clunky at times, is a remarkable piece of storytelling because it's fun and the audience can't help but be swept up in its infectious enthusiasm. SW:TESB is an even better piece of storytelling because it explores the characters in greater detail and allows for more gray area, rather than drawing the characters as pure archetypes. Lucas's other efforts to date have been decidedly second-rate compared to those two movies, but that shouldn't give critics carte blanche to savage his work wholesale.
I read somewhere a long time ago (I think it was an issue of Wizard: The Guide to Comics) that the attraction a reader had (They were tackling this same topic in the letters section) to Star Wars was the obviousness and absurdity of the entire series.
The villian is dressed in black and wears this grotesque head gear and has a rasping respirator with a deep sinister voice, so you know w/o a doubt that this guys a total bastard.
The Jedi wear their robes and such and have a strong belief in a mythical "Force" that symoblizies a spiritual existence that relates them to peaceful Monks not so far off from those of today and their ages old predecessors.
Then there are the aspects borrowed from ages old stories of good versus evil that have been around for years that are painted so obviously throughout the first 3 movies it's a nice escape from epics painted in subterfuge and guessing games. You know who's who, what's what and you get to sit and watch them kick the shit out of each other.
These guys are just pissed that Lucas (and I by no means praise George like a deity) put all these bits and pieces together and it became more popular than its predecessors.
Perhaps it was gleaned from other works but why should Lucas give credit to anyone? As far as I know the story of good vs. evil has been around in various forms long before even humans (Predator/Prey).
Quit bitching and just deal with the fact that it is what it is, you either like it or you don't. I do.
No sig for you!!
If you take a class in comparative religions, and your prof uses anything by Campbell as a text, don't just drop out of the class... change universities. No school worth the tuition would waste classroom time on such dreck.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
LOTR was not based on WWII, Sauron was neither Satan nor Hitler, Gandalf was not Jesus, pipeweed was not pot, and the Hobbits did not represent any particular undervalued minority group. It was just a story. Read it, enjoy it, don't overthink it.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
"George Lucas once gave a speech at a shindig for Joseph Campbell and said that he wouldn't have been able to write Star Wars without having read Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces. So much for trying to discount Campbell's influence."
:-)
I guess if Lucas says so, it must be true. Did you even read the article? Lucas makes comments like this all the time now.
"As for the pulp aspect, in an intro to one of the Star Wars tapes, Lucas also says he was trying to recreate the feeling he got from the serialized Westerns of his youth. Maybe the pulp style figured into that subconsciously, but he seemed pretty explicit about what he was going for..."
Well, if he seemed explicit enough, that must mean I should believe him. Come on!
At the same time there are brilliant Space Opera style Sci Fi authors out there. David Brin (Uplift), Yain Banks (Culture), Peter F Hamilton (Night's Down). All of them are capable of taking a topic and developing it into a whole universe for years.
But Lucas is not going to hire them. First it will decrease HIS credit and HIS ego. Second they will be able to draw on the Star Wars audience which he jelously guards as his prime revenue source.
Um, how about because first, these authors wouldn't touch the Star Wars universe with a ten-foot pole, and second, because these authors are doing quite well with their own ideas and audience.
>
> All this discussion is just pushing Campbell's thesis. Whether Lucas consciously or unconsciously meant his characters to fall in line with the monomyth is an entirely different question.
>
> _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ also has a great deal of monomythic elements to it, but Joss Whedon has admitted himself that he hasn't read _Hero with a Thousand Faces_.
So does _Pac Man_. Inky, the dark one, Blinky, the red one, aggressive with passion, Pinky - as in Pinky and the Brain - the fast genius who's the greatest threat, and Clyde, for comic relief. All set up in a backdrop of the ideology of mass consumption iconified by yellow, the color of cowardice - we're too scared to confront our desire to consume until we energize and empower ourselves (the energy pills), after which time we can turn the tables on our ghostly enemies and devour them.
It's like astrology. Make your "monomyth" broad enough to include anything, and anything will fit the pattern.
I don't buy a lot of what that Salon article says. Most liteary works are derivative, it's not very often that something truly new comes along.
It seems to me that with the Star Wars trilogy Lucas tied mythology, Eastern religion, and WW2 dogfights together into a great trio of movies.
Who cares where he got his ideas? Nobody else made those movies, does anyone disupute he directed them??
Thank you for that useful university selection guide.
I thought it was Joseph Conrad. You know, Typee, Heart of Darkness, etc. Something about a meat grinder and Major Elliot. That's the banker who started this "cross cultural" fad. Or maybe it was Edith Wharton-Frazer and the Golden Bough
Actually, in a sense he's correct, Star Wars does trivialize the non-heroes, and the heroes are people greatly affecting others. Of course, there's a good reason for both of these:
1) When writing a story it is common to centralize on main characters and trivialize the rest.
2) When writing a story it is common to choose main characters who have a central spot in history or fake history. Or, it is common to choose characters who seem this way and then exagerate to extreme.
I've often seen these precepts come together in history books. For example how much smarter than average do you really think Isaac Newton was? Einstein? How about a couple poorly known guys like Tesla and Maxwell? People need heroes (and Gods?) and have been known to create them if necessary. I've not seen too many people get hurt over it, and I've seen a lot of good kids grow up idolizing someone.
In this case, I think plargiarism and laziness play much more into the making of star wars than any political motivation.
One final thought, it was strange reading Mr. Brin's article because I've always felt that his books layed things on a little thick in the opposite direction... Good books, but the ideas about the device that gauges initial reactions and the class society stuff in Uplift War were pretty off the wall.
Who's your favorite character in star wars?
At least he realised he was completely mad
Sure, but mad or sane, his religion and spirituality oozes through on almost every page. Even discounting his violently anti-abortion (not pro life) short story (The Pre-Persons?), he made no effort to restrain his Christian thinking. Ignore the mind-control stuff. Ignore all of his quirks. He wrote an entire novel about an Episcopal Priest. Mercerism -- from DADOES -- is an incredibly succinct extrapolation of the mystery of Christian faith. This is not preaching from a zealot, but a poetic distillation of something familiar, repackaged and given bakc to us as something unfamiliar. This is the essence of sci-fi and Dick used it to express -- beautifully -- his faith.
Absolutely. Most people don't understand how stuff borrows from other stuff.
My personal theory is that Star Wars was mostly borrowed from the Wizard of Oz. It's so obvious when you think about the main characters:
SW: Has a large, cowardly, shaggy animal.
Oz: Has a large, cowardly, shaggy lion.
SW: Has a whiny robot made of tin
Oz: Has a whiny tin-man made of tin.
SW: Has a comedic R-to-D-to
Oz: Has a comedic toto
I shoulda been a eng-lit major!
2) Yes, Lucas did have myth in mind - Obi-wan and Han were once the same, Gandalf/Merlin-esque character. Luke and Leia were also split off from a combined female lead. Lucas was heavily borrowing things from Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and he consulted with Campbell at points!
3) As for the screenplay: Leigh Brackett, Leigh Brackett, Leigh Brackett...and Irwin Kerschner.
Now why didn't this silly little piece surface on April Fool's Day?
Campbell wasn't about scientific reductionism. He was a fan of mythology, and he studied it with zeal. --And as is natural for anybody with a creative mind, he saw grand patterns emerging in the material. He took pleasure in exploring and illustrating those patterns for others. It's ridiculous to think that somebody could get upset or bothered by any aspect of his work. And it's downright hillarious that anybody would approach with anything resembling a stuffy accademic high-brow attitude.
"Follow Your Bliss"
When you understand that, you'll understand Campbell. Until then, I recommend you seek some quiet time.
-Fantastic Lad
All the more reason for Anikin to be the first - it would be quite poignant that he be friendly, charismatic, and remorselessly violent as a child. He's Darth Vader. He kills his way to the top. What better a place to start?
John W. Campbell, not R. He was an author as well as an editor, but his editorship at Astounding Science Fiction defined literary SF for all time.
He put skeletons of sandworms in the desert of Tatooine. It was no stretch at all to draw the comparison because Lucas pretty much admitted it by putting a skelton of a 50 foot tall worm in the bloody landscape.
Lucas read SF; he knew what he was doing.
I think people are woefully forgetting that movies like the original Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark were in many ways akin the old movie serials, but instead of seeing only 12-15 minutes per week in the theater like it was back in the 1930's and 1940's, the whole story is presented in a single two-hour movie.
In short, it was Lucas' homage to these old serials, thrown in with influences from things like the Akira Kurosawa movie The Hidden Fortress.
I'm not sure if this is apocryphal or not, but didn't Lucas wanted to direct a new Flash Gordon movie originally?
Brin had no objections touching it in principle. Read the interview on Slashdot. Dunno about hamilton or Banks. Most likely too. That is if they are not completely castrated and dumbified by his galactic gasbaloon moronity.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Oops. Good call. Uh, I mean...
"Well, that may be what I wrote, but obviously, you misinterpreted it! It's trivially shown in the literature that it's the deconstruction that's important in Pinky and the Brain - the genius ghost of Pac-Man is now the idiot comic relief, while the fat, pokey Clyde of Pac-Man is the genius who threatens world domination! (Just as Pac-Man itself is arguably the Hegelian synthesis of the American Atari thesis with the Japanese Namco antithesis) You see, I have a Ph.D. in Neo-Lucasian Mythic Literature and you don't!" :-)
But, uh, yeah, thanks for calling me on it :)