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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?
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
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.
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.
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
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.
> 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.
He has a point.
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
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?
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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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
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.
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!
;-)
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Honestly,
I think both you and the article are missing the point. I have been a big Star Wars fan for years.
But I think even die hard fans have realized for more than 10 years now that story telling is not what George is good at. Good grief, any die hard fan knows that his training is in editing and that HOW he makes films is a lot more revolutionary than the stories.
Also, the article points out that his films epic links are tenative. Yes. But there are some there. The article tries to point out that these are so tentative that they can be used with other films. DUH. Most ALL stories these days are NOT NEW. Just like music is its all been done already. It's just how you can twist it, make a statement with it or apply it to todays world. Gripe at Lucas about rehashing old storys? I guess Disney gets off scott free.
The point isn't that the Star Wars fans won't believe what the article says. The point is that Star Wars fans already know what the article says. It's not anything new to them. What WE don't get is why the Salon article bitches about it so much. The whole time I am thinking, "So".
I guess the point is that Hollywood or Lucas or both are overinflating Georges story telling ability. I guess but like I said; the fans know that is "deal" isn't story telling, it's HOW he makes movies. You cannot argue that he is not a Genius with that. His company ILM IS successful on other films even if his non-Star Wars stories aren't.
I read the original screenplay, long before Star Wars came out, edited the manuscript of the novelization of Star Wars. I know the novelizer personally, and knew the publisher, Judy-Lynn del Rey, very well (worked for her for 11 years then took over the Del Rey imprint when she had a stroke). In the period from 1976 (when the ghost-written first novel appeared) through 1980, no one ever mentioned a Campbell connection in the publisher's office nor did they mention any other element that might have contributed to Star Wars than pulp science fiction, Saturday morning movie serials (e.g., Wasn't it in Don Winslow of the Navy? where the evil Japanese were always trying to squash people in rooms with walls that moved?), and elements that had appeared earlier in less successful sf films (R2D2, for instance, was very like Huey, Dewey and Louie -- I think they were -- in Cool Running). And, for several reasons, the publisher was distraught when Leigh Brackett died: (1) Brackett was a personal friend, (2) "That's the end of Star Wars". What Judy-Lynn meant was: "there's no inspiration left to be found in the project other than Leigh's."
The Salon story seems to me, an old fan of science fiction, a founding editor of Del Rey Books, and its editor in chief for more than ten years, quite nicely done. There are many who could tell the story in more detail, I'm sure, but they didn't choose to write. And what was written has, to me, the ring of truth.
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?
Why overanalyze it? It just ruins it.
I doubt that anyone with more than a passing acquaintance with written science fiction would want to over-analyze Star Wars. It's bloody obvious. Tatooine = Dune. Coruscant = Trantor = Rome. Jedi Knights = Lensmen. Luke = the callow kid starring in 90% of SF...
The thing is, somehow this Joseph Campbell (not to be mistaken for the great magazine editor of the "Golden Age") won't admit to ever reading anything just for fun in his whole life, and so is unaware of all the SF stories Lucas "sampled". Instead, he goes back to the ancient myths -- which are the same sort of stories as bad SF writing, but age has made them academically respectable. And Lucas suddenly discovers his work becoming respectable among the snooty crowd, and is lapping it up...
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.
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!!
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> 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.
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> _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.
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?