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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."
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.
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> 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.
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 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.
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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.