Star Wars on Trial
Page 37
8 In fact, I believe the Star Trek juggernaut faltered when it lost track of the same values that sf literature forgot: the excellent storytelling, the Hero's Journey, the strange new worlds (familiar and yet unfamiliar) promised in the voice-over for the first and second series.
9 Sidebar to "A Hobbit Takeover?" Publishers Weekly, April 4, 2005. Retrieved from Web site archives.
10 Chabon, Michael. Introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2005, edited by Michael Chabon. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005.
' I am, of course, referring here to the original 1977 film, which was initially titled simply Star Wars and was only later renamed Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope. Since the latter is a rather unwieldy name, and since STE4ANH looks like something a 14-year-old might text-message, I will refer to the original movie as Star Wars throughout the remainder of my testimony.
2 The term "sci-fi" was coined by writer, editor, agent and sometimes actor Forrest J. Ackerman, who is just about the nicest guy you could ever want to meet. It is used here with both permission and the greatest affection and respect. Yo, 4E!
' My personal favorite being Garnera, the giant, flying, fire-breathing, saber-toothed turtle.
8 Winner of the Academy Award for Best Special Effects, 1954.
12 Which eventually grew up to become a five-movie pentology and a TV series.
14 Winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, 1968.
4 In fairness, we must note that Lucas himself has never made this claim. Rather, fans and critics have often made this claim on his behalf.
" Okay, so it was a silly movie that depicted early humans and dinosaurs living side-by-side. But what's not to like about a movie in which Raquel Welch spends the entire film running around in a fur bikini?
s Winner of the Academy Award for Best Special Effects, 1950.
'Winner of the Academy Award for Best Special Effects, 1951.
9 Winner of the Academy Award for Best Special Effects, 1960.
10 Winner of the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, 1966.
Winner of the Academy Award for Best Special Effects, 1953.
" Winner of the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, 1968.
's Winner of the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, 1969.
16 Four-time Hugo Award-winning editor George Scithers has been known to define science fiction as, "Whatever I'm pointing at when I say, `That's science fiction."'
" Winner of the Academy Award for Best Special Effects, 1965.
18 No problem. It was the 1970s. Superficial was in.
19 Actually, the Academy has changed the name of the award several times over the years, and Logan's Run won a "Special Achievement Award." It shared this honor with the Dino De Laurentiis remake of King Kong, but let us not speak of that awful abomination here.
2' Did Star Wars help elect Ronald Reagan? Its at least worth considering.
20 Well, at least it wasn't the Horst Wessel song.
22 Or are they earlier? I can never keep this straight.
' http://www.magicdragon.coin/UltimateSF/timeline 1980.html#7OsDates.
2 Heinlein, Robert A. Time Enough for Love. New York: Putnam, 1973.
' Kessel, John. "Twenty-Nine Years, Twenty-Nine Books: The Works that Most Influenced Science Fiction, 1963-1992." http://www4.ncsu.edu/-tenshi/index2.htinl. Originally published in Science Fiction Age, 1997.
' George Lucas, interview by Jim Windolf, Vanity Fair, February 2005.
' Bostrom, Nick. "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?" Philosophical Quarterly 53, no. 211 (2003): 243-255.
' I use the word "human" very loosely here. In the universe of Star Wars, Gungans, Wookiees and little green Jedi Masters are human, too. But clones aren't.
2 This is Sean Miller's The Empire MenaceD: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Dearth Nadir (Imperial Beach, CA: Aventine Press, 2004). I guess the point is that male adolescence and Star Wars often go together; and that obsessive fascination with sex and male adolescence often go together, so there's a sort of association by implication.
' Even the production companies have got in on the act. At least, I've no reason to believe that LickUs Films is named after an actual filmmaker called George Lick-Us.
' There is in fact an entire Web site devoted to listing the myriad Star Wars parody moments in The Simpsons, as you can see for yourself if you direct your browser to www.snpp.com/guides/starwars.html.
I Ever since seeing that small-minded, nasty-spirited excuse for a comedy Dumb and Dumber I have resolved to write to the directors every year exhorting them to change their name by deed poll to "The Farrelly Brothers (shudder)." I shall persevere until they agree.
s This is what the Oxford English Dictionary gives us under sith: an archaic and largely dialect word... used especially as an interjection to draw attention or as a conversational filler. Are you telling me that Revenge of the Interjection to Draw Attention or Conversational Filler wouldn't make a good parody title?
' Snyder, Gabriel. "NATO, MPAA pass B. O. ball." Variety, October 25, 2005. http://www.variety coin/article/VR1117931602?categoryid=l8&cs=1.
' EU, of course, stands for Expanded Universe, which includes all of the Star Wars books as well as the movies.
' Speaking of big gorillas, run out and get King Kong Is Back (David Brin, editor, BenBella Books, 2005).
2 Frivolity aside, my real punishment is all the time that went into this critical appraisal of a successful series that can easily afford to shrug off a few ankle-bites by the likes of me. Heck, the angriest letters I've received have been from my own fans! (Come on, Brin, drop this silliness and write your own stuff!)
' Of course, Yoda says, "There is no try." I always wondered why more SW fans didn't balk at this statement, all by itself. In real life, effort and practice, failure and gradual improvement are the paths to skill and success. Yes, "there is no try" sounds very cryptic and guru-like. But isn't it also just plain... offensive?
4 Tell me, who is the "hero" in The Phantom Menace? There is a mentor archetype, a precocious kid, a princess, mystic helpers, comic relief, a sidekick... but no hero! Oh, it should have been young Obi-Wan's "journey"-but he was left on the ship through the whole middle, with nothing to do!
s Maybe I am too harsh on Return of the Jedi. Perhaps the whole first (second?) trilogy of Episodes IV-VI is in keeping with the spirit of The Empire Strikes Back. Still, can anybody doubt that the other trilogy, the more recent one, is just a long, unalloyed, fatalistic bummer? In which not a single good or brave deed goes unpunished?
6 Criticism Is The Only Known Antidote To Error.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION By David Brin
INTRODUCTION By Matthew Woodring Stover
OPENING STATEMENTS
FOR THE PROSECUTION: David Brin
FOR THE DEFENSE: Matthew Woodring Stover
CHARGE #1: THE POLITICS OF STAR WARS ARE ANTI-DEMOCRATIC AND ELITIST
FOR THE DEFENSE: Keith R. A. DeCandido
CHARGE #2: WHILE CLAIMING MYTHIC SIGNIFICANCE, STAR WARS PORTRAYS NO ADMIRABLE RELIGIOUS OR ETHICAL
FOR THE PROSECUTION: John C. Wright
FOR THE DEFENSE: Scott Lynch
CHARGE #3: STAR WARS NOVELS ARE POOR SUBSTITUTES FOR REAL SCIENCE FICTION AND ARE DRIVING REAL SF OF
FOR THE PROSECUTION: Lou Anders
FOR THE DEFENSE: Laura Resnick
FOR THE DEFENSE: Karen Traviss
FOR THE DEFENSE: Kristine Kathryn Rusch
CHARGE #4: SCIENCE FICTION FILMMAKING HAS BEEN REDUCED BY STAR WARS TO POORLY WRITTEN SPECIAL EFFECT
FOR THE PROSECUTION: John G. Hemry
FOR THE DEFENSE: Bruce Bethke
CHARGE #5: STAR WARS HAS DUMBED DOWN THE PERCEPTION OF SCIENCE FICTION IN THE POPULAR IMAGINATION
FOR THE PROSECUTION: Tanya Huff
FOR THE DEFENSE: Richard Garfinkle
CHARGE #6: STAR WARS PRETENDS TO BE SCIENCE FICTION, BUT IS REALLY FANTASY
FOR THE PROSECUTION: Ken Wharton
FOR THE DEFENSE: Robert A. Metzger
FOR THE PROSECUTION: Bruce Bethke
FOR THE DEFENSE: Adam Roberts
CHARGE #7: WOMEN IN STAR WARS ARE PORTRAYED AS FUNDAMENTALLY WEAK
FOR THE PROSECUTION: Jeanne Cavelos
FOR THE DEFENSE: Bill Spangler
CHARGE #8: THE PLOT HOLES AND LOGICAL GAPS IN STAR WARS MAKE IT ILL-SUITED FOR AN INTELLIGENT VIEWER
FOR THE PROSECUTION: Nick Mamatas
FOR THE DEFENSE: Don DeBrandt
CLOSING STATEMENTS
THE VERDICT
That answer is: You've already bought a book whose whole purpose is to discuss meaning and consequen
In Star Wars: The Magic of Myth, author Mary Henderson elaborates how much inspiration George Lucas
Oh, you do hear some messages of conformity and intolerance, but these fill the mouths of moustache-
George Lucas defends his elitist view, telling the New York Times, "That's sort of why I say a benev
All right then, I'll hold back on my little plot gimmick-the Darth Vader twist-that (in my humble op
Having half a dozen rants on Star Wars'
In the classic Salon.com article on Star Wars-an article that was written in June 1999-David Brin im
James Gunn expands on this notion in his essay "The Tinsel Screen"
But it was a single line of a conversation with the LucasArts content manager that really lured me i
Along with the fiction, the [sf] culture grew more sophisticated along the way, but it retained a pr
... electronic media brings science fiction to its audience free of Science Fiction Culture, the his
the book-buying public. Book sales expand every year from one to 5%, a phenomenal and consistent rat
Fiction markets have expanded. In 2004 alone, 2,550 books "of interest to the SF field" were publish
But I'm a barbarian. Of the 1,417 original SF books published last year,'
Because I had been burned before, I read the opening few pages, and a section out of the middle. And
Why do I want barbarians in the Science Fiction Village? Forget that they're my kith and kin. Think