Star Wars on Trial (41 page)

Writing is strongest at getting inside of things, of seeing below the surface into the depths, into the associations of things and thoughts, because that's how words work. Words are themselves associative, drawing out memories and ideas in multiple ways.

Consider these two words combined to create another word:

Death

Star

Death Star

The thought that is elicited by the third word is not the combination of the thoughts from the first two; it is a distinct remembrance. The same of course applies to Millennium and Falcon.

Even if one is not playing around with names, one can see how association changes meaning.

Red means a particular color.

Red light means stop.

Red light district means a place you shouldn't go but are tempted to.

The absolute best writing uses these connections and associations, as well as burrows into the minds of characters to create a scene that exists mostly below the visible surface. But so does mediocre, adequate and bad writing. There is no need to be a genius writer in order to write about the connections of people's thoughts, the associations, the emotions, the feelings, the ways people think, the paths they follow that lead to their salvation, damnation and day-to-day living. To bring these out does not require great writing as it does great acting, great painting or great dancing.

This is a good test for what is easiest in a particular art: is genius required to do it?

Let us return to Star Wars and consider the character of Anakin Skywalker. The most recent three movies have been about Anakin's fall into darkness and his taking of the Jedi with him. I do not propose to do more than hint subliminally, using the subtle arts of writ ing, as to how well I think this was portrayed (badly). The portrayal of such a fall on the screen would take a combination of great actor, director and screenwriter. But in a purely written story, it's not much work. The conflicts and confusions of such a character could be easily put down on paper. I don't think there's a need to give examples since the number of literary characters who fall believably into darkness is enormous (particularly in Russian literature).

It may sound like I am advocating the removal of all visual elements from writing, which I am not. Rather, I think that writing has never been strongest at the purely visual. I think we are better off putting our efforts into those parts of writing that writing does best and that are hard for other arts.

Here's another such strength: movies take great effort to create a mood from their visual environments, using lighting and atmosphere to make things feel a certain way to their audiences. But a writer can do so in a single line.

Consider rain:

Bone-bit, coat-soaked, Harry ducked into the archway to shiver away from the winter's-coming-and-you-can't-stop-it rainfall.

And rain:

Slipping down and rolling over together in the no-longer-mist, May and Oliver reveled in the spring rainfall.

Not great prose, of course, but it doesn't have to be; that's the point. Mood is easy for writing, hard for movies.

What does all this have to do with the effect of Star Wars on the consciousness of our audience? Here we enter the realm of prediction ... and I must confess that my track record on predictions is not a good one, so take everything to follow with a decent-sized ocean's worth of salt.

It seems to me that Star Wars and the movies and TV shows that were created because of its success have molded an audience that will soon no longer find special effects special. They will come to expect impressive effects as a matter of course. Indications are that they probably already do. The special effects-heavy moviemakers have been handling this rising expectation by targeting their movies at a particular demographic, mostly teenaged boys. This gives us a growing audience beyond this age that will be slaked on visual effects.

Several different desires are likely to rise up in the minds of such an audience. Some will want to get a new fix of SFX, but they are bound to disappointment as the next dose will seem duller than the last. Others will find themselves dissatisfied with the simple presence of SFX and want something more in their entertainment. Those are the ones that writers should go after.

This segment of the audience will be amenable to books that will feed the parts of their minds that the movies have neglected. The moviemakers will not notice this audience since they have set their sights on a demographic, not a group of individuals. They are catering only to an age group, not asking what those same people will be doing for entertainment when they are beyond that age group. I think that written science fiction and fantasy can bring them in if it does not try to be second-rate moviemaking. If the books this audience is given are too cinematic, they will only disappoint, whereas if the books show what the movies cannot and do not, they can bring in, hold and nurture the orphans of Star Wars who will grow up as SF readers.

CLOSING ARGUMENTS FOR THE DEFENSE

Star Wars has placed a set of tropes and visual expectations into the minds of a vast audience and has disseminated those tropes and expectations into the ambient culture.

This has given SF/F writers a base of materials from which to more easily work and which we can more easily transcend if we choose to do so.

Thus it can be argued that although Star Wars creates an overly uniform view of SF, we can use that uniformity in order to spring forth into a greater diversity of science fiction. In this way the influence of Star Wars on public consciousness has been a good one.

The Defense rests without any obligatory Using the Force, Fandom Menace or New Hope jokes. Thank you.

Richard Garfinkle is the author of two science fiction novels: Celestial Matters (which won the 1996 Compton Crook Award for best first novel in science fiction) and All of an Instant. At present he is engaged in the more dubious practice of writing non-fiction science popularization. He lives in Chicago with his wife and children.

THE COURTROOM

DAVID BRIN: Let me see if I get this line of defense. Are you saying that special effects extravaganzas like Star Wars will help literary science fiction, because they will eventually tire people out, making them want something more than special effects?

RICHARD GARFINKLE: Not quite. I am saying that SFX movies have two effects: First they make it impractical for written SF to rely on mindless action sequences since it is no longer possible for imagined SFX to be better than shown SFX. Thus writers are confronted with either giving up on writing books and only writing scripts, or moving away from SFX and toward what writing does best: delving into thought and meaning.

Second, because SFX are the mental equivalent of empty calories, they do not in the long run satisfy their audiences. It is true that the adolescent demographic (from, say, age ten to eighteen) will likely always want SFX, but what happens to those same people when they grow older and are no longer satisfied with things going boom? If writers concentrate on audience, not demographic, they can catch those people as they age out.

DAVID BRIN: Yes, films can familiarize concepts. But a good film, like Dr. Strangelove, can do that as easily as a bad one can (e.g., doomsday weapons and callback codes).

Are we to be glad, then, that space fighters bank and slip, as if using airfoils in an atmosphere, simply because this hearkens to the earlier romance of World War I fighter aces? The cool retro-rocket maneuvers of the fighters in Babylon 5 were as fun to watch, but also offered something to the mature mind.

Must we be grateful that Star Wars familiarized us with terms like hyperspace, when a show like Stargate actually explored it a little, too? After so many years, and billions of dollars, might one ask that the biggest sci-fi epic of all time at least give a nod toward our prefrontal lobes?

RICHARD GARFINKLE: Of course, a good film can give more than a bad film, and if there were good films with the same popularity as Star Wars (for example, the Lord of the Rings films, which of course have a literary connection), more could be brought out from them than from the more superficial qualities of Star Wars. But the question was not were there better possibilities than Star Wars; the question was, is there a legitimate defense for the Star Wars films? I never claimed that Star Wars was the best vehicle for disseminating this understanding, only that it did so disseminate.

DAVID BRIN: You suggest that, as the audience ages, they will move from SFX movies to more thoughtful forms of science fiction. Can you support this hope with any evidence? In the gaming industry, thoughtful, adventure-scenario games like Myst and Legacy of Time have been almost entirely replaced by action and effectsheavy offerings, like Halo, with no apparent end to the upward ratchet of effects-craving. Isn't this similar to what we contend has happened via sci-fi films and books?

RICHARD GARFINKLE: Your own examples above serve as evidence. Stargate and Babylon 5 do not just introduce new concepts; they draw on older ones. Babylon 5 relied on hyperspace without having to explain it. Stargate also did so. Both of these expanded on the audience's familiarity with hyperspace. As for gaming, computer gaming is not yet a mature entertainment form, but even so, look at the socialization that is forming in the MMRPGs. Indeed, the makers of Star Wars Galaxies were annoyed to discover that people playing in their universe didn't just want a hackfest; they wanted to live in the world. To be moisture farmers and traders, not just Jedi Knights and Sith Lords. In short, even Star Wars fans want more than the superficial.