Quicker, Easier, More Seductive
Sep. 20th, 2011 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinueWell, the Star Wars blu-rays are out, and George Lucas has once again fucked with them and made the originals yet more unavailable. You can guess my opinions on the matter pretty easily, given the number of times I've talked about film being a collaborative process that does not and cannot belong solely to the director (or in Lucas's case copyright holder; he didn't write or direct Empire or Jedi), or how often I've echoed Duchamp's sentiments about art being created in the eye of the viewer and not necessarily understood by the person who makes the physical object.
You can look at the way I've built my entire life around the conviction that stories matter and that the narrative choices we make have effects beyond entertainment to impact the wider culture, telling us how to treat other people and what to value. Religions are built around stories. Therapy is built around stories. Wars and elections are built around stories.
I don't really need to talk about my opinion of George Lucas and what he is doing, or whether they're "his" movies.
I do want to point out that the public backlash against people who complain about it is very good evidence that our society does not take science fiction seriously, despite the last decade of "geeks ascendant!" editorials.
The two main "shut up about this" reactions I see are:
1. Star Wars is for kids; you liked it when you were a kid, grow out of it
2. Who cares; it's not important and there are tons of other movies
I compare "who cares" to what happened when a version of Huck Finn was edited to remove a single word - a single word that has become so offensive and injurious as a taunt that it prevented many children from reading the book. A single word changed, in one edition, with the original text still available in many printings. People went ballistic about censorship of a cultural icon. Nobody said we should "get over" Mark Twain and read the other, better young adult books that have come out since. I compare our complete disdain for the people who would bowdlerize Shakespeare (note the existence of the word bowdlerize) or put fig leaves on classical statues (note the phrase "to fig leaf").
Was Star Wars as important as Mark Twain or Shakespeare? I think it was. It broke box office records. It redefined the summer blockbuster. It made huge technical leaps in how we created special effects. It changed what we thought was possible in a science fiction film. It invented a lot of film grammar and a lot of technology. It was critically lauded and nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and a category specially invented for Ben Burtt, who reinvented sound editing.
Now when professors want to teach it or trade groups want to honor it, they can't show clips. They have to work from memory or hearsay. When the hundreds of people who worked on the film want to show off what they did, they can't. It would be sad enough if that was lost through carelessness or misfortune, the way Erich von Stroheim's Greed has disappeared, the way we lost countless early films before we understood how to store celluloid or make archival prints. It's worse when a film has been vandalized.
If someone was burning books, we'd know how to react. But since it's a science fiction movie, we think it's not serious destruction; we think the only people who would be upset by it are childish geeks who should get a life.
Would people react the same way if we were talking about the Godfather movies? I don't think they would, although Godfather is smaller in scope and ambition, and less important to film history. I like Godfather. I think it's a masterpiece. Can I use Godfather to draw a line between what came before it and what came after? I cannot. Are the emotions in Godfather less elevated and operatic? No. But it's exclusively about men and about domination. That means it's adult.
In contrast, Star Wars is science fiction which includes women, friendships, and "cute" characters*, so it must be a kid's series, and silly, and not ultimately very good. I know that if I wanted to make movies for children, I would model the first one on Kurosawa and spend the first hour of it wandering alone in desert landscapes. I would split most of the run time of the second between an adult romance and a discussion of philosophy. I would keep my color palette muted and my surfaces grimy and worn. I would convey complex emotion through fleeting glances. I would offscreen important plot points and count on my child viewers to catch them based on a line of dialog.
I liked the Marx Brothers and the Rolling Stones when I was a kid, too, so I guess they must have been made for children. I'm probably fooling myself that they're any good.
Although I am being sarcastic, I have heard this argument made about The Beatles. Of course, with the Beatles, I can counter-argue by playing some of their music. With Star Wars it's a lot harder.
It would be easier to say Star Wars was silly and never mattered. It's always easier to be apathetic. But I grew up with some powerful myths that told me I was supposed to care about the things that connect me to other people.
I am so grateful for the restoration of Touch of Evil.
* Apparently old, green, and wrinkled is cute; beeping and made out of metal is cute; and furry and holding a spear is cute. The throughline: short. We should not take shorter or physically weaker people seriously, i.e. women, children, the elderly, and Al Pacino. Except --
You can look at the way I've built my entire life around the conviction that stories matter and that the narrative choices we make have effects beyond entertainment to impact the wider culture, telling us how to treat other people and what to value. Religions are built around stories. Therapy is built around stories. Wars and elections are built around stories.
I don't really need to talk about my opinion of George Lucas and what he is doing, or whether they're "his" movies.
I do want to point out that the public backlash against people who complain about it is very good evidence that our society does not take science fiction seriously, despite the last decade of "geeks ascendant!" editorials.
The two main "shut up about this" reactions I see are:
1. Star Wars is for kids; you liked it when you were a kid, grow out of it
2. Who cares; it's not important and there are tons of other movies
I compare "who cares" to what happened when a version of Huck Finn was edited to remove a single word - a single word that has become so offensive and injurious as a taunt that it prevented many children from reading the book. A single word changed, in one edition, with the original text still available in many printings. People went ballistic about censorship of a cultural icon. Nobody said we should "get over" Mark Twain and read the other, better young adult books that have come out since. I compare our complete disdain for the people who would bowdlerize Shakespeare (note the existence of the word bowdlerize) or put fig leaves on classical statues (note the phrase "to fig leaf").
Was Star Wars as important as Mark Twain or Shakespeare? I think it was. It broke box office records. It redefined the summer blockbuster. It made huge technical leaps in how we created special effects. It changed what we thought was possible in a science fiction film. It invented a lot of film grammar and a lot of technology. It was critically lauded and nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and a category specially invented for Ben Burtt, who reinvented sound editing.
Now when professors want to teach it or trade groups want to honor it, they can't show clips. They have to work from memory or hearsay. When the hundreds of people who worked on the film want to show off what they did, they can't. It would be sad enough if that was lost through carelessness or misfortune, the way Erich von Stroheim's Greed has disappeared, the way we lost countless early films before we understood how to store celluloid or make archival prints. It's worse when a film has been vandalized.
If someone was burning books, we'd know how to react. But since it's a science fiction movie, we think it's not serious destruction; we think the only people who would be upset by it are childish geeks who should get a life.
Would people react the same way if we were talking about the Godfather movies? I don't think they would, although Godfather is smaller in scope and ambition, and less important to film history. I like Godfather. I think it's a masterpiece. Can I use Godfather to draw a line between what came before it and what came after? I cannot. Are the emotions in Godfather less elevated and operatic? No. But it's exclusively about men and about domination. That means it's adult.
In contrast, Star Wars is science fiction which includes women, friendships, and "cute" characters*, so it must be a kid's series, and silly, and not ultimately very good. I know that if I wanted to make movies for children, I would model the first one on Kurosawa and spend the first hour of it wandering alone in desert landscapes. I would split most of the run time of the second between an adult romance and a discussion of philosophy. I would keep my color palette muted and my surfaces grimy and worn. I would convey complex emotion through fleeting glances. I would offscreen important plot points and count on my child viewers to catch them based on a line of dialog.
I liked the Marx Brothers and the Rolling Stones when I was a kid, too, so I guess they must have been made for children. I'm probably fooling myself that they're any good.
Although I am being sarcastic, I have heard this argument made about The Beatles. Of course, with the Beatles, I can counter-argue by playing some of their music. With Star Wars it's a lot harder.
It would be easier to say Star Wars was silly and never mattered. It's always easier to be apathetic. But I grew up with some powerful myths that told me I was supposed to care about the things that connect me to other people.
I am so grateful for the restoration of Touch of Evil.
* Apparently old, green, and wrinkled is cute; beeping and made out of metal is cute; and furry and holding a spear is cute. The throughline: short. We should not take shorter or physically weaker people seriously, i.e. women, children, the elderly, and Al Pacino. Except --
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 01:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 06:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-23 03:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-24 05:17 am (UTC)I found this article very interesting. It goes into the condition of the negative and other negatives from the 70s and 80s, and the different film stocks that were used. It does a good job of using a single film to show the difficulties of film preservation generally, and makes it clear how hard it is to preserve a film "by accident" - how much effort it takes.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-25 06:36 pm (UTC)--
Ciro
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-23 05:20 pm (UTC)What we really want at this point is the un-director's (or, more precisely, un-rights-owner's) cut. As you point out, we want them for film history reasons as well as for sentimental reasons -- nobody is dumb enough to put modern CGI in a Harryhausen film!
I assume/hope the original versions will eventually reappear after Lucas's death.
I will say, though, that Star Wars does not deserve the respect given to the Godfather movies, and not just because Star Wars is science fiction. There are many notoriously bad pieces of dialogue, there are some really ghastly screen moments (the fuzzy-people dance at the end of the last movie), and the ambitions of the first movie seem to vanish along the way. Remember the early Lucas interviews about the deliberate parallels of the last scene in Star Wars and The Triumph of the Will? He's never said that again, or followed up on it.
I see the SW movies now -- apart from their enormous impact on the movie industry and on what sorts of stories are told -- as being very like the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies. The most important, the most memorable, and the most emotional parts, are the big fight scenes, both personal and in outer space. In Astaire/Rogers movies, the real emotional content comes in the dances. In both cases, the dialogue moments are often enjoyable, sometimes sublime, but they aren't the point of the movie.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-25 05:59 am (UTC)I think your parallel with Rogers and Astaire dances is an interesting one, although it's not the way I experience the Star Wars movies; I am very invested in the love story, and respond best to the small character moments. My attention is most likely to wander during the battle scenes, which is part of what I disliked about the action-action-action prequels. (Not that there isn't plenty else to dislike about the prequels.)
It's little stuff that rings true to me - the way Aunt Beru uses the tools in her kitchen, particular gestures Bib Fortuna makes at Jabba's palace. There is such a large universe implied, with so many lives in it, which is something not many films succeed at - even ones that take place in the real world and modern day often seem airless. I admire that. It's incredibly hard to do.
And I'm enough of a softie that I'm super invested in the love story.