| The Force is with You | |
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Matsky - Student  |
Hey guys, Here's an informal essay I wrote for one of my 1st-year Uni courses. It was written really late at night and is probably pretty crap. The narrator isn't supposed to represent my views totally either lol. Anyway, thought you guys might find it an interesting read, even if just to pick it apart! Go ahead. Cheers, Matsky *** The Force is with You When did society deem it ‘acceptable’ for grown men and women to gather en masse, in public, dressed as science-fiction characters, play-fighting with plastic swords, and mimicking speaking through a ventilator? Sure, when confronted by a plastic-clad Stormtrooper at the cinema, you might say to your partner, “what a geek”, but deep down you know you would fob it off as “harmless fun”. You probably even know at least one person who owns a Darth Vader costume. The ‘Trekkies’ aren’t granted the same level of acceptance, and indeed if they gather at all to share their interest in Star Trek it is usually in the manner of some clandestine secret-society, complete with secret Vulcan hand signals. Nor were there many, if any, Hobbits at the premiere of Lord of the Rings. So how is it that this particular culture of the ‘Star Wars fan’ has managed to become so embedded in our society that we wouldn’t look twice, indeed we might even expect, to see a Jedi or two in the cinema que? I had thought at this point to include a brief background to the Star Wars films, but owing to how fixed these movies have become in our society, it would surely have to be the minority who didn’t already know something of them. For those small few who do not know, or even more ‘shockingly’, don’t care, what a Wookie is, I will take a brief moment to enlighten you: A long time ago (1975) in a galaxy far, far away (Hollywood), George Lucas (the man revered and sometimes referred to as ‘God’ by fans) wrote the story of Star Wars, after the huge success of his first film ‘American Graffiti’ the previous year. Basically, it details the rise, fall, and ultimate redemption of Anakin Skywalker. The standard story of good overcoming evil, fleshed out with the sci-fi standard mix of dazzling special effects and a multitude of good and evil characters to keep the story going. Pretty ordinary stuff, yeah? Yes, it is a simple structure. But this is a structure that has been used to great effect for many hundreds of years, indeed since storytelling itself first began. Joseph Campbell, who happened to be a good friend of Lucas, identified this structure – what he called the ‘hero’s journey’ – mapping it out in great detail in his famous book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. People like to hear the same story - to watch a hero rise from humble beginnings, pass through many great trials, overcome suffering, defeat pain, enemies, and rise to their rightful place of glory. So without even watching Star Wars, we’ve already seen it before in dozens of other films and novels. History has proven that we enjoy hearing about glorious achievements of once-ordinary characters. Perhaps this explains why some of us feed our imaginations so much so that we place ourselves in the costumes of these characters. This still doesn’t explain why mainstream popular culture has adopted these costume-wearing people so easily, and how this sub-culture has even recruited so many of our friends and family – all ‘ordinary’ people. It’s a good story, but not good enough to replace Ghandi with Yoda – is it? For a long time after the original trilogy ended in the early 80s, those who continued to love the series, collecting paraphernalia and talking about it in groups, became the ‘fanatics’, the ‘nerds’ and ‘geeks’, worse even than those strange ‘Trekkies’, and almost as bad as the D&Ders. Ralph Wiggum from “The Simpsons” was a perfect example of a stereotypical 90’s Star Wars fan – “I bent my Wookie”. But Star Wars as the ‘hero’s journey’ was liked, if not ‘worshipped’ to the extent of the ‘fanatics’, by many people. And when in 1999 Lucas announced that he was working on the prequel trilogy to the classics, beginning with “Episode I: The Phantom Menace”, fans and fanatics alike got excited, and with society now seeming to instantly accept anything that is popular, as long as it is happening now, people openly expressed their excitement and the hype built to explosive proportion. The fanatics, because they were now at the centre of this once-frowned-upon-by-society culture, naturally became popular. The new film had everything in it that should make them popular didn’t it? It was big budget (a huge difference from the classics), had popular actors (if Samuel L. Jackson is in it, it must be cool), and eye-popping special-effects (seeming to be even more important than story and plotline these days). Borrowing Darth Vader’s logic: Now the circle was complete. When the original episodes left the big screen, the fanatics were but the learners. Now they were the masters. So if the fanatics had now had their culture invaded by our society of popularity-above-all, much like a heat-seeking missile will target areas where there is lots of people gathered, is it any surprise that fans who weren’t quite fanatics should so easily adopt their own peculiar behaviours? If you’ve always been a fan of something, and now because it’s become very popular, why shouldn’t you indulge your love for it, and wear a Darth Vader helmet to the cinema. After all, it’s popular – nobodies going to take you too seriously. Will they? Well anyway, there’s a load of people there already doing it. Star Wars was everywhere. A person could not possibly go through a shopping centre without being confronted by the face of Queen Amidala or the horned-visage of Darth Maul all over the shop windows, on shirts, and even on your McDonalds cup! In a very funny irony, when Lucas first proposed his film to Fox, they were surprised that he hadn’t asked for a very big budget to go with. Instead he wanted: “the right to the final cut, 40% of the net box-office gross, all rights to future sequels, and ownership and merchandising rights associated with Star Wars”. Pre-1977, science-fiction movies didn’t make much money, and so Fox agreed easily to the deal. Little did they know of the billions in profit they had done themselves out of. Now, at the turn of the century, even the person that is most uninterested in Star Wars probably could not claim to not ever owning at least one piece of merchandise or paraphernalia at one point or another. The Star Wars franchise is but another reason to show how Star Wars has implanted itself within our society with such strength. Like a cancer, it has slowly grown and spread to the point where the person can no longer ignore it and it engulfs them whole. Society today will accept anything, as long as it has Hollywood, money, famous people and a lot of fans behind it. Is it a good story? Arguable. Is it popular? Absolutely. Will fans today, who are still fans in a few months or years, return to the era of the ‘Star Wars geek’ when our popularity-driven society pushes it to the side for something else new and big? Most likely. But it will endure. |
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Vasper Ba'xian - Student 
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Very nice Essay! I likes _______________ Brother to: Tamal, Kavar, J.D.,Jermia, Devlin, Ulic, Xiabara, Seij,Tarron Mib,>>>ROCK ON .My Spacescapes art page.My Everything Else art page. MY FAV. Jedi Are: Qui-Gon Jinn, Corran Horn, and Anakin Solo. Unofficial Master to Tamal. and Kavar. Founder of the Wuji Hundun Jian saber style. Proud owner of Tamal's 200th comment!//Proud owner of Refl3x's 300th comment!>>>Proud owner of Tyrant's 800th comment>>>Proud owner of Lucky's 170th comment>>>Proud owner of BDKawika's 444th comment>>>To except Existance is to except Reality.
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SaZ - Student 
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you gotta rule the world  _______________ playing jk3 since 30th of january (2005), member since 1st of february. [Unofficial Master to Vision and Z�diac ] If you can make a fool of yourself infront of 300 people you can do anything - Jaiko D'kana |
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