The Force Has Left The Building; Middle-Aged Musings Upon A Lifetime Of Star Wars. Part IV: Middle-Age.
A single decade separates the Star Wars cinematic universe’s final curtain from its miraculous renaissance, which in itself constitutes a virtual lifetime. Having witnessed the advent of personal computers, video games, cell-phones, and the internet, I had smugly thought myself inured to a relentlessly changing world, but as I feel its foundation’s shifting ever more precipitously, my indifference grows less blithe. Shit; didn’t see that coming—a phrase that has characterised my middle age. Didn’t see that coming: vaping, furries, bronies, Tumblr, identity politics, infinite genders, internet bloodsports, the progressive stack, Black Lives Matter, Bitcoin—and I thought Generation X had been #%@&ed. I can only feel sympathy for today’s youth, with their blue hair and their bullhorns—what sort of rude awakening will they experience, when they find themselves middle-aged and their ideological passions have abated?
In 2012, amidst this overwhelming socio-technological flux, appeared news of a minor revolution: George Lucas, possibly sick to his back teeth with the business of curating his own cultural empire, sold Lucasfilm to multimedia megalith The Walt Disney Company for a nerve-tingling four billion dollars. Quoth Lucas; For the past thirty-five years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see Star Wars passed from one generation to the next—It's now time for me to pass Star Wars on to a new generation of film-makers. Disney CEO Robert Allen Iger all but slavered with mercenary anticipation: This is one of the great entertainment properties of all time, one of the best branded and one of the most valuable, and it's just fantastic for us to have the opportunity to both buy it, run it and grow it. Disney immediately announced plans for another film trilogy; the story would pick up after events in episode VI. (Return of The Jedi, to my generation) There would be spin-off films as well, set in the extended universe: our long term plan is to release a new Star Wars feature film every two to three years...probably on a cadence of every other year and then go from there. Picture Mickey Mouse’s white-gloved fists, clamped with deathly rigour around the teats of the fattest cash cow in entertainment history...
Question: how profitably to recoup four billion dollars? Answer: market research, and careful, conservative, boardroom-driven planning. In the 1970’s Lucas had been personally inspired to blend the light-hearted and innocent adventure serials of his boyhood with Joseph Campbell’s mythological tropes, as a sort of cinematic anodyne to the world’s existential grief; it had been a labour of love, the success of which had in no way been guaranteed. Conversely, In 2015 Disney were marketing a well-established intellectual property. Producing and distributing a Star Wars film had become more than ever an exercise in corporate micro-management, and Disney’s management had deduced exactly what the plebs wanted. Unsurprisingly, this involved exorcising the prequels from collective memory. People wanted classic Star Wars, as they and their children had experienced it, in all its innocent splendour. But there was a problem; they had already seen Star Wars; some had seen Star Wars hundreds of times. What to do? Simple: give the people what they want, the same thing again, but different—only not too different
We can discern Disney’s cynical conservatism with a quick denotative reading of the film’s main poster, wherein are many elements familiar to long-time fans: Darth Vader 2.0 wields his red lightsaber; Chewbacca aims his laser crossbow; R2-D2 and C-3PO strike a familiar pose; (someone seems also to have taken R2-D2’s head and stuck it on top of a soccer ball) Han Solo and Princess Leia, grown a little long in the teeth, gaze out at us confidently; a colour-corrected Yoda sports a stylish pair of disco goggles. We see the Not-Death Star, imperial star destroyers, TIE-fighters, and storm troopers. (one of them in a nicely chromed finish) We see a rebel pilot, X-wings, and the Millennium Falcon. Only two elements can be called remotely new, a gender-swapped Luke Skywalker, and a black character wielding Luke Skywalker’s blue lightsaber. Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the poster informs us, but could as easily have titled itself Star Wars: Reduce, Re-use, Recycle.
The remainder of Disney’s promotional campaign was every bit as conservative, carefully crafted, and tightly controlled. They hired proven and bankable J. J. Abrams, a director experienced at helming summer blockbusters of mass appeal, who made it known that although CGI is inevitable in such films, he would, as far as possible, rely on practical creature design, practical sets, and live action stunt work, just as his predecessors had done in the 1970's. He would be shooting on film. He would be shooting on location. (in fact, he would be shooting in Tunisia, the very same location on which had been shot much of both the original trilogy and the prequels) Much lauded was the participation of the original trilogy’s geriatric cast. Disney even hired Lawrence Kasdan, co-writer of The Empire Strikes Back. Their message was clear throughout: never mind about those prequels; we’re going to give you what you want.
Unfortunately, long gone was the time when I could leap with enthusiasm at news of an upcoming Star Wars film. I was forty-six years old, and the sight of the Star Wars logo pasted on everything from feminine hygiene products to Kraft Dinner induced feelings of alienation and faint disgust. I bought my ticket not in childlike anticipation but in cynical curiosity, having literally nothing better to do with myself the day after Christmas. My reactions are best summarised in two parts.
Part the first, That poster did not lie:
Force Awakens evaporated from my consciousness the instant I left the theatre—same burger, marginally different sauce. We are all familiar with the general critique: Not-Darth Vader and his storm troopers intimidate the locals. Not-Luke Skywalker begins her Hero’s Journey on Not-Tatooine; Han and Chewie fly around the galaxy in the Millennium Falcon and visit the Not-Moss Eisley Cantina. Not-Emperor Palpatine and Not-Grand Moff Tarkin blow up some planets with the Not-Death Star. There are the lightsaber fights, Jedi mind-tricks, a shield generator, and X-wing fighters flying down a trench. What more can be said? Force Awakens is derivative, mercenary, soulless, tawdry, and overwrought—a completely unremarkable entrée in the corporate franchise steam-table. I sat in the theatre, listless and depressed at the crass and transparently calculated spectacle. Then it ended and I got on with life.
Three years later, reflecting upon both Force Awakens and Disney's subsequent mediocrities, I ask the question: what is the difference between imaginative usage of convention and cynical exploitation? If all stories derive from the same imaginative stock, what makes some sublime and others hackneyed and cheap? The profit motive? True, but only partially; rewarding creativity is not itself wrong, nor is deriving profit from the creative process. Trouble starts when the profit motive excludes all others, and this film is an egregious example of profit-driven thinking. Force Awakens is a soft reboot—latest gag-inducing term for the industrialised artistic practice of shovelling out tasteless, mindless, derivative mash. Should we have expected otherwise? Having invested four billion dollars into an intellectual property, Disney were hardly going to leave its development to the fanciful quirks of an idealistic auteur. Force Awakens is a product—conceived, produced, and distributed entirely by committee. Which is why I believe Kasdan’s involvement was ceremonial. Clearly he was given a long list of parameters to which he had to cleave, if indeed he did write anything for this film. Force Awakens lacks the qualities characteristic of the original Star Wars: inspiration, innovation, passion, and joy.
Part the second, everything is now Tumblr, including Star Wars:
Watching the interminable press junkets and fan conventions leading up to Force Awakens’ release, I developed the sinking suspicion that art was going to reflect life, as the entire cast, from the hoary old legends to the bright-eyed unknowns, had apparently been instructed from on high to mention the word diversity at least once in every single interview. Said suspicion was generously confirmed. Force Awakens cavalierly fills in all the current-year progressive check-boxes: diverse cast; (but still no native Americans, disableds or LGBTQs?—for shame, Disney) Whiter-Than-White-Supremacist villains; (although gender-diverse ground is broken by casting Aryan amazon Gwendoline Christie as a principle hench-person) conscientious-objector-afro-storm trooper; sulking emo-boy antagonist; beautiful, strong, independent, hyper-intelligent, and omni-talented female lead.
In re our dauntless heroine, about whom dirty, internet man-oracles have belched forth a fairly unified critique, permanently affixing her a label to which I shall not refer directly, as I am sick of hearing it. (but it rhymes with hairy Jew) Admittedly, they have a point; this boss is seriously OP! Rey is an expert martial artist, pilot, engineer, and marksman, (sorry, marks-person) though no sillier, in context, than any 1980’s male body-building action hero, duel-wielding infinite-ammo M-16s, mowing his way through battalions of exploding stuntmen. (sorry, stunt-persons) 1980’s action heroes, however, were usually written as ex something—ex CIA operative, ex green beret, ex commando, ex martial arts champion—which backstories provided a rationale for their absurd skill-sets. They would also be given a flaw or two, so as to make them relatable to us wretched, nacho-munching yokels. Rey lacks such a backstory and displays no discernable flaws, which renders her both incomprehensible and unrelatable, and highlights Disney’s ham-fisted PC messaging. Heaven forfend our female lead has limitations or flaws, that would violate the principles of current-year wymenpowerment! This progressive messaging is taken to farcical extremes; at one point, after she has single-handedly disposed of multiple attackers, Finn has the temerity to offer Rey his hand in aid, to which she takes such umbrage that I expected her to turn directly into camera and say I don’t need your help, I’m a strong and independent woman! Later, Finn solicits Han’s help in rescuing Rey from the 3rd Space-Reich, only to be caught up short—Oh. You’re rescuing yourself. Guess we’ll just wait over here, then. From my sad, outdated, and unreformed manspective, these scenes consistently knocked me out of the story, and served only to remind me of Disney’s politically woke intentions.
In re Disney’s stentorian wokeness: All art reflects its time, and just as there is nothing inherently objectionable about the profit motive, freighting a work of art with a political message is neither good nor bad in itself. I have always preferred my political content in the form of satire, in which art, at least ideally, stays true to life, but presents a side of a subject perhaps not ordinarily considered, (and which the subject would often preferably conceal) leaving the audience to form its own judgement. Satire is an apt tool for revealing the clay feet of high-status individuals and groups of all sorts. Satire that shades into pointed polemic, however, can grow distasteful and preachy, and polemic that pushes deliberately a particular political viewpoint tips art immediately into propaganda. Are Disney’s Star Wars films propaganda? Well, they are certainly not satire, and we would have to stretch quite far to call them polemic. They definitely reflect our times, which are characterised by the digitally enabled vomit-storm of activist identity politics. I believe these films are doomed to obscurity, as nothing so horribly dates a work of art, and makes it more quickly irrelevant, as deliberate, topical-political content.
Far be it from me, however, to deny the new generations their woke-a-fied daydreams. Rumour has it that we still live in a free society. (outside of Google, at any rate) We are all free, as individuals, lobby groups, and multi-billion-dollar media corporations, to advance any political agenda we wish. I will not be petitioning the government to de-platform The Walt Disney Company, lest they propagate a message with which I disagree; I will simply not pay to see any more of their Star Wars films.
Posterity will levy Disney Star Wars the test of time; my own objections are more immediate. Being a cynical old prick, and despite Berkeley graduate and current Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy’s publicly progressive stance, I suspect that the executives at Disney are less than sincerely PC. I rather believe their injecting of identity politics into Star Wars to be mere pandering. Whatever recoups us our investment. The blue-haired millennials want all their entertainment woke? Then we’ll give them woke-ass Star Wars! I will believe the anti-corporate, anti-capitalist messaging of films produced by the biggest corporate behemoth in the most hyper-capitalist city on Earth when Disney’s Central Executive Committee for Propaganda and Cultural Development distributes them gratis. I will believe their trumpeted stance on diversity and empowerment when they cast fat and ugly sexagenarians in leading roles.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens turned out to be my first and last foray into Disney Star Wars, which is just as well, as from what I have seen of its subsequent hack-fests, Disney have not backed off from their progressive pandering. Lucas’ prequels, for all of their banal flaws, where at least politically innocuous. If I am to be politically brow-beaten I would appreciate it being done with at least a little creativity. Unfortunately, J. J. Abrams et alia are not Sergei Eisenstein, and Disney's blending of a progressive agenda with derivative trash is simply obnoxious. Sorry Mickey, I’m just not buying this bill of goods.