dfrankow
Asked 7 years ago
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Star Wars avant-garde?
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[archived]
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As a general rule, I am not supposed to post in the forums. As scientists, we try not to influence you all, because we might run future experiments, and we'd hate to bias or ruin the results.
However, I just saw this Slate article on slashdot about how Star Wars is really the ultimate post-modern avant-garde film that brings revelatory focus onto plot and the influence of chance events.
Does anyone believe this baloney? (Hmm, leading question.) I am always suspicious of critics (and English majors) running amuck with subjective analyses that can never be proved right or wrong. That is, they can find stuff that ain't there.
I view Star Wars flicks as nice little space operas that had lots of gee-whiz eye candy for their time (at first) that sucked in a lot of 6-10 year olds (of which I was one!), and a smattering of mythology to give people something to chew on that wouldn't hurt too much.
Dan
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WikiLens alpha. Rate things, help others.
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Answers
vargus
Answered 7 years ago
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I agree with your assessment, dfrankow. I think the author of that article had waaay too much time on his hands and waaay too much confidence in his own analytical abilities. As far as I can see, the first two SW flicks (that is, IV and V) were enjoyable, well-made sci-fi kidstuff and the rest were unwatchable dreck. Frankly, I don't see anything remotely postmodern about the SW "saga"--not that it would be a virtue if it were in fact a postmodern saga. (And anyway, the guy's hipness detector needs to be recalibrated: pomo is moribund and verging on passé nowadays.)
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PolarisDiB
Answered 7 years ago
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I think it's a joke.
1) post-modern is the perfect word to use if you want to say something to sound smart and nobody can really prove you wrong.
2) avant-garde is a style mostly to completely removed from typical style. [noLink]Star Wars[/noLink] is very straightforward in craft, yet it's still a nice twenty-dollar word to sound smart saying.
3) revelatory focus onto plot: As Sumytra is always pointing out (correctly, I may add), the plot is basic Hero's Journey.
4) and the influence of chance events: considering everything that comes even NEAR to being a chance event in the SW saga is explained as part of the balance of the force "binding us all together." Mmyep.
5) It's slashdot. They pretend to be scientific, but then they write articles on how to build lightsabers.
6) That's not to mean that this isn't a good humoured essay, probably to point out how academia can tend to say crazy stuff like that and then, when questioned, argue deconstructionism to escape. It's a little like trying to argue philosophy with a person who, once he finds he can't defend his point of view, starts arguing basically nihilism. This is why I personally tend to give little respect to deconstructionists and nihilists. Neither should technically exist because neither can defend their point without proving they are wrong or basically falling back onto circular reasoning. But that's neither here nor there.
It also might be merely making fun of George Lucas saying, "In actuality, I am and have always been and independant filmmaker."
But I haven't read the article because currently SW is giving me a bad taste in my mouth now that everyone's reopening the topic of Revenge of the Sith being released on DVD. I did a quick rant about it and now I don't really feel like talking about it too much more.
--PolarisDiB
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Lando
Answered 7 years ago
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Does anyone believe this baloney? (Hmm, leading question.) I am always suspicious of critics (and English majors) running amuck with subjective analyses that can never be proved right or wrong. That is, they can find stuff that ain't there.
For me SW saga has something magical. I don't want to analyze those movies or books too deeply. What can I say, we had John Williams played by organs, in our weddings (while we wer walking back the aisle after ceremony) and I seriously thought to give my boy one name from SW but there my relatives talked me to senses. :)
Anyhow I don't agree or disagree with that article. For me SW is nice way to exit from reality. Books are fun to read and movies has quite a lot eye-candy and heroic plot.
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Lando
Answered 7 years ago
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I1) post-modern is the perfect word to use if you want to say something to sound smart and nobody can really prove you wrong.
2) avant-garde is a style mostly to completely removed from typical style. [noLink]Star Wars[/noLink] is very straightforward in craft, yet it's still a nice twenty-dollar word to sound smart saying.
Those are way too difficult words for me. I don't care if movies is avant-garde or post-modern.
When I go to movie I want to be entertained. I have rated 1100 movies here in ML and only two of them are Film-Noir (one of those two is Sin City) and only five documentaries. I have noticed that I mostly like action, adventures, sci-fi and comedy (best is if movie is combined from three or four of those genres) so I don't analyze movie afterwards too deeply. I know whether I have been entertained or when I have wasted two or three hours of my life.
I know that most of those who participate in this forum like different movies and directors like me but I'm not annoyed by that because everyone has right to his opinion.
By the way, should I start thread to hype mr. Bruckheimer which has affected mostly my life recent years (I watch all Amazing Races and every movie he produces and I mostly like what I see). Now You can start throwing stones... :)
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vargus
Answered 7 years ago
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I think it's a joke.
Maybe, but I doubt it. It's not clever or witty enough to be a parody or a satire.
Postmodern art rejects grand narratives, denies the existence of universal truths, plays up contradictions, celebrates fragmentation, makes a fetish of collage and bricolage, rejects genre boundaries, and continually undermines audience expectations by compulsively using irony, parody, and other methods of self-subversion.
Avant garde art is daringly experimental in form, Épater-les-bourgeois, and generally unpopular.
Seems to me that the SW saga is precisely the opposite of all these things.
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Ryuukuro
Answered 7 years ago
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I would love to see someone do an avant-garde space opera. It probably wouldn't make any sense but art snobs would fawn over it, sci-fi fans would fawn over it, and the rest of the populus would fawn over it too. And then there'd be the latter two handfuls of people: those who truly felt the movie was a genius work and could back up their claims and people who thought it was trash.
It's food for thought...
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Ryuukuro
Answered 7 years ago
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I just checked the wikipedia entry for avant-garde . While [noLink]Star Wars[/noLink] overall isn't avant-garde to film as a whole, as a sci-fi film it does fit the bill. It's not really science fiction. It's a near Tolkeinian fantasy film with lots of high tech stuff and pseudo science in place of magic. Compared to other sci-fi films, even the movie serials which Lucas based the film style on, it's very novel.
So, yes, [noLink]Star Wars[/noLink] is avant garde, just not in the cliche way we think of it.
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vargus
Answered 7 years ago
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I would love to see someone do an avant-garde space opera. It probably wouldn't make any sense but art snobs would fawn over it, sci-fi fans would fawn over it, and the rest of the populus would fawn over it too. And then there'd be the latter two handfuls of people: those who truly felt the movie was a genius work and could back up their claims and people who thought it was trash.
It's food for thought...
I'm told that Tarkovsky's Solyaris (1972) is an avant-garde science fiction film. I need to check that one out someday.
While Star Wars overall isn't avant-garde to film as a whole, as a sci-fi film it does fit the bill. It's not really science fiction. It's a near Tolkeinian fantasy film with lots of high tech stuff and pseudo science in place of magic. Compared to other sci-fi films, even the movie serials which Lucas based the film style on, it's very novel.
So, yes, Star Wars is avant garde, just not in the cliche way we think of it.
Nor in any sense in which we normally use the word. I don't think novelty per se makes a work avant garde, and anyway there's nothing particularly novel about SW (except maybe its special effects, which were advanced for their time). The dictionary defines avant garde as "the most daring of the experimentalists and innovators of original and startlingly unconventional designs, ideas, or techniques during a particular period". The plot, design, and direction of SW are very conventional and straightforward. George Lucas's first film, THX 1138, however, might be considered somewhat avant garde-ish (the short version of THX that he made as a film-school student is definitely an attempt at genuine avant-garde cinema).
But SW? Avant garde? Nah. Just a straightforward sword-and-sorcerer flick set in space.
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Ellipsis
Answered 7 years ago
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But SW? Avant garde? Nah. Just a straightforward sword-and-sorcerer flick set in space.
And a key point is that this is exactly what Lucas admits Star Wars is: A prince, a princess, a dark knight, a wizard, etc. True, it's possible for an artist to create a work in a genre that they did not intend, but it's not apparent that's what Lucas ended up with in this case. The Slate analysis is way deeper than Lucas' intentions and script.
That's not to say the analysis doesn't hit some nails on the head. For example, I agree with their description of what the Force really is; the plot. I think that's pretty on-target, for the plot does indeed take innumerable twists throughout the six pictures in the service of making the characters follow (or reject) the Force. Again, I'm not sure Lucas intended this, but you can see that's what ended up on the screen.
-Kurt
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vargus
Answered 7 years ago
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By the way, I think I should mention, in case it wasn't obvious, that I don't consider postmodernist and avant garde terms of praise. These are merely the names of, respectively, a rather vague (and dubious) artistic/philosophical movement and a stage of artistic development during a particular period. Personally, I can't stand most postmodernist productions, and very few of my all-time favorite films could legitimately be classified as avant garde.
Incidentally, postmodernism and avant garde do clash on one important point: postmodernism enthusiasticallly embraces pop culture, while the avant garde has traditionally been very hostile toward all things pop.
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