When the Star Wars trilogy was complete George Lucas flew the writer Joseph Campbell over to Skywalker Ranch for a private viewing of all three in a row. Campbell was well pleased with the sequence which neatly demonstrated the monomyth he had set out in his Hero Of A Thousand Faces. George wanted to show how closely he had followed ‘his Yoda’ – there was a protagonist, an antagonist, entry into a realm, the wise old man, a battle of good and evil, a realisation of friendship, of conflicted family, an acceptance of maturity and return of a boon to society… everything Campbell had set out as a template, ready to be fed into the drinking water. Like crack cocaine.
Star Wars was a huge hit. You hear that phrase too often, so I just want to emphasise that a film from 1977 became what we now call a ‘universe’ – containing music, costumes, shot glasses, action figures, encyclopaedias, tattoos, potato chips, collectable card sets, pinball machines … just make your own inventory. Compare this to JAWS, which had been an equal hit two years before, but only now tries to compete with a few lunch boxes and a board game.
(1960’s BeatleMania is a useful comparison. The difference is in the central control – Beatle fans mostly made their own banners, myths and legends, whereas the monomyth ‘universe’ comes with an encyclopaedia of correct/incorrect beliefs. Fan/slash fiction is highly discouraged.)
The ‘universe’ has become a familiar concept due to another drug dealer that liked the idea so much it took over. Disney, the House of Mouse, was the strongman in experiential entertainment in the years before Star Wars but had fallen into a morass by the 80s. Christopher Vogler brought the monomyth to Disney in a edited corporate format, powering up The Lion King with a bit of the old white powder and effectively saving Disney’s film division from oblivion.
Disney is now just one corporation that runs a Monomyth farm – Disney/Marvel/Star Wars/Pixar and some other bits, all dedicated to running the Hero’s Journey over and over again for maximum profit. There’s also Comcast/Universal and Warners/DC and Sanrio etc. – but the game is the same for any high stakes player – tell the same controlled story endlessly. No doubts, no variation, push all other stories and complexity to the side of the screen.
Toys, Collectables, Drug Paraphernalia
I shouldn’t need to tell you that there’s a parallel and ever growing category of toy consumers – adults committed to the memorabilia of each ‘universe’ starting with 1977 Star Wars and taking in all the franchises that learned from that lesson. The clearest of many examples would be the Funko Pop, which started by reproducing the Warners/DC ‘universe’. But the toy industry has gone way beyond that.
On the face of it being a Kidult would seem harmless, except that you can’t raise children while remaining one yourself. Some people have wisely chosen a LEGO Darth Vader over a daughter. Others are in competition with their 9-year old for each action figure. That’s a whole other discussion that I can’t honestly run. But I do have some soul searching to deliver.
My Place in this Evil
Once upon a time when this blog was first started, I was the ‘film lecturer’ at the College of Fine Arts in Sydney. It was my job to come up with a 2 hour long lecture and about three tutorials every week of session. That’s no mean feat for a music composer with a bit of video production, but I was very dedicated and careful and made sure of all the history that came up in the screenings was the good stuff. Student feedback was good.
We had everything from the Lumiere Bros, through Edison and the classics and ended up covering a lot of theory (Technologies of the Self!) and plenty of ideas to throw about in their own productions. For story telling I needed to end up with the ‘state of the art’ and as most of the students intended to animate I chose what is called the Pixar Model.
I’m sorry.
On one side – you owe it to students that they know what ‘works’ in the year they graduate. On the other – you shouldn’t feed them the recipe for crack, and say here’s your cultural education. It was only years later, semi retired as a casual teacher that I stared to question ‘what works’. Because ‘what works’ are the endless painfully dull Marvel films that pour out of Disney’s butt. And we miss the other stories, that don’t resolve, that don’t have a hero, that don’t bring a happy ending or a psychological level up or an Ewok Celebration 12″ EP. In the days of streaming these films are disappearing as they don’t get enough views – a vicious cycle that makes everything the same plastic.
Popular Culture is not enough, like fairy bread is not enough. There is food for the mind that doesn’t need a ‘universe’. Sure, it’s Highbrow, not Kid Friendly, it might cover topics which some people would rather not be allowed. But there’s other heroes, and we need them badly.
If I had a choice between watching Star Wars and The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, I would have to choose the actual work of literature. The greatest Western ever filmed.
It’s something I’ve fought with as well. I went into a film and media studies class as a “mature” student – turned 30, my health disintegrating but still feeling that I could do something I liked to get me feeling good about myself after being royally demoralised by one person’s controlling micromanagement of me and my job. Those that were younger were so heavily reliant on comic book films which deliver nothing but a formulaic view of the world and have stories you could set your watch to. Because I didn’t gel with their view on films and that I was going down that exorcising demons route to screenplay (kinda Cronenberg meets Beckett sort of thing), I had to abandon my attempts at making a film due to a lack of interest and probably me being seen as someone who is standoffish. When I look at the things that did get made, it was a very deliberate SAW ripoff and a somewhat dodgy faux documentary by way of clumsy gross-out humour.
And yet over and over I hear the words universe and franchise which is so demoralising because it feels like I’m not watching a film – it has to seem like I’m taking part in an event. I just know I don’t want to watch the same film with different actors and directors. There has to be something new or else we lose certain facets of humanity (or lack thereof) in film. But I know these things are of someone who isn’t in key with “mainstream media.”