Homage and Popular Culture

   As we discussed last class, it is impossible to be truly original in media these days. I was already aware of the inspirations George Lucas took from Akira Kurosawa while making Star Wars, but I had not realized how many elements, down to individual shots, recreated ones from the various war films and other projects shown in the Everything is a Remix video. So what makes these references homages rather than plagiarism? I would say it is the way they are linked together, combined with the innovative combination of scale models, puppetry, stop=motion animation, rotoscoping and pyrotechnics that gave Star Wars its distinctive feel.

  Film has an audio-visual language that a good filmmaker uses to elicit a desired reaction. You don't need to have seen the WWII bomber turret scenes to enjoy the Millennium Falcon/ TIE fighter battle in the first Star Wars movie, but you might actually appreciate it more if you had and could get the reference. This works for the same reason that literary allusions work, and this is the very root of popular culture; expressions and meanings that transcend other boundaries. Even people who have never seen a single moment of Star Wars can tell you that "Luke, I am your father" is a line from Darth Vader (even though that's technically incorrect). The misquote itself is a part of the popular culture that relates to Star Wars.