Image Source: https://marciokenobi.wordpress.com/2015/11/15/star-wars-original-trilogy-changes-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-part-3/

Should Original Content be Edited or Changed to Fit New Ideas or Norms?

As I was reading some of the threads from “George Lucas: Unreliable Narrator & Time-Traveling Revisionist”, I was interested in a quote taken from an interview with George Lucas in the Rolling Stones magazine in 1977.  Lucas said, “I realized a more destructive element in the culture would be a whole generation of kids growing up without that thing, because I had also done a study on, I don’t know what you call it, I call it the fairytale or the myth.  It is a children’s story in history and you go back to the Odyssey or the stories that are told for the kid in all of us.” After reading this quote, it almost seems as if Lucas chose to re-edit and modify Star Wars as an attempt to keep it up to date with each new generation as he was targeting the movie at children it would make sense that he would re-edit it to modernize it.  What does that mean for the people who grew up with the original Star Wars in the 1970s as it was a part of the society that they were growing up in at the time?  It does not seem productive to have the original protected by copyright laws, all versions of the film should be enjoyed.  The Harry Potter franchise would be the most relevant to me in terms of pop culture I consumed as a child and teenager. What Lucas did with his films(s) would give a similar reaction if JK Rowling re-edited the Harry Potter series to be more appealing to future generations. 

Who Should Own Creative Content?

Something that the combination of this BAD uncut film and the Vox article "This is the best version of Star Wars--and watching it is a crime" got me thinking, is who has a right to create something, contribute to it, and benefit from it? My first reaction to watching Star Wars uncut was that it was horrible, and there is such a thing as giving fans too much power in fandoms. In the past, some films or television shows have listened too heavily to fan theories and input, and have sacrificed the integrity of said media entirely. But on the opposite end, some creators have completely gone overboard and ruined their own creative work in certain ways--for example, George Lucas in the case of adding in terrible CGI to the original Star Wars and other terrible additions he made, and JK Rowling tweeting unnecessary additions to the Harry Potter world that none of us asked for (also for her blatant transphobic tweets...but that's another issue entirely). I'm all for world-building, but these extraneous circumstances are completely unnecessary! My first reaction is that someone should limit Lucas' control over the original films and I'm glad Rowling has no power over any of the HP films, but then as a writer...I would want all creative control and ownership over my work that I created! The Vox article accurately talked about how out of control copyright laws are, so my question is...

Should copyright control be limited to the creators of said creative work? If so, what does that look like?

I totally meant to do that

The highlighted quote is what first caught my attention in this section. I haven't included the evidence that followed this, put basically it just claims that there is plenty of evidence proving that Lucas did not, in fact, originally plan for Darth Vader to be Luke's father. This whole exchange made me wonder, how much of what we consider to be "genius" or a huge twist is actually intended? A lot of what I write (okay, maybe not a lot, but a decent bit) in stories or in essays is on accident, but then I end up getting praised like I meant to do it, so I just say, "yeah, I definitely meant to do that." This seems like a very similar, albeit to a much smaller scale, situation. 

Star Wars Revisions and Ownership

[image source: Star Wars: A New Hope Visual Comparison (HD Branch)]

As a relative outsider to Star Wars culture, it may be easy to dismiss superfans who put so much importance on the integrity of the original cut of the films.  It is, however, important to understand the impact of the originals with which these fans have grown so fond.  Media that we attach ourselves to will always hold an important place in our hearts. And when someone, no matter who, makes revisions to that media, we are left questioning how that revision affects the zeitgeist. When a piece of intellectual property is released, it can change hands multiple times from the creator, to the production company, to any number of conglomerates.  This ownership provides guidelines as to reproduction, licensing, and continuation.  But fans can have as much ownership, albeit less claim to profit, as those who spent billions on a property.  As soon as a film, an album, or a television show debuts, it belongs partly to whoever holds the license, and partly to the world, the fandom, or the culture as a whole.  So get mad, nerds! In revising Star Wars, George Lucas is changing something that belongs just as much to you as it does him.

George Lucas: Perfectionist

This quote strikes me as very odd, especially the part where Lucas says "I'm the one who has to have everybody throw rocks at me...for something I love rather than something I think is not very good, or at least something I think is not finished." I understand his dislike for an original work, usually when an artist, in my case writer/poet, views their first work as unfinished or the worst copy. He takes responsibility but the two versions can and should coexist because we can compare the old and newer versions, the progress in technology, and in the end it is art. Art improves and continues to grow but to get rid of the original does not fully mean you accept responsibility of how awful it is and how everyone loved it but that you are erasing an original piece of art that was very fine on it's own. Lucas is clearly a professional and before he had edited Star Wars he must have had some pride in the first version. To erase something so impactful and replace with not just some upgrading in shading and tech but to add and replace specific things to fit your own vision is a bit selfish.

Star Wars Revisionism - Protecting the Artist

I just don't understand the literal visceral hate that George Lusicas is subjected to concerning the film he created, he made, and he felt needed revision to better tell the story he wanted to tell.  It's ultimately his vision and creativity, so let's just allow him to make the changes he wanted to make to better tell this story without feeling like he personally insulted all of us by these changes.   

Film is the art of the 20th and 21st century, and George Lucas is an artist.  In my opinion, he has the right to change his piece of art however he likes, whenever he likes, in whatever way he likes.  The film itself is not owned by the people, no matter how much they wish they could own the film.  They may own it culturally, but cultural ownership does not give you creative rights or corrective rights.  What if DaVinci hasd the ability to come back to life, and he decided to correct the Mona Lisa (she doesn't have visible eyebrows or eye lashes)?  Does DaVinci have that right as the artist?  What if his reasoning is artistic?  In my humanities based mind he does.

What George Lucas does to his film is his business.  That business is not mine, not fans, and not some individual in his basement attempting to "right a wrong."  Uploading and maintaining an illegal copy of a film is a clear violation of laws that are intended to protect artists like George Lucas. 

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

“Hence the dependent child and its mother constitute for months after the catastrophe of birth as dual unit, not only physically but also psychologically.  Any prolonged absence of the parent causes tension in the infant and consequent impulses of aggression ; also when the mother is obliged to hamper the child, agressive responses are aroused.  Thus the first object of the child’s hostility is identical with the first object of its love, and its first ideal is that the unity of the Madonna and Bambino.”(6)

As I was reading this passage, I was curious about how this dynamic.  How did Luke not having a connection to his biological parents potentially shape his growth and development and put him on a path to being a “hero”?  Could Princess Leia be seen as this guiding mother-like figure?

Star Wars: Mentor & Hero

When reading/watching/reviewing the different things for tonight class, what stuck out to me was something said during the 2 minute youtube clip from Bill Moyers' The Power of the Myth. When talking about the point in the movie where Ben Kenobi's voice is in Lukes head saying, "Use the force Luke. Let go. Luke", he says that "this thing communicates. It is in our language that is talking to young people today. And that's marvelous". My first thought: what is "it"? I found this to be very confusing, yet also making a lot of sense. I know that sounds odd; it is something I can understand but I am unsure how to explain why I understand it. I am just lost on what "it" is.


When reading on the "cheat sheet" about the mentor and the hero interactions it states, “The Hero meets a Mentor to gain confidence, insight, advice, training, or magical gifts to overcome the initial fears and face the Threshold of the adventure." This is what happens with Luke and Ben, Ben gives him the lightsaber and helps him to train with it and fight with it. In that Youtube clip it is also said that, the mentors of the heroes often give them some type of instrument or tool to use as well as a psychological center. I interpreted this as the mentor giving the hero a weapon or object in order to complete whatever their journey is, and offering them the tools they need to get past their mental blocks in order to be successful in their journey.
 

The Enigmatic Journey Within All of Us

Star Wars! And Freud! And Oedipus, oh my! What I really got from "The Monomyth" reading was not the journey of the hero--but rather, what makes that journey possible. With Star Wars, we get the classic hero with Luke Skywalker. He's orphaned from birth, and he then saw the burned bodies of his only other relatives who raised him. He then has a mission, with nothing to lose, because he's never had much. Heroes tend to be born not from upbringings of privilege or excess, but rather they have struggled, continue to struggle, and are able to overcome it through their determination and resilience they have formed from childhood. A quote that particularly stood out to me from this reading was:

Full circle, from the tomb of the womb to the womb of the tomb, we come: an ambiguous, enigmatical incursion into a world of solid matter that is soon to melt from us, like the substance of a dream. And, looking back at what had promised to be our own unique, unpredictable, and dangerous adventure, all we find in the end is such a series of standard metamorphoses as men and women have undergone in every quarter of the world, in all recorded centuries, and under every odd disguise of civilization. 

So what is important here, is not only the journey of the individual, but how every individual journey is affected by each other. This article touched a lot on motherhood and how we as humans are more reliant on our mothers from birth than any other mammal. The compassion we have from a loving mother affects us. The loss we have from an absent mother affects us. What we have, what we have lost, and what we have never known through our relationships and intertwining journeys is paramount. The journey of the hero is only possible, not because of the individual themselves, but because of other journeys that preceded them. Our existences are but fleeting, and is both in our control and out of it.

The Hero's Journey For Normies

The structure and idea of The Hero's Journey, is great for us all to enjoy as we live our normal day to day lives. It gives us an insight on worlds unimaginable, of problems and scenarios only in our dreams that we can experience in a sense. We can't contribute to the story ourselves but it gives us a sense of vacation from the norm. In Star Wars, we are in the distant past in a galaxy not like ours. We follow the story of a young white man and his journey. As a black woman myself I couldn't fully immerse myself but the challenges Luke faces, his mentor and other characters who help and join him along the way we can see through his eyes and ride along with him as we too are experiencing this other world together. Luke's right of passage in a way is also our own that lead into the other movies following. The structure may be reused and done over and over but it has a purpose, and what isn't broken shouldn't need to be fixed, only tweaked.

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.

Two Sides to Every Coin

Something that has fascinated me as of late, and has apparently fascinated many others, is the idea of evil within a story. As "the Monomyth" discussed, there is a a specific pattern followed by most every story that involves a journey. On page 30, it says a key part of the description of the journey is, "a decisive victory is won." This means that while the hero is the main subject of whatever story you're looking at (take your pick), there was also a force actively fighting against the hero.

I find that often times, no matter how glorified the hero is made out to be, the villain becomes the true character of interest. For example, as recognizable as the name "Luke Skywalker" may be, the name "Darth Vader" will always be just a step ahead of it. Why is that? Why do we fixate so much on the villain, if everything in the story is telling us to focus on the hero? Is it perhaps because the villains are closer to us as characters than the untouchable hero? I wouldn't think so; I'd say we are closer to the character who wants to do the right thing than the character who throws a hissy fit every time someone disagrees with them.

The line between good and evil becomes much more blurred in the most recent installments to the Star Wars franchise, with both main characters often teetering just on the edge that divides good and evil. And I would argue that Rey and Kylo Ren are talked about and recognized equally. What that says about the Hero's Journey, I'm not exactly sure, but I do find it very interesting.

Secondhand Hero's Journey

Darth Vader's influence on the real world
https://giphy.com/gifs/pepsi-darth-vader-1997-ylyUQnqAdMNs4QITOE 

Myths follow a rite of passage structure because it’s something with which every human can connect. It’s not just a common human experience, it is needed. Since we can’t all be heroes summoned by a mentor to adventure around the galaxy, myths act as supplementary experiences to “supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward” (11). In the case of Star Wars, the fictional power of the force can become a real source of strength to people who connect with that symbol of divinity. Would Star Wars have had the same impact if it didn’t follow the pattern of the monomyth? Possibly. But part of its success must be attributed to the way it tapped into this innate human need to have secondhand life-changing experiences. Which is how modern texts that tap into that “transcendent anonymity” (46) of mythology like Star Wars can legitimately change the way people see the world. We withdraw from the ordinary when we enter the movie theater, we experience the film, and then we return to the world with our lives enhanced.