On Star Wars, ANZACs, Superman and a little bit of Jung

The recent news that there is going to be another Star Wars trilogy made has brought out all the usual sinchellectual nonsense about Star Wars the original movie being a dud story with bad acting saved by a vague use of technology and other heathen misunderstood rants. However, reading one of them the other day has me thinking about what it is about Star Wars that made it such an iconic film and such a huge step forward in the sci-fi genre. Battles in space; mythical beings that could use clairvoyance and telekinesis, light sabres and the rest of it were not overly new concepts. Even Darth Vader’s look and sound can be traced back through history to see an earlier incarnation of them in some way, such as the 1938 films The Fighting Devil Dogs:-

Many of the ideas are taken right out of Flash Gordon and many common fairy tales such as the Frog Princess and other collective subconscious ideas of our society. I know that you are probably wondering if I’ve changed my mind from last week’s rant that Genius can take what talent borrows, but this is not what I am asking. What I am asking is - what is it about the original trilogy, and even more so, the original film that was such a step forward? 

Reality. 

For my understanding, Star Wars was the first sci-fi movie that was totally accepted by our culture where the characters were actual people and the story was quite believable. Sci-fi stories had, up that point, been plagued by obscure and awkward narratives and characters that one couldn’t really relate to. Speculative fiction as a genre has a long history of being outside of any form of reality. From modern day vampires that sparkle right back to the beginning of it all, stories of vampires, ghosts and the like have a long history of being told “A long, long time ago, In a galaxy far, far away.” Their authors seem to be as confused by the scene as one would expect reading Lord Byron’s vampires with food poisoning, 

However, Star Wars was not. Star Wars was a story with scenes and characters that could have taken place in the current era, in the current day.  Why? Because Luke Skywalker wasn’t anything more than a farm-boy, as were the ANZACs and many other successful military people history has recorded, then morphed into something else. Luke Skywalker, as he was introduced by his best friend toward the end of the original movie, was “...the best bush pilot in the outer rims.” He is this normal guy, working on a farm for his uncle and aunt, wanting to get away from it all and then a few things happen and boom, there he is blowing up the Death Star and sticking it to the man. That could be you in a month or two couldn’t it? You didn’t come from Krypton, but you are an ordinary dude, aren’t you? 

Looking back through history, Lord Byron started Bram Stocker on a rant about a certain villain, Dracula. Interestingly, in the original book, there is no understanding given as to why Dracula is the way he is, how he became it or why. The characters seem lifeless and infallible. Scan forward to the1992 retelling of the story and there is a huge recounting of a noble and strong lord being tricked by his enemies, lost his wife to suicide and cursed his God for His lack of passion.  

In HG Well’s The War of the Worlds, the beings are not really known to us, nor are the heroes because there really weren’t any. No one won that war, the Martians lost due to a strange incompatibility that existed. Stories from Superman and Spiderman and all these other speculative fiction franchises never really presented a character that we could like. Did anyone actually want to be Superman? I remember wanting to be able to fly like he could, to be as strong as he was and, especially as I grew older, wanted that whole vision type thing. But did I want to BE him? No...not really...he was kind of a dick. At the very least, he wasn’t really a person. He wasn’t believable as a character. Neither was Louis Lane, who apparently was a good reporter that at the same time couldn’t see through the unbelievably complicated Clark Kent disguise. Damn those glasses, who could ever have penetrated that disguise? Then, from my experience, the Louis Lanes of the world don’t really see glasses or the eyes behind them, they are looking elsewhere. 

But there is this supernatural nature behind all these stories that glosses over the main plot-development story. Did Superman deserve to be Superman? He just was, there was no why, when or how. But the simplicity of this type of story breeds a lack of relatability to the characters and can be un-humanised easily to the point of absurdity. Did the whole plot scene just fall on its own sword with a little bit of prodding around the incompatibility of a person from Krypton to live on Earth and dig Earth chicks? How could Superman live a normal life even if he wanted to?  A modern relationship with Louis or any woman would have killed him. He couldn’t possibly ever have gotten any, because in order for them to have sex, he would have to wear condoms made out of kryptonite, given that that would be the only substance capable of stopping the little guys. Or what is the alternative? Unprotected sex? Surely that would leave many pissed off little Superboys flying around and growing up with single mums that could not have plagued our collective imagination in those times, or even now for that matter. Then what happens when Superman gets a super-STD? The alternative, we are lead to believe, is that he was abstinent. Yeah right....he’s looking buff as, all the time, even when deliberately nerdifying himself as Kent, he still gets serious lady cred, he can fly around and see things (see through things) and he’s not after any? Yeah right. 

Fast forward to Star Trek, where there is a lot more humanity involved in the scene. While there is this ever present God-like Spock, it is usually the very human Kirk who is the hero. While Kirk does have a military background and persona, and takes on a persona more akin to the six million dollar man or the like, he is a character with flaws and phobias that we can relate to. We are able to know him. 

But Luke Skywalker...who didn’t want to be him? Or Han and Leia for that matter? They were real people. And that is what makes a good story – you have to be able to relate to it in some way, the characters can’t be super-awesome all the time. They have to be fallible. It is in their ability to fail that makes them able to succeed. Think about Superman for long enough and his seemingly inability to fail and you start to wonder whether cheering for Lex Luther would be more to our liking. Lex was the underdog: cunning, rich, ruthless and the like, but he was always biting off more than he could chew. It was only when Superman became vulnerable due to criminals from his planet who matched his power and then some that he became kind of interesting. 

So who would we rather be, Luke Skywalker or Superman? Luke or Vader? We associate with Luke because we like that he is fallible and so are we, so we crave him as a hero. Vader is cold and seemingly all-powerful while being beyond ruthless (at least in the first two movies). Luke could have been an ANZAC, he would have fitted right in. But then there is the obvious problem: ANZACs haven’t always been like that. While Luke would have fitted in with our version of ANZAC today, he would not have fitted in with the historical ANZACs, but Vader would have been right at home. 

I guess there is the old question as to what the purpose of war is. Is the main feature of a good warrior that he dies or at least risks his neck for Queen and Country? Or is it that he kills for Queen and Country or just because that’s who he is, that’s what he does. As Bono so wonderfully puts it “... What's the glory of taking a man from his bed and gunning him down in front of his wife and his children?” Yet isn’t this what Luke Skywalker does at the end of the first movie? A battleship that big would have to have thousands of living quarters for family of crew. Schools, children’s clinics, health clinics, socio-legal research centres of excellence and do we care? No, they’re all blown up cause the good guys have to win. 

But you don’t have to go back too far in history where apparently there is a different story to be told. The historical ANZACs were ruthless killers whose bloodlust was not only marked, but kind of feared by the British at the time. They certainly wouldn’t have preferred having a yarn and a game of cricket with the enemy, this is a modern invention . The ANZACs were successful because they were great at killing people. The British War Correspondent, Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett  wrote, in the Argus in May, 1915 that 

“In less than a quarter of an hour the Turks were out of their second position either bayoneted of fleeing. But then the Australians, whose blood was up, instead of entrenching, rushed northwards and eastwards, searching for fresh enemies to bayonet...These raw colonial troops in these desperate hours proved worthy to fight side by side with the heroes of Mons, the Aisne, Ypres and Neuve Chapelle. Early in the morning of April 26 the Turks repeatedly tried to drive the colonials from their position. The colonials made local Counter-attacks, and drove of the enemy at the point of the bayonet, which the Turks would never face” [1]

So in 1915, the ANZACs would have appeared more like storm troopers really: ruthless and unfeeling. Years ago, that made them successful, now it would make them the bad guys. So what happened? Well, history was revised and rewritten. Bill Gammage’s 1974 study The Broken Years, Patsy Adam-Smith’s 1978 The Anzacs and the movie Gallipoli replaced the true nature of the First World War with a clean and innocent young group of men who didn’t know what they were getting themselves into[2] and didn’t shirk from their responsibilities to die for King and Country (as opposed to kill for King and Country). 

Peter Costello, the then Deputy Prime Minister in 2003 stated that “There are problems in the world today just as there were in 1915. You cant turn your back on them...and young Australians, even today, are serving in the Middle East because they want to make a difference...And you think back how their grandfather and great grandfathers would have felt the same in 1915.” [3]

I guess Kim Beazley makes a decent point when he thought that without the modern myth of the ANZAC, no Australian government would be able to justify sending troops to war[4]. But also think of the expense of it all. While an army is perhaps necessary for peace in historical terms, have we not grown beyond that nowdays? Thomas Hobbes theorised that peace is not the absence of war, it is the absence of the threat of war. Surely in today’s Australia, the army represents the biggest threat to that peace rather than the protector of it. 

So there goes my theory about Star Wars, and it’s a little lame to say that it was the first movie that presented the modern version of the warrior hero, although notice the tight timeline between these few points in the late 1970s. 

Allow me to have another swing at it. Jung made a distinction between sagas, fairy tales, myths and legends. In particular focus on a fairy tale, he made observations about them and the characters within them. The hero never expresses emotion, he is lifeless; he kills the bad guy because he is the good guy; the bad guy generally does what he does out of compulsion or the like, certainly not out of self-interest or controlled rationalism. Luke Skywalker goes from being a normal person in the first movie, to the ultimate fairy tale hero in the last movie, right up until just before the end. He kills Jabba the Huttt because he wants his friends back. He doesn’t show any emotion about it. “You can either profit by this, or be destroyed” he tells Jabba, not threatening or skiting, just telling it the way he sees it. He is slightly conflicted meeting Yoda again, but then kills the bad guy (well, cuts off his hand and overpowers him). He then stops being the fairy tale hero: he throws down his sword. I mean, how cool is that? He enables his father to redeem himself. That’s even better than killing all the bad guys and saving the girl, he’s not only a good guy, he’s a good guy we can again relate to. 

Or maybe it’s just the cool swords we all wish we have. 

This post’s lame joke : You might be a bogan Jedi if

•     You ever uttered the phrase, "May the force be with yuz"
•     You have ever used your light saber to open a box of goon.
•      At least one wing of your X-wing is primer colored.
•     You have ever had a B-wing up on blocks in your yard.
•    Wookies are offended by your B.O.
•    You have ever used the force to get yourself another beer so you wouldn't have to wait for a commercial.
•     You have ever had your R-2 unit use its self-defense electro-shock thingy to get the barbecue grill to light.
•    You have a ‘love it or leave it’ Aussie flag painted on your flight helmet.
•     You kinda think that Jabba the Hutt had a pretty good handle on how to treat his women.
•    The REAL reason you got into a fight in the cantina was because you ordered Fosters Light...and they didn't have it.
•     You knew Princess Leia was your sister all along.

This post’s inappropriate over share: 

There was this one time, when I was about 17 that 

[REST OF POST REMOVED BY ADMINISTRATOR]

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[1] See Lake and Reynolds What’s Wrong with ANZAC? The militarization of Australian History.

[2] ibid

[3] ibid

[4] ibid

Genius takes what talent borrows

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a genius? Have you ever wondered what it actually means to be a genius? What rights does it give you?  Like most people, I decided that I was going to be a genius long before I decided what I was going to be a genius about. I am still pondering on exactly what, although I have the basics worked out. I have met many people who claim to have genius-like talents: uber-intellegence; photographic memory; above and beyond a normal ability to comprehend and maintain access to trivial facts: inappropriate body odour and other things, but their claims have all crumbled when put to a simple test on the subject matter. 

I’ve been thinking about this for a few reasons lately. Firstly, I have seen a few movies and read a few books lately that deal with the understanding that genius is something more than humanity, or something outside of it. It has me wondering why our culture is filled with stories that externalises genius as a concept. Genius seems to be retold as an externality to humanity. It is the work of God, Satan or some other factor. I found myself re-watching the classic “Crossroads” the other night. There are two competing versions of genius in that story. 

Firstly, Robert Johnson’s abilities as a musician, like that of Blind-Dog Fulton, when briefly talked about, were the work of a deal with the devil. Albeit it wasn’t a spell or talent that was given, they were given lessons from the devil, but nonetheless, it was super-human. The obvious points that tend to get a bit lost in all this is that the music for the movie was provided by the very talented and very human Steve Vai and Ry Cooder who both learnt how to play guitar by skill and perseverance. But are they geniuses? Can they take from wherever they want? Ry Cooder is particularly interesting here as his work in ethnomusicology has been scorned for doing just that – taking from a culture that he has no claim to. Secondly, the Blues, as a concept of music does not stand out in the scheme of things. It can be placed on a continuum between the Romantics, the Jazz era and the modern Rock era. While it is outstanding music, it fits in perfectly in a spectrum of human history and artistic development. No external forces were needed for it.

Interestingly, in ‘Crossroads’ it is in Eugene’s return to classical music, a very Mozart inspired song by Steve Vai - “Eugene’s Trick Bag” that defeats Jack Butler. This is interesting because Mozart is another case in point about a man who history tends to regard as not possessing or actually having the talent that he was credited with. He was possessed by the angels or the like, and his talent was devoid of, and removed from that bratty young man who apparently died penniless from syphilis in his thirties.

The second feature is  that the film’s plot sticks closely to the main character wanting to find a supposedly lost and unheard-of, 30^th song of Robert Johnson’s, so that the main character could blast his way into the blues scene by taking something that was not his and combining it with his genius to get showered in glory. What if he had done this? The character has a clear musical genius – young and capable of out-playing the devil, or so it would seem. Could a genius take an unknown blues song and, using outstanding musical skill (to the point of genius) turn it into a new work of art that he alone gets credit for?

The more savvy of our lot here will be thinking ‘mmm...musicians who take obscure old blues tunes and, through their genius, turn them into brilliant works of art...sounds like you’re talking about Led Zeppelin, not Crossroads’. And you’re right I am.

There seems to have been a resurgence in tall poppy bashing about Led Zeppelin lately. And they did take a fair bit, but the question is, were they entitled to? This is probably more than one question and more than one depth of appropriate appropriation. Songs like “Black Mountain Side” were seemingly just taken and not improved upon at all from the original save for the addition of drums; at one end of the spectrum. Songs like Stairway and How Many More Times, where you really need to creatively listen to the supposed ‘original’ to hear any decent similarity at the other end of the spectrum.

Perhaps a response to the former end of the spectrum, Black Mountain Side - would be ‘who cares’ – that’s not a very ledded, Led Zep song, not like  Dazed and Confused.  But have a listen to what people claim is the original of that; the, Jake Holmes’s version. It sounds like that stoner brother of the boring girl you went too far with when you were a teenager, doesn’t it? He still scares you doesn’t he? And you still don’t know if he ever knew and was just playing with your mind, or whether he was that annoying and grumpy.

The baseline, the melody, the drums, the lead guitar and almost all of the words (except for those three little words of the title) were completely changed to create one of the greatest rock songs of all time, the Led Zeppelin version. But should it have still been credited? Should Jake Holmes have gotten some dosh for his song? What about old blues songs like ‘You Shook Me’ or “The Hunter” that were recorded by an artist or two, but were traditional blues songs; why should Led Zep have credited them when that meant giving them money for something they themselves took from somewhere else. Surely all art stands on the shoulders of the giants who came before.

Shakespeare is another case in point. There is yet another movie which I fell asleep in this week, ‘Anonymous’ which presented another weird take on why Shakespeare wasn’t actually responsible for Shakespearean plays and verse. At least it’s not Francis Bacon credited in this dog of a film, but it presents a reason as to why Shakespeare is so far removed from normal, that genius itself is so far removed from normal: possession and insanity of some kind. The author (who is not Shakespeare, himself is possessed and keeps writing “merely because it is the only way the voices stop” or something like that (I am sorry for the inaccuracy, but I fell asleep for half the movie, and was half asleep for the rest).  So again, Shakespeare the person is divorced from Shakespeare the genius due to the genius coming from either insanity or supernatural voices/beings.

But what is the reason? Well, maybe it gives us some comfort knowing that genius is beyond our reach and beyond our control. We then don’t have to compete with it or excuse our lack of genius. If Shakespeare the genius is a spirit, a ghost or possessed man of some kind, I can feel at ease not being as good of a writer. 

Hell, I can even not put a full stop at the end of this sentence

Maybe I can even put an emoticon in here, J ...lol

But returning to the first point; can a genius take from society without acknowledgement? Can a band like Les Zeppelin simply take old blues songs and give them a new look and claim to be their authors? The answer I guess would have to be yes, but that depends on how much the appropriating artist has given to the song and how cool the artist is. I think that this is a big consideration  – how cool is the appropriating artists in comparison to the artist whose work has been appropriated and other relative standing between the two points of view. If Vanilla Ice were cooler than David Bowie (I know, it’s hard to image that, for two reasons; firstly, it’s freaken Bowie we’re talking about here, and secondly, it’s freaken Vanilla Ice we’re talking about here). But what about the Culture Club and the Violent Femmes (albeit the Femmes did credit their work)? They were so much cooler, but is it removed enough? What about Jeff Buckley’s version of Hallelujah; is it removed enough from the original Leonard Cohen to be considered a work of art in and of itself? On the question of coolness and talent, this is probably an unfair question given Buckley is one of the most talented singers ever, whereas Cohen sounds like Darth Vader would the morning after he’d been to a AC/DC concert.

On top of all this, I have been reading some more of one of my favourite authors, George Orwell’s Decline of the English Murder. And yes, I know, I know, I am that tragically daggy (well, actually I’m not that person, because I actually do read his stuff and don’t go around telling everyone that I do, and to prove it, for those who doubt, I think Nineteen Eighty Four was one of the worst books he ever wrote). But he had a decent swing at Salvador Dali on this point (as well as calling him a fraud and a coward). Dali, in the eyes of Orwell, could be admired as an artist and spat upon as a man. Further, that it is not the case that Dali could say or do anything at all, so long as it was said artistically. For Orwell, we could still openly spit on the man while enjoying his work.  I am not so sure that this is a correct point, but Orwell makes a good point.

“[T]he first thing we demand of a wall is that it shall stand up. If it stands up, it is a good wall, and the question of what purpose it serves is separable from that. And yet, even the best wall in the world deserves to be pulled down if it surrounds a concentration camp. ‘This is a good book or a good picture, and it ought to be burned by the public hangman.’ Unless one can say that, one is shrinking the implications of the fact that an artist is also a citizen and a human being,”[1]    

Apart from the general freedom of the artist, surely there has to be a line, a point in which someone has created a completely new piece of art from a vague appropriation, but that should not mean crediting the appropriated any more than just recognising them in the continuum of human progression in the arts.

Take a listen to John Coltrane playing “My Favourite Things” At the start, the melody is recognisably appropriated from ‘The Sound of Music’ and Rogers and Hammerstein ought to be credited. The rhythm, phrasing, orchestration, the very feel of the song is completely removed though. However, by the time the song gets to the end, there is no similarity to the original work of art. Somewhere along the way, it became a new composition...but where and exactly what?

 So is it mere recognisability? Does Patti Smith owe anything to Van Morrison apart from a tongue in cheek ‘that’s how it’s done Chad’ type comment for her version of the old Van Morrison tune?  Or is it in the concept as an atom? Does Aerosmith owe a debt to the Yardbirds for their concept “if you can judge a wise man by the colour of his skin, then mister  you’re a better man than I’? Do they owe a debt to the Kinks for their concept Lola/Dude looks like a lady?

Or is it more appropriate to say that we should stop externalising greatness. We should be thankful that there is so much talent and creativity and beauty in our world, and stop cutting down tall poppies.

This post’s lame joke: Why do violin players put a handkerchief on their shoulder before they start playing?

Because a Violin doesn’t have a spit valve on it.

This post’s inappropriate over share:  When I am editing my writing lately, and I’ve done this for a while, I have this kooky need to not delete everything from a word that I am changing. It’s as though changing all the letters of a word will mean bad writing, bad consequences or something and the more of the original word that I keep, the better the writing will be.... and by the way, I know you’re thinking “and this post is what you’ve come up with...dude”.

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[1] Benefit of Clergy p26-7 in The Decline of the English Murder and other Collected Essays.