Star Wars on Trial

by David Brin

  All right. It's time to close this down and give the Defense their final say. (I await the inevitable insults, confident that sincere readers will know better. I like to poke, provoke, ask questions and stir debate. CITOKATE!6 And never let anyone tell you that I say "obey!")

  What I do ask of you jurors is not so much to convict Star Wars of any particular fault, but rather, to come away from all of this determined to ask more from the next set of myths that you are offered. To at least notice when yet another tediously cliched "chosen one" or preordained demigod inevitably strides onto the silver screen ... or your favorite video game. When feudal inheritance and vague mystical claptrap are put forward as reasonable substitutes for an open, confident and scientific society, built upon both individualism and accountable institutions that we get to criticize and control.

  Believe me, there are those in this society-in any society-who want us to lose faith in that new way of doing things. They would have us return to simpler, more regal and "heroic" modes.

  Sure, it's much easier to write a violent adventure story with demigods and flaming swords. It was always easy to tell fables that way. The cheap, lazy way. It's why stories like that are so numerous. So predictable and banal. And I say this only 10% as a writer. The other 90% is pure consumer. I want to be taken on adventures that rock, while expressing something other than complete contempt.

  Hey, it can be done. Directors like Spielberg and Zemeckis, like Meyer, Kershner, Cameron, Scott, Howard and the Coens ... all have managed to evade these hoary cliches, from time to time. They blaze harder but richer paths. In part, they do it by telling stirring stories about characters who are only a bit above average, and thus far more courageous when they stand up against evil. More realistic and far better heroes than you'll find in ancient myths. Because they are people we could aspire to be.

  Yes, I am asking a lot of you. But there's a payoff.

  If you demand better myths, they will make them. Stories with rambunctious fun, like Tom and Huck... but also offering some of Huck's wit and fantastic sense of honor. Tales that beckon forth the little boy, without snubbing the brave little girl. Adventures that take us rollicking on pirate ships without making all heroism ultimately futile, all spear carriers foolish victims and all civilization useless.

  Epics that don't yammer and preach at us for hours, and then say, "hey, lighten up, you're taking us too seriously!"

  There are more than enough examples-I have cited plenty-of storytellers who can take you further.

  It all starts by saying, enough.

  We want more.

  ADIES, GENTLEMEN AND OTHERWISE, and Artificial Beings of the jury-

  I've been having a tough time throughout this trial. You've probably noticed.

  I've been having a tough time keeping a straight face.

  Probably because I haven't really been trying.

  Before I explain why I haven't been trying-before I paste that cheerfully mocking grin back on my face-I want to 'fess up to something, in absolute honesty, without any mockery at all.

  Sometimes, in the course of these proceedings, I've gotten the sneaking suspicion that the fundamental question actually under consideration is whether the Star Wars films might have been better movies if David Brin had written them.

  Now, I know that sounds like a cheap dig. It isn't. Because David Brin is a fantastic writer; I've enjoyed his novels for years, and if we had come right out and debated that point, I not only would have lost, I may well have surrendered without firing a shot.

  So let's imagine, for a moment, a world in which Learned Opposing Counsel and his Sith dupes-dammit, I was being serious-in which Mr. Brin and the Prosecution witnesses had their way. A world in which Luke Skywalker was not a Secret Prince, but just a farm boy with dreams of being a star pilot; in which starfighters were merely clouds of gnats wiped from existence by capital ships bombarding each other from distances so vast they're visible only to each other's instruments; in which spaceships spew reaction gases in absolute silence-

  Ahh, you get the picture.

  All the political ramifications resolved. All the science holes plugged. The plot smooth and seamless.

  Where would we be?

  It sure as hell wouldn't be here.

  I mean, how many kids run around pretending to be Captain Nemo? Or, really, James T. Kirk? Even Indiana Jones-you don't see toy stores full of plastic whip and hat sets. Compared to the number of little Skywalkers out there ... ?

  Do you think that if it had all been sewn up in the neat package the Prosecution demands, we would have had books about secondary characters making bestseller lists? Do you think we would have had the Clone Wars micro-series cartoons, or the superb Clone Wars graphic series from Dark Horse? Would we have had Knights of the Old Republic and Republic Commando and Star Wars: Battlefront?

  We would have lost the late Brian Daley's marvelous Han Solo trilogy. We would have lost the X-wing novels-Rogue Squadron would have been only a passing mention in the films, and Wraith Squadron would have never flown. We would have lost the New Jedi Order, and the Dark Nest and Thrawn and Mara Jade and Anakin Solo and Talon Karrde and I don't have room for the whole list.

  We would have lost the book you're reading right now.

  My final witness, Mr. DeBrandt, was on the right track when he said that the plot holes don't matter. He just didn't go far enough.

  The plot holes are essential.

  Because inside every single hole in the entire Star Wars saga-in every flaw in the franchise-you can find a Cheshire grin floating above a flannel shirt, and a fading echo of...

  "Ha-ha-made you look!"

  When I was at Skywalker Ranch to meet with George Lucas, I brought up the sliding-around-the-turboshaft business in Revenge of the Sith. I said, "They're in orbit-gravity just doesn't work like that-"

  The answer I got, verbatim, was: "That's the point."

  Each of you on this jury-each of you reading this book-is here because you have one of two fundamental reactions to this.

  One is to frown. "Quit it! Quit or I'm telling! And I won't be your friend anymore!"

  The other is to grin right back. "Okay, you got me. What's next? Let's go!"

  Because your reaction is a choice: You can take that made you look as an insult. Or you can take it in the spirit it is intended.

  As an invitation to play.

  George says: "Let's pretend!"

  What do you say?

  Me? I grin. I always have, ever since a hot summer afternoon in 1977, when I was fifteen years old and a kid knocked on my door and told me about this goofy movie he wanted to see.

  You saw that grin on my face during my opening statement. You saw that grin every time I got up to question a witness for the Prosecution. Maybe you noticed I wasn't taking this too seriously. Maybe you noticed I was trying more for a smile than to play gotcha.

  Because they are a real pack of frowners, aren't they? Every one of them, except Mamatas-I couldn't be sure, through the foam on his mouth-and Bethke, who doesn't count, because he was a Defense witness before he fell to the dark side....

  Quit it or I'm telling!

  What I'm doing here is that nasty rhetorical trick you've all heard of: the ad hominem argument, which is to imply that the Other Side is wrong because of who they are, rather than addressing the issues they raise. But this is only half the ad hominem, because I'm not saying they're wrong.

  What I promised, in my own opening statement, was that the witnesses for the Defense would offer alternate, equally valid interpretations, and that I would leave you, the jury, free to make up your own minds. That's done.

  Now I want you to flip back through the testimony. On both sides.

  Who's smiling? Who's relaxed, and playful, making jokes and generally having fun?

  Who's gritting their teeth and citing statistics and oh-so-serious about How Awful Things Are?

  Which side, in general, would you rather hang around with?

  Which kind o
f person would you rather be?

  I'm not passing any judgments. The world needs frowners. I'm even one of them, more often than not.

  But right now, I've got Sith Lords on my tail and a starship to catch.

  The late, great Fritz Leiber liked to say that the best way to teach someone something was to make him laugh so hard he didn't notice he was learning. Nietzsche wrote about the masks that truth must wear. The most insightful social psychologist of the classic world, Aristophanes, was also the funniest playwright.

  So cast your vote. For either side. Grin with us, or frown with them.

  Because who wins this trial really doesn't matter. It's a show trial, y'know-a Sith put-up job from the start. Go ahead and convict.

  They'll never catch us.

  Listen.

  Hear that? Softly, softly, someone is knocking at your door-a long time ago, on a summer afternoon far, far away...

  If you let your younger self pull back the curtain... if you let yourself squint out into that brilliant golden light....

  It's me and George.

  Come on-Han's got the Falcon in the park behind the basketball court, but there isn't much time-!

  Here's your lightsaber....

  Come out and play.

  THE COURTROOM

  DROID JUDGE: Thank you, distinguished counselors. It is now time for you, the readers of this volume, to cast your votes based on the testimony you have heard. Your votes are on the following nine charges; for each of these you must cast a vote of innocent or guilty:

  CHARGE #1: THE POLITICS OF STAR WARS ARE ANTI-DEMOCRATIC AND ELITIST

  Guilty or innocent?

  CHARGE #2: WHILE CLAIMING MYTHIC SIGNIFICANCE, STAR WARS PORTRAYS NO ADMIRABLE RELIGIOUS OR ETHICAL BELIEFS

  Guilty or innocent?

  CHARGE #3: STAR WARS NOVELS ARE POOR SUBSTITUTES FOR REAL SCIENCE FICTION AND ARE DRIVING REAL SF OFF THE SHELVES

  Guilty or innocent?

  CHARGE #4: SCIENCE FICTION FILMMAKING HAS BEEN REDUCED BY STAR WARS TO POORLY WRITTEN SPECIAL EFFECTS EXTRAVAGANZAS

  Guilty or innocent?

  CHARGE #5: STAR WARS HAS DUMBED DOWN THE PERCEPTION OF SCIENCE FICTION IN THE POPULAR IMAGINATION

  Guilty or innocent?

  CHARGE #6: STAR WARS PRETENDS TO BE SCIENCE FICTION, BUT IS REALLY FANTASY

  Guilty or innocent?

  CHARGE #7: WOMEN IN STAR WARS ARE PORTRAYED AS FUNDAMENTALLY WEAK

  Guilty or innocent?

  CHARGE #8: THE PLOT HOLES AND LOGICAL GAPS IN STAR WARS MAKE IT ILL-SUITED FOR AN INTELLIGENT VIEWER

  Guilty or innocent?

  CHARGE #9: CONSIDERING ALL THE FACTORS ABOVE, OVERALL, STAR WARS HAS BEEN DAMAGING TO SCIENCE FICTION READERS, WRITERS AND MOVIEGOERS

  Guilty or innocent?

  You may register your votes at www.starwarsontrial.com, where you may also add your witness testimony to the arguments you have read above.

  May the Force be with you!

  DAVID BRIN: I object!

  DROID JUDGE: Withdrawn.

  Visit www.starwarsontrial.com to cast your vote.

  I The reader deserves a disclaimer about what this book is not. It is not a well-organized scholarly treatise on the Star Wars universe! Or a thorough analysis of the ideas contained therein. For anyone eager to explore the root sources and inspirations for Star Wars, and many other modern myths, an excellent starting point would be the vivid and detailed Web site at Jitterbug.com that explores a vast range of possible, plausible and utterly blatant borrowings from earlier works. Indeed, George Lucas has never denied making liberal use of earlier storytelling tropes and tricks that range from floating space letters (Buck Rogers) and secretive mystic cults (Dune) to glowing swords and whining little golem-trolls (The Lord of the Rings). (See http://www.jitterbug.com/origins/index.html. "Star Wars: Origins" was created by Kristen Brennan in September 1999 and updated sporadically, with many contributors, through 2006.) For the most part, the authors and essayists in this book will be concentrating on something else entirely-the moral, ethical and other lessons being taught by this epic series.

  In making their arguments, our writers selected by the folks at BenBella Books will largely cite plot events from the Star Wars films themselves-on-screen moments that any Star Wars aficionado ought to recall or recognize, without needing any deep grounding in, say, the "arcana of Western and Asian mythology."

  ' Though, as reviewer and critic James Lowder points out, there are also much more recent historical and pop culture sources that Lucas mined in creating the films. Henderson downplays or ignores the influence, for example, of Kurosawa samurai films like Yojimbo and The Hidden Fortress, from which Lucas patterned characters and even borrowed sequences of dialogue.

  'The chief ideological difference between a good Democrat and a good Republican appears to be whom you perceive as being a more ominously oppressive potential oligarchy A Republican worries about intimidation and undue power accumulation by pushy academics and faceless government bureaucrats. The Democrat sees undue accretions of power and influence by monied aristocrats, ideological fanatics and faceless corporations. Libertarians choose one from column A and one from column B! When you put it that way, it seems we've been guarding each other's backs for years; so why do we get so mad at each other for worrying about different authority figures? Which authority you choose to fear is largely a matter of experience and personal taste. That doesn't mean the other guy's fear is entirely without basis.

  3 George Lucas, interview by Orville Schell, "I'm a Cynic Who Has Hope for the Human Race," New York Times, March 21, 1999.

  Another excerpt: "The United States, especially the media, is eating its own tail. The media has a way of leveling everything in its path, which is not good for a society. There's no respect for the office of the Presidency Not that we need a king, but there's a reason why kings built large palaces, sat on thrones and wore rubies all over. There's a whole social need for that, not to oppress the masses, but to impress the masses and make them proud and allow them to feel good about their culture, their government and their ruler so that they are left feeling that a ruler has the right to rule over them, so that they feel good rather than disgusted about being ruled. In the past, the media basically worked for the state and was there to build the culture. Now, obviously, in some cases it got used in a wrong way and you ended up with the whole balance of power out of whack. But there's probably no better form of government than a good despot."

  Let me add that the reader should carefully take into account context. For example, this was said during the height of Clinton-era "morality" witch-hunts. Nevertheless, there is irreducible meaning to the words themselves.

  ' This isn't just a one-time distinction. It marks the main boundary between real, literate, humanistic science fiction-or speculative fiction-and most of the movie "sci-fi" you see nowadays.

  The difference isn't really about complexity, childishness, scientific naivete or haughty prose stylization. I like a good action scene as well as the next guy, and can forgive technical gaffes if the story is way cool! The films of Robert Zemeckis take joy in everything, from rock 'n' roll to some deep scientific paradox, feeding both the child and the adult within. Meanwhile, noir tales like Gattaca and The 13th Floor relish dark stylization while exploring real ideas. Good SF has range.

  ' For the purposes of clarity, Star Wars refers below to the saga as a whole. The individual films are referred to by their chapter titles. Yes, this means I'm referring to the film released in 1977 as A New Hope, which makes my teeth hurt, for much the same reason that seeing the 1981 Harrison Ford picture being called Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark does likewise, but it works better this way Damn you, George Lucas, damn you to hell.

  2 Brin, David. "What's wrong (and right) with `The Phantom Menace."' Salon, June 15, 1999. http:// www.salon.coin/ent/movies/feature/1999/06/15/brin side/index.html.

  'Gunn, James. "The Tinsel Screen." In Teaching Science Fiction, edited by Jack Willi
amson. King of Prussia, PA: Owlswick Press, 1980.

  ' Galaxy Far, Far Away-what Star Wars fandon calls the Star Wars universe.

  3 Publishers Weekly year-end statistics, taken from their Web site, www.publishersweekly.com.

  ' Williams, Walter Jon. "Thought Experiments: The Science Fiction Village." Asimov's Science Fiction, July 2005, 22.

  2 Ibid., 25.

  5 Ibid.

  ' Dozois, Gardner. The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-second Annual Collection. New York: St. Martins Press, 2005. Dozois got his numbers from Locus magazine.

  6 Okay. Its Jack McDevitt's new paperback Polaris.

  Statistics compiled every year by the Romance Writers of America (www.rwanational.org). These statistics come from two studies commissioned by the organization. One study "is tabulated by mathematician Olivia Hall, who draws data from mass-market book distributors' yearly release information; from figures released by the American Bookseller[s] Association; and from reports by Ipsos-BookTrends reports, an independent market research firm that studies book trends. This study is updated yearly. Another study focuses on reader demographics, book content, and book-buying habits. It is conducted via telephone survey and in-person focus groups by Corona Research, a market research firm in Denver, Colorado." Other studies, conducted by various organizations, have similar figures. Anyone who doubts these numbers can do his own tally using books in print numbers: total fiction books published into the number I used above. I prefer the RWA statistics; they're less dismal for SF publishing.