Figuring It Out
Mar. 19th, 2011 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lazypadawanNothing like unwinding after a long week with a little Facebook battle to get you through a Clone Wars-free night. You've seen before on this LJ how much I despise Lucasfilm's baffling boosterism of various people like Simon Pegg who proclaim they're really big Star Wars fans/geeks yet will run to every waiting reporter with the nastiest comments about the prequels, which of course get published and widely disseminated. Well, I unloaded a lot of frustration on starwars.com's Facebook and of course, the usual tools defend starwars.com and Pegg.
Imagine if you'd ever see a celebrity say to the media something like this:
The first Star Wars movies were total rubbish. The special effects aged badly, the creatures look like muppets, the story was simple-minded with an irritating black-and-white approach to good and evil, the dialogue was below par for a comic book, and the acting was terrible with the exception of Alec Guinness.
Now the prequels were by far a vast improvement. Imaginative worlds, real artistry in Lucas's vision, a thinking person's musings on the gray areas between good and evil, real drama, and a far more talented cast. It's like comparing sugary soda pop to fine wine. Too bad Lucas matured later instead of making his first set of movies closer to the commentary on the Vietnam War he originally envisioned. Because if he had, then Star Trek wouldn't have won the science fiction battle.*
Like hell Lucasfilm would ever promote this guy's work or re-tweet his comments or regard him as a friend of Star Wars. You wouldn't see this guy at a Celebration ever, only if he's walking around with a badge he bought himself and with no Tumblr photo ops. Many Star Wars fans would consider him at best a "non-fan" and at worst a total pariah.
By the same token, if a Celebration guest ever started ragging on the first set of Star Wars films or told jokes at the expense of say, Carrie Fisher's personal problems, that guy would get the hook right away and never get invited back.
Yet all of those things I've described have been directed at the prequels, and still such people are welcomed as Star Wars fans and promoted by Lucasfilm.
Why?
Because Lucasfilm understands and respects the emotional connection--attachment if you will--fans have with Eps IV-VI. They would never sanction anyone denigrating those films because they genuinely worry about upsetting fandom's sensibilities. Everybody involved with Star Wars, whether it's a prequel film actor or someone involved with Clone Wars or a game designer or a comic/book author, is expected to speak about those films with reverence.
However Lucasfilm doesn't think very many people have that emotional connection with Eps I-III, so it's not understood and it's certainly not respected. Toes can be mashed, feelings can be hurt, movies can be crapped upon because really, who loves them anyway? And the ones who do, well, they don't matter. They're not real fans: too young to have experienced the glory years of '77-'83 and too old to be Clone Wars fans. Since when is anyone associated with the first set of Star Wars films, games and other expanded universe, and Clone Wars expected to speak about the prequels with the same reverence expected of the Imperial trilogy? When have you ever seen people excited about how such and such is going to reference the prequels?
For Lucasfilm and lot of the tool poseur groups out there, a real Star Wars fan must at least love Eps IV-VI even if he hates everything else. A vociferous fan of those movies is considered passionate and genuine. An equally passionate advocate of the prequels is considered fringe, militant, weird, a dilettante, and not genuine. Not that they mind taking our money of course.
As long as they have this two-tiered view of fandom, nothing is going to change.
*This is of course NOT my personal opinion.
Imagine if you'd ever see a celebrity say to the media something like this:
The first Star Wars movies were total rubbish. The special effects aged badly, the creatures look like muppets, the story was simple-minded with an irritating black-and-white approach to good and evil, the dialogue was below par for a comic book, and the acting was terrible with the exception of Alec Guinness.
Now the prequels were by far a vast improvement. Imaginative worlds, real artistry in Lucas's vision, a thinking person's musings on the gray areas between good and evil, real drama, and a far more talented cast. It's like comparing sugary soda pop to fine wine. Too bad Lucas matured later instead of making his first set of movies closer to the commentary on the Vietnam War he originally envisioned. Because if he had, then Star Trek wouldn't have won the science fiction battle.*
Like hell Lucasfilm would ever promote this guy's work or re-tweet his comments or regard him as a friend of Star Wars. You wouldn't see this guy at a Celebration ever, only if he's walking around with a badge he bought himself and with no Tumblr photo ops. Many Star Wars fans would consider him at best a "non-fan" and at worst a total pariah.
By the same token, if a Celebration guest ever started ragging on the first set of Star Wars films or told jokes at the expense of say, Carrie Fisher's personal problems, that guy would get the hook right away and never get invited back.
Yet all of those things I've described have been directed at the prequels, and still such people are welcomed as Star Wars fans and promoted by Lucasfilm.
Why?
Because Lucasfilm understands and respects the emotional connection--attachment if you will--fans have with Eps IV-VI. They would never sanction anyone denigrating those films because they genuinely worry about upsetting fandom's sensibilities. Everybody involved with Star Wars, whether it's a prequel film actor or someone involved with Clone Wars or a game designer or a comic/book author, is expected to speak about those films with reverence.
However Lucasfilm doesn't think very many people have that emotional connection with Eps I-III, so it's not understood and it's certainly not respected. Toes can be mashed, feelings can be hurt, movies can be crapped upon because really, who loves them anyway? And the ones who do, well, they don't matter. They're not real fans: too young to have experienced the glory years of '77-'83 and too old to be Clone Wars fans. Since when is anyone associated with the first set of Star Wars films, games and other expanded universe, and Clone Wars expected to speak about the prequels with the same reverence expected of the Imperial trilogy? When have you ever seen people excited about how such and such is going to reference the prequels?
For Lucasfilm and lot of the tool poseur groups out there, a real Star Wars fan must at least love Eps IV-VI even if he hates everything else. A vociferous fan of those movies is considered passionate and genuine. An equally passionate advocate of the prequels is considered fringe, militant, weird, a dilettante, and not genuine. Not that they mind taking our money of course.
As long as they have this two-tiered view of fandom, nothing is going to change.
*This is of course NOT my personal opinion.
