The linked article below prompted this rant on my blog (which I’m not linking to) and since no one ever sees my blog, I decided, I’m a paying customer, let’s put it out on the board.
Okay, so now we’re analyzing Star Wars as if it were art. It isn’t art, regardless of what Lucas or his followers may say at this point. It was, and is, an homage to the old ‘B’ level serials put out for studios as “Throwaway” entertainment. Those of us who love serials (flaws and all) realize that they are laughable bad and great exciting fun all at the same time.
Star Wars was great fun the first three times and embarrassingly awful the last three times. That is the plain truth as I see it. Lucas, desperate for filmic success went back to the Star Wars well devoid of any real ideas in terms of plot, and an inability to write dialogue that makes you question his contributions in American Graffitti (the only well written film he’s ever made).
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE episodes IV-VI and was very excited about episodes I-III (at the time, before I’d actually seen them, I was hoping he’d do the last three as well). And while they are visually stunning, they are the filmic equivalent of a super model – nice to look at, but of no real value and they can overstay their welcome quickly.
I know this is blasphemy to a great number of people, but Lucas should have handed the story telling over to competent people and contributed design ideas and shot the film – in no event should he be allowed to write dialogue or plot for anything as fundamentally enjoyable as the Star Wars universe again.
People forget that some of the worst Star Trek scripts were written by Gene Roddenberry, proving that having a good idea and executing a good idea, are two entirely different endeavors.
I suppose I see what you’re getting at, but isn’t all art really just human expression? Whether it qualifies as good or bad is up for debate, but comic books and B serials can be art as much as Rembrandt’s work or the Cistine Chapel’s ceiling. I’m no fan of comic books or B serials, but I can see Lucas’ expression in his work, and though you may not think it deserves the respect of say a Citizen Kane or a Casablanca, it can still be argued to be art.
Certainly Star Wars is art. It’s just not great art.
Actually, that may be harsh. The fact that the film is still speaking to people almost thirty years after it came out is certainly a sign that it could be considered art. Art, after all, is primarily entertainment with staying power. Maybe it’s more accurate to say it’s just not high art.
As for analysis: well, you can analyze any film and find common ground with any other film you choose. It’s the academic game, and fairly easy to play. I have no doubt that someone could write an essay comparing the works of Rob Zombie to Shakepeare (and find Shakespeare the lesser author).
Wow. What a horrible topic for a discussion forum. Who gives a crap if someone else thinks Star Wars is art or not?
Star Wars was a good fantasy movie and if you want to take out loans to purchase original Star Wars set pieces like Han’s original blaster, that is your business.
I just don’t think this topic is really appropriate here.
I’m with scule, but with the caveat that movies as made today are an art made by a group of people. Director first, but he needs the scriptwriters, score, actors, et al. to make a movie because a movie is a bunch of arts rolled together. There is also a big “craft” component (well-done jobs that are customized for a project) that is required.
Eps. I–III may be bad, but why not “bad art?”
I thought the article was provocative–the post-modern element of the author stepping into the film or otherwise calling attention to its structure is there, thought I bet Lucas didn’t start with a plan to provide a post-modern critique of film with Star Wars–I would rather guess that he just stuck in a couple of these things because he thought they would be cool at the time.
Do you think that no film is “art”? It sounds to me like you may be reacting negatively to the article’s post-modern focus on structure as important. Do you agree that the more traditional elements of artistic analysis (plot, character development, theme, pretty language/visuals) should be applied to film?
I think it would depend on the tattoos. Unfortunately, because this site is highly prejudiced against guest members, I don’t have the privilege of posting pics of the tattoos at issue. If I had that ability, I’d post pics of some Star Wars tattoos that are a friggin mess.
BTW, I think it is a *very * worthwhile endeavor to talk about Star Wars and the like being art. What next? Is bowling a sport?
The linked article is a load of nonsense. Take this passage for example:
Are they really “an elaborate meditation on the dialectic between chance and order”? Or is it just that Lucas is not very good at plot and sometimes has to resort to ludicrous coincidences to get his pawns to move around the board the way he wants? Barring some sort of concrete evidence (notes from story meetings, for example.) that Lucas purposefully included sucky plot points as a postmodern critique on the creative process, I think it’s reasonable to say “no, that just sucks”.
If Star Wars is metafiction, it’s an accidental metafiction.
But I would say Star Wars is art. Great art? No. Intellectually engaging art? No. Postmodern art? Not on purpose. But it’s still art.
Of course it’s art. It’s popular art, but it’s still art. Britany Spears’ music is popular art, too. So is Pulp Fiction.
I don’t think you understand the article. What he’s saying is that the Star Wars films are art films, as opposed to popular films. That’s why he compares them to Cremaster. See anybody walking around in a Cremaster t-shirt? The article’s just a deconstructionist take on the whole series, saying that the intricacies of the plot that are attributed to The Force are actually meta-fiction. The Force is the writer, and the coincidences that the Force…errr…forces on the characters are actually there to call attention to the process of artistic creation. Star Wars, therefore, is actually just an extended meditation on art itself.
Now, I don’t really agree at all with many of the writer’s conclusions, but it is true that Star Wars has always had a self-aware meta element. They borrow liberally from other films like The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Searchers, Frankenstien (for the infamous “Noooooo!”) Flash Gordon, etc. etc. This was a big deal and a pretty new idea in 1977, but in 2005 it’s old news. Tarantino’s Kill Bill, for example, did the Star Wars pastiche thing better than Lucas’s later work, only instead of westerns, science fiction movies, and Saturday afternoon adventure serials Tarantino uses kung fu movies for source material. Art has always operated like this (see also the wholesale appropiration of blues in rock and roll), but the difference is that post-Lucas* filmmakers are much more aware of the process of appropriation and more willing to acknowledge it and play with it openly in the text.
But the article argues that all that Lucas was trying to do is play a post-modern game. I disagree with that notion. Was he using post-modern techniques and gambits? Certainly. Was that all he was concerned with? Absolutely not. If he was so concerned with laying bare the mechanics of plot construction, why the awkardness like the Sypho-Dias dead end in Clones or the lack of a romantic triangle in the prequal trilogy? In other words, positing that the movies are primarily an examination of plot also posits that Lucas is a plot super-genius (which he probably is), so why all of the fuck-ups?
*And yes, I’m aware that this isn’t Lucas’ idea, originally. I’m talking about the avalanche of popular American movies inspired by Star Wars.
Did you and others read the article the OP linked to? The question isn’t what is art? Or, is Star Wars art? It’s is Star wars this incredibly complex piece of meta-fiction with ponderous lit-crit overtones. Whatever Star Wars is, it isn’t that.
And so, there’s the problem. Sticking in cool ideas that makes something seem more interesting and thoughtful than it really is just plain irritates me. You can deconstruct anything (as someone pointed out) and analyze it in terms of imagery and situations from popular fiction, fairy tales, religion, and whatever cultural zeitgeist popped out to help form our understanding of culture. You can analyze this in terms of Christian imagery, find fairy tales or Greek Tradgedies that relate and make all kinds of connections. But the supposition that Lucas used the Force as a metaphor for storytelling is just plain putting ideas in his head (not that this is in and of itself a bad thing) that he just didn’t have. It is giving MORE credit to the series than it probably deserves.
No, I think film can definitely be art, though it is ultimately the product and not the medium that makes art good/bad, important or not so much.
It is no secret that I like Joss Whedon’s writing, and he does a lot of the “more important than I let on” writing. I enjoy it in spite of it. And while there are some professors deconstructing Buffy, for some reason it doesn’t bother me nearly as much as this (and make no mistake, I’m a fan of Star Wars in general). I think that there are things Star Wars can teach us in terms of this, but to suggest that Lucas had something lofty in mind when he created it, just seems preposterous to me, and it bugs me.
Ok now for my serious answer. The problem I have with declaring Star Wars as a whole, Art is that for most of its existence after the first movie the Films have been increasingly more about marketing rather than a creative expression. What new toys can we push? What will appeal to the fans for a bigger gross?
I do concede that some of the digital backdrop imagry and creatures are very much works of creative artistic expression. Even the initial dirty used space look was interesting.
The scripts, and filming are certainly not. The use of old style wipes were just an imitation of the serials it tried to recreate not an artistic look. There is no shot look that says this is a George Lucas film.
Watch Star Wars and Empire and tell me the major stylistic difference between the two even though two there are two directors.