scmilitarybrat
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“Star Wars Galaxy Asks”
Ya’ll explain to me why Star Wars is still such a hit? I saw the original movie when it opened (I was 17, you do the math). It was amazing, but it was nothing compared to Star Trek (original/new). As a whole when it comes to Trek vs Wars films, I can’t find anyone under 50 who feels different. WHY?
You know, I have some thoughts on this.
There’s a couple of things I’d like to establish before we dig into my theory of Fandom Consumption of SW vs ST
1. SW and ST are actually different genres, with different narrative structures and different narrative goals
SW is a Space Fantasy- it’s got all you classical fairy-tale-type narrative arcs and devices, but given the aestheics of Space and a few trappings of Sci-Fi. There’s a lot of exploration of what can be DONE with narrative, but also it’s ultimately a series for children and young adults.
ST by comparison is a series of Space-Flavored Fables- the early seasons in particular are rather bluntly philosophically didactic, but it’s always been about ethics one way or another. It’s really meant for a young adult to older adult audience- there’s a reason the original Spirk Shippers were in their 40′s.
2. …and as such, appeal to different kinds of fans.
There’s been discussion on Tumblr before about Curative vs Transformative fandom (if someone wants to add the link I’d be thrilled the search function is fuckt) Curative fans tend to work more with an established canon and analyze what that means in terms of creator intent, how the history of that universe played out, and the philisophical implcations of canon. Transformative fans tend to say “to hell with the author, here’s what the narrative meant to me and I’m going to pick it apart for shiny bits to make my own narrative out of it”
If I had to speak from expirience: both appeal to curative and transformative fans, but the balance is rather weighted thusly: right now, ST has a LOT more curative/older fans, and SW has a lot more Transformative/younger fans. Both fandoms are roughly the same size (in the millions) but have very different kinds of fans.
…Unless you were wondering what attracts people to SW so, in which case, here are some of it’s appeals, all of which boil down to “Star Wars Is Stupid”
1. SW is Stupid: SW as a franchise has been TERRIBLE at keeping a canon, even before the disney takeover and ‘death of the EU’, which makes it fertile ground for transofrmative works.
Yes, it’s an appeal, really.
Between the movies, shows, books, comics, tv shorts, and so on, SW has got roughly six sets of conflicting canons, made by literally hundreds of authors, artists and directors. Even Canon Canon is riddled with gaps and conflicting information. It’s a nightmare for any curator-type fan.
This is TERRIFIC if you’re a Transformative Type Fan (someone who wirtes fic, makes fanart, espouses fan theories etc) , becuase at this point, it’s not A Narrative That Must Be Adhered To, and is now more like a Promising Rummage Sale To Be Rifled Through For Shiny Bits. by picking and choosing the bits you want, SW can be made to deliver anything you need from it. tragedy, comedy, a study in fictional economics, anything you want!
After a certain point of neglect, poor canon curation stops being an annoyance and starts being an inviting substrate.
2. Star Wars is Stupid: Everyone is a Huge Moron, and that is SO entertaining.
Not gonna lie. Everyone in star wars is an IDIOT. Everyone. Even your brilliant tactician or subtle machinator or splendid politician or Wise elder is, eventually, a thundering dumbass whether its hubris or unwise emotional commitment or a straight-up lack of critical thinking skills.
This makes everyone. So much fun to write. It’s like watching cats do dumb cat things, but it’s also a space opera. it’s wonderful. If you DON’T like watching people make easily avoidable mistakes it’s probably extremely frustrating, but if you like a black comedy of terrible life choices, the prequels and animated series are for you!
3. Star wars is Stupid: SW is simpler, narratively speaking, and makes a good beginner’s sandbox.
Part of the reason that ST never really “Stuck” for me was that for a LONG time, I had a ton of damn trouble recognizing narrative symbolism, was bad at understanding forigen perspectives, and otheriwse had a lot of trouble with literature. It didn’t improve until I was 23 and parts of my prefrontal lobe grew in, apaprently, and I STILLsuck at it. There’s a reason I write mostly nonfiction.
ST, (mostly after the Shatner era, and a whole fucking lot by DS9) is remarkably narratively complex and philosophical by nature while SW is fairly simplistic in it’s philosphy and the cast of any given movie/book/show is really about six people. Its a lot less complex.
Which, if you’re younger and still learning how to write, a late bloomer or just not interested in investing a lot of spoons in your media, is nice. It’s a good sandbox for beginner creators to create in, so much so that a good many of them never leave it.
4. SW is Stu- actually one of the few things SW did do very well, even in the very beginning: It’s got the better aliens.
Not the BEST, virtually every actually-sci-fi-that-has-aliens has better aliens, but SW and ST are not Sci-Fi, they’re space fantasy and space fables, remember?
That said, Chewbacca is a more alien Alien than anything I remember appearing in TOS. Industrial Light And Magic really brought their game when it came to making visually interesting, perosnally appealing and outright WEIRD aliens and honestly that’s a huge selling point for the series. Of all the people I know who have OC’s for the universe, only a fraction of them have human OCs, and most of those are clone troopers, which are human but a very unusual circumstance of Human.
Related to Point 1 with the lack of canon: there’s a sort of… world-UN-building that’s happend with the SW franchise- bits of random ecology or xenobiology or history are thrown out by authors with almost no regard to how that fits in with the rest of established canon, so you end up with WILD shit like “Jabba The Hutt is a hermaphrodite that’s incapable of moving on his own anymore and could could regenerate from a major injury Deadpool style, but not hypoxia from strangling” which. There’s a lot to unpack there and I’m going to have so much fun doing that.
ST did eventually get there with the aliens, to the point where they were more interesting than the humans by DS9, but even then they never got to the level of
“How the actual fuck does Jabba function as an organism?”
TL;DR: SW and ST are very different types of story with very differnt types of fan, and the type of fan that likes SW also tends to be younger and transformative in nature. If you were wondering, they like SW because it’s Stupid and has weird aliens.
