The Last Jedi and the Future of Storytelling
Apparently this is my life now. Posting countless think
pieces about a movie that I only kinda like. Why do I do this? Because the
controversy that emerged around this film provides a fascinating case study of
this moment in culture. And how the chips fall will have a huge impact on my
future goals and ambitions. For context, you can see my grand scheme here, https://breathoflifeart.com/works/tft-concept/
or for the TL:DR version: I want to create a media empire that makes the world
more loving with stories. What I see happening in the controversy over The Last
Jedi is a conflict between two impulses in culture. One is tradition/privilege/entitlement.
The other is expanded empathy/compassion. Here’s your giant dumb caveat because
at this point in history it’s necessary:
>>>>NOT EVERYONE WHO DISLIKES THIS MOVIE
DISLIKES IT BECAUSE THEY ARE ENTITLED, PRIVILEGED TRADITIONALISTS WHO LACK
EMPATHY AND COMPASSION. <<<<
In fact, let me just get this out of the way. The Last Jedi is FULL of flaws. Logical,
tonal, and tactical flaws abound. Unfortunately there are people who think that
it’s appropriate to apply criteria for judging Sci-fi storytelling to what has
always been (in the movie incarnations) mythical fantasy storytelling. Some of the movies stand up to that kind of
inappropriate scrutiny better than others. Besides the prequels, TLJ might be
the worst “offender” at being illogical when examined through a sci-fi logistical
lens. If you’re reading this, chances
are you are smart enough to disambiguate the logical, tonal and tactical flaws
from the mythical and cultural themes.
It’s on THAT battlefield that I want to focus. The one where people are angry, disappointed,
or otherwise upset by the mythical/cultural themes and how they were played.
Oh, and let’s do caveat number two:
>>>> SUBVERTING EXPECTATIONS IS NOT AUTOMATICALLY GOOD OR BRILLIANT, IT’S JUST DOING THE OPPOSITE OF SOMETHING. <<<<<
>>>> SUBVERTING EXPECTATIONS IS NOT AUTOMATICALLY GOOD OR BRILLIANT, IT’S JUST DOING THE OPPOSITE OF SOMETHING. <<<<<
Rather than reiterate what was said in the following video,
please just watch it, pretend I’m the one saying it. And then continue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWqVJZMh6-w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWqVJZMh6-w
If you absolutely can’t watch that, read this perfect
summation in the comments by Nick on Planet Ripple:
“This film basically confronts some dudes with the notion, if not realization that yes, maybe their mother WAS right to send them to their room as a kid, that she does know better, not unlike Poe's two space moms. And there is nothing they hate having to hear more than that.”
“This film basically confronts some dudes with the notion, if not realization that yes, maybe their mother WAS right to send them to their room as a kid, that she does know better, not unlike Poe's two space moms. And there is nothing they hate having to hear more than that.”
So. While I don’t care if anyone likes or dislikes this
movie, I do find this interpretation of the backlash convincing. Storytelling
has its tropes and archetypes and those come about because they reflect the
culture that produces them. Some of these are close to meaningless, and thus
‘safe’ to subvert. But to the extent that a storyteller subverts tropes and
archetypes that are rooted in deeply held VALUES that a culture (or subculture)
embraces, the more the story will upset people.
The Male Action Hero On An Arc is one of those archetypes that DOES pull
heavily from cultural values, and as such, the fact that TLJ so bluntly runs
counter to it, is actively attacking the deeply held values of many
people. Especially men. Especially men who see themselves as the
hero. Speaking for myself and most
others in my demographic, I’ve been fed this Archetype my entire life. I’ve
been encouraged through watching, playing with action figures, dressing up as,
and playing characters in games as… The Male Action Hero On An Arc, to put
myself in that role. It’s an emotional
slap in the face to be told that’s fantasy.
Or even more painful: my fantasy has done unintended harm to others!
OK, now I’m sensing the need for yet another caveat, because
there are plenty of non white male people who found the movie upsetting:
>>>> JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT A WHITE-MALE-WITH-ALL-THE-PRIVILAGES DOESN’T MEAN YOUR EXPECTATIONS FOR WHAT “PROPER” STORYTELLING SHOULD LOOK LIKE HASN’T BEEN SHAPED BY THE SAME FORCES. THE FACT THAT YOU FOUND THE SUBVERSIONS UPSETTING DOES NOTHING TO DISPROVE THE THEORY I’M PUTTING FORWARD. <<<<
>>>> JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT A WHITE-MALE-WITH-ALL-THE-PRIVILAGES DOESN’T MEAN YOUR EXPECTATIONS FOR WHAT “PROPER” STORYTELLING SHOULD LOOK LIKE HASN’T BEEN SHAPED BY THE SAME FORCES. THE FACT THAT YOU FOUND THE SUBVERSIONS UPSETTING DOES NOTHING TO DISPROVE THE THEORY I’M PUTTING FORWARD. <<<<
Getting back to speaking for my demographic. I’ve been shown all my life that I, as The
Male Action Hero On An Arc, intuitively do what is right and good and just. And
opposition to my intuitions come from evil sources. Authority acting in bad
faith. Bullies. Cowards. Evil Step Moms, Etc. How much this narrative has
seeped into my real life and affected my relationships, career, and such is a
great topic for another time. But for now, let’s just say that The Last Jedi is
ruthless in beating those suppositions out of the male protagonists. Hey guess what? Just because you have an intuition doesn’t
make it automatically right and righteous.
(Sorry Ralph Waldo Emerson) And
now me: white-male-with-tons-of-privilege, (Or other demographic who was also
raised with all these expectations) is confronted with a story that is deeply
uncomfortable to my moral foundations, because it implicitly reminds me that
maybe my interpretation of myself as The Male Action Hero On An Arc could be
wrong. And not just wrong. But damaging.
What’s a boy to do in this situation? Well, a tried and true method for quashing
uncomfortable subversions of previously unquestioned social norms is to retreat
to Tradition. (Hey look who just showed up pretending to be traditional: the “alt
right”!) Traditionalists say that a
thing is bad because it breaks what traditionally has been shown to work. Yoda burning down the Jedi Temple (and
ostensibly the holy books inside) is just salt on that wound in the context of
this movie.
That’s where things get personal for me. Back to my ambition
to “make the world more loving with stories”.
That’s a fundamentally subversive ambition. It is to declare the current
state of the world worse than what I think it could be. And then to work to actively undermine the
value structures that hold the current culture in the place it is. Though I
also think that great care needs to be taken in the process. Because I have a conservative half that sees
merit and value in much of Tradition. I think overturning everything at the
same time would be catastrophic. Some institutions need a complete overhaul
because they are actively opposed to a more loving and just world. But most
just need tweaks. The kind that
naturally come about when the hearts of the people who run those institutions
change. That’s why Hearts are my
target. Not institutions or political
structures.
Here’s a quote from this blog back in 2005 when I laid out
my theory of cultural change.
“Who has the power to shape the culture? Politicians in government? A little. But rules never change hearts. Religion? Most of it is fake, and the stuff that isn't has been marginalized. The media? Sure, they have a big impact. They show us the world through their own distorted lens. But I think the real big culture-shaping forces are the story tellers. The artists, musicians and movie-makers. They don't convert people. They seldom convince people. But they lay the foundation for those who do. Stories impart value, often so subtly that you can't notice. And it's an accumulative effect. But the values they impart are like a tsunami: in the deep ocean they appear to be no more than a ripple, but by the time they reach the shore, the momentum and compression creates unstoppable mountains of water. ”
“Who has the power to shape the culture? Politicians in government? A little. But rules never change hearts. Religion? Most of it is fake, and the stuff that isn't has been marginalized. The media? Sure, they have a big impact. They show us the world through their own distorted lens. But I think the real big culture-shaping forces are the story tellers. The artists, musicians and movie-makers. They don't convert people. They seldom convince people. But they lay the foundation for those who do. Stories impart value, often so subtly that you can't notice. And it's an accumulative effect. But the values they impart are like a tsunami: in the deep ocean they appear to be no more than a ripple, but by the time they reach the shore, the momentum and compression creates unstoppable mountains of water. ”
That’s why I want to approach my story telling very
carefully. And why I’m paying close
attention to the controversy around The Last Jedi. I see it as a canary in a
coal mine. Here’s a demonstration of what happens when you challenge millions
of boy’s who grew up thinking they were The Male Action Hero On An Arc. Of course “Here’s what happened” includes
massive box office returns. But I’m much
more interested in the cultural ripples.
Specifically the ones that can be measured. (That’s the Availability
Bias in case you’re keeping track.) There’s a lot that I could say about what
TLJ may have done to the culture as a whole, but it would be a LOT more
speculative.
But I’m looking for lessons I can take from this little
cultural event and use to build the framework for my hopefully world-changing
work. Here are some thoughts on that.
1. Nudges often work better than shoves. I think
that Rian Johnson was in a difficult position because he had a lot he wanted to
say, and a very constrained context in which to say it. (A middle movie in a
trilogy in a much larger universe with a lot of rules and expectations) I
believe this led to an error of over-correcting. I think he could have reached
more hearts and minds of the Spoiled Core of Star Wars fans had he pulled SOME
of his punches. While I personally LOVED how brutally his story tackled these
tropes and archetypes, I also recognize that I’m on the tail end of a bell
curve when it comes to Openness To New Experience, as well as being socially/politically
in a similar camp as him.
2. The quality of an IP is strongly tied to a
consistent vision. Star Wars is built on the mythical framework theory of
Campbell, custom designed to rest on archetypes. This is a context that all
Star Wars stories live in to some degree or another. Though a lot of Expanded
Universe storytellers did their darndest to drag it into sci-fi proper.
Probably because, like me, they were drawn to the external aesthetics more than
the story structure. But my takeaway is
this: Be clear about the boundaries and of what the stories in my IP are about.
My IP is kind of the inverse of Star Wars.
It has the aesthetic externals of fantasy, but the core is sci-fi. I
think I intuitively did this because sci-fi has always been the genre of choice
for cultural analysis, critique, and change. Going all the way back to the
first: Frankenstein, continuing up through classics like The Time Machine,
Brave New World, 1984, Star Trek, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Ender’s
Game, etc. Whereas fantasy story structure tends to be a bulwark of tradition
embedded in myth and archetypes.
Nowadays the genres are often so interwoven that it’s hard to tease
these historical antecedents out of current works, but the momentum is still
there. What this means to me is that as
I work with collaborators I need to be clear about the social/cultural direction
of the work. So that fans will have a
consistent set of elements that they can expect from a Tales From Talifar
story. I want huge diversity in STYLE,
and it’s going to be important to make that clear from the start as well. Our first story (The Scarred King novel trilogy)
is an action adventure quest story. So
I’ll want to make sure our second output is not also an action adventure quest
story. We’ve got 11 books in production so far, so this shouldn’t be a
problem. Ideally, in the future, a huge
Talifar fan is not going to watch the next Talifar Netflix series, read the
next Talifar graphic novel, or read the next Talifar book BECAUSE they expect
to get the exact same style of experience they had in Talifar before. That’s the trap that Star Wars built for
itself. Instead, a Talifar fan will be drawn to deep themes of cultural
critique that facilitate empathy, compassion and justice, that will, in the
best case, leak out into the real world through the inspiration it
provides.
On that list of two items, (You forgot you were reading a
list, didn’t you?) the first demonstrates what happens when a storyteller
pushes too far, too fast, in an IP that was fundamentally built for a different
purpose. Rian Johnson was trying to do too much cultural critique in a fantasy
world that was built for traditional reinforcement of current cultural values.
The second item is my proposal for avoiding that pitfall
altogether. I’m not building my IP for traditional reinforcement of current
cultural values. (Although reinforcement of many of them –murder and stealing
are bad, mmmkay?- are implicit in almost all storytelling.) My IP is built from
the ground up to challenge specific problems in the human condition that make
the world worse than it could be. I want
THAT to be a consistent theme in the output from Breath Of Life. I want fans to connect with that and expect
it. (and call me out if we’re failing on that mission) And I want to find
collaborators who are on board with that vision.
I’m really glad that Rian Johnson got to do his thing in the
Star Wars universe. Besides kicking the franchise into a new realm, I think he
provided some fascinating lessons for those of us working on the next
generation of fictional universes. To get back to my original question; the reason
I spend so much time and digital ink advocating for a film I just kinda like,
is that I don’t want to live in a culture where a minority of the loudest entitled
fans get to dictate the future vision for a franchise. I don’t care what
happens to Star Wars. I care that I’M
able to create and sustain MY vision for MY franchise so that it can accomplish
the most good possible. And right now, internet outrage mobs are the biggest
threat to that. So I’m poking at that threat. Trying to see what it’s actually
made of. I can’t tell yet if it’s an ephemeral knock-on effect of this
particular time in history dealing with an emerging technology that we haven’t
had time to culturally digest, or if it’s going to be a permanent feature going
forward. Either way, the phenomenon is fascinating and it’s fun to poke.
If you want to see more great think pieces about The Last
Jedi, here’s a list that can keep you busy for weeks.
If you want to see the loudest entitled outrage internet mob’s
take on it, just google The Last Jedi SJW.
Have fun!
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