Alternative Christmases

When is Christmas not Christmas? When its equivalent appears under another name in a holiday episode of a TV series or movie franchise. TV Tropes has a page on this phenomenon:

You Mean Xmas

It's not unusual for TV series to have "Christmas" episodes even if they're set in a time or place where Christmas doesn't exist. An episode of XENA, WARRIOR PRINCESS featured "A Solstice Carol." MY LITTLE PONY: FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC has "A Hearth's Warming Tale," set on the holiday celebrating the occasion when the three types of ponies worked together to save the fledgling realm of Equestria from the terrible Windigos. (This story combines elements of A CHRISTMAS CAROL and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE.) Then there's the infamous STAR WARS holiday special, set on the Wookie home planet at the season of Life Day. (I've never seen this film, so all I know is what's summarized on TV Tropes; it has never been re-aired, because it's so abysmal that Lucas himself loathes it.) The inhabitants of Fraggle Rock celebrate the Festival of the Bell in "The Bells of Fraggle Rock," at the time of year when the Rock slows down and would freeze forever if the Fraggles didn't ring their bells to awaken the Great Bell. The characters in DINOSAURS have Refrigerator Day, appropriately commemorated by lavish feasting. Although BEAUTY AND THE BEAST takes place in the world as we know it, members of the secret underground community where Vincent (the Beast) dwells celebrate "Winterfest" instead of Christmas. Print fiction features a similar phenomenon. There's a Midwinter Festival in Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar universe. The people of Discworld have Hogswatchnight, as portrayed in detail in Terry Pratchett's HOGFATHER. The world of Steven Universe is an exception to this pattern. Its canon establishes that the invasion of the alien Gems thousands of years ago altered Earth so radically that Christianity doesn't exist, so there's no Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, etc. However, virtually every temperate-zone culture in the world has a winter solstice celebration with such elements as feasting, lights, greenery, and bells, so it seems likely that the people in this series would have one, too. If they do, apparently the producers and writers simply haven't considered it necessary to mention.

In the animated special ARTHUR'S PERFECT CHRISTMAS, Arthur's bunny friend gets so stressed out by his divorced mother's frantic attempt to make Christmas perfect that he wants to invent their own family holiday instead, "Baxter Day." An episode of SEINFELD popularized the anti-Christmas holiday of Festivus, which includes the Airing of Grievances (when everybody complains to everybody else about offenses committed through the year) and an aluminum pole instead of a tree. In short, the human spirit seems to crave festivity at the dark of the year.

A satirical essay by C. S. Lewis imagines what the ancient Greek historian Herodotus would have made of the modern British Christmas. Herodotus concludes that Exmas and Crissmas can't possibly be the same holiday, because even barbarians wouldn't go through all that expense and bother for a god they don't believe in:

Xmas and Christmas

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Value of Backstory?

I recently got around to watching the Star Wars movie SOLO. On an e-mail list I subscribe to, someone asserted that it was a mistake to produce a film devoted to Han Solo's backstory. In this person's view, the great appeal of Han was his persona as an interstellar Man of Mystery. My reaction was just the opposite. The main thing I liked about the movie was that it revealed answers to questions left unexplored in the original trilogy. How did Han and Chewbacca become partners? How did Han win the Falcon from Lando? What's the Kessel Run, and how could achieving it in twelve parsecs be explained in a way that makes sense? I'm the type of reader/viewer who wants everything ultimately revealed and explained. Enigmatic stories can be fun, but I also want the fun of seeing them clarified in the end.

Thomas Harris's prequel to the Hannibal Lecter series, HANNIBAL RISING, has received a lot of criticism on a similar premise—that it undercuts the numinous mystery of evil embodied in Lecter's character in THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Here, I must admit the critics have a point. In SILENCE, Lecter is presented as an almost preternatural monster, not quite human. (His six fingers, oddly colored eyes, and animal-like sense of smell reinforce this impression.) It would be almost impossible to create an origin story worthy of this characterization without resorting to the outright supernatural.

Then there's Disney's MALEFICENT, which not only reveals an antagonist's early life but effectively transforms her character from the way it appears in the original film (SLEEPING BEAUTY).

What do you think about prequels that create backstories for established characters? Should an author keep the "mystery" intact or offer the enhanced depth a well-crafted backstory can provide?

By the way, speaking of interstellar scoundrels, one of the frequent errors in fiction and film that grates on me the most is the tendency for careless writers to say "intergalactic" when they mean "interstellar." It's even used in J. D. Robb's Eve Dallas novels where the intended reference is probably "interplanetary." Well, granted, we're mostly in Eve's viewpoint, and she has a Sherlock-Holmes-like indifference to any scientific facts that don't relate directly to her profession as a homicide detective. But in most cases the author or scriptwriter has no excuse.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Theme-Marketing Integration Part 1, Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Theme-Marketing Integration

Part 1

Star Wars: The Force Awakens
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Today, we'll examine why Star Wars: The Force Awakens was such a runaway box office success, even as Twitter and blogs filled up with anguished criticism. Facebook, likewise, overflowed with malaise and ennui, disappointment and boredom.

The film was a runaway HIT with some people, and a complete failure with others.

You've seen that with Star Trek "reboots" as well, and even felt it.

You love a film, and walk out of the theater giddy with inspiration, say something on Twitter and get flooded with negative comments.

Why this division of opinion?

Why so many see the film again and again, even if it is boring?

It is possible the answer to that question lies in Theme-Marketing Integration - a topic we have not discussed in detail, though we've explored Theme and Marketing.

If you think about it, Theme-Marketing Integration techniques are also being applied to the Presidential Election race, and the division in the audience runs similarly -- vehement opposition countered by enraptured worship.

So let's see if we can figure out why Star Wars: The Force Awakens is so popular and so disappointing at the same time.  What happened? What did "they" do ( well, J. J. Abrams who is also an architect behind Star Trek reboot).  Once you understand what they did and why, you can decide for yourself whether you want to do that with your own Science Fiction Romance.

Yes, Star Wars has all the ingredients of Science Fiction Romance, but does not exploit them for plot or story purposes.  The reason for that may become clear as we examine Theme-Marketing Integration.

This new series, theme-marketing integration, is a spinoff from Marketing Fiction In A Changing World.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/index-to-marketing-fiction-in-changing.html

The world changes, is changing, will change.  Nothing in fiction is set in stone -- including Stone Age Drawings.

Cave Painters aimed their art at their current audience (not at us), and depicted what they knew, what they wanted others to remember, and what they needed their children to know.  Cave Paintings have theme.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/chauvet-cave-paintings-404753

Short, pithy article noting this may be a depiction of a volcanic eruption, prevalent at that time. That is a theme - hunting is dangerous.

Consider, Cave Painters and shamans of the time didn't live very long, and "lore" got lost as parents died before children reached adolescence.

Those Cave Painters may be the beginnings of the Scientific Revolution we live with today -- because their Art transmitted Information to those who were infants at the time it was painted, or perhaps not even born.

In other words, as the old saying goes, we stand on the shoulders of giants.  This is true in novel writing and all artforms.

It is because of the knowledge and understanding gained by our ancestors that we have the easy life we have today -- and the hard life.  It is because of the records they left us and our effort to comprehend and build on that record that we have this modern world.

Today, our art is more ephemeral, preserved mostly just as electrons, perhaps illegible to future devices.  But we are depicting the pithy essence of our world and the life we live now.

Here is the Index to the series on Depicting:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

The foundation for understanding Marketing is the understanding of "Demographics" -- separating and classifying people by age, gender, income level, education, native language, and then "targeting" something members of each group have in common with other members of their group.

Obviously, everyone is a member of all those groups, and when you assemble all the groups you are a member of, you find you are unique and don't march to the same drummer that others do.

However, sales statistics do reveal commonality.

Statistics only work in one direction -- predicting behavior of large groups of people.  There is no way to use statistics to predict the behavior of any specific individual, so therefore, to marketers individuals do not matter.

Grasp that firmly and never let go.

OK, given that Marketing is about hitting the largest number of a particular group or Group of Groups, with something they all want, lets look at one clue that we've discussed previously about how to understand why certain movies or books become popular.

Here's the previous post where we discussed Pluto and Plotting:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/astrology-just-for-writers-pt-6.html

Here is a quote from way down that long post:

-------quote--------
Pluto takes 250 years to circle the sun, but it's in each sign (or 30 degree swatch of the zodiac) for different lengths of time.

Remember to add say 15-20 years to see when these folks would have an impact on amusement markets because they have disposable income.

PLUTO IN LEO 1939 - 1957 (Became The Flower Children of 1960's and '70's)

PLUTO IN VIRGO generation 1958 - 1972 (Gen X)

PLUTO IN LIBRA generation (assimilating out of justice?) Late 1971 - 1984 (Gen Y? sort of)

PLUTO IN SCORPIO generation 1985-1995 or so (video game generation?)

PLUTO IN SAGITTARIUS generation 1995-2008

PLUTO IN CAPRICORN (now - 2023)

The popular press uses the 20 year swatch for a "generation" usually, or a demographic bulge of kids all born within 10 years to define a "generation." But think about the list above and see if it doesn't make better sense than the popular press definitions.
---------end quote----------

This Pluto cycle is the best explanation for the Generation Gap effect in taste that I've ever come across.

Pluto, in Astrology, can be understood as the Power that drives action. Other elements in a Natal Chart or transits will define goals, strategy, tactics, wishes, needs, ideals, drives and ambitions, but once all those elements carve out a path of action, Pluto is the source of power.

Mars triggers or starts action, Pluto finishes it.

So, as a writer always thinking Character and Story, I think of Pluto as "at all costs."  What will a character do to achieve a given goal (that's the plot, driving toward a goal), at all costs?  What is a Character willing to pay, to give up, to attain this specific goal at all costs?  The implacable, ruthless drive toward a goal is the signature of Pluto in action.

When targeting an age-demographic, a marketer looks (usually unconsciously) at the "at all costs" mechanism driving that age-group.

So look again at the Generational Positions of Pluto -- and remember, any given individual may have other planets, signs, aspects, that divert Pluto's energy in their life into something totally different than their age-mates, and Marketers just don't care about those individuals.

Remember, 20 years after birth, a generation makes its first mark on the world -- today, it may be more like 18, the voting age.

PLUTO IN LEO 1939 - 1957 (Became The Flower Children of 1960's and '70's) The flower children were all about "doing your own thing" at all costs. Drop out, at all costs. Pluto is related to sexuality, and Leo is The King (sovereign), so free choice in sexual practices as a big generational theme (and still is).  Pluto in Leo is personal sovereignty at all costs.

PLUTO IN VIRGO generation 1958 - 1972 (Gen X), Yuppies, materialism, white win, discrimination in food, and car and clothing brands. Virgo is the neat housekeeper who sees their house as messy.  All white apartments furnished in chrome and glass. So this generation wanted a NEAT WORLD at all costs.

PLUTO IN LIBRA generation (assimilating out of justice?) Late 1971 - 1984 (Gen Y? sort of)  Libra is the picky eater, and the conflict avoider. Balance, harmony, justice at all costs.  Peace at all costs -- so avoid getting the USA embroiled in another war at all costs, even surrender.

PLUTO IN SCORPIO generation 1985-1995 or so (video game generation?)  Scorpio is the Natural 8th House, connecting Sex for its own sake (not for love or Romance) and Death, Revolution, Change.  Pluto rules Scorpio, and thus when transiting Scorpio as this generation was born (who are now 20 years old from 2005 to 2015), Pluto was at the height of its power to affect Natal Charts and the world.  Thus we have a new-adult generation willing to die for Revolution - to CHANGE THE WORLD.

This Pluto in Scorpio generation has produced a determined generation. Each person, and sub-group of people, is determined to do something different from the others -- but they are all implacably determined to do whatever they'd chosen to do.

Thus we have young people organizing college campuses to impose political correctness, and the same generation equally determined to oppose that same political correctness.

The Pluto in Scorpio natal position also explains why a scattering of Americans and people all over the world, male and female, are susceptible to recruiting by Isil or Daesh - or any other totalitarian movement.  Pluto in Scorpio is totalitarian at all costs.  Or free at all costs.

PLUTO IN SAGITTARIUS generation 1995-2008 -- comes of age in from about 2015 through 2028.  Since the key attribute of Sagittarius is honesty, even brutal or tone-deaf honesty, we can expect "honesty at all costs."  Remember, truth is not the same thing as honesty.  Honesty does not distinguish between emotion or intellect. Jupiter is about International Treaties, all kinds of Legality, growth, inclusion, benevolence.  Small wonder the welcome matt is out for refugees no matter how mixed with invading soldiers the refugees may be.  Remember, Pluto is about "at all costs" and Sagittarius is about growth and honesty. Sagittarius is the Natural 9th House, foreign lands, International Law.  Welcome at all costs.

PLUTO IN CAPRICORN (now - 2023). These people will come of age in 2035 onwards. Capricorn is ruled by Saturn, which represents Rules, Law, Government, and the organized part of Organized Religion. Saturn is all about discipline, strict record keeping.  These people will want predictable security and privacy "at all costs" -- so perhaps they will finally do away with hacking.

The signature element of the Pluto Natal Position is not the target chosen, but the "at all costs" attitude.

The current 20-something generation is so susceptible to Daesh because Daesh also advocates chaos as the precondition for the End of Days being summoned.  Chaos per se appeals to that young generation because it is an extreme cost that fulfills the "at all costs" attitude fueling movement toward a goal, in this case the goal of revolution.  "At All Costs" is Pluto, and Scorpio is about change, (death being only one example of a change), and thus revolution.

Remember, the goal itself does not matter -- it is not encoded into the position of Pluto.  The only information Pluto encodes is the degree of determination, that easily escalates to implacable ruthlessness.  That attitude, running full bore and ungoverned by common sense, is fulfilled in acts of rape and murder.

When well leashed by life-long discipline, Pluto's implacable determination to achieve a goal can reshape the world for the better.

The choice of destruction or construction is entirely individual.  Nothing can compel a person toward construction or destruction -- it is a freewill choice.

Now mark this point because you will find it in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.  Construction vs. Destruction.  It is important to understand the "at all costs" element and the tactic of "construction or destruction."

Think back over how we have investigated the ways to account for personal taste in art.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/11/story-springboards-part-4-art-of.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

With a film like Star Wars: The Force Awakens we are talking about the Marketers nailing the "taste" in entertainment of several generations.

As George Lucas planned, the main actors reprised the roles they played in their youth once again in their elder years.

Thus, though George Lucas sold the franchise to Disney, Disney nevertheless did fulfill the promise of the original project and brought us the future lives of the main characters, played plausibly by the same actors.

It was an epic plan, and well accomplished.

A lot of people complained that Carrie Fisher looked her age, 59, at the time of Star Wars: The Force Awakens being released.  Carrie Frances Fisher was born October 21, 1956.  Star Wars original Trilogy (1977–1983) was done when she was 21 to 32 years old.

The youngest part of the audience Disney aimed The Force Awakens at are a new generation - a generation born around the year 2000.  People born in 1995 (a baby-boomlet year) are 20 year olds.  The original audience for the first film is now in their 60's and 70's.

So the youngest part of the current film's audience is dedicated to change-at-all-costs.  The eldest, with Pluto in Leo, personal sovereignty-at-all-costs.

The favorite theme of the elders was revolt against tyranny, and how the individual can be the Hero on his own personal Journey.  The first Star Wars trilogy was structured on the Hero's Journey, which at its core has the assumption, a thematic assumption, that Life Matters.

Whatever you do in your life, it makes a difference. Free will choices (Leo, the King, the Sovereign) make a difference. You can (and must with Pluto in Leo) win.

But that world of can-and-must-win and free will choice makes a difference is not the real world the current 18-35 year olds live in.

They have come of age in a world where "you didn't build that" and "you can't succeed without government help" and "the system is broken" and "you can go to college, yes, but you will then be in debt the rest of your life."  A college degree might get you a minimum wage job, maybe.

In other words, they live in a world where life is futile.

To get that younger viewer to suspend disbelief and enter a galaxy far-far away, Disney changed the theme of the original Star Wars trilogy for a new theme aimed at the younger viewers.

To get anyone to suspend disbelief, a writer has to provide something in the world that is being built that the audience recognizes as real.

Since this series is about interstellar war, it is all about winning and losing -- or not.

The older generation would believe that the Good Guys would vanquish the Bad Guys -- that Good Always Wins.  If that premise were depicted, everything else would be believable and enjoyable.

The younger generation needed to see Revolution, Pluto style, destruction, especially by explosion.

And Disney went for the explosion-spectacle the younger generation wanted, Revolution By Explosion.  Given the state-of-the-art of digital film today, the result was something orders of magnitude more impressive than the original Trilogy.

Thematically, the Good Guys Win Sovereignty At All Costs, the Hero's Journey, is replaced with a clear vision of a core theme of "Life Is Futile" -- there is no personal sovereignty, and no decision matters.

Where do we see that?  Princess Leia is still fighting the same war, albeit as a general now.  Hans Solo is still scavenging.  Luke Skywalker is a failure, off on the periphery somewhere, and does not count.  Nothing he did mattered.  The Galaxy is still in the same state it was before -- tyrany reigns.

The theme is The Hero's Journey is Futile.

So a good chunk of the elder audience found this new film boring, dull, slow, pointless, and disappointing if not laughable.  They pointed at the "lame" dialogue sandwiched between action scenes with scathing comments.

And a major chunk of the in-between and younger audience loved it  for the explosions, destruction, the spectacle, the state-of-the-art visuals, and the reprise of the original trilogy's situation.  They liked the fact that nothing had changed.

The ending, with the young girl with a Lightsaber going off into the wild blue yonder seemed pasted on.  Obviously, it is meant to hint and foreshadow future films centered on her efforts to do what the previous generation failed to do - oust the bad guys.  But it does not grow organically out of the portrait of her when we first see her - scavenging for a mob-boss.

She is not driven, she does not have a goal, she is not  actively establishing personal sovereignty.  She is just existing, with no expectation of getting out of that situation.  She accepts the futility of life.

In the end, she's off with Chewy to seek her fortunes in far places, but there is no plan, no strategy, no tactic, no ambition or expectation of succeeding heroically.  She is free, but she can't see any reason to be free.  Freedom is futile.  It is just a reprise of Skywalker's emergence from his desert.

During the film, nobody builds anything, invents anything (the signature element of science fiction is SCIENCE, where discoveries and inventions are created to solve life-problems), nobody makes a better Light Saber, nobody  creates anything.

During the film, explosions, destruction, and futility are pictured and  mirrored -- the symbolism is world class art, but it symbolizes the futility of building,  not the Happily Ever After.

So the theme of Star Wars has changed from Life Matters to Life Is Futile.

When you change the theme, you change the target audience.

The same thing was done to Ursula LeGuinn's Earthsea Trilogy when it was made as a TV Feature.

It is what is always done to books made in to films -- because the target audience of the marketers of films is different from the target audience of  novelists.

That difference exists because of the difference in cost of making a film vs. making a book.

That gap in cost is shrinking.  The people born with Pluto in Capricorn may live to see video-processors as easy to work as word processors.

For now, though, the box-office success and failure of Star Wars: The Force Awakens should be studied.

For now, Life is Futile and Love Is Impotent are the dominant themes.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Theme-Plot Integration Part 16 - Affairs of State by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Theme-Plot Integration
Part 16
Affairs of State
by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Index to previous posts in the Theme-Plot Integration Series:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/05/index-to-theme-plot-integration.html

Believe it or not, we live in a storybook, and sometimes the "real" news headlines actually reveal that great secret.

In these writing-craft posts I focus on "how" to do the various tasks of the writing craft.  Most books on or about how to write just tell you to do this or that.  I've never found that helpful, so I am showing not telling how the writer's mind looks, sees, interprets and then uses the elements of audience appeal to create fiction that can become a Classic in its field. One sort of Classic that Romance dances around is Cinderella - the unknown girl marrying a Prince.

What Cinderella does not cover is the Pygmalion aspect -- what does Cinderella do once she is Queen and her Prince has died?  What is the difference between a working stiff and a Head of State?  Is there any difference that matters?

Study World History.  Previously I've recommended writing students read dozens maybe hundreds of biographies and autobiographies.

Here's a great biography to study if you have liked any of the Star Wars movies.

http://www.amazon.com/Skywalking-Films-George-Lucas-Updated-ebook/dp/B00292BIR6/

Now I'm saying combine World History with what you learned from Biographies, and add Contemporary History.

International Affairs are actually run as a story-plot generated by the internal conflict of the people who make the policy decisions (Heads of State, department heads, financial backers,  Powers That Be Behind The Scenes, Corporations...)

Here is a contemporary non-fiction book about our current shapers of Affairs of State that has gained much praise (and excoriation).

http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Feud-Clintons-vs-Obamas-ebook/dp/B00WPRBM1C/

We saw that reflection of neuroses of Heads of State in our world during World War II. As a close reading of Hitler biographies will reveal, he had a psychological "need" to "cleanse" -- and he projected that need into the environment.

The magnification of Pluto related forces (which I've discussed at length in these blogs as the source of War and Drama), unleashed the Final Solution.  His drive to execute the riffraff causing him to feel "dirty" created the Death Camps, burning people to ash in ovens.

Or just look at any of the TV Series Dramas that include Queen Elizabeth I, such as REIGN - which is about Mary Queen of Scots in France.
 http://www.amazon.com/The-Plague/dp/B00O3VCJK6

Those are caricature-sketches of  International Affairs, of course, but this is the point to grasp when you've got a THEME that needs to generate a PLOT.

The theme generates the plot by fueling the internal conflict of a Character who is in a position in life where his/her actions can manifest externally.

"Life" has cycles. There are times you are trapped inside yourself and nothing you think, do, or feel has any impact on the external world.  And there are times every twitch of your eyebrow is gossiped about from the mail room to the CEO's office.

Jupiter, Uranus, Pluto, all the planets are 'cyclical' -- the cycles impact different parts of your life at different times, and sometimes manifest externally.

USA Presidential candidates have three or four properties that I've noticed.
A) their Natal Charts have some tight Relationship to the USA Natal Chart(s).
B) their transits ignite pure dynamic Energy,
C) their Solar Arc contacts trigger off something usually interpreted as Sexual, Romantic, or Social during the Campaign or the ensuing Term of Office.

Nothing in a Natal Chart can really indicate whether the person "wins" or "loses."

Transits just indicate peaks and valleys from a baseline.

The Natal Chart shows whether the person is "channeling" Energy into their own interior (unlikely to do more than a few whistle stops on the campaign trail) or into their Environment (very likely to hit a peak popularity)  Sustaining that peak means successive transits must continue to sweep energy into the Environment.

Which candidate "wins" -- well, sometimes becoming President is a way of losing in "life."  It's a brutal, massively difficult killer of a job, and it uses men up in the peak of their lives.

So is becoming President (or King, Queen, Dictator) a "win?"  Or a "destiny?"

That question can be a THEME.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-use-theme-in-writing-romance.html

So here's a sub-theme to ponder.  A sub-theme is a theme derived from a main theme.  It's not "another" theme grabbed out of thin air because you "like" it.  A sub-theme is a theme that is an essential component of the Main Theme.

So, a sub-theme for "Is being Elected President a Win?" might be something like the Hitler story encapsulated above -- playing out a Character's innermost Needs, Drives, Ambitions, Frustrations, on the International Stage then showing his demise as poetic justice.

If the Character has a ruthless streak (Mars conjunct Pluto in the Natal Chart often produces something like ruthlessness when triggered by transit or Solar Arc), that Character might take the Force of an Economy and an Army and sweep out into the world to accomplish what their internal neuroses demand of them.

This is not a "modern" idea or a new one. You see it in the Ancient Greek plays, in all that's derived from them, in modern History books, and in today's Headlines, and even in the Blockbuster films and video games of today such as STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS.

Star Wars is the saga of a galactic war long ago and far away.  The reboot by Disney, The Force Awakens, shows how a new generation picks up the "conquer or be conquered" theme.

The film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens depicts the Good Guys as the Underdog, and the Bad Guys as the Mighty.  The Bad Guys have a Grandmother of all Death Stars that sucks up a whole Sun, then spits out a beam that can destroy planets and stars halfway across their Galaxy. And to be sure you understand that, you see them blowing up planets of Good Guys with their new weapon.

Bad Guys return with bigger, badder weapons -- the same weapons, the weapons of destruction, just bigger.

In good comic book fashion, the Bad Guys uniforms are still the same ineffective, comical "body armor" with visible seams -- the bad guys wear white.

The whole movie is about explosions, and destruction. In fact, it is about destroying antique buildings, wondrous relics, and treasured people.

It brings back Light Sabers but simplifies the whole arcane concept of THE FORCE into Dark and Light, without any morality involved. Might Makes Right (a theme) abounds all over the place.

Hans Solo and Leia have spawned a son who turns to the Dark Side, and with a face-to-face trick kills his father -- saber through the chest, just as in the King Arthur Legend, and sends him falling from an immense height echoing previous fallen villains and heroes.

Luke Skywalker is the object of the hunt, and we see him in the final scenes.  He's supposed to be raising more Jedi Knights - we learn nothing of the training he is supposedly giving.

Absolutely not one thing is being BUILT in this film, not ships, buildings, planets, or families -- nothing is growing and prospering. Destruction reigns supreme, center spotlight, destruction of things, of Characters, and of every tradition (except possibly the Light Saber, but it is treated as simply mechanical.)  Look at Affairs of State around us today. What is being built?  What do people in their twenties remember of a world building things?

We never see anyone making a new Light Saber.

In our real world, plenty of people have made new things -- the Internet, the Web, the cell phone, the smartphone, phablets, and services like Uber and Amazon Prime, Netflix.  Most of those were founded more than 20 years ago.  The target audience for Star Wars does not remember the founding of these technologies.

In this movie, there is no originality, no creation, no invention, no moment of wondrous accomplishment.  The old Millenium Falcon is resurrected, the new ship Hans Solo has is destroyed. The ending depicts mere survival as a laudable goal achieved.

In traditional science fiction, the young hero is a kid with a lab in his parent's garage -- or a young married man tinkering with tech in the basement.  The hero has been learning things, (as Luke Skywalker had been when we meet him whomping sand rats), gaining skills, and is full of unrealized potential.  The young Luke Skywalker was a typical science fiction Hero.  Rey is not. Her highest aspiration is survival.

The typical young science fiction hero meets up with his Problem. He grabs hold of it, and through much fun and games, uses his apparently irrelevant, socially unacceptable skills and accomplishments, expertise about useless subjects, to solve the problem.  Rey has a few useful skills, but using those skills is not the fulfillment of her personal dream.

Rising to Accomplishment, to become something more than mere potential, is what science fiction is about.

It's what "science" is about.

Science is organizing knowledge into patterns that can be applied to solve bigger problems.  And so is Building Character -- becoming a strong, self-reliant adult upon whom others can rely -- more a matter of organizing "who you are" into a Persona, the science of Maturation.

The internal character becomes a Character by becoming externalized into the world.  That is the link between Story and Plot, between internal conflict and external conflict.

That externalization is what a writer has to accomplish by taking the theme, a "thorn in the side" of a very particularized individual, and externalizing that theme, making it real to other Characters in the play.

In the case of Star Wars The Force Awakens, we have new young Good Guys taking over from the old young guys, and doing the same things over again -- for no apparent thematic reason than that Good Guys Must Always Be Underdogs.  In other words, our promising young good guys didn't WIN, didn't conquer the Dark, vanquish it, establish a stable and functional galactic civilization.

The theme the movie works out is that Evil Always Wins and the best any Good can do is to hold the line, to contain the Evil.

Whether that's true or not, you (the Romance Writer) can easily see that the target audience for this film lives in a world where they have never, ever, known or seen any other situation.  The highest aspiration of the USA leadership is to contain the enemy.

It pleases and amuses that young audience that their favorite fiction reinforces their assessment of reality -- i.e. Good Must Not Win Or It Becomes Evil.

In our Reality - winners are always "bad."

Large corporations are large (and old) because they have WON. That's evil by definition, because they always (in reality) do become "corrupt."  Likewise the rich.  Likewise the economic powerhouse of the USA has "won" and therefore has generated a new "underdog" now coming to destroy it.

Look at STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES. Match what happens on that Trek series with what was going on in the Viet Nam war at that time -- keeping in mind some months lag between a Headline and a thematic statement being broadcast.

Read archaeology, back beyond Ancient Greek Plays, and you will find that cycle enshrined in the basics of our Literature, ancient mythology.

Rome fell -- for a reason.

Now, with all our new science and technology, can Humanity break that cycle of destruction?

Can our Affairs of State become the product of level headed sanity and benign morality?  Can Countries and Alliances become our idealized family of nations. Can Earth ever speak to the Galaxy with one voice?

Can we become constructors who do not destroy?

Those are themes that can be the "thorn in the side" of a major Character you promote to Head of State, and see if you can create a Galactic Civilization that is not a projection of some individual's internal neuroses, personal hell-transits, or life-cycle issues.

Science Fiction has postulated that Artificial Intelligence, A.I., could arise and yank command of the world from human hands because of our irrationalities being projected onto Affairs of State.

Would an A.I. who became Head of State (maybe of All Earth) be able to remain sane?  Is it "sane" to want to be such a Head of State? What would your A.I. Character/Hero go through to avoid being elected Head of State?

Would the A.I. Characters elect their own Head of State, create a civilization separate from Humanity.  Would the position destroy that A.I. Head of State's sanity?

Is there such a thing as "The Force" and if so could an A.I. command it?  Are the Jedi Knights like the Templars?  Does commanding The Force corrupt a Character?

We touched on the Templars as a fictional concept last week:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/04/reviews-25-assassins-creed-underworld.html

What could prevent absolute power from corrupting absolutely?

Pictures of things blowing up interspersed with inane bits of comic book dialogue do not fulfill the potential of the modern cinematic medium.

The establishment in Hollywood, with the megabucks to invest, are not the Underdogs.  Does that make them the Bad Guys?

They claim there is no audience interested in exploring traditional science fiction themes (which is why they expunged most of the guts out of Star Wars).  There are head-scratching moral questions always at the heart of real science fiction.  But what if a searingly hot Romance were the driving Force of such a movie?

What audience could such a mixed-genre science not fantasy movie target?

Remember AVATAR, while ostensibly science fiction, was dressed up as Fantasy, and that worked very well indeed.

Let your imagination roam, find a story in your heart that has an audience large enough for your movie to make a profit, write it as a novel easily transformed to a 90 minute script.  Be the Heroic Character.  See what happens next.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 16 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg - Star Trek, Star Wars & Quora

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World
Part 16
Star Trek, Star Wars & Quora
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous parts of this series Marketing Fiction In A Changing World are found here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/05/index-to-marketing-fiction-in-changing.html

I was asked by a connection on Quora the following question:

----------quote from email via Quora----------

Robb Ramshaw asked you to answer.
Which is more SciFi, Star Trek or Star Wars?
----------end quote------------------

There is ever so much more to say on this topic, but it is an orbital-view perspective on the evolving of science fiction into the broader mass market -- as a consequence of social change, not a cause of it. Of course, there's always the question of whether there is any difference between "cause" and "effect."  Feedback loops may govern chaotic systems for short times.

Without thinking much, I wrote the following answer.

Neither Star Trek nor Star Wars is "real" SF -- just the best imitation the broader audience will accept.

Here is an example: an old song by John Denver, Sing Australia, which fakes a digireedoo sound. If you know the native instrument's sound, you can recognize the edges of the hint of the instrument -- it isn't the real thing, but it evokes the real thing.

http://amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dprime-digital-music&field-keywords=Sing+Australia

Now, that is the musical equivalent of what Star Trek and Star Wars did when taking science fiction to the broader audience.  It's fake, but it's also real -- it evokes the real thing without being the real thing itself.

In the Bantam paperback STAR TREK LIVES! I said many times that ST:ToS was the first real science fiction on TV, and that was true for decades until Babylon 5.  But every science fiction reader knows that ST (and SW) were 1930's SF.  Aimed at teen-boys, they excluded women.

With fan fiction, women fixed that.

Jean Johnson came to mass market Romance and then Science Fiction Romance via Harry Potter fanfic.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/11/reviews-20-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

Now science fiction and fantasy (except maybe in TV and movies) are for adult men and adult women and adults in general.  There's much appeal to teens, but it isn't exclusive.  And I don't mean sex scenes -- I mean issues that mature adults must confront to be happy in life.  (like "What the heck is The Donald doing running for President?")  Real, adult, issues that are meaningless to teens.

On alien romances I discuss this at length.

ST and SW were not at all the sort of thing the readers were reading at that time.  The breakthrough, though, had to start "at the beginning" to bring the audience into the subject matter gently.

That's why Gene Roddenberry sold ST as, "Wagon Train To The Stars."  A Western TV show that was popular even among all the Westerns on TV and in the Movies, Wagon Train was about people trying to survive and travel through a hostile environment, cooperating in spite of animosities among them.

As Margaret Carter points out in a comment -- Kirk was also drawn from Hornblower.  A third ingredient is Roddenberry's own personality, and his real-life experiences.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/plane

 That comic penetrates the core of Roddenberry's experience of life. 

So ST's "people story" is very mundane, except for Spock, and ST's exploration-plot is very mundane (except for Physics and Warp Drive).  The Aliens are Indians, the Crew are just doing their job.

Science Fiction is about the impact of technology derived from basic science on the anthropology, sociology, and psychology of humans.

These are expensive productions and must draw a huge audience.

Each has real (even great) science fiction embedded in the worldbuilding, but it's not up front and demanding.  In 'real' science fiction you must bring a solid grasp of the science to the story in order to understand how the story is postulating that what you've been taught, what you use every day in your job as a scientist, what you know to be true, -- actually is false!  And "here" is how things really are.  You, as reader, must accept 6 impossible things before breakfast, reason within that altered frame of reality, and solve the Problem the plot is throwing at the Characters using this "false" science.

This mental exercise is FUN -- for scientists.

At some point soon, all humanity at every level of intelligence, must become "scientists" of some kind.  And we have to learn to discard established and settled science to reason adroitly in a world that just works differently than we "know" reality works.  That brain exercise is our most crucial survival trait.  

ST and SW have begun a trend, and we're in Stage 3 of that trend now.  Stage 2 began with the advent of fanfic, and its subsequent explosion online (remember the Internet was generated by ST fans wanting to play a game, and the Web came from overseas as a method of handling connections and seeing what's on the pages.)  You're looking at a bootstrap process, and we're almost up to loading the Startup Applications list.

You will recognize Stage 4 of the transition when big budget productions eliminate "action" and "war" and destruction-derby and spectacle for the sake of spectacle and start telling 'real' stories about very unreal people dealing with totally unthinkable problems they must solve by THINKING -- not hitting.

We've had some of those on TV tip-toeing around the core of the matter.  For example: the colonizing of strange worlds, the lost colony, the going back in time and colonizing primitive Earth (also done on ST:ToS but on another planet into an Ice Age epoch).

But each of those focused on physical prowess to survive life-or-death easily defined challenges.  In "real" science fiction, the challenge is not easily defined -- and in fact, as in a murder-mystery what you initially see is not what is really there.

You will see Stage 4 of this transition make fortunes on stories about solving problems with science, with thinking not hitting.  Consider the popularity of Sherlock Holmes re-imaginings and you will see the beginnings of Stage 4.

Consider the popularity of the TV Series MacGyver.  There have been a plethora of small hits like that.  We have medical shows, we have the TV Series House, and Bones.  Little by little popular fiction is inching toward real science fiction.

Getting into Stage 4 is not about making Hollywood produce real science fiction.  It is about the new audience now growing up learning to demand such TV or Streaming (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Indie originals) fiction.

The first real breakthroughs to Stage 4 may come in the Fantasy genre.

So far, though, mass audiences don't have the patience to sit through a story they can not understand unless they learn something they don't already "know" -- and they will not tolerate stories that postulate that what they know is not true.

That patience will appear in the mass audiences when grade schools start teaching kids how to think not what to think, and turning them loose to teach themselves.  Teaching yourself is fun.  Being force-fed is not fun.  We foster an emotional aversion to learning new things, to questioning all "facts" presented, to discarding "what you know" by our current test-oriented teaching methods. So we produce mass audiences who don't think learning (and un-learning what they know) is fun.

Entertainment has to be fun.  If you are psychologically blocked against learning and un-learning for fun, then the only alternative left to assuage the itch for fun is hitting, conquering, vanquishing, attaining ascendancy over others instead of learning who they are.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away... (guest blog)

Jacqueline Lichtenberg is observing Sukkot today, and we are delighted to welcome a guest author, Nathalie Gray, today.


A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...MY ASS!

By: Nathalie Gray (www.nathaliegray.com)

That's how Rob Sawyer, He Who Rules Canadian Science Fiction, starts his speech about his favorite genre and how Star Wars ruined it.

I have to admit, I'm a fan of Star Wars for the villains. They're much more interesting than the heroes. Darth Vader? I'm there, baby. Darth Maul? Rawr! Hans Solo, meh, sure, he's cute only because it's Harrison Ford.

But I digress.

Sawyer looks at Star Wars and recent science fiction movies from a whole new angle. It shocked me so much, in fact, that I *had* to come share it with the lovelies at Alien Romances. The speech is broken into three portions of about 5 minutes each (see link below). So you're looking at a quarter of an hour. But I promise you, it's not wasted time. Especially the bit about the androids.

Oh, and because he rocks and rules and does it simultaneously, he also reminds people that the first true science fiction novel was written by a...

Woman.

Yes. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was the first story that hinged entirely on science. It was the science, the experiment, that drove the characters, triggered the conflict and registered so high on the Massively Addictive Index. When you start reading that story, you can't put it down.
Next time someone tells you scifi is for guys, you whip out your machete, erm, I mean, your copy of Frankenstein and tell them, "Dude, that chick was writing scifi before H.G. Wells was even BORN. Now kiss my feet."

To read Rob's comment about woman writers and science fiction, follow this link:
http://sfwriter.com/2008/06/video-galaxy-far-far-away-my-ass.html#links

Star Wars

Happy Birthday Star Wars. It's hard to believe that it has been thirty years since you hit the screen.

I will never forget my first viewing. The sheer magnitude of the Emperial Cruiser as we got the underneath shot. Absolutely blew me away. And the concept of A long time ago in a Galaxy far far away....mind boggling.

Star Wars blazed so many trails. The sassy heroine. The ne'er do well hero. The conflict between father and son. The special effects. The sheer scope of everything. It pretty much changed the movie world as we know it and opened up tons and tons of possiblities.

There's nothing like the first three (or the last three for you purists) The first three chapters just didn't compare because it was more about the speical effects than the story. But Han, Luke and Leia will live forever.

Now if someone would just get this walking carpet out of my way. I'm going to have a StarWArs dvdathon....