Star Wars is Surrealism, not Science Fiction (essay) — Page 3

Channel72 said:

I know this essay is very popular here, but I’ve always disagreed with it.

In practice, people often define science fiction as “you know, lasers and robots and space ships and shit”. Obviously, Star Wars meets this criteria. But a more useful criteria for science fiction probably entails stories that are in some way actually about how some hypothetical future technology or development affects people and society. Stuff like Contact or Blade Runner are obviously sci-fi under that definition, as are movies like the Matrix or Terminator. These movies are actually about how some new technology or future condition affects people and society. This definition is not a binary thing either - there’s obviously a “sci-fi spectrum” here, and a movie can be both sci-fi and other genres simultaneously.

Some might prefer an even stricter definition or criteria for sci-fi. Under this stricter definition, a movie’s plot or themes should not be reducible to non-science-fiction themes, i.e. the movie can’t simply use sci-fi elements as window dressing to tell a conventional, non-sci-fi story. For example, arguably something like Terminator 2 has prominent themes about motherhood, fatherhood, and determinism/fate. The movie doesn’t necessarily need science fiction elements to explore those themes. It could be reimagined as a story with the same themes and overall plot structure but with the sci-fi elements removed. For example, it could just be about a delinquent teenage orphan on the run from something while an unconventional father-like figure protects him. You don’t necessarily need killer time-traveling cyborgs to explore those themes - but they do make the movie a lot cooler. On the other hand, a movie like 2001 - A Space Odyssey is irreducibly science fiction, because the sci-fi elements are absolutely required in order to explore the themes the movie wants to explore, like space exploration, AI and the long-term evolution of the human race. But this stricter definition is pretty impractical, because few people use the term “sci-fi” in such a narrow way.

Anyway, I think Star Wars - at least A New Hope - is actually science fiction using either of these definitions (even the stricter one!). Most people are likely to describe A New Hope as a “hero’s journey” or a fantasy about a young farmboy who meets a space wizard and goes on a fantastical adventure. But the main plot is also very much about a new technological super-weapon, and how it affects society as a political game-changer, making an absolute technocratic dictatorship possible and stable over the long-term without any accompanying bureaucracy or democracy. There are also themes of “man vs. machine”, spirituality vs. technology, etc., all of which are themes that are not reducible to non-science-fiction themes.

Moreover, the “Star Wars is fantasy not sci-fi” argument is often used defensively in the context of discussions about obvious absurdities, like Han Solo walking around inside an asteroid, exposed to the vacuum of space, with no protective suit and a magical source of artificial gravity. Fans (and Irvin Kershner himself) often hand-wave away such criticisms with arguments about the artistic merits of Star Wars viewed as surrealism or expressionism. Star Wars certainly has elements of surrealism and expressionism, but the films also anchor many sequences around objective rules based on technological systems - e.g. we can’t penetrate the deflector shield so we need to blow up the shield generator.

Finally, the boundaries between sci-fi and surrealism or fantasy often strike me as arbitrary, based mostly on the experiences and expectations of the average person living today. If I complain that Han Solo shouldn’t survive in the vacuum of space, somebody might respond by telling me “Star Wars isn’t supposed to be science fiction.” J.J. Abrams said exactly that (“Star Wars is not a science lesson”) when fans complained that the bright red Starkiller beam in Force Awakens shouldn’t be visible in the sky.

But why exactly do we accept this? Probably because the average person doesn’t have the experience or mental model to develop expectations about how outer space works, so they’re okay if the movie eschews all that if it increases the drama or spectacle. Okay, well, what if there was a scene where Han Solo dives into a river, and then just starts walking around underwater for hours, with no breathing apparatus? The audience would be like “WTF? How is he not dying from lack of oxygen?” It’s doubtful anybody would respond with “Who cares! Star Wars is fantasy, not sci-fi!”. Because of course, the average person in the 21st century has the experience and mental model to develop certain expectations about water, and how humans shouldn’t be able to breathe underwater. Even pure fantasy, like Lord of the Rings, generally adheres to the audiences’ base-line expectations about physics on a human scale. Pure surrealism or expressionism, on the other hand, doesn’t even require this minimal adherence to some baseline set of expectations rooted in the common shared experiences of being human. So I’ve always felt that labeling Star Wars as surrealism, expressionism, or pure fantasy - often within the context of some defense against criticisms about physical inaccuracies - to be pretty arbitrary, based mostly on current, average experience of reality, which changes each decade as humanity collectively experiences new things and learns more about the Universe.

I don’t expect Star Wars to ever be hard sci-fi, nor do I want it to. It relies extensively on fantasy conceits like the Force, FTL travel, and space dog-fights. But that doesn’t mean we should pretend it’s entirely expressionist, as if objective, physical rules should always be a secondary concern.

I thought it was long ago agreed that Star Wars is an example of the niche genre known as Space Opera. Space Opera is it’s own thing; neither Sci-fi nor mythic fantasy, but with elements of both. The “tech” in Space Opera is the “magic” in fantasy - no need to know whence it came or how it works.

Star Wars adds in it’s own version of magic (The Force) along with the tech and the same thing applies - it doesn’t matter how it works or why it exists.

Star Wars is mostly influenced by these:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lensman_series
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(franchise)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_Gordon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fighting_Devil_Dogs

Channel72 said:

I know this essay is very popular here, but I’ve always disagreed with it.

In practice, people often define science fiction as “you know, lasers and robots and space ships and shit”. Obviously, Star Wars meets this criteria. But a more useful criteria for science fiction probably entails stories that are in some way actually about how some hypothetical future technology or development affects people and society. Stuff like Contact or Blade Runner are obviously sci-fi under that definition, as are movies like the Matrix or Terminator. These movies are actually about how some new technology or future condition affects people and society. This definition is not a binary thing either - there’s obviously a “sci-fi spectrum” here, and a movie can be both sci-fi and other genres simultaneously.

Some might prefer an even stricter definition or criteria for sci-fi. Under this stricter definition, a movie’s themes should not be reducible to conventional themes, i.e. the movie can’t simply use sci-fi elements as window dressing to tell a conventional, non-sci-fi story. For example, arguably something like Terminator 2 has prominent themes about motherhood, fatherhood, and determinism/fate. The movie doesn’t necessarily need science fiction elements to explore those themes. It could be reimagined as a story with the same themes and overall plot structure but with the sci-fi elements removed. For example, it could just be about a delinquent teenage orphan on the run from something while an unconventional father-like figure protects him. You don’t necessarily need killer time-traveling cyborgs to explore those themes - but they do make the movie a lot cooler. On the other hand, a movie like 2001 - A Space Odyssey is irreducibly science fiction, because the sci-fi elements are absolutely required in order to explore the themes the movie wants to explore, like space exploration, AI and the long-term evolution of the human race. But this stricter definition is pretty impractical, because few people use the term “sci-fi” in such a narrow way.

Anyway, I think Star Wars - at least A New Hope - is actually science fiction using either of these definitions (even the stricter one!). Most people are likely to describe A New Hope as a “hero’s journey” or a fantasy about a young farmboy who meets a space wizard and goes on a fantastical adventure. But the main plot is also very much about a new technological super-weapon, and how it affects society as a political game-changer, making an absolute technocratic dictatorship possible and stable over the long-term without any accompanying bureaucracy or democracy. There are also themes of “man vs. machine”, spirituality vs. technology, etc., all of which are themes that are not reducible to non-science-fiction themes.

Moreover, the “Star Wars is fantasy not sci-fi” argument is often used defensively in the context of discussions about obvious absurdities, like Han Solo walking around inside an asteroid, exposed to the vacuum of space, with no protective suit and a magical source of artificial gravity. Fans (and Irvin Kershner himself) often hand-wave away such criticisms with arguments about the artistic merits of Star Wars viewed as surrealism or expressionism. Star Wars certainly has elements of surrealism and expressionism, but the films also anchor many sequences around objective rules based on technological systems - e.g. we can’t penetrate the deflector shield so we need to blow up the shield generator.

Fundamentally, the boundaries between sci-fi and surrealism or fantasy are often arbitrary, based mostly on the experiences and expectations of the average person living today. If I complain that Han Solo shouldn’t survive in the vacuum of space, somebody might respond by telling me “Star Wars isn’t supposed to be science fiction.” J.J. Abrams said exactly that (“Star Wars is not a science lesson”) when fans complained that the bright red Starkiller beam in Force Awakens shouldn’t be visible in the sky.

But why exactly do we accept this? Probably because most humans have never been to outer space, so the average person doesn’t have the experience or mental model to develop expectations about how outer space works. Thus, they’re okay if a movie ignores the reality of physical conditions imposed in outer space if doing so increases drama or spectacle. Okay, but what if there was a scene where Han Solo dives into a river, and then just starts walking around underwater for hours, with no breathing apparatus? If no explanation is provided, the audience would be like “WTF? How is he not dead from lack of oxygen?” It’s doubtful anybody would respond with “Who cares! Star Wars is fantasy, not sci-fi!”. Because of course, the average person in the 21st century has the experience to understand intuitively that humans can’t breathe underwater. If a movie violates this intuition, the audience gets frustrated.

Even pure fantasy, like Lord of the Rings, generally adheres to the audiences’ base-line expectations about physics on a human scale. If Frodo Baggins falls off a tall cliff we expect he will die when he hits the ground. If he falls into a river and can’t swim, we expect him to drown. If these expectations are violated and no explanation is provided, the audience becomes frustrated. Pure surrealism or expressionism, on the other hand, doesn’t even necessarily require this minimal adherence to some baseline set of expectations rooted in the common shared experiences of being human. So I’ve always felt that labeling Star Wars as surrealism, expressionism, or pure fantasy - often defensively - to be pretty arbitrary, based mostly on our current, average experiences of reality, which change rapidly with each passing year as humanity collectively experiences new things and learns more about the Universe.

I don’t expect Star Wars to ever be hard sci-fi, nor do I want it to. It relies extensively on fantasy conceits like the Force, FTL travel, and space dog-fights. But that doesn’t mean we should pretend it’s entirely expressionist, as if objective, physical rules should always be a secondary concern, or that it doesn’t incorporate themes that are irreducibly science fiction.

Well, I more-or-less much agree with everything you just said, minus the conclusion–and even that is fairly hair-splitting.

First off, my title is admittedly a tad click-bait-y, and had I written the essay now I might have phrased a few things a bit differently. But overall, the reason I label SW as surrealism is because of how its themes are incorporated into the ‘world-building.’

Yes, all fiction adheres, or should adhere, to our instinctual understanding of the physical world around us, and yes, even “hard SF” can get this wrong simply because space travel isn’t currently a natural part of our lives. But, there is a difference between getting it wrong due to laziness and doing it on purpose. SW often breaks these rules the same way fantasy or myth do in order to tell a symbolic, larger-than-life story where the ideas and impressions matter more than realism or plausibility.

Even hard SF can have themes and symbolic meaning, but there is generally a surface narrative where the depicted world hss its own set of strict rules that goes beyond simple continuity or our baseline understanding of physics. The themes are for all intents and purposes “tacked on”, even when they are the main reason for the story being told. In Fantasy, this line is often more blurred. F.ex. in Homer’s the Odyssey, Ulysses travels to several islands with strange creatures on them, but there’s no inherent logic to them beyond baseline physics. They can’t be placed on any maps, there’s no inherent logic in a lone giant inhibiting an island, nor do we need to know how Circe got to her island. They are simply there because Ulysses needs to face his trials before being allowed to get home to his family. These places and theie inhabitants don’t exist outide the narrative.

This is trickier with SW because of the EU and our modern tendency to turn everything in not only a franchise, but everything tends to evolve into a LOTR-type world now. Even so, there are things in in Tolkien’s world that breaks the established rules in order to tell a symbolic story. This is especially true for Gandalf’s magic, which is notoriously hard to pin down to any coherent internal logic. Though to Tolkien the themes trumped lore, and he chose the abstract and mythic approach.

Yes, SW has strong SF elements baked into it, but even a forcefield generator, if seen through an abstract lense can simply be a SF-ified version of a castle wall that needs to be brought down by invading army. Likewise, I don’t agree with the idea of there being AI or proper robots in the OT. The droids are effectively space-ified slaves. They are symbolic humans (and based on the two peasants in Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress). It’s hard to do a space fantasy, or science-fantasy, without established technological tropes slipping through, but the OT never really does much with these ideas because they don’t matter beyond their symbolic meaning and recognisable surface function. In Star Trek it matters how a warp drive works (even if the science is a bit questionable in hindsight), but the hyperdrive in SW is simply an engine. Ulysses had sails, Han has a spaceship engine. And considering the sounds it makes, and since we see X-Wings being fuelled by seemingly gasoline (or something similar), its basically a “normal” engine added to space ships. No dilithium crystals or atomic reactors needed here.

Anyway, I hope you don’t take this response as being harshly worded, as I think you raised a lot of excellent points. And admittedly, drawing the line between the abstract and the “literal” in fiction is extremely difficult and the lack of any universally agreed upon genre definitions doesn’t exactly help either. And I’m more than willing to agree with the use of science-fantasy being applied to SW, even if I personally think space-fantasy is better. Though you obviously don’t seem to label it as just SF, there are those that do, and that I do strongly disagree with.

Channel72 said:

ZkinandBonez said:

Well, I more-or-less much agree with everything you just said, minus the conclusion–and even that is fairly hair-splitting.

First off, my title is admittedly a tad click-bait-y, and had I written the essay now I might have phrased a few things a bit differently. But overall, the reason I label SW as surrealism is because of how its themes are incorporated into the ‘world-building.’

Yes, all fiction adheres, or should adhere, to our instinctual understanding of the physical world around us, and yes, even “hard SF” can get this wrong simply because space travel isn’t currently a natural part of our lives. But, there is a difference between getting it wrong due to laziness and doing it on purpose. SW often breaks these rules the same way fantasy or myth do in order to tell a symbolic, larger-than-life story where the ideas and impressions matter more than realism or plausibility.

Even hard SF can have themes and symbolic meaning, but there is generally a surface narrative where the depicted world hss its own set of strict rules that goes beyond simple continuity or our baseline understanding of physics. The themes are for all intents and purposes “tacked on”, even when they are the main reason for the story being told. In Fantasy, this line is often more blurred. F.ex. in Homer’s the Odyssey, Ulysses travels to several islands with strange creatures on them, but there’s no inherent logic to them beyond baseline physics. They can’t be placed on any maps, there’s no inherent logic in a lone giant inhibiting an island, nor do we need to know how Circe got to her island. They are simply there because Ulysses needs to face his trials before being allowed to get home to his family. These places and theie inhabitants don’t exist outide the narrative.

This is trickier with SW because of the EU and our modern tendency to turn everything in not only a franchise, but everything tends to evolve into a LOTR-type world now. Even so, there are things in in Tolkien’s world that breaks the established rules in order to tell a symbolic story. This is especially true for Gandalf’s magic, which is notoriously hard to pin down to any coherent internal logic. Though to Tolkien the themes trumped lore, and he chose the abstract and mythic approach.

Yes, SW has strong SF elements baked into it, but even a forcefield generator, if seen through an abstract lense can simply be a SF-ified version of a castle wall that needs to be brought down by invading army. Likewise, I don’t agree with the idea of there being AI or proper robots in the OT. The droids are effectively space-ified slaves. They are symbolic humans (and based on the two peasants in Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress). It’s hard to do a space fantasy, or science-fantasy, without established technological tropes slipping through, but the OT never really does much with these ideas because they don’t matter beyond their symbolic meaning and recognisable surface function. In Star Trek it matters how a warp drive works (even if the science is a bit questionable in hindsight), but the hyperdrive in SW is simply an engine. Ulysses had sails, Han has a spaceship engine. And considering the sounds it makes, and since we see X-Wings being fuelled by seemingly gasoline (or something similar), its basically a “normal” engine added to space ships. No dilithium crystals or atomic reactors needed here.

Anyway, I hope you don’t take this response as being harshly worded, as I think you raised a lot of excellent points. And admittedly, drawing the line between the abstract and the “literal” in fiction is extremely difficult and the lack of any universally agreed upon genre definitions doesn’t exactly help either. And I’m more than willing to agree with the use of science-fantasy being applied to SW, even if I personally think space-fantasy is better. Though you obviously don’t seem to label it as just SF, there are those that do, and that I do strongly disagree with.

Right, I wouldn’t say Star Wars is entirely science fiction. I’d probably call it sci-fi/fantasy or something like that.

I agree with what you’re saying about surrealism in the world building, and the example of Odysseus’ adventures at sea. I guess the giant asteroid worm and the Sarlacc pit are examples of things in Star Wars that are somewhat analogous - trials for our heroes to overcome with little inherent logic on their own.

I also agree that something like a deflector shield can be replaced with a castle wall, but I think Star Wars also contains elements that cannot be replaced with some pre-technological approximation without losing a lot in the translation. The Industrial Revolution inspired the emergence of sci-fi as a new story-telling genre that seemed fundamentally different from any genre that came before. While there are obscure examples of pre-Industrial stories that arguably incorporate elements that superficially resemble sci-fi, the stories that emerged during the Industrial revolution, like Frankenstein, seemed categorically different because they extrapolated from current technological developments in order to imagine ways that technology could radically impact the human condition in the future, while also bestowing the human inventor/scientist with powers previously reserved for gods or the supernatural.

My argument is that Star Wars incorporates themes that are directly related to the effects of technology on humanity, and thus can only have meaning to a post-Industrial, technological society. I agree that a deflector shield can be translated to a castle wall and a laser gun can be translated to a bow and arrow - but then you have themes like “spirituality vs. technology” with Darth Vader warning the Imperial elite not to rely so much on their “technological terror” or Luke Skywalker switching off his targeting computer before pulling off an impossible shot. These elements invoke themes that cannot be meaningfully translated to a pre-Industrial, pre-technological equivalent without losing a ton of meaning and social context in the translation. Even the Death Star and the political implications it has - an absolute technocratic, totalitarian dictatorship with no need for bureaucracy - invokes dystopian fears and themes that can’t be translated to a pre-Industrial equivalent without fundamentally altering their essence.

I mean, the Romans and other pre-Industrial civilizations could not even conceive of a Death Star or an atomic bomb and what it could mean for governance and politics. Their notions of political power were rooted in things like manpower and ties to the divine or previous dynasties. Sure, they developed some impressive new technologies with military applications, but this had a limited effect on the average person and never inspired writers or poets to imagine a fundamentally different future by extrapolating from current technological developments. It would take the wide-ranging effects of the Industrial Revolution to inspire the emergence of science fiction as a categorically new genre, and I think Star Wars includes important themes that only make sense in a post-Industrial, technological society.

Good point. Yes, although the core narrative of SW could work in an ancient myth context there are definitely elements that only makes sense in the modern world. I can’t recall the exact quote, but I think Lucas once said something about how he wanted to create a myth/fairytale for the space age.

So yes, there are definitely science-themes involved, even if they can be translated into something more universal and mythic. I agree that Vader being a cyborg carries with it very modern anxieties about loosing humanity in technology, though within in the “sub-narrative” it can still be seen as a SF-ified visual metaphor for simply loosing one’s humanity. You could find equivalent ways this could have been done in a pure Fantasy setting (something akin to Gollum, the ringwraiths, etc.), though then it wouldn’t be a space age myth. That’s what makes SW so unique, even forty plus years later, all the core principles of Fantasy/myth are there, but “updated” with familiar SF tropes.