December is one of my favorite months, and also one of the most chaotic. I always seem to be involved in at least two or three music events for the Christmas season, my husband and daughter both have dress rehearsals and performances for plays, and of course my youngest has a birthday right at the start of the month. In the midst of all this I’m still attempting to maintain a rigorous writing schedule, which means that I will definitely be completing a first draft by the end of the year, but it will almost certainly be a mess that requires a great deal of revising.
I’m also reading as many books as I can get my hands on, but the same is not true for new television shows. It’s such a vast landscape nowadays with about a hundred different platforms, leading me to feel overwhelmed and fall back on rewatching my comfort shows rather than investing in something new. I tend to find tv series more emotionally demanding than books, perhaps because there are so many factors outside the control of the storytellers (will an actor unexpectedly leave the show? will the show get cancelled before the story has reached a satisfying conclusion — or conversely, will it get stretched out long past its prime because it’s so darn popular?) and I guess I’ve been burned too many times. However, I will happily read commentary about shows that I’m not watching, much in the same way that I read plot summaries of horror movies because I want to know the twists without enduring the misery that horror inflicts upon my marshmallow-like constitution.
So I’ve found myself amused by the discussion around Andor, the latest Star Wars offering from Disney+; namely, the shock that something so intelligent and politically-thoughtful could appear in a franchise with silly aliens and wizards with laser swords. I have to assume this shock is coming from people who have had very little contact with fan fiction. The quality and/or tone of stories set in a particular universe is entirely dependent on the individual choices and skills of the individual storyteller, not the universe itself. Sure, most fan writers will adhere at least partly to the established rules of that universe, but nothing is binding them to that other than their own preferences. I explored the concept of authorship versus ownership of a franchise a few years back, coming to the conclusion that legal copyright offers only marginal validity. It also offers very little guarantee of quality, which is probably why Andor is the least watched of all SW shows — Disney’s multiple missteps with the franchise have seen viewership dropping more and more after each disappointment. Yet it’s also probably why the show offers a marked shift in tone and content that some are praising — Disney finally recognized that they’d better try something different, because shameless pandering was no longer sufficient to sustain the brand. I don’t find the change shocking in the slightest. That it seems to have produced something of decent quality; well, I’ve read fan fiction that’s better than officially merchandised novels. You can find quality everywhere. Alas, the same is true of schlock.
But enough specific grousing about Disney. I’d rather head into a more general discussion of this concept: that certain elements make a story Serious and Important, setting it apart from frivolous space fantasy. Obviously this assumption makes me, an unapologetic fangirl, particularly bristly when it disparages my favorite films. Still I think it’s worth deconstructing. It’s connected to that notion that realism is superior to sci-fi and fantasy, to the corollary that sci-fi is higher in respectability than fantasy because at least it’s semi-plausible, and that the stuff at the bottom is nothing but thoughtless escapism. Not everyone will discount sci-fi or fantasy quite that summarily, but they’ll still rank it higher if it deals with politics, social justice, economics; whatever they consider the real stuff. Anything that appeals to children is straight out.
Sigh. I’m not one to begrudge anyone their personal preferences. If someone prefers non-fiction, or literary fiction, or historical or mystery or whatever, may they find as much joy in their reading as I do in mine! It’s when they cultivate an attitude of snobbery and seem to believe that their genre is objectively better, more enriching, of greater value to society as a whole. I find this particularly irksome because it seems to suck the joy straight out of the process, as if quality and entertainment value are mutually exclusive. That the more fun a story, the more worthless it must be on the whole. That’s nonsense. Why should fun of necessity be frivolous?
Of course there are fluffy, insubstantial books without deep meaning or value. There are also ponderous tomes without deep meaning or value. And there are fluffy, fun books with extraordinary themes and messages. Myself, I prefer to have my quality meanings delivered via something that’s fun as well. I’ve seen a lot of films with splashy spectacle and wildly imaginative visuals, but none of them have stuck with me quite like Star Wars, because that spectacle delivers a compelling message. Conversely, I’ve watched movies with compelling messages that left me rather cold because the mode of storytelling just wasn’t that fun or engaging. It doesn’t have to be one or the other, and most of the time I like both together.
Why do we even tell stories, rather than just relating straightforward observations about the human condition? The fabrication of a narrative, characters, scenes — it’s fun. It’s transportive. It’s more interesting and engaging. The fanciful nature of stories isn’t an unfortunate side effect of the process, it’s the whole point. We could have a generalized philosophical discussion about, for example, the struggle between altruism and selfishness, but that’s dry and abstract compared to the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker. And darn it, I like wizards with laser swords.
cynthiaailshie 