Category: Uncategorized

Grimdark, Tone, (and Disney)

What’s happening to the Star Wars universe? I mean, yes, there are problems, and some of these are coming to the forefront, where the demand for increased throughput of the EFP (ie “content”) through the pipes of consumption exposes any flaws or imperfections in the infrastructure, and… to absolutely bury the metaphor… eventually the system buckles under the pressure and cracks…

Spewing stuff everywhere in full Technicolor with Dolby sound… ?

Anyhoo, this is an article on tone, mostly. Shades of grey and brown, apparently. Disney isn’t using the full color palette is what I’m getting at. But we’re starting at the end of the discussion, with burst pipes and a flooded basement. How did we get here?

It started with a re-watch of SW9:RotS on the streams a little while back. I was half interested, and hardly paying attention when the scene in the Emperor’s rejuvenation chamber came up… and it struck me.

The Grimdark.

The biomechanical rejuvenation chambers, the archaeotech, the fractured remains, the body horror.

These are not elements of a Star Wars movie.

They come from… elsewhere.

And I think this speaks to the recent disconnect [between the fans and the franchise].

As we’ve argued elsewhere on the Grimdark* , it is an essential feature of the Warhammer 40K universe.

(*check out podcast episode #… Whoops. Did I post that? One moment…)

And as we’ve argued at the outset of the Appendix W series, W40K was a hodge-podge of every science fiction trope from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, put in a blender, and with the mix pushed through the speakers turned up to 11. And early Star Wars (the original trilogy, plus some of the EU stuff available at the time, like the ongoing Marvel comic series and early novelizations) was definitely thrown in the blender like everything else.

Vader as an armored force-using, laser sword wielding transhuman cyborg super-soldier definitely counts as a proto-40K influence.

Of course, in the grim darkness of the 41st millennium, there’s a couple thousand like him working for the Imperium of man alone. In W40K, the dial that goes up to 11 increases exponentially. Darth Vader would be in for a very tough fight.

The other big influence that makes the Grimdark grim and/or dark is that fallen sense of technology. The “dying earth” subgenre of sci-fi, where the 20th century may be a distant memory. Often indistinguishable from fantasy, and drawing mostly from a couple strong influences like well, Vance’s Dying Earth and the Wolfe’s Shadow of the Torturer series**. And Herbert’s Dune, after a fashion. All of these are in the grimdark blender too.

** Did we post that up in the Appendix W either? No? Well then, shortly.

And while there is a pretty direct line between Dune and SW4:ANH, the grim dark filter hadn’t been built yet. So the appearance of the Grimdark in the SW universe in 2019 signified a rather significant shift in tone. And it’s appeared in the Mando-verse as well over on Disney+, notably in Season 3, with the Armorer and the mass jet pack fight.

Much like the emperor’s rejuvenation chamber in SW9:RotS, the overlap of the grimdark becomes readily apparent in Mando S3. Part of this is just the material there’s only so many ways to portray a massed group of faceless space knights, and the shift in focal point characters in SW from “space monk with laser sword” to “power armor space knight” will by necessity lead in certain ways. There’s just certain kinds of stories you can tell in that framework, and GW has managed to deliver an exterminatus to the concept with over 100 novels(?) in the 40K universe.

But I digress: when we see the jetpack assault by the massed Mandalorian army in S3E8, there has been no better cinematic visualization of an Adeptus Astartes assault company incursion. And Paz’s stand with the minigun (with it’s echoes of both Jesse “the Body” Ventura’s Blain in Predator (1987) and Jiang Wen’s Baze Malbus in the aforementioned Rogue One (2016)) could substitute for 35 years of a Terminator Astartes armed with an Assault Cannon facing off against innumerable foes. And that last image provides us a rather helpful clue.

It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment of inception, when the SW universe made the Grimdark turn. While there are elements of it throughout the sequel trilogy, Rogue One (2016) feels like a reasonable candidate. It too marked a dramatic shift in visuals and tone, standing apart from the “mainline” Star Wars films the way that it does, and with the generally positive fan and critical reception it enjoyed as well. Rogue One was still recognizably Star Wars, though darker in tone and “more mature”, appealing to an older audience that had fond memories of the original (and perhaps even the prequel) trilogies, and appreciated the mature take. In a post-AGoT era for genre on the big screen, the expectations of a more mature audience were met by Rogue One‘s screen presence.

But this more mature audience isn’t necessarily the audience that the sequel trilogy was needing to court. Star Wars seems to be pointed at a mainline audience of “the eternal 12 year old”***, an archetypical audience that is seduced by tales of the hero’s journey and see themselves within it, as long as they have the merch to go with. And Disney loves getting new fans for their franchises.

***: I could be wrong; they could be as young as eight.

And this is where the tone comes back into the picture. Because the Grimdark is defined as a universe where everything sucks and there are no good guys. Star Wars is more famously a universe with a New Hope.

This doesn’t mean there isn’t room for darker tales within the Star Wars universe; there most definitely is. The challenge comes in crossing the streams, mixing the Duff with the Duff Dark and Duff Light. Bringing the grimdark aesthetic over from a one-off that was successful for a host of reasons (of which the aesthetic was only a small part) into the mainline film series risks turning off the fans that the mainline audience are geared toward, the ETYO that Disney craves. Star Wars is an umbrella brand, and not all components that contribute to the franchise need to be geared to every part. They recognize this with the merch (I’m sure there is some overlap between Grogu squishmallows, SW Lego builders, and Mando cosplayers, but y’know, different strokes rule the world).

So is this a problem? No, not really, not in the sense that we’re contributing to the “Problemitization of Everything”. And perhaps not in the sense of it’s connection to other ongoing issues. Just an observation, drawn from the images on screen, and the connections and linkages that exist. It’s part of a trend, perhaps, one that fits with some other things that are going on.

The shift in tone, may be a larger problem, long-term, for a multi-billion dollar corporation that is struggling with producing sustainable results while keeping the franchise afloat. But that’s a them problem, and possibly unrelated to this shift in tone.

But it might be, too. I feel like this bears looking out for over the coming years.

Credits:

  • Star Wars images copyright Disney 2019, 2023
  • Warhammer 40K images copyright Games Workshop 2023

Where is the line? AKA “Cuddlefication of Brutality”

Where is the line…
… when the joke stops being funny?
… between cosplay and copaganda?
… between parody and promotion?
… between representation and reinforcement?
… where the successive waves of Disneyization of the Star Wars universe have blurred the lines so much that we forgot what the original represents.
That those are indeed “the baddies”.
Because if we look at the subtext here, or perhaps even the literal text, it isn’t that subtle.

Then what we have here is objectively terrible:

A foot soldier of an authoritarian and fascist empire uses a war trophy taken as spoils following the extermination of a minority population and celebrates with the unboxing of a new weapon of war.

Did the above capture the essence of it?

Ah, it’s funny, it’s goofy, it’s relatable.
And through this cuddlefication of brutality*, the line continues to blur.

When we look back, can we tell when the line has been crossed? Or is that only something we can tell in retrospect, with the benefit of hindsight?
(Do we know we’ve reached the Rubicon, or are we informed after the fact?)

Where we can say this, this is the point where we became accommodating, where we become comfortable with fascism, with the fun-loving stormtroopers and their goofy antics, where the clear delineations of the original films become blurred and muddied, cuddly and coddled.

So if this is the line, when do we step back? Can we back away? Are we already too late?

(*Perhaps I’m being dramatic? Maybe, but I don’t think so.)

The genesis for this was a cutesy stormtrooper “unboxing” video that circulated on social media, most notably the ‘Tube and the ‘Gram, with the cover that I embedded above. (There’s other similar videos up there as well.)

If you need to see the originals, you can find them on the following YouTube channel:

I had thought about directly embedding them, but decided not to based on the subject matter.

It’s possible to recognize that a lot of skill, talent, and resources went in to the production of the videos on that channel. We’re trying to address the broader impact of the spread of this content, and the underlying ideology that it supports.

This also was (one of) the reasons underlying the Not Feeling the Fourth post from a few weeks back. More on the other reason will be coming soon.

Invent your own life’s meaning

Bill Waterston is the GOAT, of course, a cartoonist whose impact reached out through the newsprint and embedded itself into the zeitgeist, across all levels of society. He achieved fantastic levels of success for his syndicated Calvin and Hobbes strip.

…and then he walked away.

But this was not without precedent. Prior to starting his strip, he had been fired as an editorial cartoonist, and had to re-invent himself as an artist practicing his craft. He took a graphic design job, worked through it while developing his strip and left it once he found where purchase with his new career.

Years later, giving a commencement speech at a college, he imparted some words of wisdom, and they’ve stuck with me over the last 10 years since I first encountered them:

To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed… and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.

Bill Watterson

I tacked this up on the wall behind the monitor at the tiny cubicle the university provided the grad students when I started my PhD research. I kept it as the desktop on the same computer too, just to remind me of the goal, that the reason I was there was to do something different, to engender a change in the processes of life that had left me aimless prior to embarking on that journey.

(It had happened at least twice before, but more on those stories at some future date. Bientot!)

I had encountered this quote in the panels draw by the artist Gav at their zenpencils blog in 2013. I probably found it via a link on Slate or Twitter or some such, as the post gained some traction. The panels in question are here:

All credit to the artist. You can follow the link back to the full comic and the story behind it.

It’s remains one of the best pieces of advice that I’ve encountered in the last decade or so, and it’s stuck with me. And so, in case you haven’t heard it, or needed the reminder, I’m passing it on to you.

You can invent your own life’s meaning. It is allowed.

Guardians 3 or Rocket 1?

Let’s talk about this guy (Rocket Racoon) and how his origins relate to a sci-fi concept you might never heard of called the Uplift.

Spoilers ahead in (3..2..1..)

The reason why we wanna talk about Rocket is because GG3 (poster) can really be seen as Rocket Racoon 1 (with appearances by the Guardians of the Galaxy) (cover with overlay). And by making the movie about Rocket, we get one of the most impactful and introspective movies that Marvel has ever released, perhaps since the first two Captain America films.

Because the emotional core of the film, as well as the chief driver of the plot and narrative, is all Rocket. We are treated to his origin in the MCU, his backstory, his friends, and his primary antagonist, the High Evolutionary.

Now, the High Evolutionary originally appeared in the comics as a Thor villain, and had numerous other appearances in the MCU. It’s really a shame he’s a one-and-done villain here, as he had a long history, and could often be the driver of multiple stories in much the same way as Kang and Thanos have been. His focus is on advancing the development of humanity through forced evolution. He’s a super-eugenicist. He’s a tyrant, and more than a little bit of a control freak. Having him as the antagonist is critically important, which we’ll get to a little bit later.

The High Evolutionary isn’t really the villain of the first major Rocket storyline in the comics (which appeared back in 1985), but the villain(s) in that story had a bit of overlap in method, so we get that character agglomeration so common with media translations. (AGOT reference?)

Here we can see Teefs (his best bud), known then as his First Mate Wal Rus, as well as the fabulous Lylla, an otter (cue Denis Leary: “an otter”) and romantic interest

One of RR’s other companions was a turtle, Pyko, who we witness in the test chamber (twice!). We kinda hope this guy might show backup later. (well, I do anyways)

They’re all Uplifted animals. So what does that mean? What is the Uplift?

Well, the idea of anthropomorphic animals, that can talk and communicate with humans has long been a staple of sci-fi, going back to the HG Wells, and The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896).

We also saw it a lot in cartoons of various sorts, with various rabbits and mice (Bugs and Mickey), ducks (Daffy, Donald, Scrooge) and … cows or something (Goofy), so the idea isn’t that unfamiliar to us, but it was always a bit of a weird fit in the superhero comics world.

And yes, these appearances aren’t even counting the Stadel lion-man (from 32000 BCE) or the various deities of the ancient Egyptians, or the visions of Ezekiel, or all the other appearances. It’s a long, rich history, is what I’m saying, but we’re focused on the sci-fi and comic book appearances here.

Rocket showed up in the mid 70s, but he only was in a handful of issues before the 21st century, and aside from Jaxxon in the Marvel Star Wars comics, the most prominent animal was either a Private Duck (Howard) or an Aardvark barbarian. (You can figure out his stats for D&D). This isn’t a history of anthropomorphic animals though. Let’s get to the Uplift.

The Uplift was David Brin’s science fiction series where humanity has increased the intelligence in chimps and dolphins to the point where they are sentient and can communicate with humans. And then they discover that there are other inter-galactic civilizations that exist, and do the same. And they regard humanity as being barely evolved, so it’s only the sheer coincidence that humanity had Uplifted the other species that saves them from being a client bound to some other more powerful species.

The Uplift series started in 1980 with Sundiver, (and I’m sorry, but I only have the second book, 1983’s Startide Rising, on the bookshelf at the moment.) And because verbing weirds language, Uplift is now synonymous with the leveling up the intelligence of animals (and others) to human levels of sapience (or beyond). Series like the Planet of the Apes can be seen as an Uplift story (though not in that universe), even though it came out decades earlier. There’s also Wells’ work of course, which we mentioned earlier, and there’s also Olaf Stapledon’s classic Sirius and Bulgakov’s “Heart of a Dog” (both of which form parts of the inspiration for Cosmo in the GG as well).

When it comes to Uplifted racoons, like Rocket, well, he’s pretty unique, he’s one of the first. There’s another example in Bruce Sterling’s short story “Our Neural Chernobyl” from the Globalhead (1992) collection. Raccoons as a species get uplifted, and well, it doesn’t look like it’s going to go well for humanity.

What the Uplift series explores, and allows us to imagine collectively, is our interaction with the animals around us, and how we relate to them, it they were at our level of intelligence.

Now David Brin is a scientist by training, and he brings that hard science view to a lot of his fiction. His background is in astronomy, and he’s been a consultant to NASA, as well as a contributor to many science fiction projects aside from his own novels.

And all this lays the foundation to talk about what’s going on with Rocket Racoon and the animals in Guardians of the Galaxy 3, with the imprisonment, experimentation, exploitation, and disposal.

(And I want to be clear, that there are multiple interpretations to the story, and those may be valid too. But in presenting the broader historical picture, I hope to show you that interpretations tied to the issues of the moment may miss the scope of what’s being discussed.)

Rocket’s story, and the story of his animal companions is ultimately a human story, a trans-human story, about how we evolve and become post-human.

And so to help explain that story, let’s bring in a little philosophy, courtesy of Giorgio Agamben’s The Open (2002). Subtitled Man and Animal, the work is a side project spilling off of Agamben’s larger investigation of what it means to be human through examining historical instances of it at a minimum level, the Homo Sacer project, and his examination of rule by decree. Given the “interesting times” we’re living in in 2023, as we’re now living with COVID, the guy has some interesting views, not all of which I agree with.

The main ones we’re interested in right now are the relationship between human and animal, and in this his view are informed by Foucault’s conception of “biopolitics”. (we’re not doing a deep dive on Foucault here. Bientot.)

Biopower, at a high level can be seen as the regimes used for controlling and subjugating the bodies and populations that comprise a polity. Think of the health care system in the United States, as one example, or of the food production systems that shape and manage the animals that end up as meals on our tables.

Factory farming, in other words. For Agamben, following from Foucault, biopolitics is a source of control. Of managing the biosphere, the teeming millions (whatever species those millions may be, be it man, cow, dog, chicken… racoon).

So Agamben brings us into the idea of biopower, and that our relationship with the Animal is one of humanity separating itself from the natural world. And this is where our antagonist the High Evolutionary steps back in the equation.

As noted above, the High Evolutionary, in the comics and the MCU, is a super-eugenicist, a totalitarian dictator willing to destroy his creations in the hope of improvement, and freely experiment on animals. And while in the comics Counter-Earth is destroyed by Galactus, after High Evolutionary falters when attempting to protect it, here he destroys his planet of Ani-Men as the prospect of an improved denizen comes to fruition.

The High Evolutionary is after all, all about control. And this control, this mastery, is what links the dominion inherent in biopolitics with the atrocities he pursues as part of his quest to create a perfect species with which to populate his planet. This is ultimately a fascist project, which places the super-eugenicist precisely where he belongs in 2023. As Paul Virilio notes in Art and Fear, genetic engineering and the “transgenic practices” lead to biology as an expressionistic practice, which was occuring in the laboratories of various totalitarian regimes across the 20th century.

There too, the testing of animals was unabated, and the development of hybrids continued as well. Much like Rocket and his friends being transformed, uplifted, unwillingly, by the High Evolutionary, as “hybrids of modern science signal the complete control over the animality of man” (Pick 11). But in the process of this uplift, Rocket wakes up. Much like Neo in an earlier series, he becomes aware of his particular situation.

To quote Agamben: “[An animal] who has awakened from its captivation to its own captivation. This awakening of the living being to its own being-captivated, this anxious and resolute opening to a not-open, is the human.” (Agamben, 70).

Rocket “wakes up”, grows into his sentience and sapience, and realizes his captivity, and, trying to escape, realizes he is doubly-trapped. He goes through a process of becoming, and we as the audience, go through that journey with him, and we realize our own captivity much like his.

Such is the catharsis we feel as we witness Rocket attempt his escape. it is our own liberation,. He is humanity, he has been uplifted, he is awakened, and now he fights for freedom.

We’re all Rocket.

Epilogue: now, it’s hard to say how much of this is intentional on the part of James Gunn, if he’s read these (somewhat) obscure academic philosophers, if he’s well versed in the discourse on biopolitics, and the Open, the gap between animal and man.

Perhaps the extent that these themes ring out resoundingly from Rocket Raccoon 1 (sorry, GotG 3) speaks to the essential truths that they address, and film, and science fiction, by reflecting our reality back to us allow us to see clearly that which often lays hidden (and in terms of factory farming, animal testing, and concentration camps we often rely on that distancing to shield ourselves from the damage we inflict, in our living on the planet).

But that’s the power of this film in particular, a rare hit from Marvel that reaches beyond the superhero genre and speaks directly to us about the human condition.

As experienced by a procyon lotor, a common Raccoon.

Not feeling the fourth

So it’s “Star Wars Day” again, May the Fourth (be with you), and I’m not really feeling it anymore.

I think it’s part of a longer arc, a larger trend, one that I’d like to take the time to explore more fully. Either with a video, a podcast, or both. But I want to give it the attention it deserves, because there is some nuance to it, and it speaks to a larger trend, both in term of the non-consumption mentioned earlier, and wondering how to deal with fictional facism in an era of rising real facism.

The first with look at where we draw the line, and the second will look at the changing tone of the Star Wars universe, as it* negotiates it’s identity in the 21st century.

* As much as a corporate media franchise has intentionality or agency.

We’ll link back here when we get to the point.

Until then, keep your wookies dry.