Let's Talk about Star Wars...

 To be completely honest I had NO IDEA what I was going to write about this week, but Star Wars seemed like a good direction to head in. I guess a good place to start in talking about Star Wars is why is it such a big deal? Well from my own knowledge it was the first film of it's kind with it's advanced technology and story line. Star Wars had special effects that revolutionized the film industry; not to mention when it came out we had just visited the moon not even ten years prior so the "space age" was still all the rage. Another reason I assume Star Wars is such a big deal is because of how Lucas created these crazy new worlds--hm, so did JL Rowling, I guess Harry Potter has this same draw?--, the names for the characters, the character's themselves, and most of all the language and politics of this galaxy far far away.



Now what if I told you that Star Wars, although super cool with the Millenium Falcon, the exploding of the Death Star, Darth Vader and Tatooine wasn't all that ground breaking? It's not! Obviously. No story is really that original, everything's been written before no? Star Wars certainly has it's own story line-enough to make 6 going on 7 movies plus television series like the Clone Wars and all that jazz-but alas it's nothing more than variations of various different OTHER stories written before.


One of Star Wars' most obvious characteristic is it's representation of fantastical archetypes such as knighthood, chivalry, princesses, royalty and the typical "epic hero". You could find elements of Julius Caesar, The Odyssey and maybe even Beowulf within Star Wars. The climax of the series' plot is influenced by the fall of the Roman Republic and rise of the Empire; although that's not a story, it's still a historical event that's happened and not made up out of Lucas' head necessarily. Lucas has been noted saying that he was also influenced by the Lord of the Rings trilogy which has a lot of biblical influence in regards to plot. Lucas was also admittedly heavily influenced by Akira Kurosawa's work such as The Hidden Fortress as well as Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces.  This is not to say Lucas is a plagiarist, just that he-like all writers-has only written a variation of stories told before him.


I was only able to present you with the influences I was able to source although I have have heard people speculate that Star Wars is based on stories in the bible, or government events, etc...which nobody's here to say it was or wasn't but none the less it was a groundbreaking, impressive film deserving of it's praise. It had more appeal than Star Trek due to it's more romantic, human, hero's as opposed to militaristic types. Star Wars also was less typical science fiction and more mythological and fantastical. So, in a way, Star Wars had more appeal due to it's more traditional less groundbreaking epicness. Guess it's better to recreate the old in a crazy new impressive way than to take too many risks?



P.S.-I met Princess Leia. I have Carrie Fisher's autograph, someday I want a real, movie prop quality, light sabre. I get the nerd points this week.


P.P.S.-I suggest you watch this, it's actually pretty factual, and if you like LOTR you will enjoy this even more...I must warn you it has some rough language.....definite Parental Advisory rated R for language.

The Ice Queen

So my belly dancing troupe did this performance this past Sunday, September 30th, to this song called the "Ice Queen". Originally the instructor had this storyline she made up in her  head she wanted to recreate through dance. She had everyone in the dance cast as some sort of character in the story about this princess who has this gift that these two evil women are trying to get from her but these angels are trying to protect her but get defeated by the evil ones. She never quite finished the story because by then I was added in the dance and messed up the story, plus the dance wasn't completed and she didn't quite figure out how to end the story in the form of dance. I wanted to examine how we perceive story through movement in a very simple way. Was movement the first way we told story? Was movement and spoken word the original storytelling way? Is that way we have "body language?"

Upon trying to research the answers to the questions I only ran into that "dance has told stories for thousands of years," and  ballets. Ballets (in the work sense of the word) essentially are plays with nothing but movement just as operas are nothing but music. I suppose you could say that the answers to those questions respectively is yes, yes, and yes. A lot of what we know about  body language (consider clicking the link I found it quite interesting but not able to mention a lot of the stuff in this single post) when communicating on a daily basis is greatly used in dancing. Body language is almost used more than spoken word when you think about it, how do we understand our pets and how they feel since they can't communicate in our language?I know I can only pick up on what my rabbit says by his body language because he doesn't make noises. We are getting off track here, sorry.

When doing a dance you are trying to express your story without words; you use your facial expressions and movement vocabulary over all else. If you stick your fist in the air you can convey either anger, success, joy, or maybe you won a battle but that all depends on your face. I find it unique how dance contrasts writing so much; in writing you are trying to convey a point without inflections of the voice, body language, or any visual aid of any kind. In dance you are doing the exact opposite, you are using the music and it's tone in sync with your body and that is all. So much can be told in a dance with no words at all. I guess it's so hard to elaborate on such a topic because most of it can only be explained by experiencing it.