When writing my article "The Golden Age of Science Fiction Television: Looking Back at SFTV the Long 1990s," (or revising it for reissue in my book After the New Wave) I specifically concentrated on North American-produced live-action television oriented toward adult audiences, leaving out animation, and children-oriented programming of both the animated and live-action varieties. This was partly because I'd seen very little of it since elementary school (certainly nowhere near enough to even think about writing anything comprehensive), but also because I didn't think that the scope I set for the article was overly narrow, and I didn't think that broadening it would have changed the picture it presented very much.
I'm still not sure that it would have. Given how long and how heavily science fiction's tropes have been mined, and how dependent the genre has become on Baroque handling of old concepts and inside jokes, TV aimed at a young audience seems an unlikely place for fresh ideas.
Still, in hindsight it does seem fair to note that fiction supposedly for children often isn't really that--fiction genuinely about children and their experiences, or at least engaging the way they really see the world. Rather it's just the same stuff written for the regular, "adult" audience, sanitized sufficiently to pass a more stringent censor. This isn't altogether new--the early versions of fairy tales children grow up were not the stuff of Disney films. Still, this seems to have become more conspicuous in recent years, partly as pop culture has gone increasingly metafictional. I remember, for example, an episode of Animaniacs that was an extended parody of Apocalypse Now (and even more obscure still, the making-of documentary Hearts of Darkness). Now on the Disney Channel they have a sitcom about a summer camp run by a family with the last name Swearengen, where one of the campers quotes Omar from The Wire ("You come at the king . . .") in an episode that is basically Scarface with candy and video games instead of the original product.
And as all this might suggest, I have noticed some relatively sophisticated genre content here and there. An obvious instance is Jimmy Neutron. That show can seem like merely another iteration on the century-and-a-half-old tradition of scrawny boy genius inventors.1 Still, it is notable for its consciously retro handling of that retro idea--Jimmy growing up in a household where everything from mom's hairdo to the design of the family television set looks like it came out of the '50s, in a town called, of all things, Retroville (complete with a Clark Gable lookalike for mayor).2 Steampunk has remained a genre of cult rather than real mass appeal--but Harvey Beaks included an eccentric steampunk enthusiast in its cast of characters, and served up an hour-long musical steampunk special.
Something of this has been evident in live-action programming as well. Television has been awash in superheroes for years--but Disney XD offered a more original take than most in developing a show about a hospital where they go when they need medical treatment and the two kids who stumble into it in Mighty Med. More recently the same channel's Kirby Buckets, for its third season, shifted from sitcom wackiness set (mostly) in the mundane, regular world, to a season-long, dimension-hopping adventure through alternate timelines.3 A good deal more tightly written than most of the season-length stories we get (arcs on American TV remain mostly about stringing audiences along), it actually is a story with a real beginning, middle and end, and the experiment has been all the more striking for its 13 episodes being aired in a mere three weeks (an exceptionally rare move for broadcast television).
Whatever else one may saw about it, very little of the comparable stuff pitched at grown-ups in prime time as of late has been as knowing or risky or innovative or audacious. (And when these shows are at their best, rarely as much fun.)
1. The original "Edisonade" was Edward Sylvester Ellis' 1868 dime novel The Huge Hunter; or The Steam Man of the Prairies.
2. While Ellis celebrated the young, lone amateur inventor, the red-brick universities and Land Grant colleges and Massachusetts Institute of Technology were promoting national science policies through their graduation of their first candidates, while scarcely a decade later Thomas Edison established the world's first big corporate lab.
Sunday, February 5, 2017
Making Sense of B.O.
We hear all the time about the economics of filmmaking--that this movie cost this much, that it made that much. But a lot of the talk strikes me as far, far removed from even the best known realities of the business.
Movies cost far more than their production budgets--and their backers make less than their grosses at the box office. On the one hand, marketing and promotion budgets are much less often announced than production budgets, but are often as large. The result is that the producers of a $150 million movie may be thought to have spent twice that much when the distribution costs are taken into account.
Meanwhile, studios get maybe forty to fifty percent of the gross of a film.
This means that instead of a $150 million movie earning $200 million making a solid $50 million profit, it may have actually left the backers $200 million in the red--because they spent $300 million, and only got back $100 million, or even less.
Yet, it is worth remembering that film production and other costs are often offset from other sources--like product placement, and even government subsidy. (The makers of Thor 2 got a tax rebate worth some $30 million from the British government.) It is worth remembering, too, that domestic and foreign box office are not always clearly distinguished by commentators, and the foreign markets ever more important, particularly as key large markets (e.g. China) have become more affluent. (Warcraft made $47 million in the U.S., almost ten times as much globally--with about half the total gross earned in China alone.) At the same time, the box office is not the only source of revenue--there being video and TV rights, and merchandising, which can add mightily to the total, and so turn a flop into a moneymaker much more often than might be imagined, especially if one thinks in longer than "this-quarter, next-quarter" terms. (Hudson Hawk, the most notorious flop of the summer of '91, managed a profit five years after its release--but the point is that it did manage it.)
And all that is without getting into the creative bookkeeping in which studios have been known to engage regarding the costs, which remind all involved to take their cut of the gross, not the net, if they can. (Paramount's claims about the profitability of Forrest Gump were quite the story at the time.)
All this is a reminder that like many another industry, for all that we hear about, filmmaking is less transparent than it appears. It is also a reminder not to expect a streak of underperforming films--of sequels nobody asked for and which it turned out the public really didn't want--like 2016's rather long streak of them after the hit-packed spring (X-Men, Alice, the Turtles, Independence Day, etc.)--to have too much effect on how Hollywood does things. The sheer variety of ways of fraying costs, and of revenue streams to tap, as well as the lack of any other business model Hollywood might find remotely attractive given its bottom-line priorities and the reality of a film business that makes the high-concept blockbuster more than just an exercise in business cynicism, are likely to keep it at the present game for a long time to come.
Movies cost far more than their production budgets--and their backers make less than their grosses at the box office. On the one hand, marketing and promotion budgets are much less often announced than production budgets, but are often as large. The result is that the producers of a $150 million movie may be thought to have spent twice that much when the distribution costs are taken into account.
Meanwhile, studios get maybe forty to fifty percent of the gross of a film.
This means that instead of a $150 million movie earning $200 million making a solid $50 million profit, it may have actually left the backers $200 million in the red--because they spent $300 million, and only got back $100 million, or even less.
Yet, it is worth remembering that film production and other costs are often offset from other sources--like product placement, and even government subsidy. (The makers of Thor 2 got a tax rebate worth some $30 million from the British government.) It is worth remembering, too, that domestic and foreign box office are not always clearly distinguished by commentators, and the foreign markets ever more important, particularly as key large markets (e.g. China) have become more affluent. (Warcraft made $47 million in the U.S., almost ten times as much globally--with about half the total gross earned in China alone.) At the same time, the box office is not the only source of revenue--there being video and TV rights, and merchandising, which can add mightily to the total, and so turn a flop into a moneymaker much more often than might be imagined, especially if one thinks in longer than "this-quarter, next-quarter" terms. (Hudson Hawk, the most notorious flop of the summer of '91, managed a profit five years after its release--but the point is that it did manage it.)
And all that is without getting into the creative bookkeeping in which studios have been known to engage regarding the costs, which remind all involved to take their cut of the gross, not the net, if they can. (Paramount's claims about the profitability of Forrest Gump were quite the story at the time.)
All this is a reminder that like many another industry, for all that we hear about, filmmaking is less transparent than it appears. It is also a reminder not to expect a streak of underperforming films--of sequels nobody asked for and which it turned out the public really didn't want--like 2016's rather long streak of them after the hit-packed spring (X-Men, Alice, the Turtles, Independence Day, etc.)--to have too much effect on how Hollywood does things. The sheer variety of ways of fraying costs, and of revenue streams to tap, as well as the lack of any other business model Hollywood might find remotely attractive given its bottom-line priorities and the reality of a film business that makes the high-concept blockbuster more than just an exercise in business cynicism, are likely to keep it at the present game for a long time to come.
Monday, January 9, 2017
On The Word "Deserve"
Like "lifestyle" the word "deserve" has come to be grossly misused, overused and abused, replacing many another word and concept in the process – and consequently, diminishing the average person's already vanishingly small ability to think.
The word "deserve" properly refers to those things that have actually been earned (like an award recognizing particular accomplishments). To say one deserves something is to make an indisputable moral claim on their behalf. However, the term is being used with mind-numbing regularity in place of words like "want," and "need," and "right" (as in "have a right to"). Certainly we all have wants. (You might want a private jet.) We all have needs. (You need food and oxygen to live.) We all have rights of varying kinds. (Free speech is an inalienable human right, while someone might have a right to the inheritance of a particular property or the award of damages following some injury, given the laws prevailing at a particular time and place.)
The upshot of this is that one may want, need or have a right to the things they deserve – but they do not necessarily deserve the things they want, need or claim as a right. Yet, there seems an increasing insistence on dressing up want, need and right in the moralistic language of deserts. Take, for instance, the immediate cause of this post, which was my hearing an anchor on The Weather Channel say last winter that ski resorts in a particular region were finally getting the snow they "deserve." The owners of ski resorts want and need snow because it enables them to operate their establishments, and a particular resort owner may have done the things ordinarily seen as meriting business success, but it is nothing short of bizarre to say instead that resorts "deserve" snow.
I suppose this particular butchery of the English language contains something of the tendency to view every outcome in a person's life as a matter of their own, personal morality – an idea very much in line with the self-help/religious ideas that have long enjoyed wide currency in the United States. There is, too, what Thorstein Veblen in his classic The Theory of the Leisure Class called the "habit of invidious distinction," because where there are the deserving there are also the undeserving.
It would seem that at the bottom of such things is a deeply conservative impulse to justify – and sanctify – everything as it is, not least the inequalities of wealth and the callousness toward the poor and disenfranchised that increasingly characterize American life. The CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are assumed to "deserve" their seven and eight figure compensation packages (even as they make disastrous decisions), while many vehemently deny that the people who perform the work without which their companies could not possibly remain going concerns "deserve" a living wage. Some people "deserve" megayachts, while others do not "deserve" health care – or even food and shelter.
In other words, the mind-boggling greed of some is not merely excused but justified, celebrated, exalted on the grounds of what they "deserve," while the claims of others to having their most basic physical needs met (and many would say, their most basic rights as human beings recognized) are dismissed on the very same grounds, which happens to be not the content of one's character, but the content of one's bank account, personal worth equated with "net worth." One person is "worth" fifty billion dollars and another "worth" nothing – in effect, worthless.
All of this is a revolting tissue of absurdities which only confuses and cheapens the idea of morality itself. But I don't think it's going away any time soon. If anything, the way the political winds are blowing, it seems likely the tendency will only get stronger.
The word "deserve" properly refers to those things that have actually been earned (like an award recognizing particular accomplishments). To say one deserves something is to make an indisputable moral claim on their behalf. However, the term is being used with mind-numbing regularity in place of words like "want," and "need," and "right" (as in "have a right to"). Certainly we all have wants. (You might want a private jet.) We all have needs. (You need food and oxygen to live.) We all have rights of varying kinds. (Free speech is an inalienable human right, while someone might have a right to the inheritance of a particular property or the award of damages following some injury, given the laws prevailing at a particular time and place.)
The upshot of this is that one may want, need or have a right to the things they deserve – but they do not necessarily deserve the things they want, need or claim as a right. Yet, there seems an increasing insistence on dressing up want, need and right in the moralistic language of deserts. Take, for instance, the immediate cause of this post, which was my hearing an anchor on The Weather Channel say last winter that ski resorts in a particular region were finally getting the snow they "deserve." The owners of ski resorts want and need snow because it enables them to operate their establishments, and a particular resort owner may have done the things ordinarily seen as meriting business success, but it is nothing short of bizarre to say instead that resorts "deserve" snow.
I suppose this particular butchery of the English language contains something of the tendency to view every outcome in a person's life as a matter of their own, personal morality – an idea very much in line with the self-help/religious ideas that have long enjoyed wide currency in the United States. There is, too, what Thorstein Veblen in his classic The Theory of the Leisure Class called the "habit of invidious distinction," because where there are the deserving there are also the undeserving.
It would seem that at the bottom of such things is a deeply conservative impulse to justify – and sanctify – everything as it is, not least the inequalities of wealth and the callousness toward the poor and disenfranchised that increasingly characterize American life. The CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are assumed to "deserve" their seven and eight figure compensation packages (even as they make disastrous decisions), while many vehemently deny that the people who perform the work without which their companies could not possibly remain going concerns "deserve" a living wage. Some people "deserve" megayachts, while others do not "deserve" health care – or even food and shelter.
In other words, the mind-boggling greed of some is not merely excused but justified, celebrated, exalted on the grounds of what they "deserve," while the claims of others to having their most basic physical needs met (and many would say, their most basic rights as human beings recognized) are dismissed on the very same grounds, which happens to be not the content of one's character, but the content of one's bank account, personal worth equated with "net worth." One person is "worth" fifty billion dollars and another "worth" nothing – in effect, worthless.
All of this is a revolting tissue of absurdities which only confuses and cheapens the idea of morality itself. But I don't think it's going away any time soon. If anything, the way the political winds are blowing, it seems likely the tendency will only get stronger.
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
Slow Burner and '50s Britain
The plot of William Haggard's Slow Burner (reviewed here) centers on a British program to develop civil nuclear power in the hopes of scoring a major economic coup.
While nuclear energy has never stopped being topical, this idea was especially so at the time because in the '50s the British government really did bet heavily on its scientists achieving a breakthrough in civil nuclear power, both for the sake of cheap domestic power, and as a source of export income with which to achieve a healthy balance of payments (as a country dependent on massive food and energy imports, while its manufacturing and financial position slipped).1 The object of those hopes was the Magnox reactor, which never justified such a confidence (the world generally preferred the American pressurized water reactor, today still the mainstay of civil nuclear power), but the expectations do come to pass in Slow Burner, specifically in the titular, very different technology. A nuclear power source compact enough to be installed in a suburban attic and packed up and driven about in the boot of a car, it put Britain twenty years ahead of the rest of the world in that field--the only way, the book says, that the British economy was not twenty years behind it.
Moreover, the implications of this for Britain's economic life are repeatedly underlined within the story, so much so that the characters worry that the thief might be running West as much as East, and seem more concerned about the implications of losing perhaps their only prospect for a healthy balance of payments than they are about the Soviets upsetting the Cold War balance of power. Indeed, it is Britain's economic predicament that Sir Jeremy Bates has in mind ("Fifty or sixty million . . . and food, at the level of subsistence, for perhaps forty"; manufacturing plant "a generation out of date") when he thinks to himself that a "man who could consider going abroad, selling his knowledge, was worse than a danger, worse than an apostate" (114).
The point comes up in smaller ways, too--a burglar enlisted by Colonel Russell's people for an illegal black bag job told that if things go badly he could be resettled where he likes in the Sterling Area.
Sterling Area? he wonders, surprised by the qualification.
Yes, he's told, because just now dollars are hard to come by.
Next to this any menace from the Soviets in the book appears vague, shadowy.
Unsurprisingly, a good part of the book's interest for me was in its quality of being a time capsule from '50s Britain, capable of surprising in such ways.
1. While it doesn't say much about the government's specifically nuclear ambitions, David Edgerton's Warfare State nonetheless has a good deal to say about British policy regarding R & D in these years, and the view of some of its critics that it was too devoted to big-ticket prestige projects (of which the Concorde supersonic transport was another example).
While nuclear energy has never stopped being topical, this idea was especially so at the time because in the '50s the British government really did bet heavily on its scientists achieving a breakthrough in civil nuclear power, both for the sake of cheap domestic power, and as a source of export income with which to achieve a healthy balance of payments (as a country dependent on massive food and energy imports, while its manufacturing and financial position slipped).1 The object of those hopes was the Magnox reactor, which never justified such a confidence (the world generally preferred the American pressurized water reactor, today still the mainstay of civil nuclear power), but the expectations do come to pass in Slow Burner, specifically in the titular, very different technology. A nuclear power source compact enough to be installed in a suburban attic and packed up and driven about in the boot of a car, it put Britain twenty years ahead of the rest of the world in that field--the only way, the book says, that the British economy was not twenty years behind it.
Moreover, the implications of this for Britain's economic life are repeatedly underlined within the story, so much so that the characters worry that the thief might be running West as much as East, and seem more concerned about the implications of losing perhaps their only prospect for a healthy balance of payments than they are about the Soviets upsetting the Cold War balance of power. Indeed, it is Britain's economic predicament that Sir Jeremy Bates has in mind ("Fifty or sixty million . . . and food, at the level of subsistence, for perhaps forty"; manufacturing plant "a generation out of date") when he thinks to himself that a "man who could consider going abroad, selling his knowledge, was worse than a danger, worse than an apostate" (114).
The point comes up in smaller ways, too--a burglar enlisted by Colonel Russell's people for an illegal black bag job told that if things go badly he could be resettled where he likes in the Sterling Area.
Sterling Area? he wonders, surprised by the qualification.
Yes, he's told, because just now dollars are hard to come by.
Next to this any menace from the Soviets in the book appears vague, shadowy.
Unsurprisingly, a good part of the book's interest for me was in its quality of being a time capsule from '50s Britain, capable of surprising in such ways.
1. While it doesn't say much about the government's specifically nuclear ambitions, David Edgerton's Warfare State nonetheless has a good deal to say about British policy regarding R & D in these years, and the view of some of its critics that it was too devoted to big-ticket prestige projects (of which the Concorde supersonic transport was another example).
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
An Un-Bond: William Haggard's Colonel Charles Russell
I remember that when reading Ian Fleming's James Bond novels I was struck by how much the character and his outlook, his associated image of glamour, the basis of his existence as a globe-trotting British agent (policing the Empire in its last days, playing junior but more skillful partner to the Americans in the Cold War contest) was very much a product of a particular period that has since passed. This has been so much the case that novelists working in the series, less able to rely on brand name and flashy filmmaking than their cinematic counterparts, have in recent years so often seen no option but to go back to those days--Sebastian Faulks and William Boyd taking Bond back to the '60s, Anthony Horowitz taking Bond all the way back to the '50s (or in the case of Jeffrey Deaver, starting with the character again from scratch in the present day).
Still, Fleming's creation has held up considerably better than Haggard's, and his longtime protagonist, Colonel Charles Russell, head of the imaginary Special Executive.
Russell, like Bond, is a formidable ex-military counterintelligence operative; like Bond, handsome, suave, urbane; like Bond a man who enjoys good food, drink and the other luxuries. Still, his version of luxury is different. Instead of the dated image of jet air travel and casinos, there is the even more dated image of the club, the country house, enjoyed by this old officer with his regimental moustache and pipe. Bond might brood about the taxi driver's manner, but Russell never has occasion to, appearing to exist untouched by the changes of the world surrounding him.
Indeed, at times Haggard's characters can almost seem caricatures (at least, to an American rather sensitized to "stage Englishmen" by terrible Hollywood writing). This is particularly the case when Haggard writes figures like Sir Jeremy Bates in Slow Burner, with the following line exemplary: "it was barely four. It would be unheard of for Sir Jeremy Bates to leave his office at tea-time" (116); or better still, when Bates comes home after a drunk to a valet who offers no question or comment:
Such things are even more evident in their social attitudes, the bigotry and snobbery fiercer and more bluntly expressed. While Fleming wrote many a foreign villain, he generally eschewed depicting treachery by Britons. The French unions may have been a Soviet fifth column in Casino Royale--but the British unions (even the Jamaican unions), however much Fleming disliked organized labor, were in the end no traitors to the nation. Many a scientist can be counted among Fleming's villains--but scientists as such were not presented as a perverse lot.
Not so with Haggard, who condemns scientists as such as untrustworthy because their affinity for reason makes them a bunch of damned crypto-Communists; and when the traitor is exposed, the scientist is indeed a man of "the far, far Left," while also being "no gentleman," not solely as a matter of his less than upper-crust social origin but his "character" in his dealings with his wife.1 (And that is not only all we know about him, but, it seems in Haggard's rather old-fashioned view, all that we need to know.)
All that makes it seem less surprising that there was never a Colonel Russell film franchise--and why, even by the standards of series' that did not land successful movie franchises to keep him on people's minds, the books have slipped into comparative obscurity.
1. "Take a clever boy . . . and put him into a laboratory for the next seven or eight years. What emerged inevitably was a materialist . . . a man who would assume without question that the methods of science could be applied to human societies" (58)--a prospect the narrator clearly regarded with horror.
Still, Fleming's creation has held up considerably better than Haggard's, and his longtime protagonist, Colonel Charles Russell, head of the imaginary Special Executive.
Russell, like Bond, is a formidable ex-military counterintelligence operative; like Bond, handsome, suave, urbane; like Bond a man who enjoys good food, drink and the other luxuries. Still, his version of luxury is different. Instead of the dated image of jet air travel and casinos, there is the even more dated image of the club, the country house, enjoyed by this old officer with his regimental moustache and pipe. Bond might brood about the taxi driver's manner, but Russell never has occasion to, appearing to exist untouched by the changes of the world surrounding him.
Indeed, at times Haggard's characters can almost seem caricatures (at least, to an American rather sensitized to "stage Englishmen" by terrible Hollywood writing). This is particularly the case when Haggard writes figures like Sir Jeremy Bates in Slow Burner, with the following line exemplary: "it was barely four. It would be unheard of for Sir Jeremy Bates to leave his office at tea-time" (116); or better still, when Bates comes home after a drunk to a valet who offers no question or comment:
Confound and damn the fellow! His lack of interest was an insult. A gentleman's gentleman--the convention had survived, the convention of the English manservant, secret, uninquiring, impersonal (111-112).It is much the same with William Nichol, who after nearly getting run over by a would-be assassin in a big truck, and losing his hat, takes a cab because he "was not a man to walk hatless in London" (127).
Such things are even more evident in their social attitudes, the bigotry and snobbery fiercer and more bluntly expressed. While Fleming wrote many a foreign villain, he generally eschewed depicting treachery by Britons. The French unions may have been a Soviet fifth column in Casino Royale--but the British unions (even the Jamaican unions), however much Fleming disliked organized labor, were in the end no traitors to the nation. Many a scientist can be counted among Fleming's villains--but scientists as such were not presented as a perverse lot.
Not so with Haggard, who condemns scientists as such as untrustworthy because their affinity for reason makes them a bunch of damned crypto-Communists; and when the traitor is exposed, the scientist is indeed a man of "the far, far Left," while also being "no gentleman," not solely as a matter of his less than upper-crust social origin but his "character" in his dealings with his wife.1 (And that is not only all we know about him, but, it seems in Haggard's rather old-fashioned view, all that we need to know.)
All that makes it seem less surprising that there was never a Colonel Russell film franchise--and why, even by the standards of series' that did not land successful movie franchises to keep him on people's minds, the books have slipped into comparative obscurity.
1. "Take a clever boy . . . and put him into a laboratory for the next seven or eight years. What emerged inevitably was a materialist . . . a man who would assume without question that the methods of science could be applied to human societies" (58)--a prospect the narrator clearly regarded with horror.
Sunday, December 18, 2016
Review: Slow Burner, by William Haggard
Boston: Little, Brown, 1965, pp. 192.
WARNING: MILD SPOILERS
Until recently I had read only one novel by William Haggard, mainly because it was conveniently available at the time--Yesterday's Enemy (discussed here).
In hindsight, that book--a relatively late entry into his long-running Colonel Russell series--seems less characteristic than I took it for. The book had Russell out in the world on his own, away from the milieu of British officialdom that looms so large in his other books.
Recently, however, I picked up the first book in the series, Slow Burner, particularly with an eye--again--to the status he once enjoyed as a master of the form, on a level with writers like le Carre or Fleming. Reading it I found Haggard's writing on the whole plain and straightforward (much more so than le Carre, or even Fleming), but not artless. He has an admirable economy with words, and his writing an appealing crispness and polish, especially evident in his use of evocative sentence fragments. ("Afternoon tea on magnificent silver and not enough to eat" (72), he wrote, in a suggestion of the extremely shabby gentility of a family of Irish aristocrats.)
I would add, too, that his interest in character is considerable. Like le Carre Haggard has a deep interest in this particular milieu--the grown-up public schoolboy-senior civil servant-class of which Haggard was a part; indeed, as le Carre has said was the case with himself, this can seem his primary interest, and his writing about espionage just his way of approaching it. The ambitions and anxieties of the people living in this world, their affections and enmities, their jealousies and prejudices, are the stuff of the book to a very great degree--though unlike le Carre Haggard is not terribly critical of his subject. Indeed, while his characters were clearly not of our time, they did not seem nearly so much out of theirs as they do in le Carre's books. There is insecurity about the country's position, and about their class's place within the country--the novel actually opens with senior government scientist William Nichol feeling inhibited about being seen smoking a cigar in the back of the government car in which he is being driven in the current age of austerity and egalitarianism--but one does not get the sense that the country's imperial stature and its traditional ruling class are finished, the way one does reading about Smiley and his people.
The book reflects this in its handling of its two principal plot threads--one, the playing out of the complex of personal antagonisms within the Establishment that eventually leads to attempted murder (particularly that centering on Sir Jeremy Bates and Nichol); and the other, a more conventional spy tale of identifying and stopping a traitorous scientist selling out Queen and Country. The former gets the greater attention, and frankly holds more interest, while the latter is rather slow-moving, and slight on thriller mechanics, the more so because the central character, Colonel Charles Russell, is chief of a counterintelligence service (the imaginary Special Executive) rather than an agent, and one who for the most part acts like a service chief, giving orders and dealing with other officials, rather than playing spy games out in the field in spite of his position. Surveillance is much more often talked about than portrayed; while the one piece of black bag work shown rather than just discussed is essentially played for laughs--and like many an old comedy, concludes with wedding bells.
On the whole the result is uneven, but engaging--if more for its idiosyncracies, the stronger of its characterizations, and its quality of being a time capsule from '50s Britain (a matter meriting its own post, here) than the actual spy story within it, whether taken from the standpoint of le Carre-like drama, or Fleming-like thrills.
WARNING: MILD SPOILERS
Until recently I had read only one novel by William Haggard, mainly because it was conveniently available at the time--Yesterday's Enemy (discussed here).
In hindsight, that book--a relatively late entry into his long-running Colonel Russell series--seems less characteristic than I took it for. The book had Russell out in the world on his own, away from the milieu of British officialdom that looms so large in his other books.
Recently, however, I picked up the first book in the series, Slow Burner, particularly with an eye--again--to the status he once enjoyed as a master of the form, on a level with writers like le Carre or Fleming. Reading it I found Haggard's writing on the whole plain and straightforward (much more so than le Carre, or even Fleming), but not artless. He has an admirable economy with words, and his writing an appealing crispness and polish, especially evident in his use of evocative sentence fragments. ("Afternoon tea on magnificent silver and not enough to eat" (72), he wrote, in a suggestion of the extremely shabby gentility of a family of Irish aristocrats.)
I would add, too, that his interest in character is considerable. Like le Carre Haggard has a deep interest in this particular milieu--the grown-up public schoolboy-senior civil servant-class of which Haggard was a part; indeed, as le Carre has said was the case with himself, this can seem his primary interest, and his writing about espionage just his way of approaching it. The ambitions and anxieties of the people living in this world, their affections and enmities, their jealousies and prejudices, are the stuff of the book to a very great degree--though unlike le Carre Haggard is not terribly critical of his subject. Indeed, while his characters were clearly not of our time, they did not seem nearly so much out of theirs as they do in le Carre's books. There is insecurity about the country's position, and about their class's place within the country--the novel actually opens with senior government scientist William Nichol feeling inhibited about being seen smoking a cigar in the back of the government car in which he is being driven in the current age of austerity and egalitarianism--but one does not get the sense that the country's imperial stature and its traditional ruling class are finished, the way one does reading about Smiley and his people.
The book reflects this in its handling of its two principal plot threads--one, the playing out of the complex of personal antagonisms within the Establishment that eventually leads to attempted murder (particularly that centering on Sir Jeremy Bates and Nichol); and the other, a more conventional spy tale of identifying and stopping a traitorous scientist selling out Queen and Country. The former gets the greater attention, and frankly holds more interest, while the latter is rather slow-moving, and slight on thriller mechanics, the more so because the central character, Colonel Charles Russell, is chief of a counterintelligence service (the imaginary Special Executive) rather than an agent, and one who for the most part acts like a service chief, giving orders and dealing with other officials, rather than playing spy games out in the field in spite of his position. Surveillance is much more often talked about than portrayed; while the one piece of black bag work shown rather than just discussed is essentially played for laughs--and like many an old comedy, concludes with wedding bells.
On the whole the result is uneven, but engaging--if more for its idiosyncracies, the stronger of its characterizations, and its quality of being a time capsule from '50s Britain (a matter meriting its own post, here) than the actual spy story within it, whether taken from the standpoint of le Carre-like drama, or Fleming-like thrills.
Review: Warfare State: Britain, 1920-1970, by David Edgerton
New York: University of Cambridge Press, 2006, pp. 382.
Before delving into a discussion of Edgerton's book, it is important to remember the context in which he wrote--and especially the "conventional wisdom" about British history to which he opposes his own, different analysis. It goes something like this:
In Edgerton's view all this overlooks the reality of a massive British "warfare state"--a large "military-industrial complex," comparable to that of the United States, which was not an exceptional product of wartime, but was massive through the interwar years and after; which for significant portions of even relatively recent peacetime British history consumed more resources than social services; and in practice represented massive state intervention in industry, the economy, science and British life generally. Indeed, Edgerton argues that acknowledging the warfare state's place in British life--the size and cost of the armed forces, their connections with the political, industrial and scientific establishments--automatically complicates, subverts and even debunks the conventional ideas about British history (the works promulgating which are in his phrasing "anti-histories," for giving us claims so much at odds with the facts).
In arguing this view Edgerton offers both a history of the warfare state for the period identified in the subtitle (1920-1970), and the ways in which its reality clashes with the received historiography--two objects to which almost equal time is devoted (five chapters principally given over to the former, three to the latter). Given the difference, and the scale of his efforts on both accounts, it may be best to discuss them separately.
In presenting the history of the warfare state, Edgerton does not present a complete or comprehensive picture--which would have to begin long before 1920 (the 1880s at the latest), and continue up to the present. Moreover, rather than rendering full coverage even of the 1920-1970 period on which he focuses, the five chapters that deal with its actual history look at paticular aspects over particular periods (the World War II-era research effort, the Harold Wilson-era rhetoric and policymaking about the "white heat" of the scientific-technological revolution). Unsurprisingly, there is much that might be discussed which gets little attention (like how the warfare state interacted with the broader line of British economic history). Still, the various pieces of analysis are underpinned by a copious, often systematic use of evidence ranging from statistics on expenditures and shares of national income devoted to defense, the ranking of Britain as an arms exporter (at times slighted, he reports, because ships and planes have not been counted as weapons!) or post-war R & D (a higher share of national income than any other nation in Europe, actually); to the extensive description of the alphabet soup of military and military-affiliated research agencies and establishments (the book actually has a guide to the acronyms up front); to the profiling of the people in these establishments, and the governments generally (which makes clear the image of a government of classicists had long since lost its salience); to his examination of the context and nature of major initiatives (like Harold Wilson's Ministry of Technology, not intended to redress a lack of investment in technology but to rationalize the prestige-oriented mentality that gave the world the Concorde). Together they add up to a satisfactorily broad and deep image of the existence and weight of the warfare state of which he writes.
In pursuing his second object, the historical debate, Edgerton's coverage is similarly robust. He also makes his fair share of valuable observations here--not least the fact that in a country that really was as unconcerned with the use of science as some have charged, the charges of writers like Barnett and Snow would have not have had any traction. His handling of the material is also nuanced enough that he acknowledges the grain of truth in some of the misperceptions of which he is so critical. (Harsh as he is on C.P. Snow, Edgerton does note that public school-educated, arts degree-holding Oxbridge types really were more likely to be administrators than science degree-holders--and concedes that Snow could have made his correct argument more persuasive by making reference to such facts.)
On the whole, it is a solid defense of his position--though in fairness, it is not a particularly difficult one to find support for, and perhaps easier than he admits. Many of the essential facts to which he points are well known to anyone who has paid much attention to this history. (The post-World War II era may have seen the rise of the welfare state--but that it also saw the hugely expensive Korean War-era rearmament, the advent of Britain as a nuclear power, and unprecedented peacetime National Service until 1961, are hardly obscure information.)
Indeed, it seemed to me that he exaggerated the extent to which historians have adhered to the conventional view, particularly as it affects not just writing about British history specifically, but the historiography of war and technology generally as a scene where "civilian industry, science and technology . . . transformed modern war" rather than the other way around to produce "histories only of civilian science and technology applied to war . . . the civilianisation of war," with "military agencies hardly figur[ing]" in the discussion of "war economies." (It seemed to me that he rather mischaracterized William H. McNeill's classic The Pursuit of Power, in particular.1)
All the same, this is something of a quibble, especially given Edgerton's emphasis on the general trend of the historiography, and British historiography generally. It also detracts very little from the very great deal that he gets right with a massive and generally solid synthesis of information ranging from economic history to popular culture--and which cuts through a good deal of the nonsense surrounding such matters as Britain's economic decline. That Britain went from punching above its weight to below it in manufactures, at great cost to its prosperity, is not refuted here--but the fact cannot be simplistically blamed on a cultural lack of enthusiasm for science; the refusal of the British government to involve itself with science, technology and industry; an inability to produce adequate numbers of scientifically trained personnel; or an unwillingness to fund high levels of research and development. The way in which the British state went about using those resources, and the ends to which it used them, are instead the issue. However, that is a subject for another book altogether.
NOTES
1. Contrary to the impression Edgerton gives of McNeill, he elaborates the military-industrial complex phenomenon in late nineteenth century Britain, and draws comparisons with the United States in this respect, even using that exact terminology less associated with Britain. Indeed, a section of Chapter Eight--Military-Industrial Interaction 1884-1914--in McNeill's book is actually headed "Emergence of the Military-Industrial Complex in Britain," and makes it very clear that the armed forces were not merely passive consumers of civilian technology. (The thesis of McNeill's book is actually that in the industrial age the center of gravity moved back from the marketplace to a "command economy," in warfare as elsewhere.)
McNeill's account of the rise of the naval-industrial complex in Britain in the aforementioned section identifies bureaucratic in-fighting as a key factor, as with the role of John Fisher, and notes that it was his object to use market competition to stimulate the activity of the Navy's own, state supplier. Additionally, while this failed, the Navy became an increasing driver of "deliberate" invention, as
Before delving into a discussion of Edgerton's book, it is important to remember the context in which he wrote--and especially the "conventional wisdom" about British history to which he opposes his own, different analysis. It goes something like this:
Britain has historically been a pacific, free-trading nation, with a strong anti-statist, anti-militarist tradition--and, perhaps not so science-minded as some of its people might have wished--so that one can think of it as "the un-Germany." Accordingly Britain's creation of massive armies to help resist Germany's attempts to dominate the European continent in the world wars (1914-1918, 1939-1945) was something exceptional. Indeed, the epoch-making character of the change was reflected in the way this mobilization contributed to the transformation of the order at home--most notably in the rise of the Labor Party and the establishment of the welfare state after World War I and especially World War II, which proved the dominant theme of the nation's history for the generation that followed.Liberals tend to view this reading of the past very favorably, to glorify Britain's being a liberal un-Germany. By contrast, others are more critical. Conservatives, epitomized perhaps by Corelli Barnett, view Britain's anti-statism and anti-militarism, and the lack of enthusiasm for science and especially applied science, as weaknesses which disadvantaged it in industrial and economic competition. They hold, moreover, that this economic weakness, in combination with anti-militarism, left the country ill-prepared for the wars it had to fight, and ultimately cost it a great deal of blood and treasure, prosperity and power. And many on the left, if of a technocratic mold (a C.P. Snow, for example), while not buying all of this critique (they generally do not wish for a more militaristic Britain), do nonetheless espouse significant parts of it--quick enough to attribute Britain's industrial, economic and social failings to the grip of an outmoded ruling class and its prejudices (its disregard for science, etc.) on its political life.
In Edgerton's view all this overlooks the reality of a massive British "warfare state"--a large "military-industrial complex," comparable to that of the United States, which was not an exceptional product of wartime, but was massive through the interwar years and after; which for significant portions of even relatively recent peacetime British history consumed more resources than social services; and in practice represented massive state intervention in industry, the economy, science and British life generally. Indeed, Edgerton argues that acknowledging the warfare state's place in British life--the size and cost of the armed forces, their connections with the political, industrial and scientific establishments--automatically complicates, subverts and even debunks the conventional ideas about British history (the works promulgating which are in his phrasing "anti-histories," for giving us claims so much at odds with the facts).
In arguing this view Edgerton offers both a history of the warfare state for the period identified in the subtitle (1920-1970), and the ways in which its reality clashes with the received historiography--two objects to which almost equal time is devoted (five chapters principally given over to the former, three to the latter). Given the difference, and the scale of his efforts on both accounts, it may be best to discuss them separately.
In presenting the history of the warfare state, Edgerton does not present a complete or comprehensive picture--which would have to begin long before 1920 (the 1880s at the latest), and continue up to the present. Moreover, rather than rendering full coverage even of the 1920-1970 period on which he focuses, the five chapters that deal with its actual history look at paticular aspects over particular periods (the World War II-era research effort, the Harold Wilson-era rhetoric and policymaking about the "white heat" of the scientific-technological revolution). Unsurprisingly, there is much that might be discussed which gets little attention (like how the warfare state interacted with the broader line of British economic history). Still, the various pieces of analysis are underpinned by a copious, often systematic use of evidence ranging from statistics on expenditures and shares of national income devoted to defense, the ranking of Britain as an arms exporter (at times slighted, he reports, because ships and planes have not been counted as weapons!) or post-war R & D (a higher share of national income than any other nation in Europe, actually); to the extensive description of the alphabet soup of military and military-affiliated research agencies and establishments (the book actually has a guide to the acronyms up front); to the profiling of the people in these establishments, and the governments generally (which makes clear the image of a government of classicists had long since lost its salience); to his examination of the context and nature of major initiatives (like Harold Wilson's Ministry of Technology, not intended to redress a lack of investment in technology but to rationalize the prestige-oriented mentality that gave the world the Concorde). Together they add up to a satisfactorily broad and deep image of the existence and weight of the warfare state of which he writes.
In pursuing his second object, the historical debate, Edgerton's coverage is similarly robust. He also makes his fair share of valuable observations here--not least the fact that in a country that really was as unconcerned with the use of science as some have charged, the charges of writers like Barnett and Snow would have not have had any traction. His handling of the material is also nuanced enough that he acknowledges the grain of truth in some of the misperceptions of which he is so critical. (Harsh as he is on C.P. Snow, Edgerton does note that public school-educated, arts degree-holding Oxbridge types really were more likely to be administrators than science degree-holders--and concedes that Snow could have made his correct argument more persuasive by making reference to such facts.)
On the whole, it is a solid defense of his position--though in fairness, it is not a particularly difficult one to find support for, and perhaps easier than he admits. Many of the essential facts to which he points are well known to anyone who has paid much attention to this history. (The post-World War II era may have seen the rise of the welfare state--but that it also saw the hugely expensive Korean War-era rearmament, the advent of Britain as a nuclear power, and unprecedented peacetime National Service until 1961, are hardly obscure information.)
Indeed, it seemed to me that he exaggerated the extent to which historians have adhered to the conventional view, particularly as it affects not just writing about British history specifically, but the historiography of war and technology generally as a scene where "civilian industry, science and technology . . . transformed modern war" rather than the other way around to produce "histories only of civilian science and technology applied to war . . . the civilianisation of war," with "military agencies hardly figur[ing]" in the discussion of "war economies." (It seemed to me that he rather mischaracterized William H. McNeill's classic The Pursuit of Power, in particular.1)
All the same, this is something of a quibble, especially given Edgerton's emphasis on the general trend of the historiography, and British historiography generally. It also detracts very little from the very great deal that he gets right with a massive and generally solid synthesis of information ranging from economic history to popular culture--and which cuts through a good deal of the nonsense surrounding such matters as Britain's economic decline. That Britain went from punching above its weight to below it in manufactures, at great cost to its prosperity, is not refuted here--but the fact cannot be simplistically blamed on a cultural lack of enthusiasm for science; the refusal of the British government to involve itself with science, technology and industry; an inability to produce adequate numbers of scientifically trained personnel; or an unwillingness to fund high levels of research and development. The way in which the British state went about using those resources, and the ends to which it used them, are instead the issue. However, that is a subject for another book altogether.
NOTES
1. Contrary to the impression Edgerton gives of McNeill, he elaborates the military-industrial complex phenomenon in late nineteenth century Britain, and draws comparisons with the United States in this respect, even using that exact terminology less associated with Britain. Indeed, a section of Chapter Eight--Military-Industrial Interaction 1884-1914--in McNeill's book is actually headed "Emergence of the Military-Industrial Complex in Britain," and makes it very clear that the armed forces were not merely passive consumers of civilian technology. (The thesis of McNeill's book is actually that in the industrial age the center of gravity moved back from the marketplace to a "command economy," in warfare as elsewhere.)
McNeill's account of the rise of the naval-industrial complex in Britain in the aforementioned section identifies bureaucratic in-fighting as a key factor, as with the role of John Fisher, and notes that it was his object to use market competition to stimulate the activity of the Navy's own, state supplier. Additionally, while this failed, the Navy became an increasing driver of "deliberate" invention, as
Navy technicians set out to specify the desirable performance characteristics for a new gun, or ship, and, in effect, challenged engineers to come up with appropriate designs . . . Within limits, tactical and strategic planning began to shape warships instead of the other way around. Above all, Admiralty officials ceased to set brakes on innovation by sitting in judgment on novelties proposed by the trade (279). And all this, of course, led to "military technology . . . constitut[ing] the leading edge of British (and world) engineering and technological development" (284).The page numbers I cite here are from the 1984 University of Chicago Press 1st edition.
Wednesday, December 14, 2016
Star Wars' Place in Film History
Looking back it is clear that Star Wars was not the first science fiction film--nor the first space-themed science fiction megahit. (2001 was the highest-grosser of 1968, a year that also saw Barbarella and Planet of the Apes become pop culture icons.) It was not even the first film to serve up galactic empire-style space opera. (Barbarella did that, certainly, and in a quieter way, so did Forbidden Planet, among others.)
At any rate, the significance of Star Wars' portrayal of the stuff of pulp space opera, unprecedentedly lavish as it was, ought not to be exaggerated. Contrary to popular belief, splashy galactic empires never became all that popular on the big screen. (Get away from Star Wars, and the list of really commercially successful films of the type proves rather short--certainly a lot shorter than the list of, for example, successful superhero films.) Indeed, one can think of the Star Wars as occupying a fairly narrow niche because of this.
What Star Wars really did was point Hollywood to something more basic than that--the pattern of the contemporary blockbuster. Hollywood had been making sequels since forever--but trilogies telling an extended story, and prequels, were something more novel. So was the intensiveness of the merchandising (which was why the executives at Fox let George Lucas have the rights, and doubtless kicked themselves afterward for doing so).
One may be ambivalent about that, seeing it as a simple matter of marketing than the artistic or entertainment value of cinema, but the films' innovation extends, too, to the essential structure of the movies--the structure of the action film specifically. The Bond films of the '60s had established this, organizing an unprecedentedly fast-paced film around giving the viewer a "bump" every three minutes or so, with elaborate set pieces at the center of this, filmed with the help of a battery of techniques (from short takes to exaggerated sound effects) to maximize their visceral impact.
Of course, Star Wars came along quite a few years after the Bond films--fifteen years or so after Dr. No. And Hollywood did cash in on the Bond craze, imitating the movies, but generally in a superficial way. The studios made spy movies, and other kinds of action movies (cop movies like Bullitt and The French Connection each had a big car chase in them)--but the filmmakers there didn't quite get the way they were put together (so that Bullitt, and French Connection are just crime dramas which happen to have a car chase in them, and even the Derek Flint movies look pretty flimsy as action films).
That changed when Lucas came along and served up, as he himself put it, a blend of James Bond with Flash Gordon, which because of that blend went Bond one better--because science fiction, with its exotic aliens, super powers and imaginary vehicles makes it easy to serve up bigger, flashier action than any spy or cop adventure, and because the production entailed a special effects revolution. The key innovation was the computer-controlled camera that, because of its precision, made it easier and cheaper to take lots and lots of effects shots, getting scenes right. That opening shot of the Star Destroyer's underbelly probably couldn't have been done without it.
And so today we're not awash in galactic empire movies--but action movies and science fiction movies and especially science fiction action movies have been playing at the multiplex all year long for about as long as any young person today can remember. Many are ambivalent about this--or outright critical. I don't argue that we could use more diversity in our films--diversity of subject, theme, tone, idea. But all the same, there is no denying the technical accomplishment of the saga, or its influence in this regard, precisely because of how it won over millions of fans, and has gone on winning them down to the present day.
At any rate, the significance of Star Wars' portrayal of the stuff of pulp space opera, unprecedentedly lavish as it was, ought not to be exaggerated. Contrary to popular belief, splashy galactic empires never became all that popular on the big screen. (Get away from Star Wars, and the list of really commercially successful films of the type proves rather short--certainly a lot shorter than the list of, for example, successful superhero films.) Indeed, one can think of the Star Wars as occupying a fairly narrow niche because of this.
What Star Wars really did was point Hollywood to something more basic than that--the pattern of the contemporary blockbuster. Hollywood had been making sequels since forever--but trilogies telling an extended story, and prequels, were something more novel. So was the intensiveness of the merchandising (which was why the executives at Fox let George Lucas have the rights, and doubtless kicked themselves afterward for doing so).
One may be ambivalent about that, seeing it as a simple matter of marketing than the artistic or entertainment value of cinema, but the films' innovation extends, too, to the essential structure of the movies--the structure of the action film specifically. The Bond films of the '60s had established this, organizing an unprecedentedly fast-paced film around giving the viewer a "bump" every three minutes or so, with elaborate set pieces at the center of this, filmed with the help of a battery of techniques (from short takes to exaggerated sound effects) to maximize their visceral impact.
Of course, Star Wars came along quite a few years after the Bond films--fifteen years or so after Dr. No. And Hollywood did cash in on the Bond craze, imitating the movies, but generally in a superficial way. The studios made spy movies, and other kinds of action movies (cop movies like Bullitt and The French Connection each had a big car chase in them)--but the filmmakers there didn't quite get the way they were put together (so that Bullitt, and French Connection are just crime dramas which happen to have a car chase in them, and even the Derek Flint movies look pretty flimsy as action films).
That changed when Lucas came along and served up, as he himself put it, a blend of James Bond with Flash Gordon, which because of that blend went Bond one better--because science fiction, with its exotic aliens, super powers and imaginary vehicles makes it easy to serve up bigger, flashier action than any spy or cop adventure, and because the production entailed a special effects revolution. The key innovation was the computer-controlled camera that, because of its precision, made it easier and cheaper to take lots and lots of effects shots, getting scenes right. That opening shot of the Star Destroyer's underbelly probably couldn't have been done without it.
And so today we're not awash in galactic empire movies--but action movies and science fiction movies and especially science fiction action movies have been playing at the multiplex all year long for about as long as any young person today can remember. Many are ambivalent about this--or outright critical. I don't argue that we could use more diversity in our films--diversity of subject, theme, tone, idea. But all the same, there is no denying the technical accomplishment of the saga, or its influence in this regard, precisely because of how it won over millions of fans, and has gone on winning them down to the present day.
Monday, December 12, 2016
Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress: Thoughts on my First Viewing
I first saw Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress (1958) on Bravo before its lamentable turn to particularly disgusting versions of the reality show format.
I have to admit that I was a bit thrown by that first viewing--and even a bit let down.
One of the reasons I watched it--the first Kurosawa film I saw--was that I had heard about The Hidden Fortress being a basis (the basis?) for Star Wars.
I suppose I expected Star Wars with horses and katana instead of spaceships and light sabers.
But it wasn't that.
We get C-3PO and R-2D2, Leia and Obi-Wan, and even a Darth Vader--redemption and all. But we don't get a Luke--so, no hero's journey.
There are good guys and bad guys--but no epic, cosmic, "universal" battle of good and evil. We have instead a smaller-scale, local conflict between two clans that is deeply rooted in the feudal culture with which we are presented, with its particular ethos and loyalties.
I might add that while there are some fights, it's not really an action movie. Aside from the fact that people just weren't making action movies as we know them back then (that awaited the Bond films in the '60s), the film skews comedic, at times rather darkly comic--just as you'd expect if Lucas decided to put the droids and their misadventures at the center of his film, and also made them a couple of idiot backstabbing freebooters who don't think twice about doing things they would never put in something advertised on the Disney Channel.
It is all a reminder not just of how much Lucas owed Kurosawa, but also how much he owed his numerous other inspirations--to Joseph Campbell, to a long tradition of pulp space opera, to the adrenaline-oriented structure of the James Bond films that he seems to have figured out and indeed mastered and improved upon before anyone else in Hollywood managed to wrap their minds around it (an achievement many seem to intuit, but rarely spell out clearly), among much, much else.
After realizing that, I took another look at this movie--taking it on its own terms, rather than as a prototype for a very different film, and enjoyed it for the work of art that it is.
I have to admit that I was a bit thrown by that first viewing--and even a bit let down.
One of the reasons I watched it--the first Kurosawa film I saw--was that I had heard about The Hidden Fortress being a basis (the basis?) for Star Wars.
I suppose I expected Star Wars with horses and katana instead of spaceships and light sabers.
But it wasn't that.
We get C-3PO and R-2D2, Leia and Obi-Wan, and even a Darth Vader--redemption and all. But we don't get a Luke--so, no hero's journey.
There are good guys and bad guys--but no epic, cosmic, "universal" battle of good and evil. We have instead a smaller-scale, local conflict between two clans that is deeply rooted in the feudal culture with which we are presented, with its particular ethos and loyalties.
I might add that while there are some fights, it's not really an action movie. Aside from the fact that people just weren't making action movies as we know them back then (that awaited the Bond films in the '60s), the film skews comedic, at times rather darkly comic--just as you'd expect if Lucas decided to put the droids and their misadventures at the center of his film, and also made them a couple of idiot backstabbing freebooters who don't think twice about doing things they would never put in something advertised on the Disney Channel.
After realizing that, I took another look at this movie--taking it on its own terms, rather than as a prototype for a very different film, and enjoyed it for the work of art that it is.
G.I. Joe and James Bond: A Few More Thoughts
Recently thinking about the G.I. Joe cartoon I was struck by how strong the similarities and connections to the Bond films are--G.I. Joe arguably being derived from Bond by way of Nick Fury, Cobra pretty closely hewing to SPECTRE in its essentials, and so forth.
However, it also seems worth considering the differences-- beyond the obvious fact that, as a syndicated weekday cartoon of the '80s, it was sanitized to a much greater degree. (James Bond stand-in Matthew Burke not allowed to smoke or drink or pursue Lady Jaye in any but the most subtle fashion when he dropped by in "The Spy Who Rooked Me," while any but the most oblique reference to death was rare.)
The most striking difference may be how much more over-the-top G.I. Joe was. This seems partly a matter of how what counts as over-the-top action had escalated since the '60s--big doses of science fiction increasingly necessary by that point. However, it also reflects that it was a drawn and animated rather than a filmed live-action product--meaning that if they could think it up, they could put it on the screen. It reflects, too, the fact that because it was made as a comic book/kid's cartoon there was more latitude to get zany (writing in ghosts, Cthulhu-like monsters and super-villains created from the DNA of famous conquerors), or just plain not make any sense. After all, when Bond blew up a SPECTRE headquarters, it usually took Ernst Stavro Blofeld a year or so to turn up again in another fortress--but Cobra seems to manage comparable feats on something like a monthly, even weekly, basis, with the new facilities usually sufficient to make even the most grandiose Bond villain green(er) with envy. (Hugo Drax could only wish his space station was as large, elaborate and well-equipped as the one we see in "The Pyramid of Darkness.")
Indeed, despite being an outlawed terrorist organization without any sign of a secure territorial base (despite which Cobra temples seem conveniently accessible everywhere), or the resources of a major nation-state sponsor (no nation is ever depicted as allied with them, all opposed to them, even the U.S. and Soviet Union cooperating), Cobra seems to have at its command the conventional military capabilities of a superpower. This extends to the ability to deploy operational fighter squadrons, tank forces, submarines (and even flying aircraft carriers!) anywhere in the world in a hurry--while however many of these the Joes capture or destroy, there are (usually) plenty of replacements available. The situation is in fact such that they regularly use all these weapons in major strikes against Joe facilities and forces on U.S. soil at will.1
The extreme casualness with such detail aside, there is also the focus of the series not on a single protagonist, or even a small, close-knit group of characters, but the big team as a whole, with its attention divided among many different characters, enabling those who ordinarily were just supporting players to often get their own episodes. (In season two, in fact, about half the episodes centered on characters only introduced in that season in one way or the other, with Mainframe, Leatherneck, Lifeline--and of course, the always scenery-chewing Sergeant Slaughter--each getting to be the star of an episode at least once.) Commensurately other earlier or more popular characters scarcely got any screen time at all.
Principally a function of the show being a promo for a large and continually expanding line of action figures, I suppose, it nonetheless wound up a far cry from the hardcore individualism of James Bond--and a rarity for American television in that way.
1. Indeed, the show was often iffy even on stuff that wouldn't have compromised the storyline much--like why the chain of command in this large, elite, joint-service military unit goes straight down from General Hawk to noncommissioned and warrant officers Duke, Flint and Beachhead; or how everyone so effortlessly switches between very different and hugely demanding combat specialties, not in a pinch but as a matter of routine. (Shipwreck, according to everything we are told about him a sailor in the narrow sense of the term, who has never been a naval aviator or a member of any other service, casually goes from driving battle tanks to flying attack helicopters to piloting space-capable fighter planes from episode to episode.)
However, it also seems worth considering the differences-- beyond the obvious fact that, as a syndicated weekday cartoon of the '80s, it was sanitized to a much greater degree. (James Bond stand-in Matthew Burke not allowed to smoke or drink or pursue Lady Jaye in any but the most subtle fashion when he dropped by in "The Spy Who Rooked Me," while any but the most oblique reference to death was rare.)
The most striking difference may be how much more over-the-top G.I. Joe was. This seems partly a matter of how what counts as over-the-top action had escalated since the '60s--big doses of science fiction increasingly necessary by that point. However, it also reflects that it was a drawn and animated rather than a filmed live-action product--meaning that if they could think it up, they could put it on the screen. It reflects, too, the fact that because it was made as a comic book/kid's cartoon there was more latitude to get zany (writing in ghosts, Cthulhu-like monsters and super-villains created from the DNA of famous conquerors), or just plain not make any sense. After all, when Bond blew up a SPECTRE headquarters, it usually took Ernst Stavro Blofeld a year or so to turn up again in another fortress--but Cobra seems to manage comparable feats on something like a monthly, even weekly, basis, with the new facilities usually sufficient to make even the most grandiose Bond villain green(er) with envy. (Hugo Drax could only wish his space station was as large, elaborate and well-equipped as the one we see in "The Pyramid of Darkness.")
Indeed, despite being an outlawed terrorist organization without any sign of a secure territorial base (despite which Cobra temples seem conveniently accessible everywhere), or the resources of a major nation-state sponsor (no nation is ever depicted as allied with them, all opposed to them, even the U.S. and Soviet Union cooperating), Cobra seems to have at its command the conventional military capabilities of a superpower. This extends to the ability to deploy operational fighter squadrons, tank forces, submarines (and even flying aircraft carriers!) anywhere in the world in a hurry--while however many of these the Joes capture or destroy, there are (usually) plenty of replacements available. The situation is in fact such that they regularly use all these weapons in major strikes against Joe facilities and forces on U.S. soil at will.1
The extreme casualness with such detail aside, there is also the focus of the series not on a single protagonist, or even a small, close-knit group of characters, but the big team as a whole, with its attention divided among many different characters, enabling those who ordinarily were just supporting players to often get their own episodes. (In season two, in fact, about half the episodes centered on characters only introduced in that season in one way or the other, with Mainframe, Leatherneck, Lifeline--and of course, the always scenery-chewing Sergeant Slaughter--each getting to be the star of an episode at least once.) Commensurately other earlier or more popular characters scarcely got any screen time at all.
Principally a function of the show being a promo for a large and continually expanding line of action figures, I suppose, it nonetheless wound up a far cry from the hardcore individualism of James Bond--and a rarity for American television in that way.
1. Indeed, the show was often iffy even on stuff that wouldn't have compromised the storyline much--like why the chain of command in this large, elite, joint-service military unit goes straight down from General Hawk to noncommissioned and warrant officers Duke, Flint and Beachhead; or how everyone so effortlessly switches between very different and hugely demanding combat specialties, not in a pinch but as a matter of routine. (Shipwreck, according to everything we are told about him a sailor in the narrow sense of the term, who has never been a naval aviator or a member of any other service, casually goes from driving battle tanks to flying attack helicopters to piloting space-capable fighter planes from episode to episode.)
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