Wednesday 31 October 2012

Disney & the Future of Star Wars; or, how about a Sci-Fi Mash-Up with Star Trek, Dr. Who, & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?

Update: 4 May 2020. None of the stories below was commissioned by Disney and will not be appearing at a cinema near you any time soon. Nevertheless, May the Fourth be with you.
   

The recently announced [October 2012] Disney takeover of George Lucas’s Star Wars franchise is causing a great deal of grief and gnashing of teeth.  Aficionados of the Sci-Fi classic seem concerned that the promised new films will somehow be Disnified, perhaps with a regiment of Stormtroopers unrealistically defeated by Seven Dwarves, or the Millennium Falcon risibly outmanoeuvred by a flying elephant, or some other harbinger of the End of Days. But Star Wars lovers needn’t worry. There is surely enough cultural capital in the Vaderverse to sustain at least the promised Star Wars 7, 8, and 9 without having to adulterate these artworks with childish foolishness. And if the new makers are running out of ideas when they decide to story-board Star Wars 10 plus, there’s still no need for them to stoop to having a Wookie in a light-sabre-death-fight with Donald Duck, or, worse, Princess Leia being enslaved by a mouse. Instead, and much more appropriately, they can find interesting inter-textual synergies with other Sci-Fi franchises, such as Star Trek, Dr. Who, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  Indeed, below are some possible plots for Star Wars 10, 11, and 12 based on exactly these potential scenarios.  And some guesses about how, in artistic and entrepreneurial terms, it might all pan out.     

Star Wars 10: “Space Seed”

The Kardashians and their evil leader, Kim, are planning to conquer the entire Galactic entertainment industry and, consequently, the political structures of the whole Milky Way. Luke and the gang are determined to stop them, but don’t have the military or, more importantly, the media resources to do it alone. They therefore team up with internationally well-connected Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the second iteration of the Starship Enterprise in order to defeat the dastardly scheme. In a dramatic twist, Captain Picard, immediately after ordering the final attack on the Kardashians’ Hollywood lair by bellowing “MAKE IT SHOOOOW” in an unnecessarily loud voice suited more to the requirements of live theatre than to film-making and television, is mauled to death by a Wookie who has become deranged with anger at the injustice of such an appalling ham taking a lead role while he, a superior actor, is invisible to the audience, hidden as he is in what he later describes to police psychologists as “a fucking wanking Bigfoot suit.”      

In a subplot, Princess Leia, inevitably sidelined when the real space-ship and laser-gun action narrative begins, goes on a week-long Pan-Galactic-Gargle-Blaster bender on Betelgeuse 5, until rescued by a semi-retired Captain James T. Kirk, who restores her to mental and physical health with his “Space Seed,” after seducing her with a cornographically humorous invitation back to his Space Hotel room to see his “Force.”



                    The Kardashians’ evil leader, Kim (right) and sibling henchperson Kourtney.


Star Wars 11: The League of Cybermen Strikes Back

The League of Cybermen, having failed to take over the Earth and the Milky Way, are planning to conquer a galaxy far, far away. Luke and the gang are determined to stop them, but don’t have the military or, more importantly, the time-travel facilities to do it alone. They therefore team up with Doctor Who in order to defeat the dastardly scheme. In a comedic twist, Han Solo cannot get the hang of flying the Tardis, and there are hilarious scenes of him stalling it, going round in circles, and landing it on its roof, until, in exasperation, he hands over the controls to a gigantic space bear. Solo blames the machinery, calling it a “goddamned un-aerodynamic bean tin.” The Doctor explains that because space is a vacuum there is in fact no need for aerodynamic shaping of space ships, and nor indeed for time-travel vehicles. This information offends Solo’s belief in a universe dominated by symbolically masculine geometries, so he punches The Doctor in the face.

In a subplot, C3PO becomes surprisingly aroused by the rearward attentions of K9, but the tinny cyber-romance scenes are panned by critics because of the young director’s ambitious but lamentably ill-judged attempts at an arty allegorical referencing of Blade Runner, including a confusing, unfeasible, and frankly tragic dual role-play by Harrison Ford.


Star Wars 12: So Long, and Thanks for All the Pish

The Chinese government and the warrior people of Krikkit are planning to conquer the galactic headquarters of the Brockian Ultra-Cricket Association in order to sell the broadcast rights to Sky TV, depriving terrestrial television viewers of free-to-air sports coverage. Luke and the gang are determined to stop them, but don’t have the military or, more importantly, the political connections to do it alone. They therefore team up with Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Trillian, and Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox in order to defeat the dastardly scheme. In a casting twist, after lobbying about negative cinematic representations of Asian Americans, the role of the insanely sadistic chief of the Chinese Secret Service is offered to Alan Rickman. In the film, Rickman holds the Dalai Lama and Yoda hostage, hoping to use their wisdom in dealing with the cunning and double-crossing Rupert Murdoch, who is also played by Alan Rickman. The day is ultimately saved by Darth Vader (who, following the death of Sir Alec Guinness, is played by Alan Rickman), when he turns away from The Dark Side after being told by his brutal bodyguard and sidekick, played by Sean Bean, that one simply does not associate with a man as evil as Rupert Murdoch. 

In a subplot, after many, many lifetimes of sexual abstinence, the Dalai Lama and Yoda find themselves strangely attracted to each other, and an ultimately unresolved homoerotic will-they-won’t-they scenario ensues. 

Sadly, Star Wars 12 bypasses cinemas and DVD release, going straight to Channel 5 and Fox TV, where its only viewers mistake it for a documentary. Disney decides to discontinue the franchise for the good of all humankind, and the producers and directors spend the rest of their lives in the Hollywood Hills giving poolside interviews to large young men with over-sized beards and small young men with over-sized spectacles for broadcast on their niche-audience You Tube channels.

          

Wednesday 10 October 2012

The Rhetoric of David Cameron’s Speech to the Conservative Party today at the Birmingham Party Conference; or, the Conservative PC Lies in Scameron’s Ansprache to the Lizard People today at the Nuremberg Rally.

The Tories, with their US Republican ideological soulmates, long-ago came up with the term “Political Correctness” to describe liberal-left attempts to find respectful language to refer to non-white people, LGBT people, disabled people, and so on.  Of course, the term itself is a kind of political correctness that allows them to demean these efforts to respect others, dismiss others' rights to self-representation, and which constructs such respect for and rights of others as oppression of their own freedom of speech. Or, put another way, their freedom to continue routinely (and without comic effect or political inversion) using words like darkies, benders, mongoes, spazzers, and so on.  There is indeed a whole lexicon of Conservative Political Correctness at work today.  I’ve written before (as have others) about how you can’t say “cuts” anymore; nowadays you have to say “efficiencies,” or at least I wrote about it when I saw Tory Not-Even-Slightly-Secret-Agent Nick Robinson using that whitewashing and factually misleading word: http://stevesarson.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/a-long-tweet-to-nick-robinson.html.  Similarly, in ConPC-speak, the term “something for nothing culture” now applies to people who actually have nothing, rather than people who inherited large fortunes that their parents acquired by maximising them in tax-havens (or low-tax havens and no-tax havens as they might much more accurately be called).  And, of course, the word “not,” in the ConPC dicktionary* means “and break up, privatise, and thereby abolish”: as in the election pledge that “We’ll cut the deficit, not and break up, privatise, and thereby abolish the NHS.” (*Not a typo.) 

I’m writing this as David Cameron (David Scameron) is delivering his keynote speech (Ansprache) to the party faithful (fellow Lizard-People) at today's Conservative Party Conference (Nuremberg Rally).  There will be lots of ConPC (lies) in the Asprache, and in light (the obfuscatory darkness) of the litany of enormously damaging dishonesty I have decided to publish this brand new blogpost about ConPC rhetoric as it might be applied in a Tory version of a history textbook (reheated version of this:
http://stevesarson.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/a-glossary-of-terms-for-tory-history.html with a new context and introduction and one extra joke: at the end below, if you've read this lazy rehash already and want to skip to the only new bit).  

Medieval Society. Early Big Society.

Feudalism. Social responsibility.

Serfdom. Internship.
The Peasants’ Revolt. Class hatred (orig. David Starkey).

Enclosure. Land management efficiencies (necessary and unavoidable, there is no alternative, and it's not at all driven by class-interest or ideology).

The English/British/Civil War/s/Wars of the Three Kingdoms (etc.) / The Interregnum / The Glorious Revolution. The Unfortunate Disruptions.

The Renaissance/Enlightenment/Scientific Revolution. The Birth of Capitalism (orig. Niall Ferguson).

The Birth of Capitalism. The Enlightenment / The Great Going Forward (orig. Niall Ferguson).  

Imperialism/colonialism. Global democratisation (orig. Niall Ferguson).

Empire. Free-trade zone (orig. Niall Ferguson).

The Atlantic Slave Trade. African Labour Recruitment System THAT WAS ABOLISHED BY THE BRITISH (orig. Simon Schama).   

Slavery. Free Labour.

France. South Dorsetshire.

Germany. Unser Vaterland.

World War I. The Unfortunate Incident.

World War II. The Even More Unfortunate Incident.

Europe. Northern Africa.

The United States. Daddy.

Margaret Thatcher. Mummy.

Chartism. (See Peasants’ Revolt.)

Suffragettes. Lesbians.

The Working Classes. The Help (orig. Lucy Worsley).

The Welfare State. The Failed Soviet Union (orig. Dominic Sandbrook).

The National Health Service. The Sixty-Year Mistake. The Medical Business Opportunity.

The Tabloid Press. Our Friends in the North.

Bankers. Masters of the Universe.

Boris. Person born and raised in single-parent household.