Blue Scream of Jeff: January 2016

Sunday, January 31, 2016

"The Force Awakens:" A New Hope for our dark times?

Since “The Force Awakens” opened a little over a month ago, there’s been one question raging across geekdom that’s been bigger and more controversial than “Who exactly are Rey’s parents?”

That question?

“Star Wars” or “Star Trek?”

Now, to the average “civilian” this may seem like a rather banal question. But not in the geek world.

Oh, no, no, no!

You are either a “Star Wars” fan or a Trekkie/Trekker, because we geeks live in a world of absolutes and you just can’t be both. Whatever the question, you’ve got to pick a side.

Don’t believe me? Go ahead, walk into any geek bar in the multi-verse and ask loudly, “Marvel or DC?” and see what happens. Just be sure your health insurance premium is paid up first.

This absolutist view of fandom has always bothered me, but lately it seems it’s becoming more rigid and intolerant of differing opinions.

Unfortunately this hasn’t surprised me at all because everyone – geeks and normal people alike – seem to becoming more and more rigid in their world view and anyone who disagrees with them is obviously stupid, ignorant, obnoxious and ugly.

My pessimistic view of things isn’t just from watching our politicians acting like a bunch of spoiled 3-year-olds fighting over whose parents are better than whose, but from reading Sci-Fi/Fantasy forums on the ’Net and seeing the often vitriolic way people go after one another when someone disagrees with a cow another person views as holy.

While pondering how this all came to be, I stumbled on this great article by Charlie Jane Anders on io9.com about “The Essential Difference Between Star Wars and Star Trek.”

In a nutshell, she says “Star Wars” is really all about “Fighting the Man” (a group of plucky rebels fighting an oppressive, fascist, militaristic galactic empire) while “Star Trek” is about “Being the Man” (The United Federation of Planets and its starships bringing peace, freedom and self-determination to the frontier).

Not only did Charlie Jane hit the nail right on its proverbial head, but her essay also explains why the recent release of “The Force Awakens” has captured the public’s Zeitgeist.

For at least the last decade, if not longer, there’s been an ever-growing distrust of authority. People view the government with suspicion believing its primary purpose is to take away all their freedoms instead of defending them; they see business people as greedy robber barons out to steal every last penny from their pockets; and even doubt the knowledge of our smartest scientists, believing their warnings about the damage we are doing to our environment is just part of some nefarious, hidden agenda. So it makes sense that people would identify with those plucky rebels who are out stop a re-awakened Dark Side from snuffing out their hard-won freedom.

Now I’m not saying we haven’t been given ample cause to distrust all the institutions we used to believe in. Edward Snowden, government dysfunction, The Great Recession, wars in the Mideast and terrorism have given us all plenty of reasons to believe our worst suspicions about these institutions are true. I just don’t remember things ever being this bad.

I was a child during the Vietnam War and Watergate and came of age during Iran-Contra and even then I don’t remember people being so suspicious of government. Even in the midst of those scandals and the realization we’d lost a major war, people still believed that, at heart, our government was a beacon of freedom and liberty for all the world. Despite a nearly crippling oil embargo, super high inflation, and a presidential extended family that seemed to come straight out of “The Beverly Hillbillies,” people still believed our brand of government was invulnerable to the hatred, fear, suspicion and anger that lead to the rise of regimes like the Nazis, Stalinist Russia or any other, oppressive, totalitarian government.

So what’s happened since to erode our national morale?

I’m sure there are many different answers to this question, each as valid as the next. But as curious as I am to figure out how we got here, I’m more interested in the way we break out of this dark time of distrust in everyone and everything so we can start building that optimistic, utopian future that was the hallmark of “Star Trek.”

Ironically, when the first “Star Wars” came out in 1977, the United States was in another funk as it looked like our influence over the world and status as a superpower was on the wane. Yet somehow, a silly little sci-fi film, managed to give the nation, and perhaps even the world, “A New Hope” and helped set the stage for the rejuvenation of both our spirit and the economy in the “Go-Go ’80s.”

Here’s hoping General Leia, Luke, Rei, Finn and Po and their band of brave Resistance fighters can again help us conquer our dark time of distrust and once again bring hope and optimism back to the universe nation.