Blue Scream of Jeff: July 2018

Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Digging deep into Worldbuilding

One of the best things about Sci-Fi and Fantasy is being swept away by the story and taken to magical lands or strange new worlds in galaxies far, far away.

And if the story happens to be part of an on-going series, so much the better, because as the stories progress, those settings get more and more fleshed out until you can almost imagine yourself living there.

In the parlance of genre, this is called “world building” and the better a writer or writers can do this, the more they will be able to capture the hearts, minds and imagination of fans.
Sounds like a good thing, no?

Well, not always – especially when it comes to us geeks.

You see we sci-fi/fantasy/comic book enthusiasts are a particular lot, and as a community we tend to be more passionate about our likes and dislikes than most normal people. We often catch the smallest of details most others gloss over and put way too much thought into the real-world consequences of those things. It’s something that casual fans of the genre, like Mrs. BlueScream just can’t seem to get her head around.

As a result, we geeks will begin to argue – sometimes quite vehemently – over how that throw-away line of dialogue or plot device makes no sense in the context of the world that’s being created right before our eyes and ears.

Sure, we realize that that line was only meant as a comic moment or the plot device was just a shortcut to propel the story forward without having to bog the action down with a lot of boring detail. But that’s not the point. We’ve already become so invested in this new world, and want it to be so real, that our minds automatically reject even the subtlest of things that would break our suspension of disbelief.

This is why Mrs. BlueSream hates seeing genre movies with me and my geeky friends. (Are there really any other kind of friends?) After the film we will often spend hours dissecting it and discussing “trivial” things she and most other people would never have noticed.

Another thing she fails to understand is that examining these obscure details can also add an entire new layer of subtext and meaning to a story. More often than not, it makes the film, book, comic or TV show a hell of a lot darker than I think the author or creators intended or even realized.

Let’s take “Star Wars” as an example.

The now 10-film franchise is, on the surface, a simple morality tale. In it, the freedom-loving, democratic good guys always triumph over the oppressive, fascists bad guys. Yet if we start to take a closer look at some of the background details built into these films, we being to see that our heroes have a few dark stains on their white hats…

Perhaps biggest and most obvious of those stains is not only their tolerance of slavery, but the fact that many of them are slave owners themselves!

I am, of course referring to the Droids, but there are human (or organic) slaves too, which when you begin to think about that, makes no sense given that droids would seem to be a more practical labor force than living beings. But I digress....

When we first meet Anakin Skywalker, in episode one, “The Phantom Menace,” he and his mother are slaves on Tatooine. When Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi first encounter him they show no outrage over the fact that he is a slave or that slavery exists here. Then they show no interest in freeing him until they Qui-Gon discovers Anakin is extremely Force sensitive and might be the “Chosen One” who is prophesized to bring balance to The Force.

Not only is this a callous disregard for the fates of an oppressed group by JEDI KNIGHTS who are supposed to be protectors of the weak, but they do nothing to free Anakin’s mother, who you would think would be as important to the Jedi as Mary, mother of Jesus, was/is to Christians.

Yes, there is some lip service in the movie that they don’t have the money to buy both Anakin and his mother from their owners. But the fact they are willing to buy and sell people says they are OK and accept the concept of slavery. If the Republic didn’t really tolerate slavery, and the Jedi were their galactic policemen, surely two Jedi should have been able not only free both of them but put an end to slavery on that world once and for all!

Turns out, L3 was right. Droids are slaves in the

"Star Wars" universe

Again, I don’t think this was an intentional bit of world building. The writers just needed a shortcut to set events in motion that would send Anakin down the path to the Dark Side so they decided to have Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan seemingly disregard the precepts of their order. That way she was “free” to be killed off at a later time convenient to the plot.

Of course it’s easy to find faults with the prequel trilogy, but the slavery subtext, especially when it comes to the treatment of Droids, is present from the first “Star Wars” film.

Remember when Luke, Obi-Wan and the droids enter the cantina in Mos Eisley? The bartender points to C3P0 and RD-D2 and says “We don’t serve their kind in here!” It’s the exact same thing you’d expect to hear in the Jim Crow South.

This attitude carries right through to the most current movie, “Solo: A Star Wars Story.”
In it Lando’s personal droid, L3-37 constantly talks about droid rights and how (if you’ll excuse the expression) “droid lives matter.”

It’s obvious from the way this is handled in the film that the writers were NOT trying to make a statement about equal rights for all. It’s played for laughs, as if someone today were to suggest that Siri, Alex, Cortana and OK Google, should be granted personhood.

This film also makes it clear that everyone in that universe thinks of droids as nothing but mindless automatons, with no individuality, feelings or self-awareness, which is odd considering the writers have almost gone out of their way to prove the opposite.

While making L3 an abolitionist is played for laughs, it’s also a shortcut the writers took to give her a distinct personality from the other robots we’ve met over the series: 3P0, the nervous-nelly; R2, the plucky-resourceful sidekick; BB8, the loyal puppy; and K2-S0, the snarky cynic.

Not only do the droids have individual personalities, they’ve all shown they are capable of improvising their way out of tough situations. C3PO did it in “Star Wars” when he bluffed the Stormtroopers who broke into the Death Star hanger control room he and R2 were hiding in. R2 also showed similar initiative in “Empire Strikes Back,” using his fire extinguisher to cover his companions as they ran to the Millennium Falcon during their escape from the Cloud City and again by repairing the ship’s hyper drive. Certainly, K2S0 is the best proof, directly disobeying his order to stay behind and not follow Jyn and Cassian into the city on Jedha. His bluffing attempt, while less successful than 3P0’s also shows his ability to improvise.

Now you might argue that only the droids belonging to our heroes have these abilities, because our heroes’ unique qualities have rubbed off on them. But let's take a look at a short throw-away scene in “Return of the Jedi” where 3P0 walks by a Power Droid being tortured on Jabba’s sand barge. It's meant mostly as a sight gag and a shortcut by writers to show the audience how evil everyone around Jabba is. Yet this not only implies that droids can feel pain, it confirms it by showing the droid screaming (and steam coming from it's feet as opposed to blood?).

The fact that our heroes don’t mistreat their droids like everyone else in that universe does, doesn’t let them off the hook. They are still slave owners and treat the droids as chattel.

Remember the restraining bolts the Jawas put on R2 and 3PO to keep them from running away? Luke didn’t have a problem with this and only removed R2’s in the hopes of seeing all of Princess Leia’s message. He also had no compunction about shocking 3P0 to get him out of hiding after R2 had run away.

In “Empire Strikes Back" Solo and Leia turn off 3P0 when he suggests they surrender at the end of the asteroid field chase, and show only passing concern that he disappeared for a while and was found blasted apart.

In “Return of the Jedi” Luke gives 3P0 and R2 to Jabba as gifts to work as slaves in his fortress. Sure, it’s a ruse, but at least 3PO didn’t know it was and though he’d been sold off, and was visibly upset by it.

There are even more examples of this scattered throughout the other “Star Wars” movies, if you really start to look for them. Finding these little details is what makes these films so re-watchable even though we have seen them hundreds of times. It adds layers of subtext that makes you view the characters and situations in a sometimes totally different light and makes the story as new and interesting as the first time we saw it.

The same holds true of any well-written series of books, movies, TV show or comics with a well-developed world. The more you learn about it, the more you want to come back and play in it. And isn’t that what good story does?