I know I've been gone for a while. What can I say, it's been Attack of the Really Long Reading Assignments. Sorry! But I have a really long thingy for you now. And when I say really long, I mean it. It's rambly too. The reading assigments are a bad influence. Sorry again! Anyway, if you are still interested, here goes.

The unlikely...thing...that follows has a strange origin. A long, long time ago in a forum thread far, far away, someone was complaining about his (or her) perception that Star Wars had potential but was really childish in places and had too many special effects, and the films would be so much better if they were more like Shakespeare. I had a serious response to that, which I'll be getting to, but I also got a bunny out of it. Not really a plot bunny, though it could develop into one...many Star Wars/[insert Shakespeare play here] crossover possibilities, I'm sure...I guess you could call it a filk bunny. Anyway, for some reason the idea of Star Wars as a Shakespeare play struck me as hilarious. Just imagine:

O for a Muse of plasma, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A galaxy for a stage, Rebels to act,
And Jedi to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Vader, like himself,
Assume the port of Bane; and at his heels,
Lined up like troops, should blaster, sword, and Force,
Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that hath dar'd
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object. Can this cockpit hold
The vasty snows of Hoth? Or may we cram
Within this concrete O the very helms
That did affright the air at City Cloud?
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confin'd two mighty governments,
Whose high upreared and abutting forms
The perilous airless space-void parts asunder.
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts:
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance;
Think, when we talk of blasters, that you see them
Burning their bright blasts i' the receiving troop;
For 'tis your thoughts that must deck our heroes,
Carry them here and there, jumping o'er times,
Turning th' accomplishment of many months
Into an hour-glass; for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who prologue-like, your humble patience pray
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, my play.

I didn't get around to doing this until recently, so the "Star Wars should be more like Shakespeare" person missed seeing it by a few years, but that's probably just as well. Anyway, after amusing myself, I tried to pull a serious point out of the exercise: wat's wrong with this picture? (Yes, besides the fact that it's a mutilated version of the prologue to Henry V.) That's right: NO SPECIAL EFFECTS. None at all. No blaster bolts, no space ships, no lightsabers. Eep!

I don't think I've ever seen anyone actually argue that Star Wars would be improved by removing the blaster bolts, the space ships, and the lightsabers. But a popular argument says that special effects and story are opposed, and that the more special effects you add, the weaker the story becomes. I just don't agree. Not quite.

I don't disagree because there are a lot of special effects shots in Star Wars that don't look like special effects shots (e.g. several elements got digitally merged into one perfectly ordinary-looking hallway, or whatever). It's because I think that in a lot of cases, the special effects support the story. Luke's leap down the shaft on Cloud City to escape Vader and the Dark Side is powerful partly because we can see how incredibly deep the shaft is, and we can watch him fall. The fall and then the sight of him clinging to that frail support at the bottom as the sun sets are such a great visual representation of Luke's psychological state. We can see how desperate he was to escape the Dark--he was willing to leap down that--and we can see how close he is to falling himself. (He falls to escape falling...now there's a blog topic!) That scene wouldn't be possible without special effects. Imagine if we just saw him hop down a trapdoor instead. And the cave scene--what would it be like if we couldn't see Luke staring at his own face in Vader's helmet? Even the space battles let us see sides of the characters it would be hard to show in other situations. And there's a lot to be said for the dramatic tension they create.

In Shakespeare, you don't get to see anything bigger than a minor brawl. If a character is a great warrior (I know, wars not make one great--you know what I mean), you just have to take the other characters' words for it, because you'll never get to see him in that role. Instead, you'll see someone run onto the stage, saying, "Guess what! He did brave things!" Pretty weak and unsatisfying, if you ask me.

I don't think most people disagree with me here. The real complaint is that sometimes, instead of using special effects to support the story, Lucas throws story down the garbage chute in favor of random special effects. For instance, the bit in the Special Edition of A New Hope where the very important scene of stormtroopers stopping civilians in Mos Eisley is obscured by a ronto walking in front of the camera. I don't like that either. As Shakespeare would say if he were still here, it sucketh royally. But the problem isn't in the special effects themselves. The problem is in the directing. Or, in the cases where something doesn't look real, the problem is special effects done badly. That's no different from any other element of a movie going wrong. Sometimes a mainstream, no-special-effects-visible movie has random events that obscure the more important ones. Sometimes romantic tension or humor is done badly, and it's just as unbelievable as special effects done badly.

As it turns out, Shakespeare is a perfect example of that. Words are the special effects of Shakespeare. The words usually support the story, and they can make a good story extraordinary, but sometimes Shakespeare gets so caught up in the pretty words that he drops the story entirely. Take Romeo and Juliet. Act IV, Scene 5 is a big one: Juliet's family discovers her apparently dead body on the morning of her wedding to Paris. Important stuff! But then there's the part with the musicians:

First Musician: Faith, we may put up our pipes, and be gone.
Nurse: Honest goodfellows, ah, put up, put up;/For, well you know, this is a pitiful case.
Exit
First Musician: Ay, by my troth, the case may be amended.
Enter PETER
PETER: Musicians, O, musicians, 'Heart's ease, Heart's/ease:' O, an you will have me live, play 'Heart's ease.'
First Musician: Why 'Heart's ease?'
PETER: O, musicians, because my heart itself plays 'My/heart is full of woe:' O, play me some merry dump,/to comfort me.
First Musician: Not a dump we; 'tis no time to play now.
PETER: You will not, then?
First Musician: No.
PETER: I will then give it you soundly.
First Musician: What will you give us?
PETER: No money, on my faith, but the gleek;/I will give you the minstrel.
First Musician: Then I will give you the serving-creature.
PETER: Then will I lay the serving-creature's dagger on/your pate. I will carry no crotchets: I'll re you,/I'll fa you; do you note me?
First Musician: An you re us and fa us, you note us.
Second Musician: Pray you, put up your dagger, and put out your wit.
PETER: Then have at you with my wit! I will dry-beat you/with an iron wit, and put up my iron dagger. Answer/me like men:/'When griping grief the heart doth wound,/And doleful dumps the mind oppress,/Then music with her silver sound'--/why 'silver sound'? why 'music with her silver/sound'? What say you, Simon Catling?
Musician: Marry, sir, because silver hath a sweet sound.
PETER: Pretty! What say you, Hugh Rebeck?
Second Musician: I say 'silver sound,' because musicians sound for silver.
PETER: Pretty too! What say you, James Soundpost?
Third Musician: Faith, I know not what to say.
PETER: O, I cry you mercy; you are the singer: I will say/for you. It is 'music with her silver sound,'/because musicians have no gold for sounding:/'Then music with her silver sound/With speedy help doth lend redress.'
Exit
First Musician: What a pestilent knave is this same!
Second Musician: Hang him, Jack! Come, we'll in here; tarry for the/mourners, and stay dinner.

Sorry for the length of that excerpt, but I wanted to emphasize how HUGE a digression this is. I mean, here we are, deeply into the sorrow and the dramatic tension, nearly at the end of the play, and we have to take ten minutes out for musical puns? Sometimes adding a touch of levity to tragedy makes the tragedy more poignant. This is not a touch. This is a big fat ronto. And it's a much bigger and fatter ronto than Lucas's. If Shakespeare had gone straight from the Capulets preparing to bury Juliet to Romeo getting his daydreams about Juliet interrupted by news of her "death", he would have me either bawling or biting my nails or both. But no, he stuck a long, random bantering exchange in the middle and lost the tension and the tragedy. There's a reason this part almost always gets cut.

It isn't an isolated passage, either. There's a lot more that usually gets cut out of the play, also for good reason. You can cut pretty big chunks out of most of Shakespeare's plays. Even Kenneth Branagh, Mr. Film-Every-Single-Line, supposedly cut sixteen lines from his version of Hamlet. (I'd love to know which ones!) Samuel Johnson has a particularly apt quote for the musicians example: "Perhaps the effects even of Shakespeare's poetry might have been greater, had he not counter-acted himself; and we might have been more interested in the distresses of his heroes had we not been so frequently diverted by the jokes of his buffoons." (Rambler #156, September 14, 1751) Does this mean clever dialogue is opposed to story? Of course not! It just means Shakespeare needed to edit himself better.

If the "Star Wars should be more like Shakespeare" person meant some of the dialgue in Star Wars is cheesy and could be greatly improved--well, I'd stick up for the directness and power of some lines, such as, "I am your father, " but other than that I'd agree, especially when it comes to the prequel romance dialogue. I wish Star Wars had better dialogue in spots. I also wish Shakespeare would shut up in spots.

If the "Star Wars should be more like Shakespeare" person meant the plot of Star Wars should be more Shakespearean, I'd laugh. Come on, Shakespeare is the guy who expected us to believe that Olivia couldn't tell the difference between Viola dressed as a guy and Viola's twin brother! And that was a major plot point. Gah... (And let's not forget that Shakespeare ripped all his plots off from older sources anyway. Sure, he usually improved them, but you can't call it original, can you?) Sometimes Shakespeare is incredibly sloppy in his plotting. The Taming of the Shrew, for instance, starts with a frame narrative; it reappears once and then is forgotten. Whoops!

I could add examples of Shakespeare forgetting characters, dropping subplots, or resolving everything with a random deus ex machina, but instead I'll quote Johnson again: "The plots are often so loosely formed, that a very slight consideration may improve them, and so carelessly pursued, that he seems not always fully to comprehend his own design...It may be observed, that in many of his plays the latter part is evidently neglected. When he found himself near the end of his work...he shortened the labour, to snatch the profit. He therefore remits his efforts where he should most vigorously exert them, and his catastrophe is improbably produced or imperfectly represented." (Preface to his Edition of Shakespeare's Plays, 1765)

If the "Star Wars should be more like Shakespeare" person meant Star Wars should have explored the philosophical issues more/been deeper/etc., I'd be torn. I could point out that a lot of Shakespeare's plays are pretty shallow, and that there's a lot more to Star Wars than people usually give it credit for, but yes, Shakespeare probably has the high ground here and some of the philosophical issues in Star Wars could have been handled better. For instance, if Lucas wanted "only the Sith deal in absolutes" to be an important idea in the saga and a turning point in Anakin and Obiwan's relationship, he should have devoted more than one line to it. Because that comes out of nowhere.

But I think the good points of both bodies of work far outweigh the bad. So Shakespeare rambled a bit? Fine, but his work is still genius. So Lucas has the occasional intruding ronto? His work is still genius too, in my opinion. I can and will gripe about things in Star Wars that bug me, sometimes more often than I wax ecstatic about the good points. I gripe about Shakespeare too. I still love him. As the Bard says, "The course of true love never did run smooth."