06-28-2021, 01:03 AM
(06-27-2021, 01:05 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Yes, Star Wars was deliberately patterned after the Hero's journey story, and many other epics follow the pattern unintentionally too.
The Harrison Ford character is like Gen X, and Obi Wan Konobi is an elder prophet, and the hero is like a Millennial. Of course, Star Wars being made in 1977, the actors were actually not of those generations, whereas in Where in Time is Carmen San Diego they were, and it was like a preview of how the 4T constellation would play their roles once the 4T began. Many heroic stories naturally put themselves in a 4T-like situation, so those generational roles will be portrayed. Whether we are playing the roles out now as we should is another question. Lots of folks have given up on the Boomers to do so, but it's a big society, and many Boomers still are. Thanks for watching the video, Steve. I think all 4T fans should.
It's hardly surprising that relatively few movies are made about 80 years after the event takes place. With few exceptions people don't want to see what was gone in the last corresponding generational area to the one in which they live because they are likely to see it again. OK, Gone with the Wind was as successful as any movie in its year of release even if there was a war potentially as calamitous for many nations as the American Civil War was for the American South. Western movies about the 1T of the late 1860's through the early 1880's largely went into hiatus during the High, with The Searchers (1956) nearly in line. To be sure, Westerns did well in the American High -- on television, with Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Rawhide, and The Virginian. Bonanza was about as close to cinematic quality as series television until pay-TV blurred the line between cinema and television. Between these, half-hour series such as The Rifleman and Have Gun Will Travel, there was no shortage of Western drama available. OK, the Wild West was far from the reality of suburban middle-class life in the American High. The Gilded had some GI-like traits... but many not-so-GI-like traits. Roughing it is not something I associate with GI's who experienced more than their share during WWII.
So actors' personal archetypes and movies of the time rarely match. Actors do go into character, and even someone like me with no dramatic training would have just as easily played a Gilded, Progressive, Lost, GI, or Silent character as a Missionary character. So if the setting were the American Civil War in 1970, then as a child star I would have had to play a Progressive. In 1990? Gilded, of course even if that is the generation least like mine. Now? Transcendental. Those are the generational roles that I would have had to play in a depiction of the American Civil War. Going into character for a competent actor is no more complicated than getting into period clothing. OK, so what if it were the Boom Awakening? I'd be a contemporary kid in the Boom Awakening era. About 1990? Silent. About 2010? GI. Now? Lost.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.