Star Wars 1977/Star Trek 1979

TheLiteraryBrain

Unlike Spielberg and Roddenberry, George Lucas's contribution to the renewal of the cinematic epic was based more on the dramatic principles of adventure fantasy than on those of science fiction. The story of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo took place in the 33rd century: "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away". Lucas drew inspiration from a miscellany of narratives that included old space serials from the 1950s, the exploits of the Japanese Middle Ages, Flash Gordon comics, C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, Frank Herbert's novel Dune (one), The wizard of OZ and the exploits of World War II airmen.  After a decade in which Hollywood seemed to have turned away from classic adventure, the director presented a story steeped in nostalgia. In 1977, Lucas was reclaiming the exploration of outer space at a time when action was in short supply: Once I got into Star Wars, I suddenly discovered that we had lost all that: a whole generation was growing up without fairy tales. I wanted to create a modern fairy tale, a myth. One of the criteria of the mythical approach to fairy tales is an exotic and distant world, but we had lost all the fairy tale lands on the planet. They were all gone. Never again would we have the mysterious Orient, the treasure islands or the journeys of strange adventures. Yet there was a larger and more mysterious world in outer space, far more interesting than all that surrounded us".
Lucas' script opens with the birth of a new hope amidst the rebellion of free systems against an inhuman, Nazi-like Empire. The multicultural and multiracial character of the rebels, led by a woman (two), points to one of the key socio-narratives of the predominant American dream in its third evolutionary stage: the struggle for equal opportunities in access to prosperity, a basic principle of the ethos. The Star Wars trilogy created by George Lucas was an attempt to bring back hope to a nation when it seemed in short supply in 1977.

Resurrect the myths and legends that had once defined society, but had since been forgotten because people had more pressing social problems to deal with: The economy was low, the Vietnam War had just finished with no clear victor, and Watergate caused scandal within a government that had already lost public confidence. America was in definite need of a cultural tonic that would inspire people and speak to their concerns and at the same time "offer some timeless wisdom. Star Wars was to be George Lucas' prescription for America; George Lucas (Star Wars) and Gene Roddenberry (Star Trek) were responding to their own social times and acted upon the contemporary issues that faced America in the sixties and seventies. However, this is where the similarities between the two end. Firstly Star Trek has more-or-less continually been screened on television and film throughout its thirty five year history, Star Wars on the other hand has been restricted to the cinema and Lucas has only recently continued the saga with Episode I. The Phantom Menace (1999) and Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002). This means that Star Trek is able to keep up with contemporary social issues. Star Wars, apart from its timely inception at the close of the seventies, relies upon the mediation of ancient myth to address American problems rather than being linked with newsworthy topics of the present day: Lucas devoured the great themes: epic struggles between good and evil, heroes and villains, magical princes and ogres, heroines and evil princesses, the transmission from fathers to sons of the powers of both good and evil. What the myths revealed to Lucas, among other things, was the capacity of the human imagination to conceive alternate realities to cope with reality (three): figures and places and events that were before now or beyond now but were rich with meaning to our present. Star Wars, and to some extent Star Trek, have taken history and myth and transformed them into a new package, quite literally taking a postmodern approach to looking back at the past to learn about the present. 

Star Trek's fixation with its own past in Enterprise is further evidence for its postmodern entanglement with history and myth, only Star Trek is romanticising about a history that has scientific and historical grounding in reality. Star Wars' use of nostalgia to convey the past metonymically is indicative of an American yearning to return to more innocent times: the films and Saturday afternoon TV serials such as Buck Rogers (1939,1950) and Flash Gordon (1936,1959). Telotte describes Star Wars as "homage to a great number of films and film types - the western (four), war films, Japanese samurai films (five) - all of which have contributed to Lucas's vision. " This trend is not unique to Star Wars but marks "the stirrings of a postmodern pastiche influence that has increasingly characterized our science fiction films. " Where Star Trek has taken myth, and "clothed it in the garb of science fiction" in order to present a possible and positive future, Star Wars has taken ancient myth and created an "alternate reality" admittedly set in the past. Within this new, and at the same time, ancient reality technological advancement and things of the future are set long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a "mythic time" created by the "interweaving myths of technology and religion occurring in some other galaxy.

For Star Trek, mythology is a narrative tool with which it can illustrate and correct historical happenings (six), frame many of its episodes and plot lines, and create hope for the future. For Star Wars mythology is a historically-based series of symbols and characters which connect with human society and tell us how things were done in the past - perhaps this is why some fans of Star Wars say it is not science fiction but rather science fantasy.
Or, as Jay Goulding puts it more simply, Star Trek as science fiction is overtly anti-mythic in its attempt to rationalize, systematize and package reality, while Star Wars, as fantasy, is overtly myth-affirming, with its reliance on unseen magical forces which bring order to the personality and to the universe. Star Trek begs questions such as `what if? ' and `what might be? ' that I have already identified are part of its compulsion to teach the audience how to "learn from the mistakes of the past ". Nevertheless, both have acquired mythic status in the present. Both franchises have turned to their own historical narratives to resurrect new and exciting stories to keep their fans involved and interested: Star Trek has created a pre-Kirk series that charts its own journey through very detailed and catalogued history; George Lucas has concentrated on fleshing out and substantiating his original trilogy by investing millions in making three prequels that he hopes will recapture the imagination of cinema goers. These acts of self-examination not only highlight science fiction's trend of looking to its forebears, but they also show how much American society has become disgruntled with its own time. As a result, the mythic/historical and futuristic times offered by both series offer a way out of dealing with contemporary life; it is not because audiences want to live in a mythic past but rather history and myth offer a better template to fantasize about and create the future. Science fiction is not about "what the future might hold, but the inevitable hold of the present over the future" makes clear that it is the present that determines what constitutes our science fiction.

Star Trek and Star Wars both view myth as a means to counteract the turmoil and uncertainty of that present American, and perhaps global, society. History is a representation of the past; it is information transformed into story, which, over time, becomes part of a shared mythology. These stories and myths are told by Star Trek as futuristic narratives; sometimes they are embedded in symbols and tropes or, as in the case of `going back in time, ' in stories concerning the dilemma between right and wrong. The stories Star Trek recounts about the past in the future produce images that at the micro-level some Americans use to perceive themselves as individuals both separate from and within society, and, at a macro-level, use to recognize America as a community or nation. By telling the right stories, Star Trek can help America imagine itself acting as a community, pulling together to resolve its problems often tackled in weekly episodes, ultimately overcoming a national anxiety deeply-rooted in the conception of its own history.

Translations: Italian - Spanish

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