posted
I was telling Blayne in another thread that I dislike the tendency to exploit brands in every possible medium. I thought I'd explain why in more detail.
First, the phenomenon. Barbie isn't just a doll, it's lunchboxes and videos (I was slightly horrified when my SIL explained that she just LOVES the Barbie videos for her daughters, elitist snob that I am) and fruit snacks and computer games, etc. If there's a way to use the trademark to sell a product, they've thought of it and the only thing that'll stop them is unusually pessimistic market analysis.
I don't really much care about Barbie merchandise and media, except as a representative example. I care more about this when the brand has enough adult credibility to attract some actual creative talent. Let's consider Star Wars.
George Lucas is (or was, perhaps) a talented guy. The original Star Wars trilogy had a really fun combination of humor and drama and mysticism, and some skillfully rendered action. Not to mention some of the most memorable characters that I've ever gotten to know. But the Star Wars universe is, at best, mediocre. The rules of reality in that universe are contrived and silly. The underlying philosophy is anti-egalitarian. Aside from the characters and the coarse drama involved when you're struggling against an empire that can build space stations the size of small moons, I just don't see a lot to love about it. (I do understand the vicarious appeal of wielding The Force and a light saber and an X-wing.)
So why should there be a bookcase full of Star Wars novels? There's nothing so special about Lucas's world-creation skills that compels that degree of exploration and extrapolation.
I think the answer is simply that the Star Wars brand has a lot of marketability. It's easy to sell books when people know essentially what they are going to get, and have found the Star Wars universe to be worth spending their money on in the past.
So far, I'm OK. I might not admire or enjoy the Star Wars universe as much as some do, and there's nothing wrong with that. There are two things that bother me.
#1 reason: there might be some quality writing in that universe. It bothers me that some of it might be worth reading. The reason this bothers me is that it means writers of talent are hobbling themselves by writing in a mediocre universe. To the extent they can transcend the silly parameters of the Star Wars reality, they are demonstrating an ability for world creation that should have been applied to something better than the base material. They should have exercised their creativity without the constraints of Lucas's limited imagination. Who knows what fictional worlds we miss out on because these writers (well, perhaps I should point to the people who pay the writers) choose marketability over originality?
#2 reason: the publisher and printer effort, and bookstore shelf space, and advertising budget get allocated to the known marketable stuff instead of the original stuff.
I just feel there's an opportunity cost that comes of all this effort to extract all the money possible out of these brands, and it's not an economic cost but a cultural loss. There's less that might really expand our horizons because we're mining the known territory for everything we can get.
So, as a consumer, I want to avoid rewarding this brand marketing for its own sake. If I trusted the Lucas empire to only endorse Star Wars products that are really worthy and excellent on their own, and I trusted writers and producers and publishers to only seek to create works in that universe that were the best work they knew how to do, it'd be different. But I don't think that's what is happening. So I'd rather wait to spend my money on the movie or novel that does something different, and relatively original. There's a better chance that I will get to experience something truly excellent.
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posted
I have no opinion on anything SW. But a similar argument can be made regarding Star Trek novels (among other universes). And I disagree with you vehemently on that. There certainly are some stinkers. But some are wonderful.
And my understanding from friends who read the SW novels is that they feel much the same. Which is not to say that YOU should buy them. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
rivka, is it your opinion that the Star Trek universe was the ideal vehicle for the story that the wonderful ST novels you've read told? For the effort that was expended writing them?
(I don't doubt that there is some VERY good work in the ST universe. My suspicion is that it could have been even better in an original universe.)
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posted
There's a collection of essays called "Star Wars on Trial" and one pair of for and against essays is about SW tie-in books and such.
Karen Traviss, if I remember right, argued that one of the virtues of writing sci-fi in the SW universe is that you don't have to spend pages explaining the technology and the culture and the general rules of the universe, as you would in an orignal work, so you can spent it on characters instead.
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Hmm. I think I have revealed one of my biases. I like world creation. I admit that the constraints of writing in a franchise universe shouldn't much apply to characters or human interest aspects.
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quote: The underlying philosophy is anti-egalitarian.
I don't consider that necessarily a negative.
quote:Karen Traviss, if I remember right, argued that one of the virtues of writing sci-fi in the SW universe is that you don't have to spend pages explaining the technology and the culture and the general rules of the universe, as you would in an orignal work, so you can spent it on characters instead.
Of course, that's more than nullified when the attention you get to spend on those characters is hobbled by the rules the franchise places on character development. (In the SW universe, for examples, there were specific rules stating that main characters could not die, that they couldn't change in major ways, etc..)
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Which is, of course, why every writer in a third-party universe winds up creating his or her own Mary Sue character.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: Hmm. I think I have revealed one of my biases. I like world creation.
While I don't care much. I care about characters. (I had a debate on essentially this same topic over on GR regarding inconsistency between the various Young Wizard books regarding how the universe works.)
quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: Of course, that's more than nullified when the attention you get to spend on those characters is hobbled by the rules the franchise places on character development. (In the SW universe, for examples, there were specific rules stating that main characters could not die, that they couldn't change in major ways, etc..)
The solution: add original characters.
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Rivka -- are you more a fan of ST novels that focus primarily on original characters in the ST universe, or of the ones that deal primarily with known characters?
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I don't think I can answer that. I can think of quite a few that fit in each category that I love.
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For the ones of the first category, I have more questions. Were the best one "essentially" Star Trek stories? That is, did they just happen to take place in that 'verse, or would they not have worked in another one?
And if they could have worked in another setting, what do you think being in the ST universe added to the story?
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posted
In general, I do not read books from particular settings, because the setting does not determine whether it's a good book. The author does.
In the case of Star Wars, most of the books are crap, written by authors would be writing some other crap if they didn't have Star Wars. But there is one author for whom I will automatically read anything written by them: Matthew Stover. His book "Traitor", while technically in the middle of a long, convoluted series, I read on its own just because his name was on it and it's one of my favorite books ever. You probably COULD write a book that accomplished similar things without being in the Star Wars universe, but the specific things the book accomplishes hinge largely on the Force. Beyond that, the book is an extremely short but deep read that would take a lot longer to set up if the author had to explain things from scratch. On top of that, there's a lot of world building within the story that introduces new concepts to the Star Wars universe that are just as interesting as a whole new Mythos would have been (or as interesting as one "book worth" of new Mythos would have been).
What I DO have a problem with is willy-nilly taking ideas that worked well in one medium and applying to them another for a quick buck. This I think is more relevant to the discussion of a Halo movie (I assume that's where this was coming from). Things that make good movies don't always make good novels or TV shows or video games. Each medium has different strengths. Video games in particular benefit from a main character who is a Mary Sue that anyone can project themselves into, whereas movies need a compelling main character with interesting quirks.
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quote:Who knows what fictional worlds we miss out on because these writers (well, perhaps I should point to the people who pay the writers) choose marketability over originality?
You seem to be assuming that the authors 1) are good at creating their own worlds and 2) have the slightest desire to do so. I mean, thousands of people write fiction set in the Real World, the biggest "shared universe" of all; are you unhappy that they're not exercising their creativity?
Posts: 650 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Hmm. I have to say, as far as Star Wars goes, that while I'm not so familiar with the novelizations, the computer/video game Knights of the Old Republic had better writing, acting, and story than the last three movies combined.
A few weeks ago I was in a store and happened by the books section. Amidst the "Twilight" novels and various others trying to cash in on trendy niches, there was a series- about vampires, natch- that used the same font and cover style as the Twilight books. And I thought: I don't know for certain if the author is actually trying to cash in on the success of Meyer's books, though most likely she is; it's possible that she independently began writing a novel about vampires years back and happened to find a publisher at the right point in the wave. But doesn't having your publisher actively trying to pass your work off as belonging to a more popular author on the unperceptive have to be a blow to the ego...?
I'm of mixed minds. On one hand, if there's a very limited number of new books released in any given year (and I know that there is), it does seem somewhat a pity for a large number of them to be hedged "safe bets" from publishers unwilling to give new authors a break on their own works. On the other hand, some authors really do their best work working with others' characters and worlds; perhaps they're less than stellar in finding the voice of their own characters, but can speak eloquently in the voice of others', perhaps they have a story they want to tell, but setting up the background so that story can take place drains their creative energy.
Publishers and the public alike have a tendency to go for what they see as the safe bet. About the best one can do is seek out the best regardless of merchandising, and not let publishers get away with feeding dross to fans just because they can get away with it under a popular license.
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