If Kirk can be rebooted, so can you
We all own our favorite characters from fiction. People in books are especially vibrant and real friends, because of their in-the-mind intimacy, but those from movies and TV count as well. We revisit those most beloved by re-reading and re-watching, wishing to extend the friendship long after we have gleaned every detail of their lives. Indeed, it seems that if they do not continue extending into new realms of story, then they have in some ways died, their life histories concluded, and we miss them as we miss other friends who have passed.
But strangely, while on the one hand we want these our friends to behave as we want them to behave, we want them to evolve, too; yet we don't want them to outgrow us, or grow away from us. (Just like real people.) For continuing works of fiction, this tension ends in either a stale sameness to all creations that comes after the original, or in a re-conception and restart. One need only look at the way Kirk, Spock etc. became caricatures of themselves in the notoriously bad odd-numbered Star Trek films, which strained and strained at keeping the old guys young, with increasing implausibility and decreasing success. Kirk free-climbing El Capitan? Puh-leeze. This is what happens when you let a guy write and direct his own star vehicle -- and pilot it too.
Literary criticism exercises the mind in answering "Why did they do what they did? What does it mean? What do we learn about life from this?" But I find an equally rich vein in asking "What if they INSTEAD had..." We speculate about these pals, daydream about them, wonder what other facets of their lives are yet undiscovered. This impulse begins with childhood drawings, no matter how incomprehensible. "No, Dad, that's Luke Skywalker with his hand cut off." Gads, how did I miss that? Next I might fail to recognize Drawing Number One by the narrator of Little Prince, "A Boa Constrictor Swallowing An Elephant." We make up new stories about our friends, play action figures and build LEGO star bases for them.
One fork of speculation, the one I always loved best, was the cross-over. Oh, how I wished that Encyclopedia Brown could team up with Danny Dunn, and with Alvin Fernald, and with the Mad Scientists' Club, to form an unstoppable league of genius boy detectives. No, not with the Hardy Boys; there was virtually no sense of reality around them, nor with Tom Swift nor Nancy Drew. Readers could tell that so-called "authors" Franklin W. Dixon and Victor Appleton were mere figureheads for armies of ink-stained drudges churning out books for pennies per word. Today they would be crowd-sourced over the web, or replaced entirely by a really slick Perl script, which would throw in a Flash-animated version for free.)
I remember being stunned when Marvel Comics and rival DC announced that Spider-Man would face off against Superman in an even fight. Zowee! But how could this ever take place? (Red-sun radiation, it turns out, plus aggressive marketing departments. Who didn't cackle aloud at the close of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," when Porky Pig's "Th-Th-Th-That's all, folks!" was trumped by Tinkerbell's fairy dust sending us out? The impulse to the cross-over is like setting up blind dates among your unacquainted friends; you love them individually, and want them to be in love with each other.
The other resolution is in the "reboot," which is all the rage these days. The desire to reboot or return is intensely nostalgic, to be able to experience something that is familiar and beloved as something new, full of wonder and novelty. It is the desire to fall in love for the first time all over again. That's why this year's Star Trek movie was brilliant. It allowed us old-time hard-core fans of the original series to experience the same characters as brand-new, exciting, intriguing new friends, while at the same time acknowledging the huge body of work accreted around them as valid, meaningful, treasured. Thus we could enjoy the old (old! old!) Spock and the brand-new Spock without either being "wrong."
Sadly, when a reboot fails, it fails miserably. Our dear old young love is diminished, made less glorious, as if a warped mirror made the original less beautiful too.
Thus, I fear someone will betake themselves to reboot the "Our Gang" comedies. Today's version would render Darla as one of those creepy "Toddlers and Tiaras" kids, Alfalfa as a Grade School Musical heartthrob, and Spanky as the manager, a diminuative but still slimy version of the stock Hollywood agent. Since live animal stars cannot reliably leap through flames and over buildings, they'll computer-generate that dog with the white fur and black patch over the eye. The familiar refrain of "Hey kids - let's put on a show!" would transmogrify into "Hey kids - let's post this on YouTube!" A contract for a reality show would follow, and they'd all end up in rehab, washed up and appearing in "E! True Hollywood Stories" by age 19. That's not the rosy nostalgic glow I'd wish to see dimmed.
Since we're so free in rebooting our fictional friends, why not reboot ourselves? Lose yourself in forking alternate-realities of "I wish I had." Give yourself abilities you never developed, like whistling through your fingers, turning a cartwheel, or ice skating. If they're really good, really compelling abilities -- learn to do them! Give it a try. If Kirk can be rebooted, so can you. Avoid toxic waste or radioactive insects as teaching tools, though.
But strangely, while on the one hand we want these our friends to behave as we want them to behave, we want them to evolve, too; yet we don't want them to outgrow us, or grow away from us. (Just like real people.) For continuing works of fiction, this tension ends in either a stale sameness to all creations that comes after the original, or in a re-conception and restart. One need only look at the way Kirk, Spock etc. became caricatures of themselves in the notoriously bad odd-numbered Star Trek films, which strained and strained at keeping the old guys young, with increasing implausibility and decreasing success. Kirk free-climbing El Capitan? Puh-leeze. This is what happens when you let a guy write and direct his own star vehicle -- and pilot it too.
Literary criticism exercises the mind in answering "Why did they do what they did? What does it mean? What do we learn about life from this?" But I find an equally rich vein in asking "What if they INSTEAD had..." We speculate about these pals, daydream about them, wonder what other facets of their lives are yet undiscovered. This impulse begins with childhood drawings, no matter how incomprehensible. "No, Dad, that's Luke Skywalker with his hand cut off." Gads, how did I miss that? Next I might fail to recognize Drawing Number One by the narrator of Little Prince, "A Boa Constrictor Swallowing An Elephant." We make up new stories about our friends, play action figures and build LEGO star bases for them.
One fork of speculation, the one I always loved best, was the cross-over. Oh, how I wished that Encyclopedia Brown could team up with Danny Dunn, and with Alvin Fernald, and with the Mad Scientists' Club, to form an unstoppable league of genius boy detectives. No, not with the Hardy Boys; there was virtually no sense of reality around them, nor with Tom Swift nor Nancy Drew. Readers could tell that so-called "authors" Franklin W. Dixon and Victor Appleton were mere figureheads for armies of ink-stained drudges churning out books for pennies per word. Today they would be crowd-sourced over the web, or replaced entirely by a really slick Perl script, which would throw in a Flash-animated version for free.)
I remember being stunned when Marvel Comics and rival DC announced that Spider-Man would face off against Superman in an even fight. Zowee! But how could this ever take place? (Red-sun radiation, it turns out, plus aggressive marketing departments. Who didn't cackle aloud at the close of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," when Porky Pig's "Th-Th-Th-That's all, folks!" was trumped by Tinkerbell's fairy dust sending us out? The impulse to the cross-over is like setting up blind dates among your unacquainted friends; you love them individually, and want them to be in love with each other.
The other resolution is in the "reboot," which is all the rage these days. The desire to reboot or return is intensely nostalgic, to be able to experience something that is familiar and beloved as something new, full of wonder and novelty. It is the desire to fall in love for the first time all over again. That's why this year's Star Trek movie was brilliant. It allowed us old-time hard-core fans of the original series to experience the same characters as brand-new, exciting, intriguing new friends, while at the same time acknowledging the huge body of work accreted around them as valid, meaningful, treasured. Thus we could enjoy the old (old! old!) Spock and the brand-new Spock without either being "wrong."
Sadly, when a reboot fails, it fails miserably. Our dear old young love is diminished, made less glorious, as if a warped mirror made the original less beautiful too.
Thus, I fear someone will betake themselves to reboot the "Our Gang" comedies. Today's version would render Darla as one of those creepy "Toddlers and Tiaras" kids, Alfalfa as a Grade School Musical heartthrob, and Spanky as the manager, a diminuative but still slimy version of the stock Hollywood agent. Since live animal stars cannot reliably leap through flames and over buildings, they'll computer-generate that dog with the white fur and black patch over the eye. The familiar refrain of "Hey kids - let's put on a show!" would transmogrify into "Hey kids - let's post this on YouTube!" A contract for a reality show would follow, and they'd all end up in rehab, washed up and appearing in "E! True Hollywood Stories" by age 19. That's not the rosy nostalgic glow I'd wish to see dimmed.
Since we're so free in rebooting our fictional friends, why not reboot ourselves? Lose yourself in forking alternate-realities of "I wish I had." Give yourself abilities you never developed, like whistling through your fingers, turning a cartwheel, or ice skating. If they're really good, really compelling abilities -- learn to do them! Give it a try. If Kirk can be rebooted, so can you. Avoid toxic waste or radioactive insects as teaching tools, though.