The Other Side

Hailing Frequencies #7, 5.20.24

Hail and well-met, fellow travelers.

It’s been a busy month, so I suppose it’s time I catch you all up to speed. As my daughter’s first birthday nears, I’ve marveled at how quickly things change. It’s easy to be caught up in the rush — fretting over the state of the industry, the earth, and our fragile place in the universe.

But it is also worth taking a moment to admire the small wonders from time to time, just as they are. More on that later.

“THE OTHER SIDE” PREMIERE AT LALIFF ‘24

Next week from May 29th - June 2nd, Los Angeles will be hosting the LA Latino International Film Festival. I’m pleased to announce The Other Side, a short film I co-wrote with my friend and colleague, director and creator Niki López, will be premiering there as a finalist for Best US Animated Short.

For those keeping score, this is, in fact, PROJECT COVE. It was originally part of Nickelodeon’s Intergalactic Shorts Program, and has since taken on a life of its own. It is loosely based on Niki’s childhood growing up amidst the haunted coves and catacombs of Puerto Rico, which puts its own unique spin on our little horror adventure. The film will be playing on Friday, May 31st at the TCL Chinese Theatre — if you are in the LA area, I suggest you check it out along with the many other awesome films playing at LALIFF This year.

Here are some first looks at our sneak preview:

WEEKLY PROJECT ROUNDUP

You may have noticed I missed a week or two — the simple reason is, quite frankly, I’ve been too busy to keep track of it all.

Along with the premiere of PROJECT COVE, I have a handful of other projects creeping forward. After a series of pitches and meetings with producers and studios, PROJECT GLITTERING is officially in development. PROJECT FIRMAMENT is almost ready to pitch. PROJECT CONTAINMENT is getting some traction as a feature project. It feels like the film and television industry is finally waking up, ever so slowly, which is good news for everyone.

A LITTLE Q&A

Joshua Reeve asks,

What is canon?

It’s such an eternal question, this one, especially in the current heyday of intellectual property as entertainment capital. Authorial intent is a bit of a rabbit hole. I, for one, disagree with Roland Barthe’s “Death of the Author” essay as the be-all and end-all to the subject — namely, the idea that once a work is created, its actual meaning is entirely subject to the whims of the cultural marketplace and the author’s original intentions are completely irrelevant. Thus lies the way of madness, in my opinion — especially if taken literally.

Post-Modernism has its place, of course — I think it’s a great lens through which to understand textual transformation. Fandoms in particular are a great example of this. There is Star Trek, then there is Trekkie culture. They are inextricably linked, but not necessarily the same. The meaning of many franchises has escaped the confines of what is seen in television and film — however, what is “canon”, i.e. the official lore of the franchise, has very distinct boundary drawn.

In Star Trek, canon is defined as what has appeared in the Star Trek television shows and movies, live action and animated. Everything else is not ‘canon’ in the strictest sense, but supplementary materials are often referenced by the writers of Star Trek and they bring in elements from the novels, comic books, etc. as needed. This has been occasionally confused by Star Trek’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, calling some of the movies and shows not canon — including Wrath of Khan — then trying to “recanonize” them later. Hence, why Paramount sticks with the “is it on TV or film” rule. Much easier to track.

In Star Wars, there were ‘tiers’ of canon for many years. The films were primary canon and the ‘Expanded Universe’ of the novels, comic books, and shows were considered ‘quasi’ canon even though George Lucas didn’t create them. In 2012, Disney rebranded the secondary materials as ‘legends’, recontextualizing only the shows and movies as official canon, even if George Lucas was not necessarily involved in their creation.

In Transformers, official canon is broken up into distinct continuities that co-exist in a multiverse. The original Transformers cartoon has its own continuity, which is separate from the Michael Bay Transformers movies, which is separate from the Transformers comic books. All of these are still considered “canon”, chiefly unto themselves — but they are essentially set in parallel universes that, in theory, could cross over. This is confirmed in the comics, wherein we learn all the Transformers universes are connected by the Allspark.

DC and Marvel have famously undergone regular reboots, and often change ‘canon’ via retcon to suit the current story they are telling, in tandem with other comics coming out that year or the recent past. Canon can be flexible, and often you just have to go by the context clues within the story itself. Similar to Transformers, the comics and film/tv universes co-exist in a multiverse (see Multiverse of Madness or New 52), but are not the same.

So, in short, it’s case by case. I think authorial intent is always worth considering — especially if what appears onscreen contradicts your “head canon” but it does not contradict what has been seen in the shows and movies. That is the author’s prerogative: to surprise you.

This can be difficult sometimes, especially if a franchise has been around for decades. The fandom creates certain expectations with themselves that are far beyond what the original artwork was made upon. New projects in established universes now have the doubled difficulty of staying true to the canon, while also contending with a sort of illusory mirage of what audiences think they remember, or rowing against what they liked about it, even if its tinged by nostalgia… or in some cases, the Mandela effect. (Kirk has never said “Beam me up, Scotty” and Darth Vader never uttered the words, “Luke, I am your father.”) Engaging with such expectations is a tricky beast — which is why so much contemporary media is made with a certain wink to the camera. On some subconscious level, audiences are anticipating their characters to be aware of the culture that has grown up around them, even if ‘in canon’ they are just a farm boy from Tatooine who blew up a space station.

ONE COOL THING

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the Daoist concept known as pu. Often translated as “unhewn wood”, it is the acceptance of things such as they are. Before a log is carved into tools, or sculptures, or burned in roaring campfire, it exists on its own, in a sort of suspended perfection. It is wood. It has gnarls, and branches, and grew without human intervention. It cares not what its fate will be. It could be anything or nothing, and that is fine with the wood. Its potential and self-evidence is something worth admiration unto itself.

We’re easily swept up in anxiety over the things we aren’t, or that we don’t have — in essence, our wasted potential. But take a moment to be as the unhewn wood. Allow yourself to appreciate things just as they are — a moment in time, where you are breathing, the air around you is brisk, and the chair you sit in is soft. Can this be a perfect moment if you let it? Does it even need to be?

Before you whittle and shape your identity today, be a log for a while.

Aaron J. Waltke

Glendale, CA

5.20.24