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From: bnw@crash.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: "cute" Ewoks
Message-ID: <3158@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Wed, 7-Aug-85 03:13:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.3158
Posted: Wed Aug  7 03:13:19 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 10-Aug-85 20:48:11 EDT
Sender: daemon@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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From: 

edison!dca@topaz.arpa (David C. Albrecht) writes:
>Ewoks?, be serious.  It is obvious to anyone with half a brain that
>this was a stupid descent into cutesieism to get the christmas toy
>market.  They were big overbloated teddy bears that made cute
>noises, walked funny and had adorable skittish mannerisms otherwise
>skywalker an co. wouldn't have put up with them tying them up et al.
 
     Happily, I am told I am blessed with more than half-a-brain, so I 
can safely go ahead and disagree.
     I don't doubt that the aftermarket possibilities of the Ewoks had
occurred to Lucas and company when they developed them for the film.  But
I do feel that Mr. ALbrecht has gone too far in condemning them as a
reasonable concept.
     There has been much speculation about the ability of little Ewoks to
produce the kind of attack depicted in the film.  I would agree with those
who suggest that this is a hunting society, so some of the item seen would
have been built; another idea presented by someone here was that the Storm-
troopers had been a problem for the Ewoks for some time, and the Ewoks had
already been fighting back.
     Still, I think Ewoks, as presented would have a greater capability than
they have been credited with.  I think there has been an erroneous tendency
to look at a little Ewok and dismiss any possibility of heavy work quickly.
I submit, however, that four to six Ewoks could chop down a tree in an hour,
and fifty Ewoks, using a primitive form of block and tackle, could raise the
stripped log.  Others could use ordinary levers to move logs into a pile
restrained by a keystone-type lever.
     The Ewoks would seem to be early-to-middle Paleolithic.  They have 
learned fire, sophisticated weapons-making, and have a tribal structure in
what does not appear to be a nomadic society.  Moreover, they have had some
exposure to the modern technology of the Empire.  None of the activity 
attributed to them would be beyond a humanoid culture at the same stage of
development.  It is anthrocentristic to deny small, furry people the same
capabilities.  The Ewoks are, in many ways, what Piper's Fuzzies would have
become had a non-interference directive kept them uncontaminated by man.
     Two specifics:
 
>. . .otherwise skywalker an co. wouldn't have put up with them tying them 
>up et al.
 
     This isn't realistic belief.  If I'm busy shooting down Ewoks in front
of me with my blaster while Ewoks to me left, right, and behind are filling
me full of arrows and spears, I'm going to be as dead as any Ewoks I shoot.
 
>Yes, I like fuzzies but only when treated as fuzzies not as a serious 
>character which is to give storm troopers any competition.
 
     This suggest a reference to Piper's Fuzzy novels.  If Mr. Albrecht read
them and got the idea that Fuzzies weren't serious characters or were capable
of little beyond "yeeking" and "smokko", then he missed a very great deal.
                                                         /Bruce N. Wheelock/
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