Star Wars Trisagion: Philosophy, Politics, and Personhood of the Lucasian Myth
Spring 2004
In less than a year, George Lucas's space opera will resolve in its final movement. To the chagrin of Jar-Jar haters and the vindication of Lucas lovers, Episode III may prove not only to be the most meaningful sequel of the five, but a groundbreaking film on par with the 1977 original. There are a number of reasons for this. For one, it will be an action-drama hotrod, fuel-injected with a story arc characteristic at the start of a good act two (in this case, for a six-scene/three-act play). For another, Episode III will, more perfectly than any of its predecessors, fulfill the sci-fi mandate, fulfilled as much by Forbidden Planet as Philip Dick: encapsulate the tumult of the contemporary world in futurism for the masses.
Though not technically futurism (recall that it did happen a long time ago), Star Wars's perfection of sci-fi's uniquely prescient narrative power is exactly what annoys a good many critics. To them, Lucas's sexology contains little more artistry than what Carrie Fischer called "home movies shot in space"; and yet, Star Wars communicates myth and fable to more people in more immediately powerful ways than much of the realism that is paramount in the contemporary conception of quality cinema. Prominent reviewers are often left shrugging their shoulders, like Rolling Stone's Peter Travers who gave up shredding The Phantom Menace once he realized his son loved it, or Variety's Philip Roth who forfeited his damnation of Attack of the Clones to the observation that, fan or detractor, everyone wants to be a kid in the Saturday afternoon matinee, perched on the edge of their seat to see what happens next.
The question then turns to how the Star Wars story has acquired the power of a universal idiom that keeps audiences worldwide hanging on a dime around the modern campfire of the megaplex. It has been duly noted that Lucas acquired the idea of making movie-myth from Joseph Campbell, who snubbed film as more a symptom of cultural neurosis than anything else, offering the collectively diseased modern mind "vanilla-frosted temples of the venereal goddess, under the make-up of the latest heroes of the screen." Citing Campbell's influence is as misleading as saying Kurosawa's bickering comic-relief duo in The Hidden Fortress were prototypes for R2-D2 and C-3PO, when Lucas pinched much more directly from the cornucopia of his own culture, Buster Keaton and Flash Gordon notwithstanding.
More pertinent are the writings of Campbell's predecessor, Carl Jung, who tried to apply high-minded understanding to the pending maelstroms of mass culture at the start of the twentieth century. In so snootily doing, he describes contemporary cultural phenomenon, the likes of which Star Wars came to both embody and represent at the end of the century: "How are we to explain this zeal, this almost fanatical worship of everything unsavory? It is because these things are psychological — they are of the substance of the psyche and therefore as precious as fragments of manuscript salvaged form ancient middens."
It then becomes important to ask how Lucas has made his saga work on this "psychological" level, assuming he does not fish them from old dunghills. The best way to provide an answer is to consider the Force in Star Wars. Though Lucas at first envisioned nothing more than a California-style gooviness that guided intuition and moved the story along briskly, the Force has been adopted as religious analogy specific to the precepts of everyone from Mahayana Buddhists to Southern Baptists. The Force, in league with the unmatched style of Star Wars fantasy and the simplicity of Lucasian storytelling, gave mysticism an easy appeal. And while it may at first appear most akin to Eastern religion, the roots of the Force more clearly shoot from Western philosophy and science.
In the occidental tradition, it was Aristotle, the father of science, who first thought about the Force. It was he who, regarding the gumption behind everything, concluded: "There must be a principle such that its very nature is to be in act." In the end, the man who triumphed the senses as the most dependable way to know the natural world conceded that there is a power at work behind all growing things that cannot be touched or seen; Aristotle called it the "eternal prime mover" or, in some translations, "entelechy" — what the poet Dylan Thomas would many centuries later call "the force through which the green fuse drives the flower." It was not until the later nineteenth and early twentieth century that Aristotle's entelechy would inspire its own philosophical substream, dubbed "vitalism" in its effort to counter the mechanistic thinking of science and industry with something qualitatively more organic.
The most prominent vitalist thinker was the Frenchman Henri Bergson, who elaborated a philosophy around "élan vital," the force that moves the world and guides all action. Bergson suggested that when looking for an ultimate cause and purpose, one faired better to eschew reason for intuition and, to borrow a phrase from Lucas, "use the Force." Of course, élan vital did not jibe with the tried-and-true scientific method, a method that would take on enormous consequences in the mechanized industrial century ahead.
Precisely because technology made entelechy obsolete, Bergson's ideas sound as arcane to modern ears as a sermon about the Force would to a Tatooine farmboy. "A beneficent fluid bathes us," Bergson wrote, "whence we draw the very force to labor and live. From this ocean of life, in which we are immersed, we are continually drawing something." Here, add one more exhibit to the case that Lucas is an accomplished cultural collage artist as much as anything else, for he appropriated as much from Bergson for Obi Wan's homily as he did from old dog fight reels for Millennium Falcon-tie fighter choreography.
In the most remarkable move of his pre/sequel-making, Lucas elaborated his concept of the Force along with backstory in Episode I. He thus wrested Star Wars mysticism from rostrums and youth group klatches the world over by adding an irrefutably scientific element to the Force with the introduction of "midichlorians" — a subcellular essence whose concentration determines the propensity to be guided by and/or use the Force. As Bergson's vitalism served as precedent for the Force of Obi Wan and Yoda in the original trilogy, the concept of midichlorians had a direct precedent in the scientific philosophy of German Wilhelm Riech.
Reich's sensational psychiatric physiology, some thirty years on the heels of Bergson, claimed to prove élan vital via a "primordial cosmic energy," something he named "orgone." According to Riech, not only does every living thing have "orgone energy in every one of its cells, and keeps charging itself orgonotically from the atmosphere by the process of breathing," but we are "surrounded by an orgonotic field which varies in range according to the individual." Both Bergson and Reich were wholly disregarded by the scientific establishment, though their ideas have retained a refreshingly anti-rational appeal to modern-day philosophes who find the contemporary world crazed with reason.
That Lucas could salvage leftover ideas from two continental mavericks and convincingly apply them to an American sci-fi plot is a case-in-point for the vitality of the Star Wars saga. Whether he is recycling old ideas or adapting new technology, the bigger truth behind the success of Star Wars is that Lucas has allowed intuition and hunches to guide much of his decision-making about the films. That is to say, Lucas used the Force to make a film about using the Force. This self-reflexive, generative creativity is at the core of Star Wars influence and is what has imbued all of the films with an unrivaled capacity to truck lore and float myth.
In this regard, Episode III will be no different; but, to hear Lucas tell it, the movie will be like no Star Wars yet — terribly gripping and dark. It thus stands a better-than-Jar-Jar chance of swaying critical minds; but Episode III also promises to distinguish itself by bringing to fruition Aristotle's disused entelechy as carried through in previous films. With the unveiling of the latest villain, an arthrodroid with human eyes, the Jedi's service to the Force will make its final showing as the guiding principle behind a democratic, reverent, pluralistic galactic civilization, in contrast to the cold mechanical barbarism of empire represented by the robotic General Grievous.
Of course, Episode III is really about seeing Darth Vader born. In order for that to happen, Anakin Skywalker will not wholly turn his back on entelechy, élan vital, or orgones. Instead, he will refuse to yoke his will any longer to the Force, insisting that it to do his bidding. In so doing, Anakin winds up less than a person: a maimed, withered body in a mechanized frame. Perhaps Skywalker's cyborg transformation will, at long last, reveal the pith of Lucas's Force: namely in showing us the hardshell mask of a lost heart not yet too late to save.
We'll just have to wait and see.
Fall 2004
Staring into a campfire a month after the federal election of 2004, I reflect. I think of what has happened, of what is happening, of what may happen. Hard, sometimes, to pull the mind clearly into one sphere or another. So it is with trying to muse vaguely on things like the state of the world. In visiting my field of slowly ripening ruminations, diversion and entertainment crop up quite naturally, like a banana tree in a wheat field. I see lightsabers and lasers and Darth Vader's mask; I think of the forthcoming Star Wars movie.
Somewhere in a flame, I recall the finely edited trailer I'd seen the week before at a showing of The Incredibles. Due out in a few months, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith will be startling and gripping, but it will also be tragic and sad. As the campfire flame flickers out, a related thought strikes me: the movie won't be sad for the usual reasons. It won't be tragic because the good guys lose. In fact, the good guys win — an ambitiously democratic-unto-pluralistic galactic republic emerges intact from a civil war against a money-hungry confederacy. Yet, something happens on the road to victory. The good guys, in the process of claiming victory for the people, become the bad guys intent on controlling the people.
The upcoming Star Wars movie may well prove the most salient political commentary in film that the public has nowadays, both because of genre and message. It is generally understood, at least by people who profess about things like pop culture, that sci-fi films have been one of the most conspicuous vehicles for contemporary worries and preoccupations. The earliest films are some of the clearest examples: the Red Scare mentality behind Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or the nuclear anxiety suffused in every second of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Recent sci-fi carries on the genre's mandate to float social themes, with The Matrix movies embodying near-paranoiac worry about the reach and power of cyberspace, while Mission to Mars and Contact portraying an optimism in cooperation with benevolent aliens, characteristic of hopeful, turn-of-the-century internationalism.
While the republic's nosedive into fascism serves only as backdrop for the original trilogy, the soon-to-be-concluded prequels plait the fate of government with the fate of the central character, Anakin Skywalker. The transformation of egalitarian liberalism to xenophobic totalitarianism is both made possible and symbolized by Skywalker's transformation into the paragon of evil, Darth Vader. This relationship between how nominally representative governments turn into empires and how basically good human nature gets corrupted into villainy stems from George Lucas's interest in dark chapters of history, particularly those eras wherein a singular ambitious man has tyrannically corrupted government, most graphically seen in Rome under "dominus et deus" caesars like Domitian and in Germany under the monstrous reign of Hitler.
In light of the most comprehensive imperialist initiative ever practiced by our republic, Revenge of the Sith will implore conscientiousness about how government gets out from under a public, and how the road to hell, as the old timers say, is paved with the best intentions. For it is incumbent upon even the most well-principled conservative to think long and hard about how a citizenry might tell when a vigorously partisan executive branch, in concert with the other two, has turned national security into the business of empire.
In light of the election and otherwise, much is being said and repeated about the nature of the United States and its citizenry. Old school liberalism has a stale contingency (represented well by Ralph Nader in his concession speech) that tends to harp on the shortcomings of what it means to be a modern U.S. citizen, and thus effetely calls for reform of heart and mind. A newly invigorated electorate of moral conservatives can now be heard loudly crowing, in cloying 1950s diatribe, about the Manifest Destiny of America's bedroom nation.
All told, there is but one thing that makes the United States of the 21st century and its native citizenry distinct: confidence. This confidence is a result of the U.S. dominating the hemisphere and enjoying, for the most part, the privileges of an island nation with an ocean separating it from its enemies. I am writing this observation, oddly enough, on the 63rd anniversary of Pearl Harbor — when the exception proved the rule.
Roosevelt responded not only by engaging the enemy with Old Testament-style retribution but with an articulate, principled declaration of purpose, the Four Freedoms. In it, he outlined the cardinal human liberties for which the U.S. would fight around the world: freedom from want and fear, and freedom of expression and religion. At the cost of 1,500 U.S. lives and many times that in Iraqi lives in the Middle East, the U.S. now acts to enforce only one of these freedoms — and, at that, almost exclusively for ourselves and, at that, not certainly or directly at all.
If there is one thing you can say about history, it's that it likes surprises. More often than not, the past seems to conform to the Law of Gotcha as much as anything else. The Law of Gotcha comes in two parts:
1. you never see the edge before you drop
2. it never hurts when you fall, only when you land
Part of what it means to be a confident U.S. citizen is a compliment: it's what has historically given the nation its chutzpah and bravery. Undoubtedly, the past century was directed largely by the U.S. because of these qualities and the conditions that gave rise to them in the first place. There is, however, a downside. From the same confidence, our historical sin (particularly for such a young revolutionary nation) has been our arrogance. From this arrogance is born, most conspicuous to the current state of our republic, a naiveté.
It is for this reason that a good many hawks (many of whom now are de facto war supporters, it should be noted) will see Revenge of the Sith and find it hard to imagine such a poisoning of government could ever come to pass in their country. This is for two reasons:
1. though openly critical and suspicious of it, most U.S. citizens believe that their government has been and will continue to be on Earth forever
2. most U.S. citizens believe that, if there is an Oz behind the curtain in Washington, he is a kindly, well-meaning humbug
Mixed with the Law of Gotcha, this naiveté may very well lead to irreversible harm and irreparable messes. Don't get me wrong: confidence is a good thing. But security at any price comes at a pretty damn high one. The most commendable virtue of Revenge of the Sith may be to show us, in science fantasy terms, just how high that cost can be.
In the final Star Wars movie, The Return of the Jedi, a final volley between the fascist and the liberator highlights this aspect of the coming film. As rebel starships are blown apart in an ambush, the galactic emperor hisses at Luke Skywalker, "Your faith in your friends is your weakness!" Skywalker, the scion of the fallen father, quickly retorts: "Your confidence is yours."
Spring 2005
Darth Vader is the best. Darth Vader is the best because he is the worst. James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader, had a son who was three at the time of the original Star Wars. "Daddy," the little boy frowned, "I don't like you being that mean man. I don't like you to be bad."
No child wants the man they look up to the most turning out to be something close to the least. Though few can claim to have Darth Dad, far too many of us have a father who has gone down in flames.
"I don't want to kill you, Jan," Daddy whispered through bloody lips, and he meant it. He remembered sliding his hands around his wife's throat from behind and not becoming aware of it until she recoiled, herself only half aware of the diabolical surfacing in his touch. "I don't want to kill you," he groaned. He writhed; the glossy vinyl of a salvaged barber's chair squeaked under his weight. His orthopedic wingtips tapped nervously against the cold concrete slab, only to echo between cobwebbed corners of the garage — until it sounded to him like he was tap-dancing.
"I don't want to kill."
In a moment he holds the stock of a .410 shotgun in one hand and jabs the dime-sized business end into his sternum; with the other hand and some awkward stretching, he presses the trigger with one outstretched finger.
"I don't want to . . . ." Bang!
A couple hundred BBs shear his heart to pulp.
Several years after Daddy's suicide, The Phantom Menace was released. I was swept away with an uncanny sense of jubilation in its promise. For this was no mere nostalgia trip, no hollow hallowing of lost naiveté and wonder; this was living, breathing, new — the vital continuation of a saga I claimed personally, movies possessed with singular inspiration and creativity. Waking at 3 a.m. one late April morning in 1999 with a headache, I graded some papers for my high school civics classes and tapped out this editorial, which got published in the local newspaper the next day:
In the summer of 1977, Star Wars was the movie to see. I was seven years old and my daddy was working for the Department of Corrections in the old confederate pentagon in Baton Rouge beside the capitol. It bordered the city's slowly fading downtown, which included the fabulous old velvet-curtained, ornately-balconied Paramount theater. One day, he took us to work with him, handed us a crisp five dollar bill, and sent us to the theater for quarter admission, back-to-back showings of George Lucas' movie phenomenon.
My brother and I sat in the historic movie house (which was shortly after leveled for a parking lot) and watched the movie four times in a row, sustained by Coke, hot dogs, popcorn. The young audience cheered every time the strident 20th Century Fox fanfare blared and the "Long Ago, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away . . . " narrative began to scroll. We were mesmerized by Mos Eisley time and again, biting our nails over and over with our heroes in the trash compactor and in blaster battles and in the final air strike against the Death Star. We gave a teary, standing ovation every time Princess Leia knighted Luke and Han, and Chewbacca yolped for applause.
Looking back, it's been hard to recapture the fantastic magic that attended those first twelve or so theater viewings of Episode IV: A New Hope. Of course, I loved the other two movies as well. I recall the first Shreveport showing of The Empire Strikes Back, at what used to be the Shreve City Twin theaters (now Discovery Zone). You only had to get there a couple of hours early back then. Likewise, I was promptly in line for Return of the Jedi.
I grew up with the series of movies. And it was only after viewing the recent preview in the form of movie clips put to John Williams' new theme music, that I recaptured a deep, stirring awe for the Star Wars experience. You see, what George Lucas did back in 1977, and what he's going to do in 1999 again I'm sure, is invite viewers to join him in an utterly fantastic story happening in likewise amazing worlds. Everything is so well-crafted and thought-out, the incredible becomes very believable and persuasive. Based carefully around archetypal hero and epic themes (Star Wars was inspired by Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces), the plot devices and characters resonate with classical familiarity. Like no other film in the history of cinema, Star Wars became a living, vital myth about machines and humanity, good and evil, and nearly anything else.
In our all-too real world, continually marred by natural disaster, war, and homicide, we desperately need to believe in Jedi knights, in final battles of truth, in clear-cut galactic clashes between the things that are good and the things that are evil. So, thank you George. We could all use a little bit of the Force right now.
In retrospect, it is most significant that my leading memory of Star Wars was intimately associated with Daddy. It was no coincidence. At the time I was just starting my own journey into fatherhood, having begun a family with my wife Tracey, my daughter Zoey, and my adopted mother (Tracey's mom) Meme. In contrast, my first family seemed bound to end in the shadow of our patriarch's demise. My brother turned to crack. My sister hastily eloped. Mother accelerated her lifelong slide into psychic entropy. As the momentum of despair in the wake of Daddy's suicide seemed to increase on the one hand, I was coming into fatherhood on the other, and was quick to seize on ways to make Episode I a phenomenon through which the Force itself could move through me.
In the three years that passed before the next Star Wars movie, the scenery and story of our family changed dramatically. We were blessed with an infant son, Henry. We moved out of Tracey's childhood home to our own place in Atlanta. Tracey became the career professional and I, after five years of being a teacher, became the stay-at-homer (we both came to the marriage with this as the utmost priority in making a home). With the increased burden of a little one, hairline fractures and threadbare tears began appearing in my fatherhood. I turned progressively more irritable and testy with the myriad responsibilities of home and hearth.
All the while, I became ever more enamored with the revitalized world of Star Wars. Starting mildly with t-shirts and commuter mugs after Phantom Menace, my mania made the jump to hyperspace after Attack of the Clones. It's fair to say the intensity of my interest followed the interstitial franchise of anticipation preceding Revenge of the Sith. From computer games to pulp novels, from comic books to action figures, from kiddy versions of starships for Henry to paper doll books for Zoey, I became an all-out, unabashed fanboy.
In a way, my Star Wars zaniness is a most typical "return-to-childhood" trip: from the juvenile fascination with acquiring one thing after the other, to the passive titillation of being endlessly entertained, and on beyond to the vicarious immersion in the other people's fantasies, it is very much child's play. Which, in many ways, befits such a life as mine, in a house with children — a life filled with intermittent idleness and persistent boredom; yet in all fairness to my consuming indulgence, it must be added that much of the recent Star Wars stuff (from statue-sculpted action figures to elegantly rendered comic art) obtains to markedly brilliant science fiction — to the end of increasing the sophistication not only of the series but the genre as well. That is to say, for what it's worth: there is substantive difference between Peter Pan and Obi Wan.
After so much time, energy, money spent, it becomes incumbent — particularly on the irascible Mister Mom — that my hobby help me cope. Yet the end purpose of my Star Wars fascination alluded me: for it doesn't take much to expose the appetite of drooling fan as nothing short of a junky jones; and any attempt to imagine my compulsive desire to consume as something virtuous was often illusory, if not outright delusional. In short, my obsession was not making me a happier person — just a more distracted one. I cast about for a way to turn surrogate escapism into some practical value for my wife and children, and even my dog and cat.
My answer came, for a time, in the significance and symbolism of the gallant and virile Jedi. This answer was handed to me in a fashion, as the prequels — and the subsequent flood of interstitial story and art —sharply brought into focus the Jedi Order as an altruistic nobility of martial mystics. Tales of such beneficent hierarchies come in soothing contrast to the inherently troubled stories of our liberally anti-caste, Enlightened egalitarianism.
The order, by its nature, was a tall one: find a way to bring the practice and mentality of a sci-fi guardian of truth-&-justice to bear on the banal tasks of changing diapers, giving baths, picking kids up from school, making dinner, washing dishes. I hadn't really thought it out that far by the time I was really becoming an insufferable bastard on visits home to see what remained of both our families (Tracey's father had died of cancer and her only brother was divorced). As only the very best partner could do, Tracey held up a mirror so I could see what I had become: a well-meaning but snake-bit fool whose poisoning was lacing his own love with venom. I quickly decided how I might aspire to bring an element of Jedi-ness into my life, and thus assuage my rising angst: study kendo — the legacy of samurai in the art of Japanese swordplay.
This decision resonated with paternal significance, as my father had denied me karate lessons when I was seven, on the grounds he didn't believe in violence and neither should I. And though I had briefly studied Judo in school, pursuing private martial arts instruction was realizing a small dream dumbly deferred. After visits to several dojos and a few freebie lessons, I decided that I could mine much more personal meaning with a cool kendo suit and a regular home devotion of book-guided self-study. It worked both some and a little. I mellowed a bit with a sense of meditation and purpose, though the point of the steady physical exhaustion became a bit nebulous after a while, and for good reason: I would never, ever want to draw a sword, much less duel with anyone; and the chances looked damn good, at the onset of the 21st century, that I would never have to.
So, it became clear that, to pursue sword practice with necessary conviction, one must feel compelled — I mean really motivated — by some completely inane paradox embarrassingly common to the half-baked sophistry of martial "artists"; it goes something like this: the ultimate, noble goal of studying the best ways to physically contest others is never having to do combat in the first place. I, for one, soon found that there were many more rewarding, less demanding ways to achieve non-violence. For, while I exhausted myself with a kendo regimen of building and toning the muscles I would need to slice a person in half down the middle, the results weren't the most home friendly. In my attempted solution to become a better man, I found myself a bit too pumped up; I regularly suffered from a physical can-do intensity repugnant with child rearing, normal libidinal ebbs of a decade-old marriage with two kids, and peaceful sleep. Of course, the final pitfall to any at-home devotion is the motivation to practice regularly. So it was that, after a steady six months, I dropped the daunting gauntlet of discipline and walked away, figuring it only a half solution at best.
Soon after, I began to apply Jedi-ness to my life as a hopelessly enigmatic sincerity to all tasks undertaken, whether that be nightly food preparation (i.e., "cooking with the Force") or teaching the larger spiritual ramifications of the Star Wars films to my pre-teen Sunday school class. I have also realized the Jedi ethic in various half-baked attempts to philosophize while writing erratically some fiction here, some poetry there, and every now and then a quasi-essay (such as the preceding two) that bring into play the insights and ruminations apropos to Jedi proper.
But, it seems, I have become an insufferable bastard once again. My indulgence and occupation with Star Wars cannot, in the end, save me from (or really even help me to deal with) the germ of irritation that roils within me, recurringly poisoning my life. It is a shame, in a way: two months from the debut of the final film in the Star Wars saga, and the unfolding of an epic cinema story-event I have anticipated with a passioned fever for years now — and I face the end of Star Wars for me.
More than ever, I have my own fantasy, my own stories, my novels and characters and worlds and lives that I must tell and share. Too long have I put aside the creative impulse for the consuming one, and it has taken its toll. I will not be consumed by it. I will create and, in turn, be created anew. At any rate, I think that that's what the whole Star Wars story is about: redemption. Lucas would be happy to know that my indulgence in his wildly collaborative fantasy vision has resulted, ultimately, in a personal liberation of sorts and, what's more, it's going to eventually help one person in the galaxy turn out to be more Luke than Anakin.
As I watch Darth Vader emerge in all his evil misdirection in Revenge of the Sith mid-day on May 19, I will think of how badly Daddy turned out. Into the theater, I will carry with me the understanding that, since his suicide: my brother has been killed; my sister has had children, sank into morbid obesity, become homicidal and lost her husband, her children, her home; Mother moved into a townhouse after the family place burned down; she then filled the townhouse with junk to the point of living in a chronic, filthy mess; more and more, she lights the darkness in her life with a candle burned at both ends while looking for a sugar daddy at dance lessons and on the internet, lighting the way to a therapist once every month or so.
I will leave the theater with these things as well. I will not be changed after I see the movie. It will be as wind in the vast dunes of time, and my very small grain will simply remain. What will be most important is the oasis — the movie that's on, the scene in which I forgo the dark armor.
"Pappy is the best," I hope my children will one day write. "Pappy is the best because — well, he's the best."