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Either you accept all this complicated subtlety or you go meta and simply ask whether George Lucas is incapable of expressing empathy through his characters, wh

Either you accept all this complicated subtlety or you go meta and simply ask whether George Lucas is incapable of expressing empathy through his characters, which leads to them all acting like psychopaths regardless of other considerations. "Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence."

zephjc 15y ago
I think it was more along the lines that Lucas didn't/doesn't understand the eastern philosophies he was trying to emulate, only copying the trappings (wearing robes, taking on apprentices, practicing asceticism). I think he needed a white knight and a premise, and the rest of what we know about Jedis just snowballed from that.
mechanical_fish 15y ago
Yeah, the touchstone of a Star Wars essay is: "Is this essay diverting enough to make me forget all about George Lucas?" This one doesn't quite get there. Indeed, so far I've only seen one essay incorporating the dreaded prequels that did: http://km-515.livejournal.com/746.html http://km-515.livejournal.com/746.html ... though it's not as if I read widely in the genre. I generally prefer to pretend that all Star Wars footage filmed after 1984 was part of a bad dream I had in the mid-1980s. [1] --- [1] I really did have a dream, sometime in the Eighties, where I was watching some sort of Star Wars movie on TV, but couldn't figure out which it was, and in the dream I eventually figured out it was some kind of made-for-TV Movie #4, and then I figured out that I probably hadn't heard of it because it was awful. And I was sad. I assume this was actually a memory echo of the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special, which I saw at a young age and have since managed to completely suppress except in nightmares.
trevelyan 15y ago
The films are incredibly subtle. Jedi and Sith represent the allegorical extremes of human nature for Lucas, in the same way the Republic and Empire represent idealized democratic and authoritarian societies. The reason the author sees "psychopathy" as a common trait is that the first three films show ostensibly good characters morphing into bad ones as they embrace violence and deceit as a means to an end (ending a trade dispute, fighting terrorists, etc.). There is complex manipulation of the same symbolic imagery Lucas uses in his original films (water, caves), sometimes to the point of sequences going over-the-top: the transformation of C3PO from protocol to battle droid in a hell sequence marking the end of the second film is a commentary on what is happening to the rest of the characters, who also abandon diplomacy for "aggressive negotiation". The Jedi are not unambiguously good by the end of film III. They are harbingers of war ("there is no war here unless you have brought it with you") who die marching into battle. Now, the films may not be as emotionally engaging as their predecessors, but they are leagues more subtle than almost anything else you see in cinemas, as evidenced by the fact that Lucas made an anti-war film a blockbuster at a time when American society was broadly supportive of imperialism and military vengeance. As I remember, it wasn't until Anakin explicitly began aping Bush/Jesus in the final film ("you're either with me or against me") that anyone really seemed to notice the political agenda.

zephjc 15y ago

I think it was more along the lines that Lucas didn't/doesn't understand the eastern philosophies he was trying to emulate, only copying the trappings (wearing robes, taking on apprentices, practicing asceticism). I think he needed a white knight and a premise, and the rest of what we know about Jedis just snowballed from that.

mechanical_fish 15y ago

Yeah, the touchstone of a Star Wars essay is: "Is this essay diverting enough to make me forget all about George Lucas?" This one doesn't quite get there. Indeed, so far I've only seen one essay incorporating the dreaded prequels that did: http://km-515.livejournal.com/746.html http://km-515.livejournal.com/746.html ... though it's not as if I read widely in the genre. I generally prefer to pretend that all Star Wars footage filmed after 1984 was part of a bad dream I had in the mid-1980s. [1] --- [1] I really did have a dream, sometime in the Eighties, where I was watching some sort of Star Wars movie on TV, but couldn't figure out which it was, and in the dream I eventually figured out it was some kind of made-for-TV Movie #4, and then I figured out that I probably hadn't heard of it because it was awful. And I was sad. I assume this was actually a memory echo of the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special, which I saw at a young age and have since managed to completely suppress except in nightmares.

trevelyan 15y ago

The films are incredibly subtle. Jedi and Sith represent the allegorical extremes of human nature for Lucas, in the same way the Republic and Empire represent idealized democratic and authoritarian societies. The reason the author sees "psychopathy" as a common trait is that the first three films show ostensibly good characters morphing into bad ones as they embrace violence and deceit as a means to an end (ending a trade dispute, fighting terrorists, etc.). There is complex manipulation of the same symbolic imagery Lucas uses in his original films (water, caves), sometimes to the point of sequences going over-the-top: the transformation of C3PO from protocol to battle droid in a hell sequence marking the end of the second film is a commentary on what is happening to the rest of the characters, who also abandon diplomacy for "aggressive negotiation". The Jedi are not unambiguously good by the end of film III. They are harbingers of war ("there is no war here unless you have brought it with you") who die marching into battle. Now, the films may not be as emotionally engaging as their predecessors, but they are leagues more subtle than almost anything else you see in cinemas, as evidenced by the fact that Lucas made an anti-war film a blockbuster at a time when American society was broadly supportive of imperialism and military vengeance. As I remember, it wasn't until Anakin explicitly began aping Bush/Jesus in the final film ("you're either with me or against me") that anyone really seemed to notice the political agenda.