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my MA theses excerpt about Star Wars saga and its socio-political and historical contexts
Citation preview
Tel-Aviv University
The Yolanda and David Katz Faculty of the Arts
The Interdisciplinary Program in the Arts (Graduate Program): Film & Television Track
Human History According To George Lucas Models of Fascism in Star Wars’ Prequels
This thesis is submitted for an M.A. Degree
© Amir BogenBy
The thesis was supervised by Dr Boaz Hagin
July 2011
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An abstract: Human History According to Lucas
My objective in writing this thesis was to examine the socio-political and historical
aspects of the work of George Lucas, which represents a stream of science fiction
somewhat different from that of the past seventy years – primarily as expressed in the
cinema. The futuristic environment he created notwithstanding, Lucas endeavored to re-
examine the past and to warn us of the likelihood that horrific historical events, such as
the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe and the world war that followed, could be repeated in
our present or future. It is precisely his and our awareness (opposed to ignorance) of the
sociological, economical and political models formulated in an effort to analyze and
understand the events that transpired, that lead to anxiety of their possible recurrence at
another time and in another place.
Lucas created a detailed, varied, rich and ingenious world in his films that became
a popular storyline, usually described as an adventurous and mythological, rather than a
critical text. Narrative elements overshadow the embedded social criticism – even in the
politically saturated prequels, but reading it only in this way can cause one to completely
miss the real content, which is crammed with insights into history.
Looking at Lucas through the Star Wars series, I believe that we see in the
“prequels” a Lucas who acquired means and self-assurance as a movie maker, and veered
off in a different direction in this later trilogy, incorporating large chunks of social
criticism – not only in the Star Wars diegesis that he created, but also through the
ongoing and significant correspondence with the annals of humanity. By constantly
referring to “realistic” history, Lucas develops a model for the rise of a dictator from the
midst of a democratic society through the prequels. Notwithstanding the futuristic
environment in which the films takes place, we see that the possibility of what happened
in the past with its horrific historical situations like World War II could well recur in the
present or in the future, based on the model that emerged within several seemingly liberal
societies.
I argue that Lucas, like many other creators of science fiction, took the
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opportunity to reenact events or trends in the fantasy playground in order to disengage
from the details, as seen in other films from various genres that deal with the rise of
fascism, remaining faithful to the historical space-time and striving to validate the
historical veracity of the story. They focused on the particular: the very facts, persons,
leaders and symbols that “really were” – which on the face of it seem less pertinent to the
films of Lucas.
In the course of developing this thesis, I wanted to explain how the initial
development of historical situations in the fantasy space-time led to distancing from
specific national links, thus distilling the debate of typical human behavioral models. In
this way typical occurrences tending to recur throughout history and create dictatorships
and democracies, wars, revolts, political subterfuges, and other major events were
exposed. I illustrated this by spotlighting various aspects of Lucas’ cinematic work which
took place in the futuristic universe that he himself created, aspects that relate
concurrently to socio-political manifestations of human history. Even though the films
deal with familiar historical situations, they intimate underlying abstract ideas along with
the typicality of the events that motivated them, while films aiming at the same well-
known situation would focus on concrete aspects, images, arenas and familiar events.
Sixteen years after completing his Star Wars trilogy, George Lucas returned to the
complex perfect world that he created with the Phantom Menace – the first film of the
prequel trilogy. As such, the prequels constitute a reliable historical document within the
Star Wars diegesis, accompanying, step by step, a socio-political dialogue that ultimately
led to a dramatic upheaval of the ruling structure of the galaxy – transmuting it from a
stable liberal democracy into a harsh and cruel dictatorship, which we had accepted as a
given in the original trilogy. Nonetheless, even though the Star Wars series as a whole is
a science fiction fantasy presenting us with a complete yet unrealistic world created
entirely by the fertile imagination of George Lucas the creator (along with the unusual
creatures populating its planets and the heroes among them), they are heavy with strata
critical of our own world. The link between the Star Wars series and this world is
reinforced in the prequels that describe the political change taking place in the galaxy
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through correspondence with human history and events of the past that recur over the
years – events that can produce a tyrant from a democratic system who turned it into a
dictatorship. We may then view the Star World series and particularly the prequels, not
only as an historical survey relevant to the imaginary universe of Lucas, but also as
relevant to the socio-political history of mankind.
But may we view the Star Wars series as a text containing valuable content for the
study of history? This surprising query emerges from the discussion on the importance of
cinema as a historiophoty tool. Hayden White out-and-out rejects the argument that
traditional historiography is more reliable and more faithful to the truth than
historiophoty, although both deal with narrative processing of past events. What White
believes is that while historiographers lean toward concretization, cinema leans toward
typicality, and thus “factual” details are less important to cinema makers, who are able to
describe events of the past from an inclusive and abstract angle. Thus it is also in the Star
Wars series, which relates to the historical process not for the purpose of revealing
particular details, but rather for the purpose of describing their function through an
abstract model.
David Davies and Darko Suvin proposed that science fiction is a store of abstract
models removed from their familiar historical context. Davies believed that thought
experiments in films – particularly of the science fiction genre – facilitated various
scenarios in science fiction which enabled evaluation of their implications. Suvin
presented “cognitive estrangement” as an essential process through which it is possible to
disconnect the idea from its concrete links, and use it to create an abstract model that can
be incorporated and expanded, as well as to reflect reality, thereby presenting it in a
different, novel and critical light. “Cognitive estrangement” is also a process that
concurrently disconnects and reconnects the particular and the abstract. To reinforce that
link, I thoroughly reviewed the narrative elements contained in the prequels which anchor
the films to their historical context and suggest how they relate to the rise of the Third
Reich in Germany of the 1930s. Adopting the esthetics of Leni Riefenstahl as a dominant
stylistic element reinforces the link between Star Wars films and Nazi Germany, both
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before and after Hitler’s rise to power.
While historical implications may be looked upon as a pastiche, an inane nostalgic
motif – as the thinkers Frederic Jameson and Dan Rubey argued in their response to the
first film of the Star Wars series: Star Wars: New Hope, the following two films and in
particular the prequels, nonetheless load the entire saga with meta-historical, even critical
context, striving to testify to socio-political manifestations as expressed in human history
over the years. Lucas was “accused” of being a reactionary pining for America of the
1950s in his film American Graffiti, but in the prequels he takes advantage of the
opportunity presented by the genre to follow the saga of the Galactic Empire from an all
inclusive and critical point of view. He carries out an historical inquiry into the past of the
world that he created, not for the sake of nostalgia and not out of his reactionary
tendencies (if he indeed had such), but rather in order to focus on the socio-political
events that brought about the fall of the Republic and the establishment of a totalitarian
Empire in its stead. The critical acts in the prequels, endowed with a sort of historical
documentation aura, are a departure from the mythological pathway of the first trilogy
according to Anne Lancashire and to the director himself. Using this vehicle, he
enumerates the ills of the Galactic Republic and its conduct as a seemingly harmonious
democratic system. The Republic, presented in the first trilogy as a utopia, is revealed in
the prequels as a system burdened with failures and faults, and not the object of the
nostalgic longing of the rebels of the first trilogy, nor the object of Lucas’ apparently
nostalgic yearning.
As historical films, prequels have to be classified within historical research as part
of the generic fascism school, since they do not seek out factual or other particulars
regarding leaders, places and dates, but rather attempt to formulate a typical model which
can be implemented within the fantasy of Star Wars. The Galactic Empire parallels
models formulated by researchers of generic fascism with its collection of characteristics,
both on ideological and practical levels as identified in fascist regimes of the first half of
the 20th century. All this with the aim of identifying the common elements of all fascist
regimes: those of the past and those yet to come. Such elements are applicable in the
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socio-political world of Star Wars according to the models formulated by Stanley Payne
and Michael Mann.
Payne, Mann, Roger Griffin and other members of the generic fascism school
focus their research on the regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Salazar, and others
whom they identified as fascists during that period. They were also bound by reasonable
scientific practices to do so by virtue of being researchers. Such commitment, however,
was not required of Lucas in creating the prequels. Without dating and a clear location,
“A long time ago, in a galaxy far away,” is not a scientifically accepted factual detail.
They describe a phenomenon that could be ascribed to those dark European regimes of
the 20th century, but also to the democratic regimes of our time, including the seemingly
liberal United States. In this manner, the prequels present to us this phenomenon as
timeless.
Lucas proposes in his films the possibility that, similar to what occurred in the
past, American democracy could also implode, transforming itself into fascism – not
through a military coup or enemy attack, but rather as a result of an internal socio-
political process embedded in the foundation of the democratic regime, as expounded by
politico-legal philosophers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Carl Schmitt and Giorgio
Agamben. This process has long been voiced in liberal-democratic-parliamentarian
regimes, bursting with a proclamation of a state of emergency which provides certain
leaders with the opportunity of taking advantage of the legal vacuum and to assuming
excessive powers. In other words, Fascist leaders arose as totalitarian rulers by virtue of a
state of emergency they themselves proclaimed, and not only the state of emergency but
also their rule were extended over and over again, radically overturning the balance
between the organs of government while expanding their own authority, and trampling
civil rights through the police and the army. So was the case with Hitler and with
Mussolini, as well as with Emperor Palpatine of the Galactic Empire. The prequels hint
that this has also happened at times in the United States (Richard Nixon and George W.
Bush being the examples of improper exercise of authority by U.S. presidents in
emergencies, on which Lucas declaratively offers his views).
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These all-inclusive models were included in the prequels, and in this they differ
from other science fiction films that sought to describe the fascist threat to the United
States within the accepted historical narrative. Films such as the Manchurian Candidate,
The Boys from Brazil and Spy Smasher described the threat to American democracy in
the real world, stressing the historical contexts of familiar events familiar from the past
(World War II, Korean War and even the Iraq War). The familiar and realistic arena and
the story unfolding within it tends to be conspiratorial, telling the tale of a fantasy
stratagem which seemingly threatens to strike at the American nation. In these films, the
conspirators were foreigners who wanted to harm the United States and were in
possession of an advanced technology that facilitated their aims (The Boys from Brazil
and Spy Smasher), or interested parties that sought to utilize advanced technological
means in their possession to seize political power (The Manchurian Candidate). As
opposed to these films, the prequels seek to stress “realistic” socio-political stratagem in a
fantasy world so that it could reappear and be applied in any world or regime, even in our
own reality.
The prequels construct flexible models of fascism which can be superimposed in
today’s United States as well, so that through “cognitive estrangement”, they reject the
clear signs of the Third Reich and other totalitarian regimes, to which they relate. This is
in direct contrast with other historical films of different genres, including: Mephisto,
Cabaret, Inglorious Bastards, The Wave and its German remake TheWave (Die Welle),
Spy Smasher and X-Men: First Class which sought to describe the same processes while
remaining true to the time and space in which they took place, and presenting familiar
leaders from the past and the symbols identified with them. In this sense, these films are
truer to the historiographic tradition than that practiced by investigators of generic
fascism. They seek historical truth, and reconstruction of the past is a substantial part of
that truth. In this they meet up with the expectations held by Marcia Landy and Pierre
Sorlin regarding historical films, yet restrict themselves from the standpoint of their
abstraction and ability to conduct effective thought experiments. They present the
standpoint of the individual regarding the political situation, and integrate their internal
8
world with the external, yet generally do not observe the process on a large scale as an
ideological and practical model (as investigators of generic fascism attempted to do).
Their all-encompassing interpretation, if there be such, stems from the psychology of the
individual operating in such an environment. The Wave is exceptional from this
standpoint, succeeding in demonstrating to some extent the manifestation of fascism on a
large scale, since from the outset it describes a case that was removed from the playing
field and the space it sought to recreate (the image of Hitler appears at the end of the film,
in order to resolve the conflict in the plot).
The imaginary arena of the prequels, cut off from any familiar space-time of human
annals, is what enables them to demonstrate the generic models of fascism disconnected
from their particular nationalistic and historical, at times traumatic, contexts. These
contexts may constrain their internalization as a natural human manifestation without
relating them to specific events. A fantasy arena may neutralize preliminary positions and
data bases of the viewers, thus facilitating internalization of the models and sensitivity to
such socio-political processes, possibly even out of self-criticism. This is a significant
development in the prequels, arising as the experience of “cognitive estrangement”,
inviting the viewers into the political event without identifying it unequivocally as an
expression of fascist regimes.
In order to anchor the fantasy films in the history of humanity, intertextual
quotations from period films (Casablanca, Ben Hur, Metropolis, Napoleonic films,
serials film of the 1930s and others) were introduced into the prequels, thus hinting at
specific historical contexts without directly pointing them out. In the prequel world, so
distant from ours, there is no need to confirm the realistic and factual reality of the arena,
for time and space are not anchored in the accepted history. These hints are cognitive
anchors, helping to distinguish between the abstract models and our world, while creating
a multi-periodic effect. The prequels offer us another possibility of decoding models such
as generic fascism in respect to reality, such as is mirrored in the fantasy universe.
Decoding this universe as a reflection of human history over different periods shows that
it is not all that different from our world.
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Yet, if the reality described in the prequels is a reflection of that present in the
human experience throughout history, what is the added value of their fantasy in films
striving toward realistic space-time? Indeed, according to Suvin, it is the distancing that
facilitates deeper examination and analysis of the manifestation being dealt with
disconnected from its specific daily contexts, a striving that historians Griffin and Payne
as well as Lucas and other creators of science fiction seem to be able to identify with to
some degree. Realistic films dealing with fascism generally look toward factual veracity
and tend to observe congruence between space, time, plot and various elements of style
and narrative within the accepted “factual” historical narrative.
Films such as Mephisto, Cabaret and others sought to recreate historical
conditions as they “really were”. While successful recreation reinforces their veracity, it
also restricts their relevance to other arenas, periods and societies. These films generally
rely on the viewers’ prior knowledge of the overall environment of the plot, whereas the
prequels illustrate political changes as a whole, creating an external reality in the Lucas
universe unimpeded by historical facts, weaving its generic characteristics into a tight, yet
complete multi-period narrative, traversing time, places and nations.
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Williams, Raymond. The Long Revolution. London: Chatto and Windus, 1961. 307 Wood, Robin. Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan - and Beyond. New York, NY:
Columbia U P Worschech, Rudolf. “Frühling für Hitler: Wie der deutsche Film das ‘Dritte
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Filmography
1. Austerlitz. Abel Gance. France/Italy/Yugoslavia/Lichtenstein: CIPRA, Lyre Films, Galatea Film, Michael Arthur Films and Dubrava Film, 1960
2. Battle of Britain. Guy Hamilton. UK: Spitfire Productions, 1969 3. The Battle of Britain: Why We Fight. Frank Capra. USA: Warner Bros, 1943 4. Ben Hur. William Wyler. USA: Warner Bros, 1959 5. Blade Runner. Ridley Scott. USA: Warner Bros, 1982 6. Boys from Brazil. Franklin Schaffner. USA: ITC entertainment, 1978. 7. Cabaret. Bob Fosse. USA: ABC, 1972. 8. Flash Gordon. Frederick Stephani and Ray Taylor. USA: King Features Productions
and Universal Pictures, 1936 9. Gladiator. Ridley Scott. USA: DreamWorks, 2000 10. Inglorious Bastards. Quentin Tarantino. USA: Weinstein Co. and Universal Pictures,
2009. 11. The Manchurian Candidate. John Frankenheimer. USA: United Artists, 1962. 12. The Manchurian Candidate. Jonathan Demme. USA: Paramount Pictures, 2004 13. Mephisto. Istvan Szabo. Hungary: Mafilm, 1981. 14. Metropolis. Fritz Lang. Germany: UFA, 1927 15. Napleon. Abel Gance. France: Films Abel Gance and Société générale des films,
1927 16. The Sound of Music. Robert Wise. USA: Robert Wise Productions, 1965 17. Spartacus. Stanly Kubrick. USA. Bryna Productions, 1959 18. Spy Smasher. William Witney. USA: Republic Pictures, 1942
16
19. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. George Lucas. USA: LucasFilm and 20th Century Fox, 1977.
20. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back. Irvin Kershner. USA: LucasFilm and 20th Century Fox, 1980.
21. Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi. Richard Maquand. USA: LucasFilm and 20th Century Fox, 1983.
22. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. George Lucas. USA: LucasFilm and 20th Century Fox, 1999.
23. Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones. George Lucas. USA: LucasFilm and 20th Century Fox, 2002.
24. Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. George Lucas. USA, LucasFilm and 20th Century Fox, 2005.
25. Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens). Leni Riefenstahl. Germany: Leni Riefenstahl-Produktion and Reichspropagandaleitung der NSDAP, 1935
26. Tora! Tora! Tora!. Richard Fleisher, Kinji Fukasaku and Toshio Masuda. USA/Japan: 20th Century Fox and Toei company
27. Waterloo. Sergei Bondarchuk. Italy/Soviet Union: Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica and Mosfilm, 1970
28. The Wave. Alexander Geasshoff. USA: TAT Communications Company, Tandem Productions, 1981
29. The Wave (Die Welle). Dennis Gansel. Germany: Rat Pack Filmproduktion GmbH, Constantin Film Produktion, B.A. Produktion and Medienfonds GFP, 2008
28. X-Men: First Class. Matthew Vaughn. USA: 20th Century Fox, 2011