Which brings to mind David Brin’s brilliant essay that not only details the fascist underpinnings of Star Wars, but – in the tradition of the best science fiction – explains the last 10 years of American history before that history took place.

September 16, 2009 at 8:27 pm

Gary Farber

If you strike him down, more powerful will he become than you can imagine.

September 16, 2009 at 8:32 pm

Ahistoricality

Brin’s piece really is excellent, in that erudite rant sort of way. I love a good rant. And the political and ethical implications of Star Wars (especially the prequels) still bug me. The Jedi really were ethically vacuous towards the end: genetically engineered submissive clone warriors? Ick.

September 17, 2009 at 4:37 am

Tom

Yeah, Brin makes a lot of good points about Star Wars. He’s not wrong about the films, exactly, though it is annoying for him to brush off most of human literature before the enlightenment as inherently despotic. Also, can we please retire the trope that “postmodern literature professors despise science fiction?” Because, really, they don’t.

September 17, 2009 at 4:56 am

eric

I’d never read that Brin essay. Thanks. I’ve always hated the “Darth Vader gets off the hook” aspect of Star Wars. I mean really.

But Brin cheats slightly here, doesn’t he?

Gene Roddenberry’s vision loves heroes, but it breaks away from the elitist tradition of princes and wizards who rule by divine or mystical right.

By contrast, these are the only heroes in the “Star Wars” universe.

Han Solo?

September 17, 2009 at 5:41 am

kevin

Don’t forget Chewbacca. What a Wookiee!

September 17, 2009 at 6:14 am

Charlieford

Yes, but what’s he saying?

September 17, 2009 at 7:09 am

politicalfootball

Ten years later, Brin’s bullet points on the lessons of Star Wars resonate:

-Elites have an inherent right to arbitrary rule; common citizens needn’t be consulted. They may only choose which elite to follow.
-“Good” elites should act on their subjective whims, without evidence, argument or accountability.
-Any amount of sin can be forgiven if you are important enough.
-True leaders are born. It’s genetic. The right to rule is inherited.

I’m not sure “rant” is the word I’d use to characterize Brin’s piece. He readily concedes the seductive nature of Campbellian myth. He just points out the dangerous places that myth can take you – and especially the dangerous place that Lucas, in particular, arrived at.

But he still saw the Phantom Menace. And in truth, my primary, visceral gripe with that latter three movies wasn’t that they were fascistic, it’s that they sucked.

September 17, 2009 at 7:24 am

politicalfootball

At the risk of committing a non sequiter, I’ve been reflecting a lot on Leo Strauss and modern conservatism lately, and this piece from a Strauss acolyte struck me as a sort of counterpoint to the Brin piece. I read this essay as a conscious rejection of modernity in favor of old heroic (read: elitist) narratives.

September 17, 2009 at 7:43 am

JPool

Yes, but what’s he saying?

Arrroooaa’a’a’a’a’a’aaah

September 17, 2009 at 8:48 am

Tom

But he still saw the Phantom Menace. And in truth, my primary, visceral gripe with that latter three movies wasn’t that they were fascistic, it’s that they sucked.

Yeah, although I’d be interested in seeing Brin update his analysis to take into account the most recent films, since Lucas tries really, really hard to turn it into some parable about democracy and the Bush administration or somesuch. It doesn’t really work, but that’s because he’s still wedded to the idea that “good” elites should save the world.

Also, this recent Dinosaur Comic seems relevant.

September 17, 2009 at 8:49 am

Tom

Sorry, link fail:
http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1544

September 17, 2009 at 9:45 am

Ahistoricality

Lucas tries really, really hard to turn it into some parable about democracy and the Bush administration or somesuch.

He does? The basic outline of the Republic being supplanted was established in the ’70s and Phantom Menace came out in ’99. From the Wikipedia description of the plot development, Lucas then pushed the story away from politics towards a more personal, psychological tale.

And we won’t talk about the post hoc tweaking of the original movies to cover up his inconsistencies and failings.

September 17, 2009 at 10:19 am

Tom

The basic outline may have been there, though I think the backstory developed much more slowly than Lucas (“I had it all thought out by 1975 in one big master plan”) lets on. By the time he actually made the prequels, he was back to being interested in politics again. He’s spoken many times about his interest in how democracies turn to dictatorships, and this idea seems to be where he put most of his effort in the prequels (as opposed to character, or dialogue, or fun). There are a lot of little moments in the third film which people saw at the time of the film’s release as some kind of anti-Bush message, like Natalie Portman tearily watching the Senate create the Empire (“So this is how democracy dies, to thunderous applause”), Anakin giving out ultimatums (“If you’re not with me, then you’re my enemy”) or the revelation that the whole clone is an evil conspiracy started by the Emperor. Lucas’s politics aren’t nuanced or even very logical, and it doesn’t work at all as an allegory (Is Bush the Emperor? Anakin?), but the film can be read as a kind of feverish nightmare a leftist might have had in mid-2005.

Unfortunately, Lucas presents the whole mess in the driest way possible, so while the prequels no longer follow the Campbellian Hero with a Thousand Faces routine they also don’t work as a Jedi version of Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire, either.

And we won’t talk about the post hoc tweaking of the original movies to cover up his inconsistencies and failings.

And sometimes just ruining otherwise badass moments, such as the whole “Gredo Fires First” disaster. I feel like this has been sufficiently dissected on the interwebs, but….really George?

September 17, 2009 at 10:33 am

Ben Alpers

If you don’t mind me asking, politicalfootball, what’s been leading you to think a lot about Leo Strauss and modern conservatism lately? (Full disclosure: I’m working on a book about Strauss and the Straussians in American academic and political life.)

September 17, 2009 at 10:43 am

Ahistoricality

There are a lot of little moments in the third film which people saw at the time of the film’s release as some kind of anti-Bush message,

Just because Bush was an anti-democratic, autocrat manque who exploited and manufactured crises for political gain, doesn’t mean that Lucas wasn’t talking about the fall of Rome, or Byzantium, or the Tsar, or Prydain.

September 17, 2009 at 12:49 pm

Chris

The Republic was never much of a republic, since it was ruled in all but name by the unaccountable (and stunningly ineffective, considering their supernatural powers) Jedi.

Or at least, as of the time of the beginning of the series, it wasn’t much of a republic. It may have been one at some even earlier time that we aren’t shown. But as of the beginning of Episode I, one part of the Republic is more or less openly making war on another part of the Republic and the official central authority is doing effectively nothing to stop it. The unofficial central authority sends two envoys, whom one of the belligerents doesn’t hesitate to immediately try to kill. And at least one inhabited planet is effectively ruled by criminal gangs. (I wonder if they get a Senator, too.) The Republic is so weak its money isn’t even accepted in some markets. And the leader of the most feared and hated (ironically) enemy of the Jedi holds a seat in the Senate and they don’t even know it. “Failed state” hardly begins to describe it.

September 17, 2009 at 2:08 pm

Tom

Ahistoricality, I don’t really want to get into a fight over authorial intention, but the film was largely received as having anti-Bush tendencies, and Lucas (to my knowledge) didn’t do much to dispute this. He may have modeled the collapse of the Republic after Rome, the Weimar Republic, etc. because he felt we were headed that way, too.

September 17, 2009 at 2:18 pm

zapoli

Han Solo?

Wiki: “In the fictional Star Wars universe, the Solo family was once a prestigious, Corellian royal family. The first known Solo in the family tree is Berethon e Solo, a king who ruled Corellia during the Golden Age of the Old Republic and set up constitutional monarchy in 312 BBY.”

September 17, 2009 at 2:33 pm

ben

Why was a king ruling anywhere during a republic?

September 17, 2009 at 2:46 pm

Anderson

Why was a king ruling anywhere during a republic?

Ask the Romans.

September 17, 2009 at 3:03 pm

Anderson

Re: PF’s Straussian link, this passage near the end —

Strauss was a trenchant anti-globalist avant la lettre, writing that “no human being and no group of human beings can rule the whole of the human race justly.” (Natural Right and History) His most serious reservation about the Cold War was its lurking premise that the undesirability of Soviet world rule implied the desirability of American world rule. He believed that world citizenship is impossible, as citizenship, like friendship, implies a certain exclusivity, and universal love is a fraud. (I would say if it exists, it is the province only of God.) Good men are patriots or lovers of their patria or fatherland, which must by definition be specific.

— is interesting as yet another confirmation of Strauss’s agreement, on some levels, with Carl Schmitt.

Whatever happened to cosmopolitanism?

(And that Strauss, or Robert Locke, can write “good *men*” unselfconsciously in 2002, speaks volumes.)

September 17, 2009 at 3:14 pm

tpb

On “http://crookedtimber.org/2009/09/17/a-citizen-of-where-exactly/comment-page-1/#comment-288645” cosmopolitanism:
http://crookedtimber.org/2009/09/17/a-citizen-of-where-exactly/comment-page-1/#comment-288645

September 17, 2009 at 3:16 pm

tpb

Well that didn’t turn out right.

September 17, 2009 at 4:33 pm

Ben Alpers

(And that Strauss, or Robert Locke, can write “good *men*” unselfconsciously in 2002, speaks volumes.)

If Strauss could good write anything in 2002 it would have spoken volumes. He died in 1973.

September 17, 2009 at 5:05 pm

Ahistoricality

But as of the beginning of Episode I, one part of the Republic is more or less openly making war on another part of the Republic and the official central authority is doing effectively nothing to stop it. … The Republic is so weak its money isn’t even accepted in some markets.

Why was a king ruling anywhere during a republic?

The Galactic Republic, as Lucas posits it, seems more like a confederation of sovereign states (think Delhi Sultanate or Mughal Empire) which dominates the core but not the fringes of the galaxy — that explains the inter-planetary warfare as well as the vast disparities in governance, the existence of smugglers, of seemingly independent leagues of planets hostile to Jedi control.

Maybe it’s a cautionary tale about what might have happened to the United States if we’d stuck with the Articles of Confederation.

September 17, 2009 at 5:06 pm

Anderson

Yah, Ben, when I read that I realized it didn’t say what I wanted it to.

Of course, his spirit lives on!

September 17, 2009 at 8:08 pm

politicalfootball

what’s been leading you to think a lot about Leo Strauss and modern conservatism lately?

Disclaimer: I don’t regard my thoughts as interesting or even entirely coherent. Also my opinions are bound to be banal or misguided to someone who has productively studied this topic. But since you asked …

I’ve understood for a long time the double game that political conservatives play with their constituency. I have conservative friends who mock the snake-handling social conservatives – but who also mock liberals for the fact that they can’t get the votes of these creatures.

Republicans feel smug superiority over other Republicans. I get that, but Ron Suskind introduced something new to me that I’m still trying to grasp.

When Suskind in 2004 reported his famous anecdote about the “reality-based community”, I snickered along with a lot of liberals. Anyone who rejects Enlightenment epistemology is a caveman, I thought.

I was naive. Suskind’s unnamed source – “when we act, we create our own reality” – was making a serious point. “We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Well, guess what? He was right – or at least not crazy; not a caveman. Katrina, the financial disaster, Iraq, Afghanistan, 9-11 itself; each of these was – to an Enlightenment-oriented guy like me – bungled ludicrously, or the result of root misconceptions about reality. Yet each disaster strengthened the hands of the conservative malefactors who brought them about.

The other day, I was going ’round-and-’round with “Al,” who is sort of a House Troll over at Yglesias’ blog. I wasn’t trying to score points or win an argument; I was just trying to get a sense of what makes guys like that tick. We’ve all seen it: He was spouting nonsense – contriving fantasies about what I was saying so that he could rebut those fantasies. He put a lot of effort into it.

I found myself wondering: Who does he think he’s kidding? But I’m coming around to the view that he wasn’t kidding anyone, including himself. Rather, I think he was attempting to create reality by asserting it. Pre-Suskind, I would have condescendingly argued that this sort of behavior was both delusional and dishonest. Now I’m not so sure about the delusional part. Maybe Orwellian is the better description, and Orwell made the right choice when he didn’t put a happy ending on 1984.

And this is how I come to Strauss. Observing the conservatives’ double-dealing with their own constituency, I see that Strauss offered the intellectual underpinnings for communicating dual messages. Did Strauss invent the concept of the political dog-whistle? And as I see how Enlightenment values have been rejected – with significant success! – I find myself wondering, is this what Strauss anticipated?

So, Ben A., that’s my story. Anything you can do to set me straight would be appreciated. Of course, if you engage my theories in the honorable tradition of the Enlightenment, and explain my errors and illuminate my ignorance, then I won’t need to buy your book and you’ll be just another ineffectual liberal.

September 17, 2009 at 8:14 pm

Ahistoricality

I don’t regard my thoughts as interesting or even entirely coherent. Also my opinions are bound to be banal or misguided to someone who has productively studied this topic.

If that stopped people, the internet would still fit on a 5 inch floppy disk.

September 17, 2009 at 9:55 pm

Sir Gnome

I’ve understood for a long time the double game that political conservatives play with their constituency.

FWIW, Timothy Egan’s most recent post on his NY Times blog cites a very topical example of the “double-gaming” of the working class by modern conservatism. He makes a great point, if with the usual condescension (not a fan of Egan’s horrid prose).

…Orwell made the right choice when he didn’t put a happy ending on 1984.

The Orwellian thing is that you’re constructing a self-fulfilling prophecy about the motivations of a specific social (or rather, political) class of individuals.

September 18, 2009 at 6:56 am

Ben Alpers

Thanks for the thorough reply, pf! Just a few quick responses:

1) These are important issues and (especially given the sometimes Dan Brown-ish things that people on the left write about the Straussians) your opinions are neither banal nor misguided.

2) However, Leo Strauss did not invent philosophical double dealing (read Plato) nor did he introduce the expedient lie to U.S. politics.

3) My (still developing) view is that part of the attraction of Strauss’s ideas to some U.S. political actors is that Straussianism provides a seemingly high-minded justification for what these political actors would be doing anyway. Whether the high-minded justification exacerbates the problem is an interesting and important question.

4) Politicians regularly lie and everyone knows that they regularly lie. But part of the game has usually been that they don’t tell you they’re lying. Straussians, on the other hand, often do. Here’s Bill Kristol (quoted in Nina Easton’s Gang of Five (p. 183)):

One of the main teachings [of Strauss]…is that all politics are lmited and none of them is really based on the truth. So there’s a certain philosophical disposition where you have some distance from these political fights . . . You don’t take yourself or your causes as seriously as you would if you thought this was 100 percent “truth.” Political movements are always full of partisans fighting for their opinion. But that’s very different from the truth.

If the presence of Straussians on the right encourages open talk about politically motivated lying, that’s somewhat paradoxical, as it would seem to degrade their own understanding of the purpose of the politically motivated lying, which is to promote necessary (if not strictly speaking true) “truths.” But, then again, Strauss publicly revealed the supposed secret of esoteric writing, so in a sense this particular paradox is built into his teaching.

4) The Straussian view that politics cannot be philosophically truthful is not the same as the claim that reality is whatever people in power say it is. In fact, it’s arguably the very opposite of that. Straussians basically believe that truth is unchanging, but difficult to ascertain and potentially socially dangerous, which is why political life is bounded by a series of conventional truths or “noble lies.” This is not to say that there is no relationship whatsoever between the importance of the Straussians and the Suskind-reported line “when we act, we create our own reality.” But the view Suskind reports is not Straussian in a simple sense. However, describing the actual relationship between Strauss’s thought and the “we make reality” view is harder to do. One aspect of it (in very broad terms): American conservatism has grown progressively postmodern in its view of the world over the last four decades. “When we act we create our own reality” is a great instance of this phenomenon. And Straussians have contributed to this process. But I’m not sure that’s a very satisfying explanation (or even an explanation at all). And, unlike you, I am working on these things ;-)

September 18, 2009 at 9:09 am

politicalfootball

Thanks, Ben A. You identify here what has piqued my interest:

Straussianism provides a seemingly high-minded justification for what these political actors would be doing anyway

Before coming into contact with Strauss, I didn’t understand that this sort of justification had been attempted at a level deeper than, say, Kristol.

September 18, 2009 at 11:32 am

Chris

Returning to the picture for a moment… what’s the point of having your off hand up in the air like that? I’ve seen it before, but I don’t understand it. Did it come from a two-weapon style where the main gauche or whatever has since been abandoned, or is it a balance thing, or what?

P.S. Why aren’t there any lightshields?

September 18, 2009 at 1:01 pm

dana

Did it come from a two-weapon style where the main gauche or whatever has since been abandoned, or is it a balance thing, or what?

Both, sort of. (Note that it makes no sense at all on a lightsaber.) Quite a lot of rapier techniques made use of some object in the off hand — a cloak, a buckler, a small blade. In these cases the off hand/foot might be leading (block with the buckler, stab with the sword bringing the full weight of the body into the motion.)

Bringing the arm up helps with balance in classical fencing/small sword (it works as a counter on a lunge) as well as helping the swordsman to remember to present a narrow profile to the opponent.

September 18, 2009 at 1:15 pm

Julian

Something that has long troubled me regarding lightsabers: given that the “blade” has no mass, all the twirling that the Jedi (especially in Episodes 1 through 3) do with their lightsabers has no effect on the momentum of their strikes. Why doesn’t everyone copy General Grievous and the propeller-spin lightsaber thing? It’s unbeatable!

September 18, 2009 at 2:53 pm

zapoli

Grievous could execute the propeller spin only because he was half alien, half machine. And, it must be said, all evil.

September 21, 2009 at 12:16 pm

Chris

The propeller spin ought to be very vulnerable to thrusting your lightsaber into the center of the rotation, where there is only a material object and not a plasma blade. (While keeping your body out of the plane of rotation, of course!) Presumably since it requires a mechanical arm to execute, it’s rare enough that not everyone knows the counter.

But the Jedi rarely thrust, even though you don’t need weight behind a blow for it to do severe damage. Probably because thrusts don’t look as spectacular on the screen – lightsaber fencing is not, after all, a practical martial art. What would actually work takes a back seat to what looks cool.

An elegant weapon for a more civilized age.

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