Star Wars Over the Years
The "Star Wars" science fiction movie series is so iconic that it is no barometer of culture, but rather an interacting component of living society. The saying, "as California goes, so goes the nation", would apply equally, if perhaps not more so, to director Lucas' Marin County, California creations. Spanning some thirty years, the complete series provides a unique opportunity for cultural reflection.
Communality pervades the 70s and early 80s episodes. Witness the the Jawa with their giant mobile techno-rust-caravan of the desert, the perfectly-balanced cloud city in "The Empire Strikes Back", "Return of the Jedi"'s space convoys, and its Ewoks, with their Rainbow Familyesque situation in the old-growth redwood forest and primitive drumming. The episodes treat us to visions of encapsulated, usually acephalous community existing in seemingly perfect balance with the surrounding environment.
The early episodes feature long, meditative periods, as if to conjure themes in Eastern religions. As part of this conjuration, the audience gets a lesson in how appearances can be deceiving with the first appearance of Yoda in the swamp of Dagoba. Yoda comes first as a silly little green swamp creature. Later, the opposite is revealed.
In the very first episode, Luke has a psychedelic trip-like experience in the swamp of Dagoba as part of his Jedi training. There Yoda says, "Know fear you will." Going back to the raw 70s Marin County original, without the major motion picture filtering, the wording is, "Know bad trips you will."
These cultural alternatives to mainline Western culture are, at best, subdued in the episodes from the 2000s. We see the Jawa, where Annakin gets tips from them about the location of a group of desert inhabitants. But nothing of their interactions amongst themselves is presented. The film shows only smoothly-operating Jawa caravans at night with their lights shining brightly.
That scene makes a marked contrast to the funky rustiness of the caravans and the Jawa society that was on display in the first-released episode. Overall, the closest thing we see to communality in the later-released episodes is its nightmare: the clone army. The film shows a perfect inversion of the former visions in this vast replication of the ultra rugged-individualist, bounty hunter Jango Fett.
Along with the cultural alternatives presented in the early episodes goes their delight in technology. Gone are the long droid soliloqueys and duoliloqueys of the early episodes. Whereas in the early episodes, technology offered liberation for many, in the later episodes that role is limited to the child Anakin's winning the pod racer contest. While in the early episodes we saw much promising fix-it wrenching and welding, such activity is limited in the later ones.
In the later episodes, an equally interesting angle replaces the early themes, however. Corporate society envelopes almost everything in a suffocating embrace. And the technology of the 2000s episodes reinforces the current world, instead of transforming it. The spaceships land with perfect grace, often turning slightly upon landing or performing other graceful, smooth, last-second maneuvers to perfect a landing. They do this as if to say that their essential technical function, space transport, is beyond much significance, and the only remaining excitement is in their style.
Happily, the 2000s episodes support not only science fiction content but in-depth love stories. While the primacy of the individual seems lost amidst a suffocating corporate galaxy, exemplified in the city-planet where the galaxy finds its capitol seat, the personal dramas stand out clearly. As in Balzac, the interest lies in the individual dramas, highlighted against the intentionally boring backdrop.
With this highlighting of the individual comes an emphasis on physical fitness. The light saber duels that formerly focused exclusively on the philosophical schools of the combatants, representing the intensity of the clash of will in the humming of the clashing light sabers, now feature pervasive gymnastics. 70s acid trips are out; physical fitness is in. Pointed politics is also in, especially when Anakin (as the newly-minted Lord Vader), tells Obi Wan Kenobi, "If you're not with me, you're my enemy", echoing a recent statement by the President of the United States.
Kenobi responds, "Only the Sith deal in absolutes." And the exquisite portrayal of Anakin's turning to the Dark Side stands head and shoulders above the melodrama in the earlier episodes. Anakin's straightfoward mind is bent and twisted to Senator Palpatine's ends. In this end of the beginning of the series, the democratic Galactic Republic turns into the totalitarian Empire.
From the outset, the film introduces us to Anakin's thinking early on and its progression makes the evolution into Lord Vader seem understandable. For any film, the level of sophistication is impressive. For an American film, it is shocking.
As large corporations dominate American society today, it is fitting that the Star Wars series should find its zenith in depicting good turned to evil in a misguided struggle for corporate power. Perhaps the great American novel is, in fact, this movie series.
