Star Wars on Trial (12 page)

That's exactly the opposite of what you'll be seeing here.

In the subsequent pages, you will see the Prosecution selectively ignore important elements of the Saga in order to support their pernicious misinterpretations; you will see them twist some facts and pretend others have no significance; and you will see them persistently insist that their interpretation is the only valid one.

It is this last which We of the Defense will be attacking directly

Why?

Because we're the Good Guys, of course.

Well, okay: that's a biased statement. But it's honestly biased. I openly admit that you (or, most particularly, the Sith L-um, Learned Opposing Counsel and his evil minions, er, witnesses) might have a different interpretation.

Which might be equally valid.

Hang on to that idea, too.

Because what we'll be arguing here (with only a very few exceptions) will not be the facts of the case; those facts are on public display, in six films, dozens of cartoons, over a hundred novels and countless comic books. What will be argued here is the interpretation of those facts.

What the Prosecution will attempt, in fact, is to control your interpretation of the facts.

Why?

Not because they're the Bad Guys (well, not just because they're the Bad Guys), but because that control is necessary to their case. They have to make you agree with their nasty-minded misinterpretationsI would say force you, but I won't sink to cheap puns. Very often.

As soon as you start to think that other, alternate, innocent or even virtuous interpretations of the facts are available to you, their case falls to pieces. So their only option is to twist the facts-and when the facts cannot be twisted, there's only one avenue left.

Mind control.

Its an insidious game (in-Sidious, yes, I lied about the cheap puns)-for the need to control is the essence of the dark side-and it has already begun.

Let's just take a quick look at Learned Opposing Counsel's opening statement for evidence of careful editing of reality to suit a dark agenda....

For example, Opposing Counsel begins by insisting that Luke Skywalker, in his very first action as ajedi Knight, should have violated the most fundamental principles of the Jedi Order. Opposing Counsel will be satisfied only if Luke threatens Jabba the Hutt-bullies him into submission-rather than entering in peace, and offering even a crime lord a simple, straightforward opportunity to Do the Right Thing. Lukeentirely properly, consistent with his principles and those of the Jedioffers violence only in response to violence. Opposing Counsel, on the other hand, apparently would prefer Luke to have fallen to the dark side by the very first sequence of Episode VI.

Not that I find this in any way suspicious, you understand.

While we're at it, let's swiftly dispose of Opposing Counsel's fetish for the Other Franchise as well. Is it really necessary for us to remind the Court that these "closer to average" minor character types in the Other Franchise are statistically far more likely to be disposable cannon fodder than "heroes themselves"? Does Opposing Counsel expect us to believe he is unaware of the etymology and meaning of the SFnal expression redshirt? Does Opposing Counsel expect the Court to forget that-high-minded rhetoric notwithstanding-again, statistically speaking, this so-called Prime Directive has proven to be an SFnal Wicker Man, honored most when it must be burned down in the name of some "greater good"?

Does Opposing Counsel expect the Court to ignore the plain fact that these Vessels of Civilization he so admires are, in fact, heavily armed warships? That for all its supposed role as a carrier of some theoretical democratic principle, the Enterprise is in fact an authoritarian state in miniature, a collective under the command of an absolute ruler-more often than not in a de facto condition of war.

This is the truth of the ideal held before the Court by Opposing Counsel: lip service to principles more honored in the breach than in the observance, to create the illusion of democracy-which is actually supported by the suppression of individual rights, in an authoritarian regime justified by a semipermanent state of armed conflict.

Let me remind the Court that the ship Opposing Counsel fetishizes is "vastly bigger, more complex, a veritable city cruising through space"-a city-ship, one might be forgiven for adding, that carries enough firepower (by no coincidence whatsoever) to vaporize a planet.

This, Opposing Counsel freely admits, is his ideal.

Does this remind the Court of anyone in particular?

Not that I'm saying it should.

And the filmmaker he holds up as the egalitarian opposite to George Lucas? Whose oeuvre extols the power of the "barely above average"? (In passing, on the subject of Saving Private Ryan-I would sincerely love to watch Opposing Counsel explain to a roomful of Army freakin' Rangers where he gets the balls to claim they're only "barely above average"... but that's just in passing, and we'll let it go.)

This filmmaker would be none other than a certain Steven *coughIndianaJonescough* Spielberg, whose films are notable mostly for demonizing and dehumanizing the heroes' opponents, to make us all comfortable with cheering along as we watch them being eaten alive by, say, the Wrath of God.

As opposed to George Lucas, who has spent half of his life's work putting a human face on what had been previously regarded as the icon of ultimate evil-who spent an entire trilogy of films reminding us that the potential for destruction rests beneath even the noblest motives, and that we should always turn a suspicious eye upon anyone who preaches that They Know Best.

Even the Jedi Council.

Because sometimes they're just plain wrong. And sometimes they're up to something....

What I find so astonishing, in fact, in Opposing Counsel's indictment is that he seems to believe that the Saga endorses rule by a secretive unelected elite-and then spends much of his argument showing how the Saga itself explicitly rejects that very concept.

Yes, Yoda is secretive, and often unhelpful. The Jedi themselvesSURPRISE!-aren't exactly good guys. Perhaps Opposing Counsel never noticed. Let me enlighten him, and the Court.

If you take a close look at the Jedi Order, you find that-in Mr. Lucas's own words-they're a cross between the Texas Rangers and the Mafia. They are a vast organization of superheroes-real superheroes, with superpowers right out of Marvel or DC Comics-who wield near-absolute power in secret, without accountability to anyone but themselves and the Office of the Supreme Chancellor. They are the Justice League with interplanetary Licenses to Kill.

And guess what?

The Chosen One is chosen to destroy them.

Does Opposing Counsel expect the Court to believe this is an accident?

Everything Opposing Counsel has to say about Yoda actually undermines his own case!

If Mr. Lucas were truly advocating rule by a benevolent despot, wouldn't Yoda have turned out to be always right? Wouldn't Luke's rebellion against him have become a disaster, from which Yoda would have had to rescue him, as a father rescues an errant child?

In fact, at every turn in the Saga, when a Figure of Authority speaks out and gives strict orders ... they're wrong.

Except when that order is to trust in the Force.

In other words: trust the voice of the life within you. Trust yourself. Trust love. Trust faith.

Don't trust people who claim they know what's best for you.

The Opposing Counsel makes an eloquent argument on the virtues of questioning authority, calling its effects "inarguably spectacular, underlying most of the accomplishments of modern-enlightenment civilization."

What Opposing Counsel doesn't seem to understand is that George Lucas shares this belief in questioning authority, and that the entire Star Wars saga is a brilliant lesson in the virtues of questioning authority.

Lucas understands that once we start to question Authority, we might end up questioning all manner of authorities. We might start to wonder if they might have their own agenda, or simply be just plain wrong.

Like, for example, our own Emperor, er, president.

It's a terrible shame that our powerful myth of suspicion of authority made our Powerful Liberal Media Elite (another myth) ridicule our vice president's assertions about links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, and dismiss our national security adviser's stern warnings about mushroom clouds over Detroit. It's a terrible shame we were so distrustful of authority that nobody believed the president when he told us that sanctions and inspections weren't working to restrain Iraq's nuclear weapons program, and that Saddam Hussein was a clear and present danger to world peace in general, and the United States in particular.

If only we had trusted them, and let them lead us into that quick, cheap, simple war they were asking for; after all, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld assured the nation-before Congress, under oath-that the whole operation in Iraq would have taken only six weeks, would have been almost bloodless, and cost under ten billion dollars. If only we'd believed them, instead of being suspicious of authority.

We'd have been so much better off right now.

Having dealt with the major issue, let's take a moment here to clear up a thing or two. One of the Heroes of Real SF that Opposing Counsel cites, Robert A. Heinlein, had his alter ego Lazarus Long advise, in Time Enough for Love, that we should "Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by..." -well, let me say ignorance. Mr. Heinlein's word is less charitable. In that spirit of charity, let us assume that Opposing Counsel is merely mistaken on the following points-as opposed to intentionally misleading or deceptive-and that he, and the Court, will be grateful for the corrections.

1) The ability to use the Force is not the result of a mutation. Midichlorians are the GFFA (Galaxy Far, Far Away) equivalent of mitochondria. Every living thing so far identified in the GFFA has them. This is what is called a metaphor-relating the Force to the essential energy of life in every cell-and anyone who tries to get technical about it is wasting his time.

That is to say, everyone can touch the Force, and the Force can touch everyone. Everyone is, in fact, part of the Force, as is everything ("It surrounds us, and binds us," remember?). What Qui-Gon speaks of, when he measures Anakin's "midichlorian count" is Force potential, that's all. Does he have more potential than other people? Yes. Why?

Because that's the way the world works. Like it or not.

Some people are gifted. Some people aren't.

Now, certain ideologues may be uncomfortable with this simple truth. No matter how much self-discipline I have, I will never be a composer the equal of Mozart, nor a basketball player the equal of Michael Jordan; I'll never be as handsome as George Clooney nor as brilliant as Stephen Hawking. Given the current state of cognitive science, it can even be argued that self-discipline is itself a talent, given to us in greater or lesser degrees. Neither Mozart nor Jordan, I might add, became great simply as a result of their great talent; they took great talent and developed it into great ability through years of training. Hawking had to train his intellect; even Clooney has to exert some discipline with diet and exercise to maintain his looks. It is talent that Qui-Gon measured, not actual ability, or power.

(Is it really necessary to point out that the Jedi possessing the "highest midichlorian count ever recorded" got his high-midichlorian-count butt smoked-literally, as it happens-by Obi-Wan Kenobi, whose own midichlorian count is never described as anything special?)

This, I need hardly point out, makes a fair hash of Opposing Counsel's preposterous "hereditary mutant elite" accusation.

2) Shmi Skywalker is not from Naboo, nor is she related to Palpatine or Padme Amidala (except by marriage). She just isn't. Sorry. Nor is Palpatine related by blood to Padme. Sorry again. It just ain't so. You might as well drop that Family Feud crap right now.

Yes, of course there are family elements to the Saga. But those aren't among them.

I could tell you how I know, but then I'd have to send stormtroopers after your family.

3) Neither Joseph Campbell nor Bill Moyers ever seriously claimed that the "Hero's Journey" or the "monomyth" is the "only human way to tell a story." Campbell's work is descriptive, not prescriptive, and to pretend that he is somehow responsible for what some unnamed and possibly entirely invented "romantics" have supposedly said is a shoddy con game.

Joseph Campbell's primary work, The Masks of God, is precisely about enumerating the different ways in which myth is used in human culture, and the differing implications of the various elements, the differing aspects of human psychology that he believed the specific elements seemed to represent, and-only in the final volume, Creative Mythology-the ways in which mythic tropes continue to penetrate twentieth-century culture, and how they might be deliberately used by artists, and by others. Far from glamorizing feudal power structures or glorifying heroes, he was an acute observer and a voluminous synthesizer (which was all he actually claimed to be), as well as a very fine writer and, in worldview, something of a Hinayana Buddhist.

There are plenty of aspects in Campbell's work that are open to criticism (e.g., if I recall correctly, I found his extensive disquisition on the use of pig symbolism from The Odyssey through Finnegan's Wake to be a bit suspect), but the ones Opposing Counsel has chosen don't happen to be among them.

Aristotle, however, I will not waste words to defend. Aristotle is the most easily refutable philosopher in history; no other man has been so consistently wrong on so many points, with the possible exception of Samuel Johnson.

And, of course, Opposing Counsel.

4) One can hardly hold the Saga accountable for teaching that the "skilled and worthy warrior must cut off all attachments, etc." because this is explicitly defined in the Saga as the primary error of the Prequel-Era Jedi.

With apologies to Opposing Counsel, he simply missed the boat here. That's all there is to it. Not only is that "cutting off all attachment" business defined as exactly what drives Anakin Skywalker to become Darth Vader, but it's precisely the error that Yoda is determined to correct by allowing Luke and Leia to be raised by real families, rather than trained as Jedi from infancy by him and Obi-Wan: so that they will know a family's love, and be connected to the reality of society in ways that the Prequel-Era Jedi could never be.