?? That's frickin' haiku man | Main | Was Toccata and Fugue not Bach's? ??
It's a helluva turd to polish, but it's Aidan Wasley's theory. The basic argument: "the Force" is an overt representation of the mechanics of plot. It brings C3PO and R2D2 to Luke at just the moment when they'd have to get there, for instance, to move the story ahead. And so on. The whole yarn is held together by a very thin thread which can only be explained by unseen forces at work. Meanwhile, the Empire represents pure will and control, the opposite of the fatalism that, say, drops Luke within a mile of Yoda when he crash-lands on a presumably earth-sized planet. In other words, Star Wars is "about" the illusion of causality, and the folly of will.
It's one thing to claim that artistry can be unintentional, but it's another to argue that Lucas' hamfisted storytelling is a virtue. Taken in historical context, a thing that postmodernists are usually loathe to do, we realize that the plot is more like Darth Vader than Yoda: The movie starts with something relatively organic: two robots are dropped into the desert after their spaceship is invaded. A nice little seventies throwback to Flash Gordon. Then Lucas begins to beleive his own press, and piles artifice upon artifice to raise the story's supposed mythical import, until it's a stiff caricature of Faust. Sure, it's interesting, but in the same way that a car-crash interesting. Or, perhaps, in the same way that Chance the gardener is a genius.
On the other hand, there are some similarities between the Jedi and postmoderists:
1. They both have a fondness for dressing in black.
2. They both speak in jibberish.
3. They both get accused of undue influence on the Academy.
Comments
After having read that article, and subsequently reading all the other posts about it, I've come to agree with Wasley's assertion that the films are postmodern, albeit for completely different reasons.
Bear with me...one of the philosophical underpinnings of postmodernism is existentialism, which claims that existence precedes essence, and only after the individual recognizes the absurdity of existence does the chance for defining an essence emerge.
Years ago Lucas made the statement in Rolling Stone magazine that he had three prequels and three sequels to the original trilogy planned. Somewhere along the way he recognized the downright absurdity of that lie and since then has been desperately trying to come up with a story-line, or essence if you will, of that line of b.s. he fed a reporter. The prequels were the result of his working a story top-down because he wrote himself into a corner by filming the IV-VI first. So, his story was in existence the moment he opened his big mouth, but it lacked any sort of definition.
I guess I???m trying to claim that the series is postmodern because Lucas is a bad story-teller and a weak-chinned liar. ???Course that???s just my opinion???
