Hm.
As a genuine Uber-fan (I saw the first film 8 times in the theater when I was 7 yrs old in 1977, Empire 12 times--boy did my stepdad hate me!
and someone who has spent collecting and reading most of the novels (and I think that some of them ARE canon--but that's a debate for fans, Irivne, you'll know what I mean!
--and ROTJ 10, let me comment here.
last night I did something I haven't done in quite a while: watched the prequels. And it is amazing how much the story of the Republic seems to be panning out to the events of the last 10 yrs or so.
Geroge Lucas did not write the origional trilogy novelizations, but he DID write the Prologue, which is basically the outline of the plot of the prequels. It says (and yes, I am literally quoting this out of my head): "aided and abetted by restless, corrupt officials, AND BY THE MASSIVE ORGANS OF COMMERCE, the ambitious Senator Palpatine caused himself to become Chancellor of the Republic. Once in office, he shut himself away from the populace... and the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears."
(mini spoiler ahead)
I won't comment on the machanations of allegory (which I suspect Lucas dislikes as strongly as Tolkien, his inspiration, did; this is why he does not name names, although he is not averse, it seems, to discuss a society's state of being--I saw another article at about Cannes on Oscarwatch.com yesterday) but one thing that startles me more than any other was the apparent answer to a question that has been bothering me all these years:
Was Palpatine's destruction of the Jedi a act that he committed during his takeover of the galaxy, the miltary part of it, was it a byproduct of the aftermath of the Clone Wars, or was it a premeditated act that he did DURING his rise to power? How could the people of the Republic possibly approve, or how did they react? The answer posed in Sith shocks me: that after the events of the prequels, in which Palpatine apparently creates a set of artifical galactic disturbances (the Naboo Trade Federation dispute, the phony "seperatist movement" of Clones) he created a state where the security of the Republic was a t risk because the JEdi were spread out too thin around the galaxy and there were not enough of them to stop the escalating chain of violent events happening all over the galaxy.
Thus, Palpatine was able to proceed easily with the next-and most crucial--phase of his plan: (and as a Sith, he knew he's HAVE to do this before hand or his takeover scheme would be futile): mount an effective public relationd campaign that would result in the public's-and the Senate's enthusiastic endorsement of Paplatine's plan to remove the Jedi. That's right: he doesn't just do it; he goes ahead and makes sure the polls tell him it's the right time to do it. The public, then, is a full and willing particpant in the murder of their saviors. By the time of Sith, the Galactic public thinks of the Jedi as stupid, greedy for power, arrogant (an opinion that Yoda seems to share, curiously) and inept. They are a nuisance best neutered, for the public good, if not destroyed outright. What I can't wait for in the film (and I hope Lucas shows, if only by way of showing Bail Organa's reaction) is the Senate's reaction to the massacre in the Jedi Temple: did their words and actions justify and support ACTUAL murder as well as political "murder"? And was Palpatine justified in going that far when the galaxy was in a state of war, no matter how bad? Does the public know the full extent of what he planned to do to the discredited Jedi? Doubtfully. I hope Lucas tells us what Palpy told the public would happen to them.
Thoughts of the Patriot Act, and Gitmo, surface here....
These questions aren't just questions. This was brought home to me when after rewatching The Pantom Menace Qui-Gon tells Padme: "We are keeprs of the peace, not soldiers...we can only protect you. We can't fight a war for you." And Lucas also tells us that the Jedi were the gaurdians of peace AND JUSTICE in the Old Republic. ( I hope even you casual fans can recall where THAT quote comes from!)
Peace and justice. Does this start to ring a bell? When you think of the current campaign to discredit the UN as an insitution, and America's abandonment of multilatralism in favor of the solitary trappings of Empire, it;s hard not to see the Jedi in a new light. The Old Republic did not need an army becuase its prosperity guarunteed its peace. Or so each Chancellor was arrogrant enough to believe. So that when a threat arose, it was at a disadvantage.
Each country needs its army. But it also needs ties to other countries., And itmight be good to recall why the UN was established in the first place.
As for Justice, one needs only recall the threat against Justices and judges in recent months and the filibuster drama CURIOUSLY beginning this very week in Congress (just today the final talks broke down--what timing), and this acuirres a more urgent light.
In the Lord of Rings, characters such as Frodo, Sam and Aragron resperesented Archtypes as much as ourselves: Frodo as the Everyman who experiences all the changes of life (his very name comes from the old German Frode, "one who has experienced or seen much"); Sam, friendship; Aragorn, individual principles and human capabilty of nobilty. (One might also portray him as the romantic archtype in his devotion to Arwen, but that's another story...Ai! Viggo
)
So Star Wars, too, the characters are Archtypes as much as ourselves:
Anakin: the Everyman, fallen and risen (virgin birth crap aside--I used to think before the prequles came out it would have been great if he was Palpy's bastard child or something, that as an up and coming politican on Naboo he had had an affiar with Shmi and fathered Anakin, and then packed them secretly off into slavery on Tatooine before the baby was born, to hide the potential skeleton in his closet as he climbed the ladder of power..and Shmi never tells her son this...GOD, what aplot line that would have been! Luke facing down his grandpa in ROTJ and he didn't know it! And expalining Luke's power!).
Padme: Freedom. Both of countries and the human spirit. She is symbol and metaphor for Freedom. Which explains everything she does in the prequels, and her quote about this in Sith. Which is why she has to die at the end of the film...why she does not for example survive and flee with Leia to Alderaan and die after a few years. In Lord of the Rings, Tolkien said in the Appendices that Arwen was the fairest creature in ME (indeed, she had athe blood of a demi-goddes in hee vains--she is living link between the human and divine, as Luthien's descendant)--she is the literal representation of Good. So that she cannot survive if Sauron won--as his pwer grows, hers indeed weakened.) Likewise, if Palpatine won, Freedom (or Liberty--DON'T think Lucas chose that old-fashioned Declaration 18th-century word by accident, or because it sounds good!) would be dead. Padme CANNOT survive at the end--Freedom is dead. But she carries Hope in her body, and the only trusim worth noting, it seems, for Lucas, is the eternal truth that Hope never really dies: it rests there in our children.
Which makes him perhaps the greatest optimist of our day, even as others despair.
The most interesting thing, though, in terms of today's current events, (and in light of watching the films again), is Lucas' visual represtation of the SPIRITUAL disentigration (and rebirth) or countires and societies. This is why Palpatine can't just be an ordinary corrupt, power-seeking politician from Naboo. He also has to be a Sith Lord who either penetrated Naboo's political system, or a ordonary man who decided for whatever reason to dabble in the Dark Arts and fell from grace. He has to be the visual representation of the inversion, or perversion, of a cherished SPIRITUAL belief or state of being. Corruption and disentigration of the Body (the Republic) is impossible without corruption of the Soul. Thus, he is the ultimate corruption of the Force. The Force is thrown "out of balance" when too much power is amassed in one individual. (Very Eastern way of thinking!)
I am sure that Lucas could not have POSSIBLY predicted the rise of "Christian" Bush and those I like to call the Taliban in our government and other more local places, and their profound effect on politics, busines, society and culture but he must be shaking his head in astonishment at how closely his metaphoric trusims are playing themselves out today, in starkly literal terms (the schisms in chruces due to the "designer" issues of gay marriage and abortion; the expelling of people from congregations who didn't vote for Bush; the attempt to enter list of congregations of major churches onto Republican databases, and have churces classified as tax-free contrubution zones etc) I imagine that out of all the things he wrote, he never saw THAT one coming. Not in America! Not to call Bush a Sith Lord (!) but there IS another quote from the film that so far nobody in the media except the NY TImes has picked up on: "Only a Sith thinks in absolutes."
What he might be implying about the consequences of America's artifical fracturing along so-called "spiritual" lines can only be conjectured. Remember Lincoln's quote: "If destruction be out lot, we must ourselves be iths author and finsisher. As a nation of free men, we willlive forever..or die by suicide." That never has seemed more true today.
