Jump Cut 1997: Iss 41

141 Pages·1997·7.9 MB·English

Special sections—contradictions of sexual representation,
ethnicity and race, radio, sci-fi and cyborgs. Reali-TV.
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A REVIEW OF CONTEM PORARY MEDIA US$10
STAR WARS
JUMP CUT 41
CO-EDITORS CONTRIBUTORS
John Hess
Robert Barringer has a keen interest in Hollywood film, especially science fiction.
Chuck Kleinhans
...Sylvie Blum, who teaches French at the University of Florida, is writing a book about
Julia Lesage French cinema’s look back on colonialism in a postcolonial era. ...Filmmaker/writer who
teaches in the film school of the London College of Printing, Michael Chanan is current¬
ly editing a book on Tomas Gutierrez Alea. ...While teaching English at Oakland
ASSOCIATE
University in Rochester Ml, Robert Eberwein is writing a book on the uses to which film
EDITORS
and video have been put in sex education. ...Karla Fuller, currently teaching at Rosary
Edith Becker College, completed a doctoral dissertation at Northwestern University on representa¬
Julianne Burton tions of non-Asian actors playing Asian roles in Hollywood films. ...Jane Gaines is au¬
Michelle Citron thor of the prize-winning book,Contested Culture: The Image, the Voice, the Law. ...A
Doug Eisenstark very useful text for introductory media students is Susan Hayward’s recently published
JoAnn Elam Key Concepts in Cinema. ...Eithne Johnson teaches film and media studies at
Jane Gaines Emerson College and at Wellesley College. ...Jeff Land is writing a book on the history
of Radio Pacifica. ...Author of Running Scared: Masculinity and the Representation of
Kathy Geritz
the Male Body, Peter Lehman teaches in Media Arts at the University of Arizona.
Deborah Holdstein
...Editor of Enclitic, John O’Kane teaches media and cultural studies at UCLA. ...A fre¬
Ernie Larsen
quent and welcome contributor to JUMP CUT, Robert M. Payne wrote in the last issue
Gina Marchetti
about Asian American organizing in protest against RISING SUN. ...Chad Raphael’s
Sherry Millner
dissertation at Northwestern University is about the political, economic, representation¬
Manji Pendakur
al, and regulatory strugggles over television documentaries. ...Dan Rubey is Chief
Dana Polan Librarian and Director of the Comparative Literature Program at Lehman College,
Mark Reid CUNY, where he teaches medieval literature, film, popular culture, and contemporary
B. Ruby Rich art. ...Eric Schaefer is finishing the book, “Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!”: A History of
Kimberly Safford Exploitation Films, 1919-1959, as he teaches film and television studies at Emerson
Robert Stam College. ...Marc Siegel is spending the year in Paris with the Centre Parisien d’Etudes
Peter Steven Critiques. ...Amy Wegener is working for her Ph.D. in theater at Northwestern
Tom Waugh University. ...Tony Williams is author of Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the
American Horror Film.
Claire Whitaker
Linda Williams
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Mike Arnzen JUMP CUT PO Box 865 Berkeley CA 94701
Mark Gallagher
Mari Sugata
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Kate Sullivan
Elaine Roth
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2 JUMP CUT 41
Star Wars
Not so long ago,
not so far away
(This essay is reprinted from JUMP CUT 18,1978)
simulations of dazzling speed and acceleration, usually in¬
by Dan Rubey volving bright light against a dark black background, as in the
explosion of the Death Star or the jump into hyperspace.
George Lucas’ enormously popular STAR WARS (1977)
Stark contrasts of light and dark, black and white, organize
plugs into its audience’s central nervous system by mixing
shots: the white ships against the black void of space, Darth
the U.S. love of machinery with the heroic myths and dreams
Vader’s black robes and Luke and the Princess’s white ones.
of western European civilization.! This technological fairy
When the colors are not simply black and white, they are usu- i
tale reflects in the symbolic language of its images the desires
ally restricted to metallic gold and silver, the colors of the
and ambiguities produced by living inside a machine-oriented
world of spaceships and robots. These patterns and the ear-
technology, supported by anachronistic ideologies of individ¬
shattering noises create the film’s machine ambience, a basi¬
ual heroism and metaphysical justification. STAR WARS
cally inhuman atmosphere—hard-edged, dry and metallic. In¬
embraces technology in order to enjoy the sensations of pow¬
itially, technology seems menacing in images such as the
er and exhilaration which technology offers, and then falls
enormous battleship or the Death Star or Darth Vader’s face-
back on heroic individual action and the metaphysical, non-
mask. But the film’s every frame celebrates machines and the
rational Force to solve the problem of eroded values and de¬
speed and power they seem to promise, and the special effects
personalized experiences which technology creates. The film
create a technological thrill.
combines traditional models of individual combat with the
technology of electronic warfare in a way which re¬ STAR WARS’ special effects derive largely from 2001:
romanticizes war, creating a new set of heroic images appro¬ A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), but second-generation comput¬
priate to a technological age and the kind of electronic war¬ er technology makes them more sophisticated.2 Lucas uses
fare the United States waged in Vietnam. STAR WARS’ classier effects and does more with them, particularly in sim¬
meaning and appeal depend on how the striking special ef¬ ulating three-dimensional movement. But 2001'% director
fects reinforce the plot’s fantasies and mythic echoes. Stanley Kubrick introduced new kinds of special effects to
create visual images of a different order of reality and to force
VISUAL IMAGES
audiences to participate in the characters’ disorientation. Lu¬
Visually STAR WARS creates a machine aesthetic, one that cas simply uses special effects to heighten the intensity of his
invests machine surfaces with the life and interest denied hu¬ combat sequences, to make them super-real, while at the
man forms. The film uses images of size, speed, sharp con¬ same time keeping us firmly grounded in the familiar world
trasts, and violent action to create a visual counterpart to the of World War II dogfights and police-movie car chases.
plot structures in which young rebels are menaced by mon¬ 2001'$ special effects move us out of the film’s technological
strous and powerful enemies. world and create feelings of otherness, other spaces, other
kinds of experiences. STAR WARS’ special effects involve
STAR WARS’ visual and aural experience is intended to
us more deeply in the film’s technological, machine-oriented
be overwhelming. The 70mm film and Dolby quadraphonic
ambience, producing visceral effects which heighten our in¬
sound amplify the images’ impact and the sound’s volume,
volvement in the conventional fantasy structure.
enclosing the viewer in the filmic world. The general visual
pattern involves contrasts between overwhelmingly large im¬ Compare, for example, the shot in 2001 where the space
ages and vulnerably small ones. In the opening shot, for ex¬ pod with Bowman in it rushes between deep space’s converg¬
ample, a tiny spaceship is pursued by another ship of enor¬ ing horizontal and vertical planes of colored lights, and the
mous size which slowly enters the screen from the right top parallel shot in STAR WARS where Luke and the other pilots
comer, moves into the center of the screen, and finally fills it attack the Death Star by flying at great speed down a narrow
entirely, engulfing the smaller ship. This visual dichotomy of trench in the space station’s surface. In both films the speed
small and large reinforces the organizing narrative dichotomy and acceleration produce excitement and a touch of fear. As
of good-young-less-powerful versus evil-older-more- Kubrick’s 2001 simply presents the visual effect with only a
powerful, and it helps the audience participate emotionally in vague context for it ("Beyond Infinity”), this lack of defini¬
the vulnerability of Luke and the Princess. tion increases the audience’s sense of disorientation. Bow¬
man’s helplessness inside the machine, his inability to control
Most of the special effects involve either explosions or
or even understand what is happening to him, gives the scene limitations. It enables us to take on the nature of our ma¬
a powerful sense of ambiguity and anxiety. On the one hand, chines and share in their power and relative invulnerabili¬
the pod is his only protection in this tremendously threatening ty—the bionic fantasy of television shows and comic books.
environment, the only thing keeping him alive and connected Machines move as fast as we can think, erasing the gap be¬
to reality. But the pod also seems like a trap, something en¬ tween thought and performance, desire and satisfaction, mak¬
capsulating him, keeping him from the world outside. The ing us into comic book superheroes.
very word “pod” suggests a seed pod, so that the sequence be¬
But this fusion with machine sensibility has dehumaniz¬
comes an experience of birth or rebirth.
ing side-effects, partly as a result of placing the machine be¬
In STAR WARS’ comparable scene, the combat context tween ourselves and what it acts on, and partly because of the
focuses the feelings of anxiety and excitement generated by nature of the cinematic medium. As sophisticated film view¬
the visual effects, and it transforms anxiety into feelings of ers, we have learned to pay attention solely to what is on the
aggression and violence. Since the feelings of unease are giv¬ screen and not to speculate about what’s been withheld. (Less
en a specific focus on the plot level—a desire to destroy the cinematically sophisticated audiences interrupt the film to ask
space station—the Death Star’s explosion serves as catharsis. questions about characters who have disappeared from the
The sequence generates a desire to use the machine more screen.3) So when ships or planets blow up, we do not think
skillfully, not to escape from it. For Kubrick, human depen¬ about the people who presumably die. Special effects tend to
dence on technology is simply one stage in evolution, and the exist for their own sake, regardless of their function in the
obelisks represent an extra-human reality; in STAR WARS, plot; we take them in without examining their implications.
the Force represents a better bombsight.
As a visual image, the planet Alderaan’s destruction
In STAR WARS, the special effects—speed, lasers, ex¬ looks very much like the Death Star’s explosion. Obi-Wan
plosions, jumps into hyperspace, noise—excite and satisfy Kenobi’s brief attack of heartburn does not convince us that
the audience almost apart from any connection to the narra¬ something tragic has happened. Since we do not experience
tive line. The constant contrasts of large and small call up the deaths of the people on the planet, those people do not ex¬
feelings of vulnerability and powerlessness which in turn re¬ ist for us in the film. Both explosions are visual experiences
flect the frustrations (general and specific) of the youthful au¬ to be enjoyed in aesthetic terms. Everything is a visual trip,
dience the film is aimed at. These frustrations are then satis¬ an aesthetic experience.
fied by the feelings of enormous power created by the film’s
This act of turning war into an aesthetic experience
machine aesthetic and the special effects of speed, power and
seems connected to the increased use of airplanes in World
violence. The machine ambience of the film provides an illu¬
War II, and to the images of the air war created in both the
sion of power and control, the ability to escape our bodies’
news media and war films. World War II films tend to move
f'
4 JUMP CUT 41
in one of two directions—toward infantry “war is hell” mo¬ use of special effects. Such an experience was documented in
vies which record the blood-and-guts suffering of the war on contemporary history by Peter Davis’ Vietnam documentary,
the ground and occasionally its effect on the civilian popula¬ HEARTS AND MINDS (1974), where a pilot says that
tion; or toward air-war, fighter-pilot films which romanticize bombing runs were like “a singer singing an aria.” Such pi¬
combat and take place in the more abstract, generalized realm lots took pride in their technical expertise; they found the ex¬
of the sky. These differences reflect real differences in the citement of seeing the bombs explode “incredible,” “thrilling,
two modes of warfare, that of ground troops who have no es¬ deeply satisfying.” But they never saw any people or any
cape from war and its implications, and that of pilots who live blood. As one flyer says in Davis’ film, “You could never see
in protected rear areas and fly to war as if to work, experienc¬ the people. You never saw any blood. You could never hear
ing combat as moments of intensity and exhilaration spaced any screams. It was very clean. I was a technician.”
out by respites in comparatively comfortable surroundings.
Robert Lifton argues in his study of Vietnam veterans
Being physically detached from the realities of ground that technological warfare like the U.S. air war in Vietnam
war lends itself to aestheticizing war and psychically detach¬ has an avoidance of guilt built into it. Lifton says, “Increasing
ing from what is really going on, which becomes evident in technicizing of the war makes certain that the people we kill
media treatment of the war. In a Movietone News film clip are outside of our immediate and imaginative vision.”5 In this
reproduced in Marcel Ophul’s film on the Nuremberg trials, kind of war in which killers and victims are separated by such
MEMORY OF JUSTICE (1975), the narrator describes foot¬ vast distances, the only awareness of the “enemy” comes as
age of the night fire-bombing of Dresden, perhaps the great¬ electronic feedback in the form of blips on a screen. This
est Allied atrocity of the war, as having “magnificent bomb¬ technological detachment from war’s realities makes possible
ing shots.” And aesthetically the footage is beautiful. But what Lifton calls "numbed warfare: killing with a near-total
such a judgment fails to translate what those images actually separation of act from idea.”6 The machines’ sensory equip¬
mean—the burning and destruction of the city and the hide¬ ment becomes an extension of or substitue for the pilot’s sen¬
ous deaths of 35,()(X) civilians. sory equipment; along with it, the pilots seem to take on the
machine’s lack of moral sensibility as well.
These air-war films are the lineal ancestors of STAR
WARS’s combat sequences—Lucas used actual footage of In a Washington Monthly aiticle on the era of the Blue
dogfights to construct his own sequences. He explains: Machine in Laos, Fred Branfman records a flyer’s words:
The dogfight sequence was extremely hard to cut and You become a part of the machine as you really do it.
edit. We had story-boards that we had taken from old Guys who fly keep their professionality.... I haven’t
movies intercut with pilots talking and stuff, so you bombed now for three months and I really feel out of
could edit the whole sequence in real time.4 shape. The key is to be able to bomb without really think¬
But despite its roots in World War II films, the sophisticated ing about it, automatically, to take evasive action... in¬
level of technology in STAR WARS—computers, .nissiles, stinctively—to be able to do this you have to be flying
lasers, flashing space-age control panels, beeping radar gun- every day.7
sights—actually reflects Vietnam’s air war, conducted with a This statement aptly describes Luke’s final attack on the
technology the pilots called “the Blue Machine,” the U.S. Air Death Star, the scene in which he switches off his gun-sight
Force. STAR WARS is the first war movie of a new age of and releases the missile instinctively, in a fantasy of bionic
electronic combat, predicting what war will feel like for com¬ fusion with his ship, a fusion made possible by the Force.
batants completely encapsulated in technology, like the sol¬
STAR WARS reproduces technological warfare’s senso¬
diers in Robert Heinlein’s 1959 Starship Troopers.
ry exp)erience and excitement through special effects, and
The film’s dogfights and one-man fighters are a romantic then the plot provides a romance-fantasy structure that glam¬
attempt to recapture the glamor of WWII films and disasso¬ orizes and justifies this kind of experience. The film articu¬
ciate ourselves from the destructive role that our bombers and lates and feeds on its audience’s feelings of frustration and
rockets actually played in Vietnam.The film projects that as¬ desires for escape, mobility and power. It satisfies those frus¬
pect of the war onto the Death Star. By associating the bad trations and desires with conventional fantasies about good
guys with the heavily armored Death Star, which destroys a and evil, the family romance, vague mystical forces that
helpless planet, and the good guys with the small one-man guide and give meaning, and images of war and combai as
fighters, STAR WARS uses an image of ourselves from the metaphors for competition and individuality. In the process
past as a defense against our more recent history. the film endorses traditional structures of racism, sexism, and
social hierarchy which create and maintain frustration, and
But this separation is not so simple. The technology of
also attitudes towards technology which form an important
the Vietnam air war came as a natural outgrowth of World
part of the whole ideological package.
War II’s more primitive machines. Furthermore, U.S. pilots’
attitudes about what they were doing in Vietnam was funda¬
FANTASY SYSTEMS AND
mentally the same as that expressed in the Movietone News
THE BIAS OF MEDIEVAL ROMANCE
report on the Dresden fire-bombing. Totally cut off from the
effects of what they were doing by their machines’speed and STAR WARS is not a science fiction film. It combines what
accuracy, the pilots viewed their bombing runs as aesthetic used to be called “sword and sorcery” and “space opera,”
experiences, exciting and exhilarating moments in their now called “epic fantasy.” Lucas says he wanted to make a
lives—the experience that STAR WARS recreates through its space fantasy in the genre of Edgar Rice Burroughs rather
JUMP CUT 41 5
than Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. He wanted to do a film for between chivalric romance and romantic (as opposed to rea¬
“kids” and “the kids in all of us” which would restore “fairy listic) novels, romance has been one of Western culture’s
tales and dragons and Tolkien and all the real heroes,” left out most successful and long-lived fictional structures.
of science fiction and films in general since the 50s.
Romance developed originally in a period when the rigid
Lucas wants to turn “some ten-year-old kid” on to outer class structure of the first stages of medieval feudalism began
space and the possibilities of romance and adventure in space to relax enough for the formation of a commercial middle
exploration; “What we really need to do is to colonize the class and a lower order of nobility within the aristocracy it¬
next galaxy, get away from the hard facts of 2001 and get on self. This lower order of nobility arose with the gradual grant¬
the romantic side of it.” When we colonize Mars, we will “go ing of aristocratic status to the military class, the knights. In
with Stanley’s ships but hopefully we are going to be carry¬ the twelfth and thirteenth centuries this class came to share
ing my laser sword and have the Wookie at our side.” That is, the great lords’ legal status but not their power and wealth; it
Lucas hopes space’s exploration and colonization will be ac¬ filled an increasingly bureaucratic and administrative role in
complished by 2001'% realistic technology but with STAR the growing governmental apparatus dominated by the lords.
WARS providing the explorers’ fantasies and motives:
Within this social framework, Arthurian romances like
I would feel very good if someday they colonize Mars those of Chretien (stories about the British King Arthur and
when I am 93 years old or whatever, and the leader of the his knights) articulated these lesser nobles’ desire for upward
first colony says: T really did it because I was hoping social mobility within the rigidly hierarchical feudal system.
there would be a Wookie up there.’8 The romance fantasy structure in this period combines Ger¬
These ingenuous statements about fantasy, kids, and the irra¬ manic feudal military codes with the newly rediscovered Ro¬
tional serve to disguise Lucas’s conservative ideological bias, man idea of the state and the Roman conception of imperial
his assumption that humanity’s greatest challenge still lies in power as based on “popular sovereignty.” It modifies earlier
expansion and conquest of new territorial frontiers. Space is forms of Christianity, in which God forbade taking Christian
the new West, the new frontier to exploit. Instead of using our lives, into a newer style of imperial Christianity, in which the
resources to deal with the problems we created within our state became the supreme moral force on earth and so could
current frontiers, we can continue to direct our energy out¬ order men to kill soldiers from rival Christian states in its
ward in fantasies of endless worlds and limitless expansion. name. Within this fantasy structure, military action for God
and country (increasingly symbolized by an aristocratic wom¬
Lucas ignores these views’ ideological character by an) provides the path to recognition, fame and acceptance
claiming to work within an eternal tradition of fairy tales and (that is, social mobility). Combat becomes a symbolic rite of
adventure myths stretching from Homer’s Odyssey to John passage that has social as well as individual implications.
Ford’s westerns. He describes the kind of adventure he is try¬
ing to recreate for kids today: Romance fantasy was potentially revolutionary in the
sense that it expressed a desire to overthrow existing social
I call it the fairy tale or the myth. It is a children’s story hierarchies (often expressed through the reversal of male/
in history and you go back to the Odyssey.... the myths female roles inherent in courtly love). But it finally supported
which existed in high adventure, and an exotic far-off the existing hierarchy because the lesser nobility wanted to
land which was always that place over the hill, Camelot, rise within the system and enjoy the fruits at the top rather
Robin Hood, Treasure Island. That sort of stuff ihat is al¬ than overthrow the system entirely. Romance indicates this
ways big adventure out there somewhere. It came all the social conservatism; as a genre, it recognizes and expresses
way down through the western.9 revolutionary impulses but finally defuses them and renders
But Lucas’s picture of such an unbroken tradition ignores them harmless to the current social structure.
both the specific meanings these stories had for the societies
This fundamental social orientation persists within the
which created them and important differences between them.
form. When medieval romance (and medievalism in general)
Myths and fantasies are not eternal: they are historical.
was revived in the nineteenth century, it was often used to
To trace the background of its genre briefly, the plot of suggest an alternative to industrialism and capitalism and
STAR WARS is a chivalric romance plot. Chivalric romance their tendencies to destroy human values. But this alternative
as a specific form in western Europe was first developed in had implicit within it conservative and even reactionary
twelfth-century France by authors such as Chretien de strains. As Raymond Williams argues, such a critique of capi¬
Troyes, and it remained widely popular through the sixteenth talism with its nostalgia for past golden ages, knights in ar¬
century. The form w£is revived in the nineteenth century by mor, and flowing robes, carries within it a system of received
poets such as Tennyson (whose Idyls of the King reworks social values which, if they become active, “at once spring to
Malory’s fifteenth-century Morte d’Arthur), and writers like the defence of certain kinds of order, certain social hierarchi¬
the socialist William Morris (Well at the World's End). These es and moral stabilities, which have a feudal ring but a more
works and others like them filtered medieval romances relevant and more dangerous contemporary application.” 10
though a gauze of nineteenth-century concerns, and in turn
This implicit conservative, reactionary strain is present
they became the sources of twentieth-century sword-and-
in STAR WARS and undercuts the film’s tone of youthful re¬
sorcery fantasies, among them Tolkien’s Ring series, begun
belliousness. The final scene of the film, in which Luke and
in the 1930s, and contemporary works like Michael Moor¬
Han Solo walk between rows of uniformed soldiers at rigid
cock’s Sword Rulers series. Even leaving aside the relation
attention to receive their medals, visually echoes the march of
6 JUMP CUT 41
Hitler, Himmler, and Lutze to the Nuremberg memorial in But if Luke is to rise socially, his success must be ex¬
Leni Riefenstahl’s TRIUMPH OF THE WILL (1935).l 1 The plained. A fantasy system like that of romance, which wishes
grins that the heroes exchange with Princess Leia are meant to allow for social mobility and also to retain the hierarchical
to assure us that these three at least aren’t taking all this mili¬ status quo, must somehow explain the fact that not everyone
tary pomp very seriously. But since the scene and its totalitar¬ in the society rises. If everyone rose to the top, those at the
ian, fascist overtones grow so naturally out of the rest of the top could no longer feel superior to anyone. On the other
film's fantasies and images, it seems fair to ask if the grins do hand, if eligible people do not rise, then the social system it¬
undercut this image or simply allow it to function for us in self appears unjust and the hero’s success arbitrary and mean¬
much the same way that Riefenstahl’s original image func¬ ingless. These two requirements generate an ideology of indi¬
tioned. vidualism. The romance hero can win fame, glory, and the
boss’s daughter and still not threaten the hierarchical status
The scene confirms all the hierarchical, militaristic val¬
quo because he is an uniquely talented individual.
ues that have characterized the bad guys up to this point and
applies them to the heroes. Martial tones dominate the scene In medieval romance the problem is solved by disguise
and the accompanying music. The military position of “atten¬ and mistaken identity. The hero enters a situation in which
tion” and the practice of lining troops up in precise rows is an his aristocratic identity is not known. He wins victory and so¬
attempt to deny the human body’s weakness and vulnerabili¬ cial acceptance through his own strength and courage and
ty, to make human beings hard-edged and precise like their then reveals his identity at the end. Tliis solution proves that
weapons. Up to this conclusion, the bad guys have been asso¬ merit alone is enough to succeed, but at the same time, it vin¬
ciated with their rigid body-armor, impenetrable mask-like dicates the social system by locating both rank and merit in
helmets, and heavily armored Death Star. When so drastic a the hero’s own person. In STAR WARS, a film which comes
reversal or transition takes place at a story’s end, it becomes out of a North American culture which officially denies the
important to try to understand the nature of that transition. importance of class, the problem is solved by racism.
In romance, the generation gap functions as a symbolic ROBOTS, WOOKIES AND RACISM
representation of the split between upper and lower social
levels, or between those with more power and wealth and Structures of racism in STAR WARS form an alternative,
those with less. The desire to grow up and escape childhood’s parallel hierarchy, so that the hero who is oppressed and infe¬
frustrations and restrictions by becoming an adult is symboli¬ rior in one system can be superior in the other. On the bottom
cally analogous to the desire for upward social mobility. This in the power and age hierarchies, Luke is on top in the race
connection falsely attaches the sense of inevitability, a natural hierarchy. He is human, as opposed to the non-human races,
part of the process of growing up, to the desire for social mo¬ and most importantly as opposed to the robots. Actor Mark
bility. Assuming there is no accident, everyone grows up; not Hamill’s blond, blue-eyed, all-American, Wasp good looks
everyone rises within the social system. reinforce such racial resonances. In his position at the top of
the race hierarchy, Luke acts kindly and generously to those
Luke represents both youth/age and class splits. He is under him (specifically in how he treats the two robots), be¬
young, living with his aunt and uncle. As we see him initially having as he wishes his uncle would behave to him, and as
(and as he sees himself), he is a farmer, an unsophisticated ru¬ the audience wishes their superiors would behave to them.
ral hick living on an unimportant planet in a backwater of the
This behavior marks Luke as a good person. His final success
universe. Luke feels oppressed on the farm. His uncle needs says that good people can, by their own conduct, overcome
his labor and refuses to let him go to the academy to become
the hierarchical system’s unattractive aspects and make it
a fighter pilot, thus refusing to let him grow up and move up
function satisfactorily for everyone.
socially. The youth/age, peasant/aristocrat split takes on an¬
other dimension, that of labor/management. Thus Luke’s The price paid to affirm the hierarchical system is dehu¬
sense of frustration can resonate for the audience on a number manization of those in lower positions. Thus a hierarchy that
of levels, depending on the circumstances of their own lives; we perceive as unfair and oppressive when seen from Luke’s
any or all three of these levels can be present at the same point of view (the virtual slavery of his position in his uncle’s
time. Luke’s experience in the film provides a generalized house) becomes fair and matter-of-fact when Luke becomes
fantasy vehicle through which the audience’s real experienc¬ master of the two robots. The robots (or ‘droids for androids)
es can be organized, “understood,” and solved. are science-fiction Stepin Fetchits. They do the real work of
this society but are discriminated against. The issue of race is
In the plot Luke grows up by taking part in military ac¬
raised explicitly in the bar scene; there the bartender says he
tion, moving simultaneously into a more cosmopolitan, aris¬
doesn’t serve their kind. It is also raised earlier when C-3PO
tocratic, big-city world. Indicatively, the rural culture’s lan¬
(See Threepio in Lucas’s novel) says he “can’t abide those
guage differs from the aristocrats’. Luke, his uncle and aunt
Jawas.” The issue of racism has been explicit in science-
speak plainly; aristocratic characters like Princess Leia and
fiction treatments of androids at least since the early 1950s,
Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi speak in the high-flown, ornamental
when Theodore Sturgeon published a story in Galaxy in
rhetoric of romance and epic fantasy. This language can seem
which scientists had created a race of androids so similar to
corny, even campy, but Lucas means it to be taken straight. 12
humans that the only distinction was the androids lacked a na¬
Their dialogue gives the aristocratic, cosmopolitan world
vel. The story revolved around discrimination against the an¬
Luke wants to enter a heightened reality above that of every¬
droids and the rape of an android woman who conceived a
day life, and Lucas’s instincts are sound on the point.
child as a result. The point here is not that the treatment of ro-
JUMP CUT 41 7
bots in STAR WARS is racist, but that —i
the film makes use of and supports racist
habits of thought when it divides its char¬
acters up into hierarchical levels based on
their physical attributes. That the film is f
forced to use racism to support and justi- 11
fy its fantasy structure calls that structure ^
into question. We should examine its im-
plications closely. ^
The robots and the Wookie perform J M
another function in STAR WARS’ fanta- y
sy system. They serve as non-
competitive, non-sexual comrades and
friends, one of racism’s chief emotional .
satisfactions. We would like friends and
allies who have our best interest.”, at heart, ^
but people prefer a leading role in their -
own play to a secondary one in ours. In
fantasy, members of lower classes or rac-
es can fill that supporting role because
they cannot compete with us. In the fan-
tasy at least, they accept their inferior po-
sition without question and assume the
role of loyal follower and trusted side- - mSSp
kick. American literature is full of Indi- t
ans and blacks who fill this role (e.g.,
James Fenimore Cooper’s Indians, Hack- HB
leberry Finn's Nigger Jim). In an adven- , B
ture fantasy you don’t want subordinates .
striking for higher wages while you are ” - « ■
being mashed in the garbage crusher, so ' . K B
you make them robots or Wookies who ^ .mB
cannot move up in the hierarchy. Wook-
ies and robots are not eligible to court
princesses and they do not need money or
glory. In the final ceremony only the
as a romantic and morally justified screen for the more specif¬
white male heroes get medals; the Wookie walks down the
ic forms of competition which are the avenues to success and
aisle and then steps aside to join the robots and applaud like
social mobility in the real world, and which cannot be so easi¬
everyone else.
ly romanticized. Combat provides a setting for individual vic¬
This focus on the individual and the recognition of indi¬ tories that singles out the hero and supports him with the mo¬
vidual merit as validating the social system itself requires a ral force of the whole community. By setting things up this
plot in which individual (rather than collective or group) ac¬ way, Lucas denies that people need to work collectively or
tion serves a dramatic purpose. STAR WARS’ plot hinges on long, or even very hard for change. Individual heroism at one
the fact that the imperial space station, the Death Star, has spot and in one heroic moment can win the war.
one vulnerable point, an exhaust vent into which one small
Because of this focus on individualism, collective action
rocket manned by one heroic pilot can shoot a missile and de¬
does not serve collective goals, it only advances the hero’s
stroy the installation. So the rebellion’s outcome and the uni¬
fortune and reputation. The other pilots’ deaths simply make
verse’s fate hang on the outcome of one act by one man.
us aware of the task’s difficulty and increase the dimensions
By placing such an apocalyptic weight on one individu¬ of Luke’s victory, giving it the added motivation of revenge
al’s actions, the film demonstrates both the importance of in¬ for lost comrades. Within the fantasy, only Luke, as the vehi¬
dividualism to the fantasy system and the difficulty in the late cle for realizing our own fantasies, is real. Other characters
1970s of creating a plot in which individual action can have simply serve as cannon fodder in an illusory pursuit of dimly
convincing consequences for the society as a whole. Laser articulated common goals. If the hierarchical system is to be
swords and guns and one-man fighters are STAR WARS' preserved, not everyone can rise. Other characters tend to
weapons because they are the weapons of romantic individual serve either as enemies who initiate and justify the action or
combat, the equipment of fantasies in which things can be as surrogate parents and comrades who help the hero and then
changed, outcomes significantly affected, by one person. This in one way or another drop out of the picture.
kind of individualized military combat (like medieval jousts)
Luke and Han Solo’s relation is of particular interest in
is an ideal plot vehicle for romance fantasy because it serves
8 JUMP CUT 41
these terms. Initially Han is smarter, cooler, more sophisticat¬ the society values most highly. They are pushed into roles as
ed and more competent than Luke. His cynicism and worldli¬ maternal figures or sexual objects, encouraged to see them¬
ness serve as a foil for Luke’s romanticism and naivete. But selves primarily in terms of men and male activities. But by
as Luke’s vague romanticism turns into Force-directed ideal¬ identifying women with the system, men have ensured that
ism, Han’s cynicism turns into a negative kind of individual¬ when the inevitable feelings of entrapment and betrayal arise,
ism which undercuts him and eliminates him as a serious ri¬ those feelings will be directed at women rather than faced re¬
val for the audience’s affection and approval. alistically. This identification impels men back into the ado¬
lescent, narcissistic male camaraderie which Leslie Fiedler
Han’s withdrawal from the final battle serves two pur¬
sees as characteristic of American fiction in Love and Death
poses. First, it is a criticism of real individualism, the kind of
in the American Novel, and which Molly Haskell in From
individualism which tlireatens society because it rejects soci¬
Reverence to Rape describes as a dominant theme in Holly¬
ety’s values and imagines the possibility of a life outside its
wood films like BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE
approval, a possibility that romance invariably rejects. Han’s
KID (1969).
decision to take the money and run places him in an inferior
position to Luke within the film’s value system, reversing In STAR WARS, the relationships that Luke has with
their previous places in the hierarchy. Second, since Han Ben Kenobi and Han Solo are much more important and re¬
leaves the collective pool of cannon fodder, he can avoid warding than his relationship with Princess Leia. The sexual
death and return at the last minute to support Luke by keeping implications in that relationship are undercut by Leia’s mater¬
Darth Vader off his back while Luke scores. nal behavior to Luke and her focusing romantic attention on
the older Han Solo. (In Lucas’s novel Han Solo is described
SEXISM AND THE RESCUE FANTASY as “perhaps five years older than Luke, perhaps a dozen—it
As Princess Leia’s withdrawal from the action indicates, this was difficult to tell.”) Princess Leia is most attractive early in
world of romantic combat is structured around male relation¬ the film, when she functions inside this world of male cama¬
ships and male-oriented viewpoints. Women exist primarily raderie as one of the guys, and less attractive and interesting
to provide motivations for male activity, to act as spectators, later as she takes on the female roles assigned to her.
or to serve as mediators between different levels in the male In their roles, the two women in the film form two mater¬
hierarchy. When Luke’s aunt isn’t stuffing artichokes into the nal poles that Luke moves between, one middle-class, the
Cuisinart, she serves first as a mediator between Luke and his other aristocratic. Luke’s movement from a lower-class cul¬
uncle and then as a motive for revenge when Luke returns ture into an aristocratic one reflects what Freud called the
home and finds her charred body in a scene taken from John “family romance,” one of the film’s central fantasy struc¬
Ford’s THE SEARCHERS (1956). Princess Leia, despite her tures. Historically, the family-romance fantasy structure first
attractive spunkiness and toughness, basically fulfills the became prominent in medieval chivalric romances in thir¬
same male-oriented roles. She is the traditional damsel in dis¬ teenth-century works written in or translated into English
tress—her capture by Darth Vader begins the film and pro¬ mainly for middle-class readers. In bourgeois romance, the
vides the motivation for Ben Kenobi’s return and Luke’s res¬ family-romance fantasy structure substitutes for the overt
cue mission. Although she does grab a laser gun at one point Oedipal rebellion of the adulterous triangles (Tristan, Isolde,
and fires a few shots, she remains dependent on male res¬ and Mark; Lancelot, Guinevere, and Arthur) which character¬
cuers, and the only action she initiates during the rescue al¬ ize French romances written for the aristocracy. But both fan¬
most gets them killed in a garbage crusher. Her most memor¬ tasy systems are structurally parallel—both reflect the desire
able line, repeated over and over by her holographic image, is of those in a lower position to rise within the social hierarchy.
“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You are my only hope.’’
Briefly, in the family-romance fantasy a child exchanges
While Luke goes on from initial helplessness and rescue his or her real parents for more aristocratic ones, imagining
by Kenobi to take a more heroic rote. Princess Leia recedes himself or herself the orphaned or kidnapped child of royalty.
into the background. During the attack on the Death Star, she The fantasy reflects the growing child’s disillusionment with
merely stands as a spectator. In the final scene, dressed in a his/her real parents and their limitations, and it substitutes for
decollete gown which symbolizes her role as sexual prize, she them memories from an earlier period in which the parents
stands on the steps between her father at the top and the seemed unique and omnipotent. These idealized figures from
young heroes at the bottom, mediating the gap between them the past then become omnipotent parents with whom the
and mitigating the scene’s overt militarism. Her position in
child can identify, protectors against the various threats
the system is clear. Her existence makes the rebel hierarchy a which the child is beginning to encounter in the real world,
good hierarchy because she offers a path to the top. By win¬ among them the Oedipal issues. The fantasy serves to repress
ning her favor, Luke can rise within the system. But her posi¬
Oedipal conflicts by regressing to earlier, less mature con¬
tion is fixed. She functions as a prize to coerce men into join¬
flicts, substituting pre-Oedipal fantasies of parental omnipo¬
ing the system, and she also functions as a maternal figure
tence and total identification of the child with the parent for
who looks on approvingly while boys undergo their rites of
more threatening fantasies of Oedipal sexual desires and re¬
initiation and become men.
bellion. Rescue fantasies are an inherent part of the family ro¬
This role assignment mirrors the ways in which sexism mance, both in the form of omnipotent, parents’ rescuing the
frustrates women in male-oriented societies, but the system child and the child’s rescuing (or avenging) the parents. The
also has adverse effects on men as well. Women are denied fantasy has a strong social dimension: lower-class children
autonomy and a chance to participate equally in the activities imagine aristocratic parents, aristocratic children imagine pi-