Star Wars creator George Lucas should not support the political dark side
Irate fans of George Lucas’ Star Wars juvenile romps have obviously spent too much time waiting in the freezing cold outside movie theatres with the result their brains have become permanently numb.
They’re outraged at me following the column “Utter nonsense,” (May 24) accusing me of trying to slur Lucas and of mixing politics with entertainment.
Excuse me, but it was Lucas himself, now an arch-foe of the democratically elected government of U.S. President George W. Bush, who decided to mix politics with entertainment.
That’s when, at the official opening of the latest Star Wars movie, he said it contained a “wake-up” call to Americans to rise up against the Bush administration which, he insisted, was insidiously trying to take away their individual freedoms.
And, he said, when he conceived the first Star Wars movie that appeared in 1976, it was actually an attack against the alleged dictatorial aims of President Richard Nixon and his involvement in the Vietnam War.
So, the entire Star Wars series has not been solely about entertaining audiences—they have contained subtle political messages to back Democratic or lib-left candidates and oust the Republicans from power at every opportunity.
That the Republicans have won seven out of the past 10 presidential elections—and would have won eight of them had not that lunatic rightwinger Ross Perot stolen 18 million votes from George Bush Sr. in 1992—shows that Lucas’ audiences obviously haven’t got the message.
Perhaps he should just stick to making nonsensical, but harmless movies.
What I know about the movies is, reputable critics say while they are technically extraordinary, the plots have all been stolen from the Bible or other religious tomes or 1930s cliffhanger serials, the dialogue is appalling, the acting amateurish.
But I’m a William Shakespeare man, myself.
Lucas sees a parallel between Nixon and the Vietnam War and Bush and the fight to give the Iraqi people their freedom from a heinous dictator.
He forgets, as I mention in “Utter nonsense,” that it was Democratic President John F. Kennedy who got the U.S. mired in Vietnam and Nixon who got the U.S. out of the quagmire.
Also, does he think the Iraqi people enjoying being brutalized by Saddam Hussein in a country where women have no rights whatsoever?
Should Bush have just accepted the 9/11 attacks and done nothing about fighting back?
A handful of decades ago—before Jane Fonda praised the North Communist Vietnamese terrorists, just as thousands of young American boys were dying—the lib-left didn’t control Hollywood.
Hollywood was a place of patriotism, evidenced by the likes of Clark Gable and James Stewart, who immediately went into combat when the Second World War came, and Ronald Reagan who, having dismally poor eyesight, joined up and was assigned to boosting the Allies’ morale.
After the Second World war, when Soviet dictator Josef Stalin grabbed half of Europe and tried to bring down the rest of Europe and the U.S. with spies, agents of influence, propaganda and outright threats, the likes of Reagan, Stewart and Gary Cooper went before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and testified about the enemy in their midst.
Nixon, as president, was still fighting that enemy under the Nikita Krushchev and Leonid Brezhnev regimes, and Reagan and Bush Sr. finally brought down the Soviets and freed hundreds of millions of people in Eastern Europe, and in the Soviet Union, itself.
The much-maligned Nixon did his bit to secure peace for the world when he made his trip to Communist China in 1972 and pushed for the country’s admittance to the U.N.
Those moves started the long process of reform on Mainland China that eventually led to dynamic economy of that country today and to the outpouring of billions of dollars worth of consumer goods that Americans, Canadians and Europeans buy at rock-bottom prices.
One would have thought that, if the Star Wars movies had a political message (as Lucas says they do), it would have been about defending those who fight for freedom against dictatorships and terrorists, like Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. have done.
- Suzuki playing gutter politics - Sunday March 4, 2007 at 10:41 am
- Grit record terror-ible - Tuesday February 27, 2007 at 9:51 am
- Britain’s Blair takes tumble - Sunday February 18, 2007 at 10:53 am
