Of "Star Wars" and Moral Ambiguity

                Today’s article is a doozy: it argues that the Star Wars prequels are superior to the original trilogy.

                Now, taking that stance alone ought to be enough to earn a contemptuous guffaw, but the arguments used in support of this opinion are muddled, clueless, and simply wrong to the point of insanity.

                Let’s run down the article point by point:

It verges on cinematic treason to suggest that the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy is in any way superior to the original trilogy. However, history has proved that treasonous behavior is just as often necessary to stimulate progressive revolution as it is to endow malevolent forces with unrestricted authority necessary to obstruct basic human rights. So here goes: the first three episodes in the saga of Anakin Skywalker are deeper, better structured, and more politically astute than the final three. I don’t know what you think ‘better structured’ or ‘deeper’ means, but I don’t think they mean what you think they mean. The prequels are an absolute mess from a storytelling point of view: things happen for no reason, characters act like idiots purely because the script says so, sequences of events make no sense, and so on. I could spend this entire article just giving a cursory summary of the structural flaws in the films, but just as a random example: in “Phantom Menace” the Jedi are told that the fastest way to Naboo is travelling through the planet core. Does that mean the Federation landed their army on the other side of the planet? How does that make any sense at all? Why wouldn’t they just land right in the (unarmed) city? And how does it help to warn someone of an invasion when you’re coming down with the invasion force? What were the Jedi planning to do, run alongside the army all the way to the other side of the planet and hope to get there first? Also, what is the Federation attempting to accomplish here? What did Palpatine promise them in exchange for risking their lives and freedom in open rebellion?

I’ll deal with the idea that the new films are more ‘politically astute’ later.

Not only is that why the prequel is superior, it is also a pretty decent elucidation of the original trilogy's greater popularity.

That the "Star Wars" trilogy embraced by American moviegoers is the one that presents a far less complex universe is not incidental to the rabid rebuke of the prequel. "A New Hope," "The Empire Strikes Back," and "Return of the Jedi" reflect the Cold War milieu in which they were created, offering up a comforting us-vs.-them story told in bold strokes lacking nuance, complexity, or intellectual ambiguity.

Again, you’re wrong: the original series was actually much more subtle and nuanced than the new films. Look at the transformation of Han Solo, from roguish, self-centered crook to selfless hero. Or the struggles Luke has on his path to becoming a Jedi, laden with failure, temptation, and terrible revelations about his past. Or Lando’s deal with the Empire and his rebellion from it. Or how about Darth Vader’s final transformation, with the stunning affirmation of paternal and filial loyalty over the power of the Dark Side, overturning Yoda and Obi Wan’s warnings about evil being absolute and final. These are bigger and more interesting themes than ‘government can turn corrupt’ and are far better realized by the films.

By the way, ‘intellectual ambiguity’ is a trait, not a quality. That is, the fact that a work demonstrates intellectual ambiguity does not make it superior to a work that does not: it depends upon what the work is aiming for. The original trilogy aimed for a mythic good-and-evil storyline, which, incidentally, is a universal theme: it’s not something born out of the political climate, it’s something born out of human nature.

Incidentally, was a comfortable ‘us-vs.-them,’ black-and-white worldview really that common during the seventies and eighties? Wasn’t it just as common to view the Soviets as just as good/bad as us? You know, especially with Vietnam and Watergate still fresh in people’s minds and all?  

 That isn't to say that times have changed much; with the exception of "The Phantom Menace," the second and third installments of the prequel were released to an America that had embraced absolute views even more so than the original trilogy.

So, how is Mars these days? Did the cave you’ve been living in for the past decade have good ventilation? Seriously, have you been paying attention at all in the past few years? Absolute views are verboten in most circles: people adopt a ‘whatever works for you’ attitude and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are horrendously unpopular. It’s been like that for decades and hasn’t changed much in recent years.

The difference is that the original trilogy appealed directly to the simplistic moral perspective of an America above reproach and always on the side of right in global geopolitics, whereas the much more subversive prequel trilogy stands in defiant counterpoint to the much more dangerously simplistic moral absolutism of the Age of Bush.  

The difference is more that the original trilogy are good films and the prequels are not good films. And again, the original movie came out five years after Vietnam and three years after Watergate: it was lightning from a blue sky in the midst of dreary, downbeat, cynical flicks like The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Chinatown, and Apocalypse Now: whatever the mood of the time, it was definitely not that America was above reproach and always on the side of right.

And again, are you seriously arguing that this is the age of ‘dangerously simplistic moral absolutism’? If so, I’d seriously hate to see what a world of moral ambiguity would look like.

The original trilogy holds a special place in the bosom of American moviegoers precisely because we view ourselves comfortably in place of the Rebels. Yes, because again, good-vs.-evil is a universally appealing story which has been told and re-told for thousands of years. Americans revel in their historical construct as rebellious underdogs constantly at war against an easily identified and unquestionably evil empire. Hence, the reason most Americans love the original trilogy has much to do with placement of ourselves in the role of the inheritors of the mantle of the Jedi. There’s also the whole ‘good movie’ aspect.

The problem is that the post-9/11 world meant Americans also were forced to identify themselves with the Jedi in the prequel trilogy as well, and we don't like the face we see in the mirror. No, we just don’t like the faces on the screen: since when have Americans ever been bothered by self-flagellation? It’s practically required these days. Just name me one movie about the Iraq war that was supportive of it. Let's face it, the Jedi don't exactly come off too swell in the prequel. Which is what we call ‘bad writing.’ Look, part of the reason the prequels are so bad is that they fail to justify the rebellion in the original films: if the republic and the Jedi were so corrupt and incompetent, why should we root for their return? If the story were to have any weight, we should have seen the Republic and Jedi, at least initially, as a kind a Camelot: an idealized order of peace and justice (like Obi Wan said in the original). That way it would actually have meant something when they fell, rather than an opportunity for people like you to point at the screen and say “see! See! Look familiar? See how the fantasy films justify what we’re saying about Bush?”

 This time around they are the guys in charge, and it is painful to watch them screw it up, especially when the way they hand over the keys to the Empire is so eerily familiar to a historical era defined by words like "signing statements" and "Patriot Act."

I’ve got some bad news for you: it’s supposed to be ‘eerily familiar.’ Lucas wrote it that way in a ham-fisted attempt to make a political statement. The trouble is that movies that attempt to make topical political statements most often don’t turn out to be very good movies. Half the audience is alienated by having their views attacked, the rest are distracted by the poor writing and bad acting, and only a few people, such as yourself, actually like them for their political content because apparently the extent of your powers of judgment are ‘does this agree with my political views.’

Just in case you didn't notice in your rush to castigate Jar-Jar Binks and complain about the wooden dialogue of the prequel, the peaceful Galactic Republic in place at the beginning of "The Phantom Menace" doesn't turn into the dark empire in place at the beginning of "A New Hope" due to an invasion by a foreign element. …So what? How does that in any way make these better films or better stories? I’m pretty sure most viewers caught onto that plot detail, thank you very much, and they didn’t care because the way that happened was contrived and stupid. The Republic falls as a result of due democratic process, albeit due democratic process that is manipulated through lies and deception. Again, sound familiar? Yes, actually: it sounds exactly like what President Obama is doing right now while you’re wasting your time pointing accusatory fingers at a president whose been gracefully out of office for three years.

Watching the "Stars Wars" prequel trilogy is like the most entertaining lesson in civics ever given Well, too each his own on the entertainment aspect, but the fact that you can even attempt to take a civics course from a Star Wars movie is actually a good demonstration of why and how these films are so awful: these are supposed to be epic fantasy films, not civics lessons. -- specifically the way it reveals how even a republic peopled by representative leaders with the best of intentions can make decisions that result in disastrous policies, accompanied by devastation and the crumbling of great ideas. Except the problem is that the policies they adopt are so patently stupid that they’re unbelievable and we are never convinced that anything great is at stake here, since they were too busy piling on moral ambiguities to make the Republic or the Jedi something worth preserving. Yoda's observations about anger, hate, fear, and suffering are not said lightly; they may be the most prescient words spoken by a movie character in recent memory. No, actually: they’re a stupid, pseudo-profound statement that is utterly useless and meaningless: you could mix up the order of his little progression any way you like at it would still make as much sense and be subject to as many exceptions: suffering leads to fear, fear leads to hate, hate leads to anger. Incidentally, take them in context please: the context is that Yoda’s arguing you should not fear for your loved ones, which is hardly profound or prescient. Look, let’s face it, Yoda averages about a one-to-one ratio of profound-to-stupid in his maxims, at least in the original trilogy (in the prequels, it’s more like one-to-five).

Not much less important is another quote associated with "The Phantom Menace," a quote that hasn't proved anywhere near as memorable as Yoda's but nonetheless plays a huge part in the events that will follow. Chances are you don't even remember these words of Darth Maul: "Fear is my ally." No, we don’t, because Darth Maul was an absolute nothing character: his design was good, but he had no depth or purpose other than to have a light saber fight. Another reason the films are hated is that the villains have no depth or purpose to them: they exist for no other reason than to provide an excuse for some action scenes. This is bad storytelling. Incidentally, that’s a stupid line that makes no sense with regards to the character.  One can well imagine that slogan scrawled across the office walls of men like Scooter Libby and tattooed across the back of Dick Cheney. Again, you are aware that Dick Cheney is not in office anymore, right? And we’ve got much bigger problems currently coming out of the White House?

Nowhere in the original "Star Wars" trilogy is there any sequence of events nearly as profound in their application to real life as Palpatine's manipulative orchestration of the separatist movement "headed" by Count Dooku. See, this is exactly the problem with your analysis: you are judging everything solely on how they square up with your political views and you seem to think that this is the highest thing a film can aspire to. There are much more important things in life and in art than politics! Nothing in the prequels can be called profound: they’re lazy, stupid, poorly-written attempts to cash in on the legacy of better films. Luke’s rejection of both Yoda’s extreme detachment and the lure of the Dark Side is profound. Darth Vader’s redemption is profound. Fake political scheming that doesn’t even make sense on its own terms is not at all profound. Palpatine's nefarious scripting of events allows him to go before the senate and ask for special "emergency powers" to deal with the growing threat facing the peace of the republic. Perhaps if Americans had embraced the prequel in the way they did the original "Star Wars" trilogy, they would recognize the danger when an elected member of a representative republic asks for "emergency powers" to combat a threat.  You honestly don’t think Americans noticed the dangers? You didn’t notice all the alarmist political commentary, the books, the articles, the movies, and so on that spilled out of every pore of the land condemning him as a dictator in the making? People who hate Bush still hate the prequels because they are bad movies. And really, do you honestly think people would have, I don’t know, impeached Bush if they had only decided they liked a few fantasy movies?

Palpatine's actions in the prequel are positively Machiavellian, and his evil in those first three movies is far more chilling than his appearances as the emperor in the original trilogy. In those movies, Palpatine is so far removed from us we can only approach him from the perspective of a Hitler. That’s exactly what made him chilling: he was a presence hanging over the whole trilogy; manipulating things behind the scenes, and then when we finally saw him he was this withered, death-like figure, urging Luke to kill him just so that he would turn to the Dark Side, then when that failed using lightning to slowly cook him alive. That is a lot scarier than an ambitious Senator who succeeds in his plan because everyone else in this universe is even stupider than he is. We must always remember that Hitler didn't ascend to dictator by using tanks, but the ballot box. Again, that’s true, but you should look more at the current president than the one who, again, isn’t even in office anymore.

Just as Palpatine is far more chilling as a politician abusing the system than he is as an emperor in comprehensively malevolent control, so is Anakin Skywalker far more chilling as a powerless pawn than he is as powerful Darth Vader. No. Just…no. He’s a total patsy; a useless pretty-boy whom everyone fawns over for no reason and who turns evil because he’s a complete moron. No more alarming scene exists in the entire "Star Wars" canon than the political conversation that takes place in "Attack of the Clones" between Anakin and Amidala when the boy-who-would-be Vader suggests the system is broken and needs to be replaced with something where one person in charge has the power to enforce laws he feels are for the good of the people. Amidala replies, rightfully, that what Anakin is talking about sounds like a dictatorship. And then these all-too-familiar words from Anakin: "Well, if it works." Again, you judge everything by politics. And honestly, you find someone taking a poor political stance more alarming than someone blowing up an entire inhabited planet just to make a point, while an inhabitant from that planet is forced to watch? Or, again, the emperor murdering our hero by zapping him with lightning again and again while he writhes on the floor and begs his watching father to save him? Or our hero getting his hand cut off and letting himself fall to his death?

Anakin's justification that if authoritarian control works in keeping us safe was being repeated on a daily basis by those in charge at the very time the scene was being projected onto multiplex screens around the world. Too many Anakin Skywalkers existed then and, amazingly, exist right now in this country who are far too eager to give up hard-earned civil rights for the illusion of security. Or for the illusion of tolerance and equality, which is a much more subtle and insidious desire. And it is the very fact that one can write about Anakin without calling him either evil or good that elevates the prequel above the original. Again, no it doesn’t. Ambiguity does not make a work good. Oh, and by the way, you can call Anakin evil: he murders women and children in the second film (noting that he’s glad he did so), then murders unarmed and innocent people left and right in the third film (including his own wife). Just because the writing is so bad that they still try to pretend he’s a hero doesn’t mean that you can’t call him for what he is. Try naming a single character in the original trilogy that can attain such an authentic level of ambiguity. Okay: Han Solo, Lando Calrisean, Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker…

There is absolutely no element or character in the original trilogy that isn't delineated in stark black and white terms. See above: the original trilogy was full of sacrifice, hard choices, loyalty, temptation, redemption, and development. These are not stark black-and-white ideas. For goodness sakes, the series ends with the main villain discovering the good in himself: how is that starkly black-and-white? Episodes IV through VI tell a much happier story, one that is consistent with the birth of the American democracy through acts of rebellion by a ragtag group of people who held the moral high ground. Episodes I through III, by contrast, tell a much less happy story about how a democracy can come to an end -- not at the hands of foreign interlopers, but directly through the democratic process itself. And it tells that less happy story very poorly. More people may prefer the original "Star Wars" trilogy, but there is no question that the prequel is a more challenging, illuminating, and superior work of art. Well, sure, if you judge ‘art’ by “how well it agrees with my political beliefs,” as opposed to, say, how well-written, acted, plotted, entertaining, profound, true, and beautiful it is.

                God, that is one of the worst pieces of film analysis I’ve ever read. The worst part is not just that the author has no idea how to judge a work of art, but the fact that he so clearly seems to view politics, and specifically his own views on politics (which are questionable at best), as the most important themes in the world. The themes of the original: freedom-vs.-tyranny, sacrifice, the insidiousness of evil and the need to resist temptations to it, the possibility of corruption for even the most good and of redemption for even the most evil, and the power of familial bonds (to name only a few) are viewed as just so much irrelevant fantasy: not applicable to the real world (by which he means the political sphere), while a ‘Bush is bad’ message automatically earns classic status. It’s actually alarming to see someone take such a narrow view of the world, especially since he rather smugly takes it as more ‘ambiguous’ and ‘authentic.’

                “Ambiguous=good, absolute=bad” seems to be the extent of his critical awareness. As I noted several times above, whether a story is morally ambiguous or absolute is irrelevant to whether it is a good story or not. Both are ‘authentic’ and true to life. Basically, ambiguous stories tell life as we experience it externally: unable to judge the inner workings of other men, frequently doubtful and uncertain, filled with broken people unable to save themselves. Absolute stories tell life as we experience it internally: there is good and there is evil vying for control, with evil frequently seeming all-powerful and overwhelming and good small and weak, but determined. We respond to good-and-evil stories because we all desire to be good and so the story speaks to our struggles in that regard, not because we think that the political spectrum always operates that way (although, if we’re honest, it sometimes does, as the author’s mention of Hitler reminds us).

                The amusing thing (and I notice this seems to be fairly common among those who pride themselves on accepting ambiguity) is that this author takes a rather stark view towards President Bush: Bush is evil and his actions were oppressive and dictatorial (unlike, say, forcing Catholic hospitals to buy insurance policies that cover contraception). That’s the thing: moral relativism is still absolutism because it unilaterally condemns absolutism. It proves itself wrong just like Obi Wan did when he (a Jedi) declared “Only the Sith deal in absolutes!” Ambiguity is freeing and authentic while absolutism is false and oppressive, end of story. Sounds pretty black-and-white to me.

                Speaking of which, are the prequels really more ambiguous than the originals? Palpatine is still evil, absolutely, and Anakin becomes evil (okay, he pretty much started out as evil, but let’s pretend he didn’t). The Trade Federation and the Sith are still absolutely the bad guys. Indeed, they’re more two-dimensionally evil than the Empire was in the original. With the Empire, we never really questioned what their motivation was or why they were fighting: they wanted to bring order to the galaxy and viewed themselves as the rightful rulers, and if they had to blow up planets to keep people in line, well, that’s the price of order. With the Federation, we never have any indication of what they are trying to accomplish or why they’re fighting: do they want to be their own nation? Do they want lower taxes? Do they want Palpatine out of power? We’re never told: it’s just “these are the separatist droid army: they’re the bad guys.” Wow, that’s really ambiguous, isn’t it? On the other hand, the Republic and the Jedi aren’t as good as they are supposed to be, so that’s sort of ambiguous, right?

                Well, no, it just means we have bad guys with no good guys: a conflict between ‘evil and vaguely corrupt’ is not ambiguous, it’s just annoying. Ambiguity would be if the Federation had a reasonable excuse for their rebellion, like the Republic was imposing segregation of offensive Jewish caricatures, or the Jedi had done them wrong sometime in the past. But the best we get is some guff about ‘the taxation of trade routes.’    

                Real ambiguity is found in characters like Lando, who is forced into the impossible situation of betraying his friends to save the community he’s responsible for. As time goes on, he sees he’s being tricked and so works to repair the damage he’s done, but while he is able to help to an extent he’s unable to take back everything he’s done. So, to sum up, a man trying to balance responsibility with friendship makes the only choice he feels he can, then discovers he made a mistake and tries to make amends, at which he is only partially successful. That is honest ambiguity.

                See, most moral absolutists, so called, really aren’t that uncomfortable with moral ambiguities: we view them as challenging situations that require thought and sacrifice, but which ultimately can be resolved with thought and humility. That is, we tackle each situation with the assumption that there is an answer. Relativists who praise ambiguity, on the other hand, seem to more often end up in the case of ‘see how bad these absolutists are?’ or, alternatively ‘see how bad everyone except us is?’ Moral absolutism can accept both stark black-and-white situations and ambiguous situations: relativists, it seems, can only accept stark black-and-white. There is more self-righteous absolutism in this article than in all the original trilogy. I mean, honestly, the guy basically cites three awful films as superior to three great ones for no other reason than that they agree with him: real open, ambiguous judgment there.