Star Wars on Trial (15 page)

However, as I said above: beyond being gross oversimplifications (an astonishing concept, when applied to Star Wars!) those interpretations represent only what the works in question mean to me. What they mean to you, sir, is clearly different. What they mean to someone else will likely be different from either of our interpretations. Which is okay with me. It saddens me that this doesn't seem to be okay with you.

Now let me satisfy those temptations of yours, Mr. Brin. You don't even have to ask. (Won't be the first time I've played at being a bit devilish-goes with the red hair, y'know.)

(And anyone who's "frustrated" by our "wrangling" is absolutely free to skip ahead to the witness testimony, as they have been since before either one of us started yapping. Hell, I'd be surprised if we haven't lost a few already. Doesn't matter: we'll catch 'em when they read the book again... or maybe the third time ... or we'll pick up some in the library. Or the bookstore cafe... .

YOU! Yeah, YOU! Don't just sit there sipping that latte! BUY this book, you cheap bastard-!

-Everyone who actually shelled out cash or credit-their own or somebody else's, we're not picky-please ignore the preceding private-service announcement-)

Anyway... .

First: I wasn't "arm-waving in the direction of Star Wars and calling it Truth." I apologize for the confusion. I was arm-waving in the direction of Truth, and attempting to remind the Court that stories-all kinds of stories, from The Iliad to Saving Private Ryan to, yes, Star Wars-carry different truths than those kinds which can be settled by a jury, figured on a calculator or spotted by a telescope, and that stories using mythic elements tap resonances deeper than surface appearance. Forgive me for the apparently unwarranted assumption that-as a storyteller of justly legendary skill himself-Opposing Counsel might have understood what I was talking about. Perhaps we can take that up in the online discussion group, as a more fruitful line of inquiry than whether Star Wars fans think Yoda might be Eeeevil... ?

Though one might be forgiven for wondering, if Opposing Counsel has no fear that Star Wars might convey Truth of some description, precisely why he's gotten so exercised about the whole thing....

Second: the political issues in question were from long before 2006, my friend; they've just been bleeding over ever since. And they belong here precisely because the Saga is, in your word, timeless.

Here's another story: To promote the Revenge of the Sith novel, Del Rey Books sent me on a brutally exhausting author tour-twentythree cities in twenty-seven days, if memory serves, with multiple appearances in most of those cities-and at every appearance except one, I was asked some variant of the following question:

"Did George Lucas intend the way the Republic falls and Palpatine becomes Emperor to be a direct critique of the Bush Administration?"

In many of those appearances, the question was not framed in such polite terms-it was more of an accusation. By the time the film actually came out, I could not talk about the book at all without fielding that question; I spent an entire half hour on a live national radio call-in show out of Dallas trying to explain that I'm not telepathic, goddammit, so how the hell should I know what George Lucas intended?

The one event where I didn't get the question? The first one. Due to release restrictions, nobody there had read the book yet.

Not relevant? Thousands of Star Wars fans (not to mention film and book critics and right-wing talk-show hosts all over the country) would disagree.

Now, I'm no fan of President Bush, and this is no secret. However (unlike Opposing Counsel), I don't pretend to know Mr. Lucas's personal politics; it seems to me that if Mr. Lucas is the feudal reactionary that the Prosecution paints him, he'd be an admirer of an hereditary aristocrat, ruling our nation with openly stated imperial ambition....

So the answer I gave-the only honest answer I could give-is that to the best of my limited knowledge, Mr Lucas sketched the outline of the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Empire back in the seventies, when the Bush Dynasty was merely a blip on the future political radar, and that he took his inspiration from Rome, not from the United States. But when you create a story using a mythic toolbox, you can touch on truths you do not intend; if the Star Wars Empire reminds people too much of ours, it's not a comment on Mr. Lucas's politics, it's a comment on America's.

Again, this was only my opinion. Was and is. Take it for whatever it is, or isn't, worth.

Here again, I will admit to being possibly under-educated and over-opinionated. I'm not here as an expert on politics, either terrestrial or those of Star Wars (again unlike Opposing Counsel). But it sure looks to me like the Prequel Trilogy, on one level, could be read as a cautionary parable on the dangers of giving peopleeven good people-too much power with too little accountability, on the vulnerability of democracy to demagoguery (especially in wartime, and in the absence of a free, critical and aggressive press), and on how events can transform even the actions of folk of good will into terrible destruction, when arrogance and too much faith in the Unseen blind these folk to the pitfalls in their paths.

This is an interpretation which the jury is free to decide may, or may not, be relevant to our situation in 2006.

Which brings us back to arm-waving and Truth and all that murky metaphoric stuff, and if you keep poking the buttons on any loaded metaphor, eventually it's gonna go off and blow up in your face. Which is another way of saying that there's no need to go staggering out the airlock under the weight of all this, but still-

Yes, Star Wars is about more than lightsabers and spaceships.

Which, I might add, is also Opposing Counsel's opinion. Or we wouldn't be here.

DROID JUDGE: Now let's hear from the next witness for the Defense.

MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: I call science fiction writer Keith R. A. DeCandido.