Junto Boys

AMERICA BAD, WORLD GOOD, SAYS LUCAS

Legendary "Star Wars" film creator George Lucas told a packed house the United States is a provincial country with a culture that has invaded the world via Hollywood.

"As long as there has been a talking Hollywood, Hollywood has had a huge impact on the rest of the world," Lucas said as he discussed his films and enhancing education with computer technology.

"I hate to say it, but television is one of the most popular exports," Lucas said.

People see shows such as "Dallas," about a wealthy Texas oil family, and decide they want the grand lifestyles portrayed, according to Lucas.

"They say that is what I want to be," Lucas said. "That destabilizes a lot of the world."

"There has been a conflict going on for thousands of years between the haves and the have-nots, and now we are in a position for the first time to show the have-nots what they do not have."

So Hollywood is exporting Americanism and doggone if it doesn't make people want to be Americans. Funny that he had to cite a 20 year old TV show to make his point about modern films.

George Lucas grew up as a middle class kid and became a billionaire by doing the things that he naturally loved doing. The world is full of artists and potential filmmakers with more talent that he, and yet they're trapped under the boot of poverty or some dictator and usually both. The export of American culture has helped end some of the repressive regimes and the job isn't over. Even Hollywood that does all it can to show capitalism as equal to corruption cannot hide the fact that people are free in so many ways.

Lucas made a daring trilogy in his youth that used classical Roman politics to create a cold war parable about good and evil. It was not only great entertainment, but it was uniquely American in its outlook. Sometime after he finished that project he turned to technology and created the best visual effects company in the world. Now you'd think that his success would tell him something about his fellow citizens and the country that made it possible. You'd think that a country that could defeat the Reds and the Nazis in one century could be elevated above "provincial."

I said last year that the problem with the prequels was that the originals were about a young man's struggle and that mirrored Lucas' own struggle as a young filmmaker. The second batch is about a spoiled whiney kid that wants to be recognized for his genius or else. And the movies empathize with the brat a little too much. This speech has helped me realize that Lucas couldn't make the old films again because he doesn't believe in good and evil anymore. It's not that Darth Vader was evil, but that he was a product of a bad environment. I think that's why he intentionally defiled his own films with those cheesy Special Edition scenes and effects. He's struggling with being famous for a mythology that he no longer believes in.

Later in the piece, Nancy Pelosi compares Lucas to Mozart and though lofty it's an interesting comparison, except Mozart died without going through a re-evaluation of his life's work. Since Mozart was more of a regional figure than a worldwide star, what if he had re-worked all his music at the end of his life and all we had to remember him by were the sad attempts at bettering that work which were already great?

Lucas was a protégé of Coppola, who was a talented Bolshevik. It's very possible that Lucas too considered himself a man of the left, but was apolitical enough in his youth that he didn't realize the implications of having good and evil characters. It's certainly not chic in a post 9-11 world. So like Spielberg his early movies were temperamentally conservative, but when he became more politically aware, he went a different direction as movie maker.

My biggest fear is that the gifted M. Night Shyamalan will someday succumb to the same peer pressure and decide to be fashionable instead of interesting. His early work reminds me so much of Lucas and Spielberg that my gut says that he will have a struggle with the same forces.