“How Star Wars Conquered the Universe” reveals the political references that George Lucas worked into Episodes I – VI

Jim Hill

10 years ago

It's been kind of amusing to watch what's been going on online this past week
in the wake of the release of the
"Star Wars: The Force Awakes" teaser trailer. And — no — I'm not
talking about the faux controversy surrounding that lightsaber with those two
mini-lightsabers coming off of its hilt. But — rather — the ridiculous
response that certain Star Wars fans have had to John Boyega's appearance in
the teaser for this upcoming J.J. Abrams film.

As one irate IGN reader put it:

"So why is there a black storm trooper in the new Star
Wars movie. They're supposed be all white. I'm tired of this political
correctness (expletive)."

Given that this Star Wars fan is complaining about a
political agenda suddenly being foisted on this film franchise … Well, they clearly
weren't paying attention during Episode I – VIs. For —
as Chris Taylor points out in his terrific new book, "How Star Wars
Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar
Franchise" (Basic Books, September 2014) — there has always been a
political component to these motion pictures.

How so? Well, let's go back to 1973. Which is George Lucas
first began trying to turn his treatment of what was then known "The Star
Wars" into a full-fledged screenplay. As Taylor
reminds us, it was a time when the entire …

"… world seemed to be falling apart. The ceasefire in
Vietnam broke
down. US troops were heading for the exits. Watergate engulfed the Nixon White
House. The Arab nations attacked Israel
again. OPEC was withholding its oil."

And George — who had spent the previous year toying with
the idea of possibly directing "Apocalypse Now" for his friend &
mentor Francis Ford Coppola — had all the research that he'd done on the North
Vietnamese swirling around in his head as he began working on the screenplay
for "A New Hope." As Taylor
recalled:

"Lucas was fascinated by the notion of how a tiny
nation could overcome the largest military power on Earth and this was baked
into 'The Star Wars' right from its earliest notes in 1973: "A large
technological empire going after a small group of freedom fighters."

(And given that George was an admitted television news
junkie), Lucas channeled the news into his notes. With 'Apocalypse Now' (now) on
hold until Coppola, then just its producer, could persuade a studio to fund it,
'The Star Wars' became the only place he could comment on present-day politics.
Thus the planet of Aquilae becomes "a small independent country like North
Vietnam," he wrote in late 1973.
"The Empire is like America
ten years from now, after gangsters assassinated the Emperor and were elevated
to power in a rigged election … We are at a turning point: fascism or
revolution."

Mind you, Lucas didn't just want his "$4 million space
opera in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs" project (or at least
that's how George described "The Star Wars" when he was pitching the
project to executives at United Artists, Universal and Disney. All of whom
passed on the opportunity to make this motion picture) to have political
relevance. George also wanted this motion picture to reflect what was going on
American society at that time. But not for entirely altruistic reason. As Chris
recounts in his book:

(George had) already gotten a lot of heat over the fact that 'American
Graffiti' ended with on-screen text catching us up with the next ten years in
the lives of the male characters, and nothing about the women. With the
feminist movement growing more powerful with each passing month, 'Star Wars'
seemed on track for similar criticism. In March 1975, Lucas decided to fix that
(by changing) Luke (into) an eighteen-year-old woman.

Luke's sex change only lasted for about two months. By May
of 1975, Princess Leila (who had been relegated in the most recent rewrite of
this screenplay to a glorified cameo) was now back in "The Star Wars"
in a much more prominent role. No longer a damsel in distress that constantly
needed to be rescued a la Dale Arden in "Flash Gordon," Leila was now
shown to be a leader of the Rebellion right from the very start of "A New
Hope." Which Lucas hoped would appease any woman's libbers out there in
the audience.

As Taylor points
out in "How Star Wars Conquered the Universe," there are all sorts of
touches to Episodes I – VI that reflect the times that these films were
actually made in. Take — for example — Emperor Palpatine. Which Lucas modeled
after President Richard Nixon.

Did you notice something about the room in which we meet
this character on the second Death Star (in 'Return of the Jedi' ? As Lucas
pointed out to Ian McDiarmid (the actor who played the Emperor) on set,
Palpatine's office is oval.

And this reflecting-the-time tradition continued as George
began working on the "Star Wars" prequels in early November of 1994.
Lucas was …

… interrupted eight days into the writing process by one
of the most seismic midterm in postwar American history. Republicans took the
House and the Senate for the first time in 40 years. A resurgent GOP under
House Speaker Newt Gingrich started pushing its tax-cutting, regulation-slashing
"Contract with America."

It was perhaps no co-incidence, then, that Lucas started
writing about a "Trade Federation," aided and emboldened by corrupt
politicians, embroiled in some sort of dispute over the taxing of trade to the
outlying star systems. We never learn what the dispute is about — whether the
Trade Federation was pro- or anti-tax. But what we know is that the name of the
leader of the Trade Federation — never actually spoken in the movie, but noted
in the script from the start — was Nute Gunray. By 1997, when the GOP Senate
leader was Trent Lott, Lucas named the Trade Federation's representative in the
Galactic Senate: Lott Dodd. We're a long way from the subtlety of (George's North
Vietnam) metaphor.

This continued through "Revenge of the Sith,"
which Taylor describes as having
…

… more political references than any other movie in the
saga.

Episode III … was written around the US-led invasion of Iraq
in March 2003. In the Bay Area, protests against the Iraq War and (President)
Bush were as hard to avoid as Vietnam
and Nixon were during the writing of "Star Wars," especially for a
self-confessed news junkie like Lucas. Suddenly, after Anakin Skywalker is
first dubbed Darth Vader and confronts Obi-Wan, we find him using this line:
"If you're not with me, you're my enemy." Few adult listeners at the
time would fail to pick up a reference to Bush's line in his speech to Congress
on September 20, 2001:
"Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." Obi-Wan's
response would have cheered the heart of every voter who felt some nuance was
lost in Bush's black-and-white worldview: "Only a Sith deals in
absolutes." Promoting the film later, Lucas would declare his hostility to
Bush for the first time, publicly comparing him to Nixon and Iraq
to Vietnam.

So for "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" to now have John Boyega
as a member of its cast and to then have this casting choice spur additional conversations
about Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Trayvon Martin … One has to assume that
George Lucas — that TV news junkie who had previously deliberately slipped
references to earlier difficult issues that America was facing into Episodes I
– VI — has to be enjoying that his "space opera" is still having
this sort of impact on our national discourse.

This article was originally posted on the Huffington Post's Entertainment page on Thursday, December 4, 2014