The killjoy wing of the Republican Party is back at it, this time with the shocking revelation that (gasp!) there just might be a liberal bias in Hollywood. They have singled out the uber-blockbuster Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith for their censure, due to its purported anti-Bush message.
The fanatics over at Free Republic are calling for a boycott of the film, as is a group called Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood—that's PABAAH for short, which sounds like something your grandfather might say after inadvertently stumbling onto a Ludacris video on MTV.
Craig Winneker, editor of Tech Central Station Europe, who wrote an article that more or less sums up the anti-Sith argument, laments what is "disturbingly—and rather awkwardly—evident: a recurring anti-Bush, anti-Iraq war message."
First, it must be noted that almost every line of dialogue in this film is awkward, not just the allegedly offending passages. That said, the paranoiacs on the right are inferring an anti-Iraq war bias from the following message: using war, or the threat of war, as an excuse to overthrow a democratic government and replace it with a totalitarian dictatorship is really, really mean. Especially when you kill Wookiees in the process.
The fact that this is identified by the boycott-happy whiners as a left-wing, anti-American idea says a lot. That the right-wingers identify their own position with that of the merciless Sith overlords of the Empire (an Empire which eventually strikes back, by the way) says a whole lot more. Apart from a passing resemblance between the post-electrification Darth Sidious and Dick Cheney, there's not a whole lot going for the Iraq war parallel.
A rational person might be more likely to compare the film's events to the rise of the Third Reich or of Stalin's USSR (the Empire's foot soldiers are even called "Stormtroopers," fer chrissakes). An even more rational person might recognize that they're watching a science fiction movie that has little if any bearing on the real world.
Article comments
1 - Harri
I think it would be more accurate to say the Star Wars movies are a critique of those who deal in absolutes. If you watch all the movies the evil Empire is what is in black and white while the rebellion embraces all nuances of the spectrum (Jedi do not wear white, they wear earth colors). Thus the Sith lines that are making headlines fit into a mold created 30 years ago and modelled on the common elements of dictators such as Hitler, Stalin and at the time would-be dictator Richard Nixon.
2 - SFC SKI
IT's a movie, not a political treatisee, and I'd hesitate to throw my support behind any person or party who gets their polotval viewpoints, or makes their political axe to grind, movies.
3 - Kristen
Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. Read this excerpt about the "House on Un-American Activities Committee" sound familiar?
HOLLYWOOD BLACKLIST
by Dan Georgakas
from: Buhle, Buhle, and Georgakas, ed., ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE AMERICAN LEFT, (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992)
"The investigation of Hollywood radicals by the House on Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 and 1951 was a continuation of pressures first exerted in the late 1930s and early 1940s by the Dies Committee and State Senator Jack Tenney's California Joint Fact-finding Committee on Un-American Activities. HUAC charged that Communists had established a significant base in the dominant medium of mass culture. Communists were said to be placing subversive messages into Hollywood films and discriminating against unsympathetic colleagues. A further concern was that Communists were in a position to place negative images of the United States in films that would have wide international distribution. Totally ignored in the hysteria generated by HUAC were the realities of the Hollywood studio system of the 1930s and 1940s. That system's outstanding characteristic was the hands-on control by studio bosses who ran their business as a strictly entertainment industry and shared Sam Goldwyn's often quoted sentiment that, "If you want to send a message, use Western Union."
Evidence of leftist images and dialog Hollywood films was extremely slim.
Film workers were instructed that their primary responsibility was to keep anti-Soviet and anti-Left sentiment out of films, a kind of esthetic Hippocratic Oath to First, Do No Harm.
Liberalism, not Communism, may, in fact, have been the true target of the HUAC investigators. The Right wished to discourage any Hollywood impulse to make films advocating social change at home or critical of foreign policy. The task of intimidation was focused on the role Communists played as screenwriters. Nearly 60 percent of all individuals called to testify and an equal percent of all those blacklisted were screenwriters. Only 20 percent of those called and 25 percent of those blacklisted were actors." end of excerpt.
I think the Republicans are becoming a little paranoid. Either that or they are looking for some free publicity. Whatever the case. They need to get over themselves, talk about self absorbed. Or maybe it's just a guilty conscience.
4 - Thad Anderson
I had no idea Free Republic was boycotting it! That's hilarious. I thought the resemblance was so uncanny that I actually started feeling bad for Dubya by the end of the scene on the lava planet . . . I can't stand the guy, but I'm not wishing anything like _that_ upon him.
5 - Jonathan David Leavitt
As I wrote, "The central myth of the Star Wars cycle, and this final episode in particular was the clash between Good and Evil, the forces of Light and Darkness (any Zoroastrians in the audience?), and particularly the theme of the Evil Empire."
This mythic theme, which I believe is encoded in human DNA, makes people nervous. Leftists got nervous when Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an Evil Empire. I am not surprised that some nervous Republicans thought that the film was anti-Bush.
The one political current that was not honored in the series, imho, was pacifism. Had it been, the series would have been "Star Peace," and instead of high-tech weaponry, we would have been treated to many hours of diplomatic nuancing. Maybe C3PO would have been the hero instead of Luke Skywalker, and R2D2 would have played the evil trigger-happy Texas robot. Lucas would have had to get a day job, and there would't have been a second film, let alone six.
Given that reality, I don't think Republicans need feel too alienated from the Star Wars series.