Star Wars on Trial Read Free

come across it once or twice in Leiber (at the bitter end of Ill Met in Lanhhmar, for one). I'd found it when reading of Aslan's sacrifice in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and of Theoden's sally at Helm's Deep in The Two Towers; I would find it again in later years, as I read of Beowulf's weary stand against the dragon, of the Green Knight picking up his severed head and stalking away from the Round Table, of High Lord Elena speaking the Word of Command in The Illearth War....
    I would find it in 1980, when a certain someone of our mutual acquaintance said (again, for me, entirely unexpectedly), "No, Luke. I am your father."
    This is an experience I never got from those hard SF guys. Except for Heinlein. And that was Glory Road. If you read it, you'll understand why.
    Science fiction is usually, quite properly, about what may be. What we might become. (Heinlein himself, for example, is justly legendary for prophesying in, "Solution Unsatisfactory," the development of dirty bombs.)
    Fantasy, by contrast-real fantasy, not the mocked-up pseudo-me dieval horseshit Some People like to pretend encompasses its whole range-is about what already is. It's not about what we might become; it's a metaphor for who we already are.

    Each of us.
    Fantasy's landscape is the map of our dreams; it is peopled with our personal monsters, and the struggles of its heroes are metaphors for our own.
    Which brings us back to Truth.
    Now, I have to tell you something about what I mean by Truth, too. I'm not talking about engineer's truth, here: the kind of truth that is visible by microscope, measurable by laser balance or quantifiable by any contortion of mathematics. That kind of truth is commonly referred to as fact, and as such has no need for the uppercase T. There is another, dicier aspect of reality also commonly referred to as truth, and that is the kind that we turn to courts and juries to decide. These are truths that are still describable in plain language, but about which there may be legitimate disagreement, because they can't be reduced to straightforward observation, or measurement. Guilt or innocence, proportional blame-these are what we call decidable questions. Ones that have more or less final answers. That's what we're pretending we're up to here. But we're just pretending.
    Because that's still lowercase truth.
    When you get to Truth, in the upper case, you face questions of meaning. Maybe I should say Meaning. Uppercase Truth deals with Who We Are, and What It All Means.
    That's when direct language begins to fail. Closing in on that kind of Truth, direct statement falters on asymptotic approach-the closer you get, the less useful it becomes. You need imagery to even get into the atmosphere, and metaphor for landing gear.
    Which brings us back to Star Wars.
    Because uppercase Truth is the real subject of Star Wars. Not who we might be, or what might happen someday, or what ought to happen or what we should worry about happening in the future. Star Wars isn't about the future.
    There's a reason why the whole saga takes place "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away....

    Its not anchored in time or place. It's not about some other galaxy. It's not about the future, or about 1977, or 1980, or 1983, 1999, 2002 or 2005. It's about wherever is here, and whenever is now.
    That's a function of myth, and make no mistake: Star Wars is and always has been exactly that. Not only myth, but arguably (and argue is exactly what we'll be doing here, isn't it?) the most powerful mythic cycle of the twentieth century.
    The opening passage of the Tao Te Ching is commonly translated "The Name that can be named is not the Eternal Name," but-as with all works that deal with Truth-the Tao Te Ching is elliptical, and metaphoric. That particular passage might also be translated, for example, as "The Way that can be weighed is not the Eternal Way"
    It's worth noting that Stephen Mitchell, in his seminal translation, noted (as George Lucas seems