Behind-the-Episode: Star Wars x Mass Culture
from Marcelle
Star Wars was one of— no, probably my first major fandom. Decades before I knew what a “fandom” even was, I was a weird little kid with one cherished VHS tape of the Ewoks animated series; I annually calculated whether it would still be possible for George Lucas to live long enough to direct the promised Episodes VII, VIII, and IX; I was a tween who callously wasted the ink in my mom’s bubble jet printer on black and white pictures of a young Mark Hamill and while typing up phenomenally misguided emails to geocities websites hating on the Star Wars franchise. Even as a sullen, counter-culture teen, I willingly saw The Phantom Menace in theatres twice. I have loved Star Wars for so long that I can’t even remember which of the original movies I watched first or when I watched it (I assume it was A New Hope but I kinda feel in my bones that it was The Empire Strikes Back on VHS). All of which is to say, I was nervous about taking on this episode! The research question that got me started, how can a movie franchise that is essentially about anti-fascism be so phenomenally successful in our anti-antifa neoliberal late-capitalist state, has a pretty straightforward and uncontroversial answer (money; the answer is money), so I really wasn’t sure what I could contribute to the discourse.
Unlike my Barbie research, which took me down a series of unexpected rabbit holes, each preliminal Star Wars google required that I choose one of multiple possible directions for the episode. (Did you know that the rough cut of Star Wars was, like, pretty bad and the only reason we like the movie is because it was “saved in the edit”?) (Did you know that the “saved in the edit” story is hotly! contested! in! the! fandom!?)
In the end, as you heard in the episode, I focused my research on the following:
1) scientific and technological developments in the 1960s/70s
2) American military involvement in the war in Vietnam
3) the US government’s sticky fingers in Hollywood.
But even with a focus, there were still so many interesting and not-at-all-devastating fun facts that we didn’t have time to include in our episode! So I figured, hey! Let’s get into them here!
The Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union ensured that space exploration was a pretty big deal in the decades preceding Star Wars. I found an incredible retrospective piece by astrophysicist Eric J. Chaisson, writing for the Harvard Crimson in January 1980. Chaisson waxes poetic about the cosmos and the discoveries his field had been making throughout the 1960s and 70s. In one particularly charming paragraph, he writes:
Radio antennas as large as engineers can now build them scan the cosmos for signals from dense, dark and dusty pieces of galactic real estate that cannot be observed visually. State-of-the-art infrared detectors routinely fly aboard high-altitude balloons and reconnaissance aircraft, seeking evidence for heretofore unrecognized warm regions of space. Ultraviolet and x-ray spacecraft, perched in orbit far above Earth’s opaque atmosphere, map distant sources of potent radiation emitted by previously unknown exotic astronomical objects…
And on, and on!
But it wasn’t just space nerds who were hot for space—regular everyday nerds like you and me were hot for it, too! Basically, Lucas grew up in a cultural landscape obsessed with exploring the cosmos. (Fun fact: George Lucas graduated from high school in 1962, the same year that quasars were discovered!)
When we consider the zeitgeisty-ness of space exploration during Lucas’s youth, it makes perfect sense that his anti-war epic would take the form of a space opera. Star Wars carried on a tradition of fictional space exploration fantasies popularized by pulp magazines and tv shows like the BBC’s Doctor Who (1963), CBS’s Lost in Space (1965), and NBC’s Star Trek (1966). Lucas wasn’t trying to reinvent the sci-fi wheel; he was contributing to an extant science fiction megatext. As science fiction scholar Lisa Yaszek reminds us, “It’s … obvious that George Lucas knows his science fiction history. You know the scroll of text at the beginning of each movie? That’s an homage to the 1930s and ’40s, when Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers short films scrolled words on the screen before the movie started in order to fill in the back story for audiences.” So cool, right? Because now, when another creator makes use of that scrolling text, it inevitably alludes to Star Wars!
So this all helps explain the Galaxy far, far away, but what about the war element of Star Wars?
You heard in the episode that opposition to the Vietnam War was a major source of inspiration for Lucas. As a Canadian, I confess that most of my knowledge of the two-decades long war in Vietnam comes from American popular culture. I’m pretty sure that Forrest Gump (1994) and Dead Presidents (1995) were my first major cultural texts on the subject, but I grew up with a tacit understanding that the Vietnam War was “bad” because Canadians have sanctimonious cultural narratives about “draft-dodgers” (the draft-evaders and war resisters who sought political asylum in Canada). I can’t think of any specific examples, it’s just something I grew up knowing, like what a sugar shack is and the correct pronunciation of the letter “zed.” But I digress.
Anyway, reading about the various anti-war organizations that emerged in the 1960s was fascinating. I had never heard of G.I. coffeehouses before! These “coffee houses” were centres of anti-war activism and community organizing. Did they serve coffee? Unclear! Again, I digress! In my research, I learned of one particularly famous G.I. coffeehouse called “The UFO Coffee Club,” which opened in 1968 right across the street from the University of South Carolina! And what does this have to do with George Lucas? Absolutely nothing. Lucas’s alma mater is the University of Southern California (BFA ’66), whose shorthand is USC. The shorthand for the University of South Carolina is UofSC. Oops! This, my friends, is what we in the research biz like to call an ERROR.
Short of digging through the UofSC student paper archives (SOMETHING I WOULD LOVE TO DO, TBH), I have zero evidence to indicate that Lucas ever knew about, let alone visited the UFO Coffee Club in South Carolina. I can’t even figure out if Lucas completed his grad degree at USC! What I can tell you is that the activities of the UFO Coffee Club and other G.I. coffeehouses like it, made them prime targets for state surveillance and police raids. The UFO was eventually shut down by police in January 1970, a mere three months before then-President Nixon would announce the US invasion of Cambodia, sparking “one of the largest coordinated sequences of disruptive protests in American history, with walkouts spreading across more than 883 campuses involving more than a million students” (Miller).
So what was George Lucas doing at that time? Other than probably not protesting the closure of a specific coffeehouse that he likely never patronized? He was busy! By 1970, Lucas was already an accomplished filmmaker with numerous credits to his name (including a Master’s degree, maybe???), but unless he was making his films in a sensory deprivation chamber on Mars, he would have been well aware of the anti-war movement accelerating across the US. In fact, according to the organization Diabetes UK, Lucas had been drafted for military service in 1967, just after graduating from film school at the age of 23. His physical exam, however, revealed that he was diabetic and thus excused from serving. (Fun fact: Lucas had previously tried to enlist in the US Air Force, but he was rejected because he had too many speeding tickets. What?!)
As we discuss in the episode, Lucas himself has claimed that Star Wars “was really about the Vietnam War,” a claim that makes sense except when we look at the franchise’s mainstream success. Hannah and I consider the work of Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer as we talk at length about the strengths and limitations of Lucas’s allegory, especially given the tendency of conservatives and fascists to draw on Star Wars rhetoric as willingly as liberals. I won’t rehash the details of our conversation here because Adorno is a lot, but I will leave you with two final and, dare I say, fun facts.
First, that in his tome Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu casually refers to Adorno as “an arrogant theoretician who refuses to sully his hands with empirical trivia and who remains too viscerally attached to the values and profits of Culture to be able to make it an object of study” (Distinction 513). What a sassy bitch!
Second, there’s a widely circulated claim on the internet that Adorno called Walt Disney “the most dangerous man in America.” Regrettably, there’s no textual evidence for this, so we are left to hope that he uttered the statement aloud, possibly while standing in line for Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.
Reading List
Here is the composite list of research I did for the episode… AND A CHART!
Barson, Michael. “George Lucas: American Director, Producer, and Screenwriter.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 17 Oct. 2023, www.britannica.com/biography/George-Lucas. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
Beckwith, Ryan Teague. “George Lucas Wrote ‘Star Wars’ as a Liberal Warning. Then Conservatives Struck Back.” Time, 10 Oct. 2017, time.com/4975813/star-wars-politics-watergate-george-lucas/. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Routledge, 1984.
Briggs, Andy. “What is a Quasar?” EarthSky, 28 Feb. 2021, earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/definition-what-is-a-quasar/. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
Caro, Mark. “‘Star Wars’ Inadvertently Hits Too Close to U.S.'s Role.” Chicago Tribune, 18 May 2005, www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2005-05-18-0505180309-story.html. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
Chaisson, Eric J. “Exploring the Invisible: Astronomy in the 70s.” The Harvard Crimson, 7 Jan. 1980, www.thecrimson.com/article/1980/1/7/exploring-the-invisible-astronomy-in-the/. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
Dat_SW_Guy. “The Inaccuracies in ‘How Star Wars Was Saved in the Edit.’” Originaltrilogy.com, 2023, originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-inaccuracies-in-How-Star-Wars-Was-Saved-in-the-Edit/id/101857. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
DragonflyBeach. “Maybe ‘How Star Wars Was Saved in the Edit’ Was Wrong?” Reddit, 2020, www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/l5i7ew/maybe_how_star_wars_was_saved_in_the_edit_was/. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
“Ewoks (TV Series).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 16 Oct. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewoks_(TV_series). Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
G&G-Fan. “RocketJump’s Video on Star Wars ‘Being Saved in the Edit’ Is Literally a Lie _(*No, It Is Not)_.” Originaltrilogy.com, 2021, originaltrilogy.com/topic/RocketJumps-Video-on-Star-Wars-being-saved-in-the-edit-is-Literally-a-Lie-no-it-is-not/id/84279/page/1. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
“George Lucas.” Diabetes UK, 2017, www.diabetes.org.uk/guide-to-diabetes/teens/fun-stuff/celebrities/george-lucas. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
“George Lucas.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 24 Oct. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lucas. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
Harrison, Eric. “A Galaxy Far, Far off Racial Mark?” Los Angeles Times, 26 May 1999, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-may-26-ca-40965-story.html. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
Kuchera, Ben. “Star Wars Was a Mess before It Was Saved by the Editor.” Polygon, 29 Dec. 2017, www.polygon.com/2017/12/29/16829502/star-wars-wreck-editing. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
Miller, Amanda. “May 1970 Student Antiwar Strikes.” Mapping American Social Movements Project, University of Washington, 2015, depts.washington.edu/moves/antiwar_may1970.shtml. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
“Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.” Disneyland.com, Disney Parks, 2023, disneyland.disney.go.com/en-ca/attractions/disneyland/mr-toads-wild-ride/. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
Oierem. “The Lost Cut and the Editing of Star Wars (a Star Wars Myth).” Jedi Council Forums, The Force.net, 2 Aug. 2020, boards.theforce.net/threads/the-lost-cut-and-the-editing-of-star-wars-a-star-wars-myth.50054343/. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
Olla, Akin. “Is WandaVision... Pentagon Propaganda?” The Guardian, 9 Mar. 2021, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/09/wandavision-pentagon-propaganda-marvel-disney-fbi. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
Parsons, David L. “How Coffeehouses Fueled the Vietnam Peace Movement.” The New York Times, 9 Jan. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/opinion/coffee-cafes-vietnam-war.html. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
“Students and Soldiers Protest Closing of Antiwar Coffeehouse.” The New York Times, 19 Jan. 1970, www.nytimes.com/1970/01/19/archives/students-and-soldiers-protest-closing-of-antiwar-coffeehouse.html. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
“The Science of Star Wars.” Gatech.edu, Georgia Tech University, 2021, news.gatech.edu/archive/features/science-star-wars.shtml. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
The Tape Keeper. “Canon Bubble Jet Printers Commercial - 1997.” YouTube, 28 Dec. 2022, www.youtube.com/watch?v=a38vRALdZVQ. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
“What Was the Space Race?” Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian, 23 Aug. 2023, airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/what-was-space-race. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
Yrguiltyconscience. “‘Star Wars Was Saved in the Edit’ Is Nonsense.” Reddit, 2021, www.reddit.com/r/MawInstallation/comments/tosjue/star_wars_was_saved_in_the_edit_is_nonsense/. Accessed 27 Oct. 2023.
And lastly, a reminder that you can find transcripts for our episodes on our website!
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