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David Brin Responds to Star Wars Issues
himi writes
"After his articles on what was wrong with the Star Wars
movies were linked here, David
Brin's mailbox got flooded - as per usual. He's posted an interesting
reply to most of the points raised in those emails.
It's a good read, even if you don't agree with him. "
-->"Guess what, vader may have been more than a 1-dimension cardboard cutout. So might luke. And Han. And Chewie. And C3PO. And every damn character in the movie. Lucas could have been telling a story about people. Genuine, multifaceted people."--
But they're NOT!! That's the point! You can't just rant and rave and say "George didn't tell us anything about their inner character because we were supposed to fill in the blanks with imagination". The characters ARE ARCHETYPES. The entire storey is ARCHETYPICAL. That's why it fits so easily into those literary slots. And that is Brinn's point! Real stories, good stories don't follow a formula. They challenge us, make us think, at the same time as giving us a kick ass story.
StarWars has no real story, no depth of character. That's not to say it isn't "a damn good yarn", but there's only so far down you can pear a plot before there's nothing left.
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"Psychos do NOT explode when exposed to sunlight, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are!" -DTD
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
The problem is that there are rather a lot of people who are taking the whole star wars series *very* seriously. For a disturbingly large number of people, it has an almost religious focus.
Because of this, it is perfectly valid for Dr Brin ( or anyone else ) to critisise, since it presents an essentially elitist view of society.
His critisisms are not directed at those who regard it as being only entertainment - his critisisms are directed at those who regard it as "divinly inspired", and who seek to elevate it to such a level.
Neither is this irrelevent issue within our contemporary society. As we continue to develop more and more sophisticated methods for the manipulation of the human genome, the temptation to create the "Ubersmench" ( the Super-human ) is gradually leaving the realm of fiction and begining to emerge within the realm of actual possibility.
In this respect, Star Wars is very much a moral tale, and one which tells a very questionable lesson.
As someone who grew up in the early sixties, the concept of the Ubersmench was very much present for me. It's central position within Nazi ideology and their experiments in eugenics were very much within peoples minds.
Sadly, this is no longer the case. Recent surveys have indicated that many people today would utilise genetic modification on their own future children if such techniques were available, and that the traits that they would select for would simply be in accordance with their own particular racial and/or ethnic prejudices.
It has been said that those who do not learn the lessons of the past will inevitably make those mistakes again in the future.
My own suspicion is that the Ubersmench is very much alive and well, and living next door to George Lucas.
First off, I'd like to summarily dismiss all of Brin's arguments that so-and-so must have planned for someone else to do something by acting like they wanted to opposite. This assumes that the characters are, in fact, demi-gods and have the ability to entirely manipulate every one's actions, taking into account that they can place barriers and assume that the foe will defeat the barriers. Brin says
and
VADER's the one who sent the secret plans to Leia's ship! He arranged for the droids to get away, and coincidentally land just a few miles from his hidden son! Remember how, a little later, he talks Tarkin into "letting them go so we can trace them"? Likewise, he's the only close-up witness to Obiwan disappearing, when he supposedly "killed" his master in that sword fight! (Maybe he actually helped Obiwan pull a vanishing act.) Note that the "fight" with Obiwan distracted the guards & helped let Luke get away!...
Brin goes on to suggest that Vader/Anakin planned the entire course of the movies starting from his escape from Tattoine just to overthrow Palpatine by arranging for Luke to distract Palpatine at a critical moment. Finally, Brin offers a quicker way for Anakin/Vader to meet his life-long goals and chides Lucas for not seeing this simpler method.
My complaint with this entire criticism is that people, no matter how powerful, simply don't plan that far ahead. Brin accuses Palpatine of planning for Amidala to escape just in time to win him the senate. He then wonders why anyone had to die if this was the plan all along. This is ridiculous. The reason these movies (at least 4-6) are fun, is watching how powerful figures react to unpredictable events.
>Jedi knights probably are considered partisan.
Your average Jedi knights, perhaps. But these ones are *specifically* identified as ambassadors, and were empowered to negotiate.
Brin is incorrect in his assertion that "(a) Lucas never even tries to use this excuse [that Vader is completely controlled by the Emperor], so why concoct it?" But Vader clearly says "I *must* obey my master." in the scene where he meets Luke on Endor.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
[The Jedi were sent in secret]
Ah. Which explains why they show up in a brightly painted diplomatic vessel (according to the Star Wars Scrapbook) and immediately go talk to the leaders. Well, given the size of the galaxy, at least this is secret to the rest of the Senate. Point taken, particularly given that Valorum *is* weak and corrupt.
The victory at Naboo eliminates the Trade Federation as a vassal of Sidious's, which given the hundred (disappearing? Where did the others in the blockade go?) battleships they had was a significant force. So Sidous did lose something significant in that battle, although the Chancellorship for Palpitane was probably more than compensation.
>Luke made the Ewoks (spit!) fight the Empire?
No, his actions were just a vital step in getting the Ewok involvement. Otherwise, Luke, Han, and Chewie were going to be eaten. There was no indication the Ewoks would have spontaneously attacked the shield generator, and Leia would have been hard-pressed to do it with just herself, the robots, and any help she could get from the Ewoks.
Apparently in early scripts the Ewoks were Wookies.
Another non-ubermench who plays a vital role is Wedge Antilles, who survives the first Death Star attack, takes out an Imperial walker, and leads the attack on the Death Star, talking out the main power coupling or something like that.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
But who is the Chancellor keeping this mission secret from? Primarily one would think it was the Trade Federation folks and their allies, in which case sending a diplomatic vessel with a couple of Jedi (ok, not everyone knows how to spot those) straight to the leaders of the trade fed just isn't going to keep it secret.
I also wonder why, in a world where people can fly halfway across the galaxy in (what seems like) a few hours, there isn't anyone who will exchange Republic credits for whatever ones are used on Tatooine -- one would think the Hutts would arrange to for usurious rates if no one else would. And don't the Jedi have any secret way to wire for cash/aid? Clearly they had the potential of contacting Naboo (otherwise there was no way they could respond to the pleas for her return), so they should have been able to call elsewhere.
Apparently by the time of Star Wars, btw, those exchange problems must have been worked out by those efficient Imperials; Han didn't worry about the different credits he was getting on Tatooine versus Alderaan.
Last little note: Darth Vader apparently wasn't the only one to survive the explosion of the original Death Star. The same actor who plays the part of the guy who tells Grand Moff Tarkin that there is a danger in "A New Hope" appears in , I believe, "The Empire Strikes Back", again as an Imperial officer. So apparently he took his own advice.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Darth Maul isn't out to kill Amidala, he's out to kill the Jedi, thus leaving her without advisors other than Palpitane. If Maul had succeeded, he would have fixed what (to me) is the biggest plot hole in the movie, the whole "let's send a committee rather than an army" bit in the Senate. Exsqueeze me? They had *just sent* a committee, two Jedi knight ambassadors, and the Trade Federation had destroyed their ship and its crew and attempted to murder the ambassadors via multiple means. Said ambassadors were available as witnesses. Just exactly what would be enough evidence for the Senate?
Oh, and Luke *did* matter in ROTJ; without his Force skills, the Ewoks would never have attacked the Stormtroopers.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Whoah, somebody must have received *just a few* too many flames. I read the entire critique, and I have to say it's really a nitpicker's guide to star wars. I mean, yes, the plot has some holes. But after reading that article, I wouldn't have been suprised to see "So there, Nyaaaah!" written at the end.
:) *ducking and running*
In my opinion, it was still a good movie dispite the holes in the plot. Take Armageddon - did you really think for one second that a nuclear warhead that might have weighed maybe 300 lbs was going to blow a asteroid the size of *texas* in half? No, but that doesn't mean the movie sucked for that fact alone (it sucked for other reasons *g*).
And finally, comparing Star Trek to Star Wars is just *asking* for the geeks here to break out their light sabres and phasers and go get medival on your ass. Those two universes are seperate. For one, Star Wars has far more interesting aliens. However, bar none, the Enterprise has the bigger guns.
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You know, a simple "the show was cool" would have been enough...
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Perhaps Marcvs is unfamiliar with how countries with parliamentary systems work. Generally speaking, there is a president whose powers are mostly ceremonial except for times where there is a change of governments. At that point, if one party has a majority, there isn't a choice: the leader of that party gets to be prime minister or premier or chancellor. If no party has the majority, the president has some choice who to appoint, but the appointment is only successful if the appointee forms a successful coalition. In this case, Hindinberg picked Hitler. While Hitler's own party didn't have a majority, he had allies in other parties. These allies thought they could control Hitler; they were about as wrong as they could be, but that's why they went along.
What this means is that Hitler gained power by standard constitutional means; dozens of other leaders of democratic countries gained power in the same way (e.g. the current chancellor of Germany, who also doesn't have a majority).
Hitler later managed to abolish democracy. But at the time that he did this, he was wildly popular.
If using the concept of archetypes is a sign that someone is an ass, Lucas is an ass. The source for the idea that Lucas is using concepts out of Joseph Campbell to construct Star Wars, complete with archetypical heros and villians, is ... Lucas himself.
As for your last question: the fact that you rebel against a despot doesn't mean you're a democrat. It may just mean that you believe that someone else has the right to be despot (e.g. you think Princess Leia should be the queen, with powers like those of Elizabeth I).
In the end, you're just defending illiteracy. Anyone who analyzes the sources of a film or book you dismiss as "a middle-aged English teacher".
Makes plenty of sense to me. Send the Jedi off in an unmarked ship. Arrange to have a diplomatic vessel along the way. Senate doesn't know you sent muscle as ambassadors, Federation thinks your enforcers are the ambassadors.
I mean there were plenty of other glaring inconsistencies, but that wasn't one. I for one was just disappointed in the really poor character development. Darth Maul looked sounded like one bitter dude "At last we reveal ourselves to the Jedi. At last we will have revenge", but beyond that he did not get ONE SINGLE LINE, aside from some "yes master" nonsense. Like Brin said, a little speechifying while those forcefields were up, even some vague allusion to some blot on the Jedi's morality would have lent some depth to this character before he was sliced by Obi-Wan. Something to make people chew on before the next movie.
GL has gotten much sloppier. He doesn't even have to try anymore, he knows millions of fandroids will flock to the next SW even if it's two hours of still shots of gungan droppings.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
> So why is R2D2's serial number so short?
Well, aside from the known fact that he was named for the reel of film he appeared on, the other explanation is that R2D2 was simply the designation for his class (Repair), and he was unit D2 on that ship (since A New Hope does refer to "R2 units" in general).
Going a little deeper and probably off the deep end, it would seem they were designed to deliberately be non-anthropomorphic, to have less interaction with humans and more with machines. They likely learned through interaction, and didn't want them getting cluttered up with social interaction routines -- thus no human comprehensible audible language. R2D2 got put around more humans than normal and thus learned to mimic some human expression.
That's the hindsight angle. Really he was just a cute squeaking sidekick named after the reel of film he was introduced on (then likely re-written to be put in on the first)
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Wow way to rebut those points without having to descend to use of logic, counterpoint, or counterexample.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
> "Abortion is a service subsidized bo local, national governments"? Man, where do you get your news from? It's *ILLEGAL* for the national government to subsidize abortion.
Poppycock
Balderdash
Kerfuffle
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I read Brin's original piece in Salon, as well as his follow-up.
My personal impression is that Brin is simply too full of himself. The Salon piece was the most long-winded, arrogant, and condescending drivel I've read in a long, long time. Parts of it were completely unreadable because, I guess, Mr. Brin wanted to impress the reader with his extensive vocabulary. After reading that dissertation a couple of times, I still can't figure out what he was saying. Picking apart popular sci-fi movies and books is a popular past time on Usenet and the web. It goes on all the time. Yet, Brin takes this to ridiculous extremees.
I've read some of Brin's novels. They didn't impress me much. My take is that Brin is simply jealous of George Lucas's success, that's all.
Try the "culture" universe from Iain Banks.
That's an interesting suggestion in terms of Brin's argument.
On the one hand, the Culture is held up as some sort of endpoint for the rational questioning of all things in society and the ultimate permissiveness of individual tastes: the egalitarian utopia which Brin asks us to struggle toward. It has no money, no laws, no violence or coercion, no secrecy outside your own head. (Plenty of values and social norms, though.)
On the other hand, the gap in power between the Minds and the human population is effectively disenfranchising. Most of the humans give their lives over to the one thing where competition with machines doesn't mean anything: having a good time. One could argue most of the machines are up to the same, but where the moral exercise of power requires the most complete understanding of the consequences of your actions, the important decisions must lie with the Minds. More to the point, the stories always focus around the experience of a single protagonist, often a person to some degree outside the human norms of the culture. A "throwback" or a "barbarian". These characters act as demigods to the societies the Culture intervenes in, usually by natural talent, other times by technological or ethical fiat, but they are also shown to have been instruments of the Minds that are the real movers behind the plot.
What little is described of the Culture's origins says they developed from a splinter group of humans who started a somewhat radical society and left the mainstream when it got unfriendly. (secessionist fandom anyone?) From isolation it grew into one of the dominant civilations in the galaxy, either by luck or the strength of its open development model. Presumedly they still work this way, because the Minds see it as the most efficient way to run things. Indeed, it seems to be be their evolution, not that of the humans, that's keep to society stable for millenia. Marain, the language the humans speak was designed by the Minds, and humans tend to drift into less utopian modes of thought when they stop speaking it. Witness the "almost inhuman detached passion" required to prosecute antagonists in a way least damaging to both sides, or the common occurence of characters gone native in "primitive" (meaning less egalitarian) societies. Perhaps this is an unfortunate 'way out' a la LeGuin's Disposessed.
How-we-get-there-from-here aside, I'd like to ask, "The best way to keep things running compared to what?" We're led to believe it's "compared to everything", like RMS's contention that open development makes sense from a rational point of view without an appeal to ideology. This has always rung false to me, like Star Trek's claim that the the android Data has no emotions. I think the Vulcans got it right: logic tells you the consequences of your actions, but it doesn't tell you with of those consequences you'll prefer. That comes down to values, or feelings, or something we don't understand from a technical point of view yet.
The message I've always taken from the Culture novels is that it's the values the society is based on, the values the Minds grew up with, that make it what it is. The consequences of our power to affect each other, which has only been magnified by technology, can't be avoided. Our only hope is to find ways of dealing with each other that improve our lives and avoid the miseries of the past for all of us. And that's what David Brin is talking about.
The problem with Brinn isn't that he used $10 words, everyone does that in a specialty. It's that he used archetypes. Using archetypes is nearly the surest sign that you're an ass that I can think of. Archetypes are the bad ideas generally recycled by third rate intellectuals (most of whom become english teachers or english professors) to try to come up with something to talk about. They take these archetypes, push and tug characters until they fit into them (or just proclaim that they do), then procede to talk about a story in general terms.
That is, they figure out a way to say pretty much nothing in as many words as possible with as arrogant a tone as possible, doing their best to imply that they're in the know because they can categorize everything into a bunch of made-up cubby holes.
Guess what, vader may have been more than a 1-dimension cardboard cutout. So might luke. And Han. And Chewie. And C3PO. And every damn character in the movie. Lucas could have been telling a story about people. Genuine, multifaceted people.
Did you notice that just about every one of the main characters in the SW trilogy was responsible for saving each other at least once? Did you notice that every one of the main characters was saved by someone else at some point?
The problem with Brin wasn't that he used big words. Big words are just accedents of the fact that human beings only tend to pronounce so many sounds, and to get more words than sounds we have to string the words together. Unfamiliar words are just side effects of the fact that we're not all the same person, and we don't all live the same life. Noone objects to those. What people object to are people who use big, unfamiliar words as labor-saving devices. Instead of coming up with something worth saying, they just use a special cant that's readily appliable to any situation because the can't is fairly similar to the cant of newspaper psychics - so broad that it always describes everything without exactly seeming to.
I don't think that Brin is jealous of Lucas. I just think that he's talking about him to get publicity. Talking about big issues is a way to get attention, especially if you show opinions contrary to popular belief.
I think that most people will be intereste din listening to Brin when he doesn't sound like a highschool english teacher. It takes most of us a long enough time to recover from that crap and regain the ability to appreciate good literature, we don't need another dose of mindless elitist drivel.
On the other hand, I think that Brin is right that we are all part of a community. I just think that it's strange that he thinks that star wars has anything to do with the idea that democracy is bad. After all, weren't 4-6 about the goodguy rebels defeating the badguy despots?
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
Wait for the "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Darth Maul Huggies With Leak Protection" to go on sale. Buy a box. Attach one of the diapers to a baby. Come back in 3 hours, and open the diaper. You'll find a plot summary inside.
Bowie
Bowie J. Poag
Oops ... posted in the wrong place ...
Here's one curious thing I have noticed about R2D2, C3PO and droids in general. Droids appear to be very common (the tiny Naboo ship had at least three of them). There's probably thousands of worlds, hundreds of thousands of ships and perhaps hundreds of millions of droids in the Star Wars galaxy.
So why is R2D2's serial number so short?
If we assume that a droid's serial number can consist of any combination of four letters and/or numbers, then there are only 36 ^ 4 combinations, or 1,679,616 different serial numbers, which would barely cover the number of droids found on a small, backwater world such as Tattoine.
On the plus side, R2D2, as always, has a lot of hack value. He is also clearly running Linux: R2D2 did not bluescreen once in the whole of the Star Wars series. The only times R2D2 failed that I can recall were hardware failures such as an external electrical overload (Jawas, Endor) or being shot in the Death Star trench.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
yeah.... but just about anyone here REALLY could have helped out the script to Menance. We have to expect more from movie-makers, has it really gotten to the point where we're going to shrug off even STAR WARS as "just a movie." Lucas has to be pretty far gone to not realize what a terrible actor Jake was (he spits his lines as if off a teleprompter!) and not correct the rest of the hokey dialouge. The fact is, the man owns the franchise, but unless the plot does something tricky like Brin's evil Yoda, he's not doing anything very interesting or creative, just throwing CGI at us. No heart mon. No heart. Does he really deserved to be credited for that?
1. That individual rights can exist under a non-democratic government, and are unrelated to democracy.
2. That history is changed only by elites.
This statement is bizarre. These things cannot exist but in a democracy. If there is no way to hold leaders accountable, then you can not stop them from silencing speech or making people "disappear".
And how do you suppose these rights become law? In the US, they were voted on by ratifing the Constitution. What do you think is more credible and more likely to endure: rights declared "inaliable" by those who choose them and with the power to ensure their protection through the process of democracy, law, and public criticism, or by rights granted abirtrarily by a dictator or ruling elite? Consider what happens when power is transfered to another elite. The most enlightened king can have a tyrant son.
With a significantly reduced reign and less power. And they can be removed from power without bloodshed. And anyone can become a politician.
But being able to criticize that government, and select that government from the most qualified canditates DOES mean you get good government, or at least the best available.
That is circular reasoning. Any example of someone who has changed history is automatically had the "spear-carrier" status removed. But the fact is many people who had humble beginnings have gone on to change the world. Martin Luther King, Jonas Salk, and Albert Einstein are just a few examples.
Or look at this way. Of all the people born to be elites, how many have turned out to be mediocre? Certainly more than those who haven't!
And what did that party do as soon as it had power? It outlawed other political parties and silenced public criticism. There was no democracy when almost all of the atrocaties were committed. The German people and their rulers were at fault, not the democratic model of government.
Besides, this is a pathetic argument against democracy, considering the number of autocratic governments which have committed atrocities throughout history.
Offtopic sidenote: The fact that you prefix "supposed" in front of "ethnic cleansing" says about your bias. I assume you get news from the international wire services in Greece. Whatever you think of NATO's intentions, or the indepndance of the media, the fact is that thousands were murdered by the Serbian army. I've seen mass graves on TV, and heard survivors describe how the entire adult male population of villages were rounded up and shot. It happened. You can't fabricate stuff like that and get away with it, at least not in countries with competing news services and laws against censorship (ding ding, only in democracies!). The only part that people don't agree on is the accuracy of the estimates of the number killed. Some claim that the numbers are being inflated to help justify NATO's bombing, but that does not mean it didn't happen.
It must be incredibly difficult to build such a large franchise from a single (albeit good!) movie (StarWars). To expect utter continuity in a storyline which, despite Lucas' protestations to the contrary, is largely being written on the fly, is a bit optimistic I feel.
The fact that he has done such an admirable job to date is a testament to the guy's sheer ability - who really cares if he messes up on a few minor details, he tells a good old fashioned "yarn". Great escapism that takes us away from the sometimes awful reality of the world we live in.
Often in a good story it is not what is said, but what is left unsaid, that makes the story most plausible - and the fact that so much debate has been able to be raised over so many of these unspoken aspects speaks volumes about Lucas' talent as a storyteller.
From what we've seen, it's been mostly to force Naboo to sign a treaty with the Trade Federation. And after that either come back and say this wrong or simply use it to build is power base and pile up the atrocities.
He took advantage of having Amidala arriving in Coruscant but this is not necessarily what he wanted and what he had originally planned to do.
We have the choice between someone who can either see the future, or someone who is forced to act earlier and takes advantage of it.
And the main reasons why the Jedi were not presented as proofs of the atrocities, I would guess that several of the senators would not have trusted them. I mean, they have quasi-magical powers, they are pretty much independant from any temporal power. And being all-good does not really inclines rulers to try to trust you (I doubt a lot of them have clear consciences, at least from a Jedi's POV).
Of course, there are holes in the scenario, but that doesn't mean that this excuse should be used whenever you don't understand (or course the reverse is also true).
And as for what matters or not, the point is that everything matters. Everything you do changes the outcome for the better or for worse and usually for both. But you can look at pretty much every events and see how it could have turned better or worse depending on what happened.
And not to forget that one of the lessons there is to always try to do what you should be doing, not to tell yourself that it doesn't matter, because you never know when it's going to matter or not.
The fact is very few people (Lucas himself and a small handfull of trusted individuals at this point) know how things are going to go down in the next two films and very little will be known by the public at large untill they are actually released. This is part of Lucas's magic. Think about the backstory for a bit, and you know exactly how the next two turn out. In the second of the six, Obi-wan will train Anakin while Palpatine continues his fiendish machinations (and anyone who machinates is okay with me). Palpatine will discover the clone technology that allows him to mass produce stormtroopers, and they'll make their appearance in the galaxy in some innocuous way, under the auspices of the Chancellor's decision to build some sort of the standing army to protect the galaxy from evil. The climax will be a half-trained Anakin falling into the pit of fire Obi-wan mentions to Luke in ESB, and the Emperor taking over Anakin's training. The third prequel will focus on the discovery by Obi-wan of Palpatine's identity as the Emperor. Darth Vader will be released on the galaxy to hunt down and kill the jedi, who discovered too late that Palpatine is the Sith Lord. The stormtroopers will become open conquerers under Grand Moff Tarkin, and the movie will climax with Yoda and Obi-wan going into hiding at the same time that the last jedi is slain (probably Samuel L. Jackson's character) and organised resistance to the empire ends. The order may be switched around a bit, but the skeleton's been around since Lucas started. Remember all the urban legends about Lucas having already written nine movies?
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
One objection I've never heard, and this surprises me, is that Star Wars is a wonderful missed opportunity.
The Star Wars universe is a huge and well developed context in which many different, interesting tales could be told. Unfortunately, because they're marketed to kids for toy sales, the movies, books and comics are juvenile. I enjoyed Phantom Menace once I remembered it's directed at ten year olds, and concentrated on the special effects.
The fallout from that marketing angle is througout all the movies. The force is no longer a mystical element of the universe; it's a microbe that people have in greater or lesser quantities (leading, however, to the tantalizing possibility of bottling and freebasing it). The wars aren't fought with blood and bone, but with plastic aliens that get knocked down and don't get up. The insulting caricatures of other cultures were used for comic effect, with little thought to how adults might interpret them.
Surely I'm not alone in feeling cheated of what could happen if those movies were directed at adults. Whatever mythic quality they have is diluted to uselessness by the action figures that follow.
Star Trek movies make the same mistake, to a lesser degree. In Insurrection, Federation shuttlecraft come with a karaoke machine as a standard option, and the Enterprise can be flown with a Sidewinder joystick. I nearly puked in the theatre when I saw that.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
What I found most disturbing in the whole affair, and the only point I will address, is that Brin's objection is Lucas presenting a story that supports the opinion that democracy might be inherently bad.
This being an opinion I currently hold, I would like to offer a couple of comments. Brin seems to be confusing several of the underlying concepts of American society and over-generalizing about how your political system works.
Democracy is not a cut-and-paste solution. Democratic governments vary greatly, and the principle behind democracy is elected government. A lot of other things that exist in American democracy and various other types of government in the Western world, such as human rights, international law, freedom of speech and expression etc. have little to do with democracy in itself.
I am not an American. I am Greek, and I live in Athens, the place where democracy was born. I would like to point out that the ancient Athenian democracy came with little of the sprinklings and egalitarian human-rights laws that come with most modern forms of government. And it didn't work well. It didn't work well at all, and it could be argued that democracy was largely to blame for Athens' fall and decline after the Pelloponesian War.
I've also read the Iliad and the Odyssey as well as several plays by Evripides (in the original, no less!) and would like to wonder about how they differ with the kind of stories Mr. Brin advocates.
For one thing, Mr. Brin agrees that a story must have heroes. And, believe it or not, this is the way history works. I'd like to see someone come up and disagree with me when I say that a handful of people have made an incredible impact on the history of human civilization while most people did indeed play the role of un-named spear-carriers. Especially in the case of war, the decision to go to war is usually taken by a small group of leaders to whom many have sworn allegiance by one means or another. It was the American government's decision to start the war in Kosovo over supposed ethnic cleansing just as it was Agamemnon's decision to start the war in Troy over the abduction of Helen.
The only moral objection that Mr. Brin brings up is how the elite is selected. The only difference he really sees between the Homerian demi-gods and everyday-Joes-cum-heroes is that one is selected by fate / hereditary rights / genetics while the other is selected by a handful of people around him. For Mr. Brin, the deciding difference between Agamemnon Atreides and Bill Clinton is that Agamemnon was king because he was the son of Atreus, while Mr. Clinton is president because of the small percentage of the American public that actually voted, more than half chose him over the other candidate.
The fact that he's at least partially responsible for bombing the houses of people in Serbia, half way around the world from the Oval office, is not the problem. Supposedly, our beloved democracy would have struck him down in his place if his action was morally reprehensible.
Please get me straight. Although I do take interest in these matters, I do not wish to debate the moral right of this or that leader to wage war against another nation. That is a matter of a different discussion. What I am debating is Mr. Brin's point that all the good in society comes from the fact that our leaders are elected.
Let me tell you something you might have forgotten. The Nazi government was elected, through due democratic process. The public loved them. For the average German in the 30s, a government that promised freedom from the economic hell imposed by the winners of WWI and getting rid of the Jewish commercial elite that they believed was the source of all their problems (there, another elite creeps into place). HITLER AND THE NAZI PARTY HAD A DIRECT MANDATE FROM THE GERMAN PEOPLE, AND YET THEY ARE STILL THE CAUSE FOR SOME OF THE WORST ATROCITIES EVER COMMITTED .
Mr. Brin supports that power corrupts, and that despots invariably become egotistical and power-hungry, incapable of acting in the best interests of their people. Just because a (relatively small) bunch of people picked an elected president over his opponent does not mean that the above cannot apply to him as well!
Democracy is, IMHO, just another way to pick an elite. But the way the world is governed at the time being means we NEED an elite. We just switched from passing the crown down from father to son, and are now passing the mandate from politician to politician.
The average citizen might have an opinion, and even a valid and just way of thinking about how the country should be run. But he might not. Putting the decision of one political party over another in the hands of the public does NOT mean you get good government.
This is Slashdot, a site for geeks, people who see ourselves as an intellectual elite. Saying that if more people pick a Democrat over a Republican (or the other way around) means we get good government is like saying that having people pick Windows over Linux (which they do, mostly, and the reasons, though bad, apply equally to democracy: lack of choice, lack of support, bad media coverage, lack of education and awareness, lack of interest) means they get good computing.
If George Lucas wants to thrash democracy, let him. You might disagree with him (and me), but it's a valid point and not unethical or morally reprehensible. Mr. Brin's point about GL thrashing a culture that has been good to him is invalid. GL is thrashing ELECTED GOVERNMENT, not the institutions that allow freedom of expression and opportunities for financial success. The two do not go together hand-in-hand. You can have one without the other. And in ALL forms of government to date, be it monarchy, aristocracy, communism, tyrrany, democracy or anything else, (perhaps not socialism? But the examples are few and far apart, and hard to judge) an ELITE has governed the masses, who have had little say in government except when they rebelled or went to the polls to exchange one elite for another. The question here is how an elite is selected. Elected government might be the best we have so far , but it is not close to being a good and effective system. You can judge individual elites (e.g. Nazis were bad, JFK was good, Agamemnon was bad, Pericles was good etc.) but you will find that the way they were brought into power has little to do with their effectiveness. Mr. Brin's objection to this I find appalling.
Give a monkey half a brain and still he's bound to fry it - Placebo