Wednesday, May 18, 2005
AND AMERICAN GRAFFITI WAS ABOUT SYRIA’S WITHDRAWAL FROM LEBANON
Arthur Chrenkoff is all over George Lucas’ Star Wars-as-political-metaphor claim:
Star Wars is a wakeup call to Americans about the erosion of democratic freedoms under George W. Bush, filmmaker George Lucas says.
Lucas, responding to a question from The Sun at a Cannes Film Festival press conference on Sunday, said he first wrote the framework of Star Wars in 1971 when reacting to then-U.S. president Richard Nixon and the on-going events of the Vietnam War. But the story still has relevance today, he said, and is part of a pattern he has noticed in his readings of history.
“I didn’t think it was going to get quite this close,” he said of the parallels between the Nixon era and the Bush presidency, which has been sacrificing freedoms in the interests of national security. “It is just one of those re-occurring things. I hope this doesn’t come true in our country.
“Maybe the film will awaken people to the situation of how dangerous it is ... The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we are doing now in Iraq are unbelievable.”
Yes, they are. In the sense that nobody with any concept of history believes them.