From: dgoldman@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Daniel Robert Goldman)
Subject: Re: Lucas the literary genius? (LONG)
Organization: CS Department, Stanford University, California, USA
Date: 18 Dec 92 19:16:35 GMT

julie@alaska.et.byu.edu (Julie Gritton) writes:

>I'm sorry, but George Lucas is not a Tolstoy or a Dostoevsky or a
>Kafka, and he can't even begin to hold a candle to Dickens.  Don't get
>me wrong, I love SW just as much as the next person, probably more,
>but that doesn't make it literature.  Yes, it can teach us some
>things, yes we can gain some insights about life from it, but
>comparing it to some of the great classics that I majored in in
>college is ridiculous.  I mean, I learned something about life from

Well, I guess I'd like to hear what people consider the definition of a
literary masterpiece.  I don't claim to have a definitive answer, but what
you've just described sounds like literature to me.  A Great Work could be
defined as a) a work which characterizes the mood or culture of a civilization
or era, b) a work which transcends that era and remains poignant/valid/mean-
ingful long after the forces which shaped that expression are gone, c) a
work which expresses "universal truths," d) a work which gives us insight into
human nature, etc., etc.  While SW does not necessarily fit all of these
descriptions neatly, a case could be made for each: a) SW characterizes the
American need for heroism, the need to see itself as an underdog against
monolithic government (first the "real" imperials, the British, but at the
time of the movie, the threat of Communism), the belief in Rags to Riches
and individualism, as well as Protestantism (the Force is a personal deity,
not one who is "administered" via a "church"), and so on.  b) as evidenced
by the continuing interest in this newsgroup even by people (like myself)
almost too young to remember when SW came out, there is a continuing interest 
in SW.  It remains to be seen whether or not this will be truly lasting into 
the next century, but I will bet that it will.  More on this in a moment...
c,d)  You may not believe there are Universal Truths in SW, but Joseph Campbell
did, enough so that he would include it among the greatest myths of the
world.

Now I ask you a different sort of question.  Suppose you were a historian of
the late 21st century, looking back on the culture of the late 20th century.
Certainly you will take note of art, books, drama, and all the other tradi-
tional expressions of culture, but you cannot fail to take note of the
phenomenon of the motion picture, which dominated American popular culture for
over 50 years.  You will try to identify what about film was so enticing to
the American populace, and you will examine those films which had a lasting
impression on their ways of thinking.  Star Wars influenced the lives of just
about every child growing up in the 70's and 80's, provided nicknames for
defense programs, broke Hollywood out of its slump of 70s drawing-room dramas
(along with a few other bright filmmakers named Steven and Francis), inspired 
new interest in the space program (which you will note had a hiatus of manned 
missions from the time when SF was going out of vogue to shortly after Star 
Wars' release), and had many, many other impacts.  Such a historian would
have a hard time not including Star Wars in an impartial list of influential
Great Works.  

While you may find it difficult to consider a popular art form as literature, 
many of the forms we look at today as literature were just as "popular."  
Dickens has already been mentioned (and bears a similarity to Lucas in that 
his novels were released serially, and no-one really knows if he had them all 
figured out before he began... sources seem to indicate that he made it up as 
he went along!), but Shakespeare was also catering to a popular audience for 
many years before the royalty took an interest in his work.  The commedia 
dell'arte, the great improvised art form of the Italian renaissance, was also 
performed for peasants, not the elite upper class.  Secular great works are 
quite often popular works.  Although it's much too early to tell whether Star
Wars will stand the test of time, we cannot discount it simply because it
is "entertaining" or "popular".

					--Dan Goldman
					  obiwan@deathstar.stanford.edu