We too have spent much of our epoch recombining elements, placing the age-old icons in new, deracinated contexts. Sure, we have technology now, though postmodern culture has given us the benefits of the Enlightenment without its technical underpinnings. We illuminate things like Merlins, flipping light switches. It's one big special effect. Once again, effortless will appears to rule.
Magic seems to be everywhere.
George Lucas has shown a genius for encapsulating all of this and giving it back to us as myth. He's been able to anticipate the popular mind of our time, and has been richly rewarded for it. George Lucas, guy from Modesto, Calif., has become Saint George, iconmaker for the era. Complaints that instant iconography and sound-bite mythology amount to a starvation diet might just as well be directed toward the culture as a whole. Jim Paul is a writer who lives in the Mission District of San Francisco.