The Birth of the Entertainment-Industrial Complex

Two and a half decades ago, in an entertainment galaxy not so far away, the young George Lucas shopped a grammatically slapdash and orthographically challenged 13-page treatment that would become the “Star Wars” trilogy. Fresh from the commercial triumph of “American Graffiti,” which had been made for less than $1 million and had astonished Universal executives by earning over $120 million at the box office, Lucas was chagrined to see his pet proposal rejected by Universal and United Artists. Alan Ladd, who was then the head of Fox, ignored the strenuous objections of his fellow executives and decided to put the script into development. Ladd’s gamble paid off handsomely, as “Star Wars” went on to become the most successful franchise in Hollywood history. By 1992, Lucas’ trilogy had brought in $1.3 billion, while “Star Wars” merchandise had racked up more than $2.5 billion in sales. With “Star Wars,” George Lucas had clearly tapped into a Force not entirely of his own devising.

Unlike the great Hollywood movies of the ‘70s and ‘80s--say, Robert Altman’s “Nashville” or Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull”--the “Star Wars” trilogy eschewed moral complexity and irony altogether in the name of a New Age Manichaeanism whose signal trait was moral legibility. As such, Lucas’ movies marked a certain retreat toward childhood on the part of Hollywood, just as they inaugurated the era of the cinema as theme park with their much-vaunted special effects. Neither grandly modernist in the manner of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Godfather” nor coyly postmodernist in the manner of Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction,” the trilogy was conceived as a kind of cinematic oxymoron: Its nostalgic futurism combined the latest in spectacle with the hoary old values of the western, and not just in obvious nods to the genre such as the Mos Eisley Cantina set piece in the first film. Indeed, for a suburban world hurtling toward the era of cyberspace, Lucas’ galaxy of vigilante fighters in hyperspace was about as close to the world of the western as one could get.

Conceived at the end of the tumultuous Vietnam era, the “Star Wars” trilogy couches a comforting moral message amid its high-tech swashbuckling. In Lucas’ world, good triumphs over evil, but only after evil has been shown to have always harbored the good; the Force triumphs over technology, but only after harnessing technology to its ends; and the son triumphs over the father, but only after reconciling with him in extremis despite his murderous paternal trespasses. Though it wears its pulp proudly on its sleeve, the fiction of “Star Wars” wants to be taken seriously, which is why the intelligentsia initially took it to be a joke, a kind of tongue-in-cheek riff on the Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “John Carter of Mars” stories that were its inspiration. Lucas, however, wanted movie audiences to become absorbed by the pathos of Luke Skywalker’s initiation into the mysteries of the Force and his conflict with Darth Vader, the fallen Jedi master who happens to be his father. Lucas had studied anthropology at Modesto Junior College before going on to USC film school; with “Star Wars” and its siblings, he created an optimistic mythology for a traumatized post-Vietnam America.

Given the context of the Watergate era, a period in which moral ambiguity and Oedipal rebellion were the name of the American game, it is perhaps not surprising that Lucas’ films struck such a resounding chord in an American public hungry for moral verities. For the counterculture, America itself was the Empire to be combated in the name of youth solidarity, just as the Death Star amounted to another name for the military-industrial complex. By the time of Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America,” the tables were turned, and Lucas’ trilogy seemed at times to insert itself in our conception of history itself. When Reagan famously inveighed that the Soviet Union was an “Evil Empire,” was it not the case that Americans imagined not so much the Stalin of history as the Darth Vader of Lucasian myth? And was it not the case that Americans saw the end of the Cold War as the triumph of the ancient American Force itself, the faith in our manifest destiny as the bearers of political good news around the world?

Above and beyond its political resonances, “Star Wars,” along with Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws,” did more to change Hollywood movies than any film since “The Jazz Singer.” Whereas traditional American cinema largely hewed to the Aristotelian principle that plot and character are the most important elements of a dramatic work, the trilogy is first and foremost about light and spectacle (thus the unusually apt name of Lucas’ special effects company: Industrial Light and Magic). Lucas has suggested that for him, character derives not from plot but from “editing and light,” and that he began working on “Star Wars” not with a plot or a series of characters, but with a series of images to which he affixed a story. For Lucas, character is virtually supererogatory. So it is that the personalities of the ‘droids C3PO and R2D2 are more memorable than those of the film’s central characters, just as it is easier to recall the blips and beeps of R2D2 than any words uttered by Luke Skywalker.

In keeping with his commitment to spectacle, Lucas changed the structure of the action of the Hollywood feature film, for what matters most in “Star Wars” is less the overall plot than the momentary itinerary of events. In order to retain the interest of viewers bowled over by the effects, Lucas’ movies feature what the industry calls “an action beat” every 10 minutes, so that the cumulative effect of watching his trilogy is akin to watching a serial from start to finish. Speed is the order of the day, especially in the remarkable battle scenes at the end of “Star Wars” and “The Return of the Jedi” when the Rebel Alliance succeeds in blowing up the first and second Death Stars. (And here the virtuosic camera of “Star Wars” prefigures the advertising imagery of Intel: The plastic grooves of the Death Star resemble nothing so much as a greatly magnified silicon chip, just as the nearly unimaginable speed at which Luke and his Rebel cronies fly suggests the instantaneous zip of a computer circuit.)

Perhaps most important, “Star Wars” changed the way movies and their accessories are marketed, in what Neil Gabler has recently termed the “National Entertainment State.” After “Star Wars,” merchandise, which had previously been used to market films, became a thing unto itself, with a shelf life far exceeding the theatrical run that had traditionally set a limit to its viability. As Stephen J. Sansweet’s useful “Star Wars: From Concept to Screen to Collectible” informs us, Lucas gave responsibility for marketing “Star Wars” paraphernalia to his college chum, Charles Lippincott, who then hooked up with Bernard Loomis, the head of Kenner Toys. Loomis believed that “Star Wars” had certain “toyetic” qualities that made it a good bet for marketing. At first, Kenner was not going to produce any toy guns, as Vietnam was still very much on the cultural horizon, but Lucas demanded guns and Loomis relented. Kenner “Star Wars” action figures, at 3 3/4 inches, were smaller and cheaper than other action figures of the day; they catalyzed a furious consumer demand for “Star Wars” goods.

Over the next eight years, more than 250 million action figures would be sold and countless new products would be introduced to an ever more rapacious public. According to Sansweet, a former Wall Street Journal bureau chief who is the world’s foremost collector of “Star Wars” memorabilia and who arguably knows more about the expanding “Star Wars” universe than Lucas himself, by 1979 products included “Halloween costumes and masks, overalls and jackets, digital and analog wristwatches, T-shirts, socks, shoes and sneakers and sandals, plastic tableware, greeting cards, gift wrap, a syndicated newspaper comic strip, flying rockets, plastic model kits, wallpaper, buttons and patches, lunch boxes, belts and buckles, jewelry, school supplies, ceramic mugs and banks and cookie jars, posters, gum trading cards, records and tapes, books and comics, pajamas and robes, sheets and towels, and, of course, lots of toys.” Sansweet’s “Star Wars Scrapbook: The Essential Collection” contains pictures of many of these objects, as well as a facsimile of an invitation to a San Francisco press screening of “Return of the Jedi” for those who weren’t lucky enough to attend it 15 years ago and a reprint of the first newsletter of the Official Star Wars Fan Club, among other things. In time, the “Scrapbook” will no doubt become a collector’s item, an ersatz treasure trove of the ersatz.

The most agreeably kitschy of the volumes under consideration here is Robin Davis’ “The Star Wars Cookbook,” which will delight would-be culinary Jedi Knights around the galaxy. “The Force inhabits all realms,” Davis informs us, “even the kitchen.” Included are recipes for “Princess Leia’s Danish Dos,” the swirls of which resemble the whorls of Carrie Fisher’s hair; “Han Burgers,” which are traditionally served with “ketchup blasters”; “Jabba Jiggle,” a lime gelatin concoction that recalls the fabulously fat gangster, Jabba the Hutt; and “Death Star Popcorn Balls,” which, like any popcorn balls worthy of the name, may well be lethal. Frankie Frankeny’s campy photos of food posing with “Star Wars” action figures perfectly complement the recipes they adorn. The recipes offer children an easy, enjoyable introduction to the world of basse cuisine.

Aspiring “Star Wars” scholars will want to consult Sansweet’s definitive “Star Wars Encyclopedia,” a hefty reference tome whose 354 triple-columned pages are crammed with more information than the archives of many small nations. Offering an alphabetized, synoptic view of “films, novels, radio dramas, short stories, computer games and more,” the “Encyclopedia” is a lavishly illustrated labor of love. Similarly useful is David West Reynolds’ “Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary,” which offers well-chosen images and comprehensive explanations of the characters and creatures of the films. Reynolds, who holds a doctorate in archeology, brings a scholarly temperament to the volume, considering the world of “Star Wars” as “a culture from another time and place to explore.” In good reference book form, the “Encyclopedia” and the “Dictionary” provide more information than any but the most die-hard “Star Wars” fan will be able to exhaust. Those interested in the vehicles and spacecraft of the trilogy will enjoy Reynolds’ “Star Wars: Incredible Cross-Sections,” which offers fabulously detailed pictures of the various machines in the reader-friendly format popularized by its publisher, Dorling-Kindersley.

In preparation for next spring’s release of the fourth “Star Wars” film, the first episode in the so-called “prequel” that details Darth Vader’s epochal turn to the Dark Side, Chronicle Books and Kenner Toys have teamed up to issue the Limited Masterpiece Edition of “Anakin Skywalker: The Story of Darth Vader.” The deluxe trapezoidal box opens to two compartments, one of which contains a “collector-quality, 13 1/2 inches tall, fully poseable” action figure of Vader as a redeemed Jedi Knight, the other of which contains yet another book by the irrepressible Sansweet that recounts the “Emergence” and “Saga of Darth Vader” and offers a comprehensive guide to Vader collectibles. My 6-year-old child finds the action figure fun to play with, but the book is fairly dull going, as it merely rehashes what is already known about Vader in workmanlike prose.

The tale of Vader’s fall, of course, remains to be told in full, though soon enough it will be. Considerable demand for this story was made clear during Thanksgiving weekend, when the trailer for the upcoming film was released, prompting frenzied fans across the nation to buy full-price tickets for movies they did not want to see, merely to catch a glimpse of what the spring will bring. Come May, no doubt, a thousand new products will bloom, and the Force will still be with Lucas and the entertainment-industrial complex he has spawned.