"Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones"

reviewed by MC5, May 20, 2002

The politics in this movie is light considering that the movie is about
empires, government leaders, secession, war and contention between good
and evil. Nonetheless we give this movie a limited endorsement.

There was not much to complain about politically in the first installments
of "Star Wars," which was both anti-fascist and anti-imperialist. The role
of Black characters and the "Red Guard" in the key battles did not go
unnoticed at MIM. In this movie, we learn that democracy is the preferred
government of the "good guys" of the Republic.  Although the characters'
endorsement of democracy is rather shallow like the current understanding
of democracy in the united $tates, the movie itself offers slightly more
analysis of democracy.

We learn right away that corruption and wrangling are ruining the Senate
of the Republic. At age 20, future evil incarnate Darth Vader is just
Anakin Skywalker, one of the most skilled Jedi warriors. We can tell that
he is going to grow up to be an imperialist when he tells Obi-Wan Kenobi
not to lecture him anymore on politics and economics. According to Anakin
Skywalker, he only trusts 2 or 3 politicians and therefore the subjects of
politics and economics themselves are contaminated--a huge mistake to
throw out the baby with the bath water. He also favors dictatorship;
although we learn that he himself wants to become the most powerful in the
world when his mother dies.

The death of his mother at the hands of an odious scavenger species also
raises the question of genocide or extinction of species, because Anakin
Skywalker kills every single member of that species, at least those on
that planet.  MIM found this a troublesome point, because the species was
indeed loathsome. Democratic Senator and future wife of Anakin Skywalker,
Padme Amidala has no criticisms when she learns of the genocide. To be
sure, majorities of white people favored genocide in the united $tates to
take land from Indians, so democracy and genocide are compatible. We wish
there had been more discussion of the merits and demerits of this
particular species that Anakin Skywalker wiped out and whether it is
possible to say that some species are worthy of such extinction.

Distrust of politicians, favorable attitudes toward dictatorship,
inclinations toward genocide--clearly Anakin Skywalker has the makings of
a classic Nazi. Just as Hitler copied much of Lenin on the vanguard party,
Anakin Skywalker is going to take all the training of the Jedi Knights
before becoming a full-fledged imperialist.

One of the parts we like about the movie is the discussion of the
secession movement by the politicians still loyal to the Republic. They
talk repeatedly of negotiating with the thousands of planetary systems
breaking away from the Republic. In fact, there is no standing army in the
Republic. The Jedi Knights make a point of saying "we're only
peacekeepers, not an army."

The formation of a standing army in this movie is obviously tied to
profit. By taking a smuggler-mercenary as the prototype, the Kaminoans who
live far out in space away from the Republic build an army of clones for
sale--to the Jedi Knights of the Republic. It appears that the dark side
of the force ordered up two manufactured armies, without telling the Jedi
Council of course. Each member of the clone army is ruthless, without
thinking capacity, unquestioning and cloned from the same dubious humyn
material.

For MIM this is an excellent point about the movie. The Republic lived in
peace with thousands of systems for 1000 years before a standing army came
into being in obviously evil circumstances. So it appears that species
able to inter-communicate can negotiate their organization with each
other, without systematic wars.

When it comes time to organize these armies and a secession movement, it
turns out that we find business federations conspiring behind the back of
the Republic. They stand for action to defeat the Jedi Knights and secede
from the Republic.

Hence, the origin of standing armies is the most odious of circumstances
in "Star Wars." Yet, we cannot blame Yoda for organizing one of the clone
armies to save the remaining Jedi Knights in a battle against another
manufactured army. Although we have not seen the sequel, it appears that
the army Yoda mustered will end up being corrupted itself and serving as
an instrument of Darth Vader. The creation of armies is a plot by the evil
Emperor Palpatine himself who assumed power legally while keeping the
Republic in turmoil and emergency powers in his own hands.

This problem neatly parallels our own in this day. Somehow we have found
ourselves in circumstances where standing armies exist, act and arm
themselves in connection to the profit motive. Contrary to anarchists who
mistake their own wishes for reality or a means to achieve a new reality,
we scientific socialists agree with Marx on the need for an interim
dictatorship of the proletariat. Yoda had no choice but to use that army,
because society was not ready for any other approach. A society needing an
army is a dictatorship of some kind or another, whether openly fascist or
cloaked as "democracy."

By the way, the character who plays the leader of the secessionist
movement is Christopher Lee of Dracula and British special forces
intelligence fame. In the movie, he plays Count Dooku, who leaves the Jedi
Knights after claiming they served a corrupt government.

The newspaper critics focused on Jar Jar Binks, the character that starred
in the last installment of Star Wars widely and deservedly criticized.
However, even that criticism was shallow political correctness.
Considering that there are all range of alien characters in the movie,
including some of the lowliest scavenger types, it should not be
surprising to find a character speaking poor English reminiscent of a
Black slave caricature. Even accepting the criticism of the critics, we
say so what? There is no reason that all species in a future intergalactic
Republic would be perfect English speakers or highly intelligent, if Jar
Jar Binks is indeed representative of a species.

"Episode II" of "Star Wars" deserves to be a launching pad for more
serious political discussion, not just political correctness on Jar Jar
Binks.


A note on dialectical, materialist acting

by a comrade

Reviews of "Attack of the Clones" in the bourgeois press were mixed. Those
panning the film usually cited its "boring" subject matter--politics--and
bad acting. Of course, for those of us interested in art as a means for
arousing people to fight oppression and not an end in itself, there is
nothing ITAL a priori END boring about politics. There was enough meat to
"Attack of the Clones" to keep MIM interested and entertained--despite
director and writer Lucas' muddle-headed idealism.

Bad acting is another matter. As Mao taught us, "Works of art which lack
artistic quality have no force, however progressive they are
politically."("Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art," Selected
Works, vol. 3) The bad acting in "Attack..." is not simply a matter of
unprofessionalism, however. Rather, some of the actors apparently used a
technique which makes it difficult to bring politics to life.

Stephen Hunter from the Washington Post grasped some of this. His review
is worth quoting at length:

"[T]he movie is kind of a laboratory on American vs. British technique.
Score: Brits 10, Yanks 0. That's because to the Brits, who work from the
outside in, acting is physical mastery of face and voice and body,
strategically employed at certain moments for impact. An actor imposes
himself on the character, and invents charm and wit and sparkle where none
exists. So even the guy playing Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) is
creepy-elegant, and McGregor, athletic and earnest, can even bring a
little life to a line like, 'I am concerned for my Padawan. He is not
ready to be given this assignment on his own yet.'

"The Americans, on the other hand, are trained to get into the character's
mind and imagine as he would imagine, to work from the inside out. But
there is no inside here: These characters are nothing but pop-cult props,
and that leaves the performers helpless and inert...  [E]ven an actual
great actor, Samuel L. Jackson, seems ridiculous. He never looks
comfortable as the Jedi Mace Windu, in robes and boots, and there's
nothing he can do at all with a line like 'The Genosians aren't warriors.
One Jedi has to be worth a hundred Genosians!'"

Hunter's comments remind MIM of commie-symp playwright Bertolt Brecht's
writings on acting. Brecht hated the "method acting" approach where actors
draw on their persynal experiences to "feel what their characters are
feeling" so that audiences also "feel their pain" etc. Why, Brecht asked,
should the audience rejoice with the British soldiers who just put down a
colonial revolt? Instead of getting caught up in the euphoria, the
audience should be encouraged to make their own intellectual and emotional
assessment--in this case, sorrow and anger.

Brecht's preferred acting style--based on what he called the "alienation"
or "distancing" effect--was similar to what Hunter calls "British
technique." But for Brecht, the point was not to "inject charm and
sparkle," but class analysis, proletarian politics.

Hunter and other reviewers may dismiss "Attack's" characters as "nothing
but pop-cult props" and its utilitarian, expository dialogue, but MIM does
not--although we may quibble about the political line behind the
characters. After all, in one of our favorite films--"Breaking With Old
Ideas," made in China during the Cultural Revolution--the characters are
not so much bourgeois individuals with personal psychological histories as
representations of particular classes and political lines.

But Hunter has a point: there is no way a seventeen-year-old actor from
the 'burbs will be able to "get into himself" and find his "inner
Anakin"--a former slave--or use navel-gazing to comment sensibly on
Anakin's youthful impatience or fascist leanings. On the other hand, an
intelligent, well-trained seventeen-year-old actor who had studied history
and ideally participated in the class struggle first-hand would have been
able to do more with Anakin--not because "that's where he's coming from"
but because of his knowledge of the world outside himself and his take on
it.

So what on the surface looks like a matter of bad acting vs. good acting
reveals itself as a conflict between subjectivism and post-modernism on
the one hand and dialectics and materialism on the other.