Star Wars: Dystopia and New Hope
May The Fourth 2020 is an important date for Star Wars fans. It's the first ‘Star Wars Day’ when fans can look back on the entire trilogy of trilogies. Last year’s Star Wars, Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker was the end of a journey that Generation X, or perhaps we should call ourselves Generation X-Wing, started in the seventies.
Star Wars has taken us to the ice world of Hoth, desert planets on the outer rim, the megalopolis at the heart of the galaxy, the forest moon of Endor, not to mention the spice mines of Kessel. But Star Wars has never taken us to utopia. Cloud City on Bespin looked like the utopian civilisation depicted in H.G. Wells’ 1933 book The Shape of Things to Come - which he adapted for the screen as Things to Come (1936). But behind the gleaming Art-Deco modernism lurked Darth Vader, the enduring nemesis of the Rebel Alliance. This absence is all the more striking because the trilogy seemed to promise utopia twice. In Episode IV Obi-Wan described the old Republic as a 'more civilized age . . . before the dark times.’ Then again in Episode VI the return of the Jedi promises the end of tyranny and the restoration of peace and justice to the galaxy. Yet, the Republic that emerges in the prequel trilogy is corrupt. And Luke's victory in Episode VI is followed by the rise of the dystopian First Order, rather than a millennium of peace and justice.
None of the Star Wars films presents a straightforward dystopia, but they are all shot through with dystopian themes. The Death Star, the Empire’s ‘technological terror’, is the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. The link between the destructive power of the space station and nuclear bombs is emphasised in Rogue One, where every blast from the Death Star produces the mushroom cloud and shock wave characteristic of nuclear weapons. Vader embodies another dystopian concern: the domination of humans by machines. Obi-Wan memorably describes Vader as ‘more machine than man.’ Vader's journey 'to the dark side' is complete once the human Anakin has been subsumed into the armoured machine which breaths, sees and moves for him. Similarly, Anakin's redemption is symbolised by the removal of the mechanical mask, revealing his human face. Luke, by contrast, refuses to be subservient to machines. At the climax of Episode IV he turns his targeting computer off, trusts to his feelings and single-handedly destroys the Death Star.
Notably, Star Wars’ emphasis on ultimate weapons and the dehumanising potential of machines roots the trilogy in the imaginative world of post-war America. Fear of nuclear war, cropped up in post-war dystopias such as John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids (1955), Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Mordecai Roshwald’s Level 7 (1959), the 1960 film adaptation of Well’s classic dystopia The Time Machine, not to mention sci-fi classics The Daleks (1963), and Planet of the Apes (1968). The concern about the domination of humans by machines goes back much further. It’s there in War of the Worlds (1899), E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops (1909), Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1921) and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1931). But the theme gained new salience with the development of computer technology after the Second World War. It is this concern over computers which led the Bene Gesserit to decree ‘Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind’ in Frank Herbert's Dune (1965). And it is the same fear which led to the observation ‘‘First you use machines, then you wear machines, and then . . . you serve machines’ in John Brunner’s dystopian novel Stand on Zanzibar (1968).
The Star Wars films also reflect another trend in post-war science fiction. The new wave of sci-fi, which emerged in the early sixties, took J.G. Ballard’s adage that ‘it is inner space, not outer, that needs to be explored’ to heart. Ultimately, Luke’s battle is not with the Death Star in deep space, it’s a battle between good and evil deep within himself.
The sequel trilogy presents a more modern dystopia. Decades after the end of the Cold War the First Order’s weapons of mass destruction are a side show. The dystopia that emerges in Episode VII and VIII is the dystopia of radical inequality. Rey scratches out a living on the desert planet of Jakku, while the super-rich escape the travails of the universe on the pleasure planet of Cantonica. Equally, totalitarianism, one of the most visible elements of dystopian fiction immediately following the Second World War, is all but absent from the Star Wars universe. Rather, large sections of the Galaxy have wholly escaped central authority and are ruled by local warlords or gangsters. The economic consequences of enfeebled states are central to a number of influential contemporary dystopias, including Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017). In each case the absence of the state is the threat to the good life.
Perhaps the aspect of Star Wars that locates it most clearly in the contemporary world is the absence of utopia. Writing in 1992 the philosopher Fredric Jameson argued that it is now easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. If contemporary television is anything to go by, Jameson was right. The Platform, Snowpiercer, The Handmaid’s Tale, Black Mirror, Altered Carbon, The Purge, and Westworld - dystopia is ubiquitous now. Danny Dyer's The Wall may well be the BBC's first dystopian game show. Remarkably, even when locked down by a global pandemic, television audiences can't get enough of apocalypse. Jameson's claim that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism is certainly true in the Star Wars universe. No matter how many worlds are destroyed there are always arms dealers, smugglers and gangsters looking to make money.
Star Wars may not present us with a utopia, but it still offers hope. Counterintuitively, the modern taste for dystopias is a positive trend. After all, dystopias allow us to engage imaginatively with the problems of our world, and in so doing better understand the challenges we face. In the absence of utopias, then, the prevalence of dystopias is reason for optimism, or to quote the original Star Wars, a ‘new hope.’
Links
Robin’s book on Blade Runner 2049: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blade-Runner-Philosophy-Popular-Culture/dp/0812694716
A New Statesman article by Robin on the politics of Blade Runner 2049 https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/film/2017/10/blade-runner-2049-s-politics-resonate-because-they-are-so-perilously-close-our
Robin’s podcast contributions on dystopia:
