What Are You Trying to Say, George?

Friends,

Tonight I bore witness to the next installation in George Lucas’ pocketbook- I mean, Star Wars genre. I wrote an earlier blog dealing with the rather pathetic showing of Lucas’s "Star Wars: Clone Wars" movie. This blog is dealing with the new cartoon series.

I have to give Lucas some credit on this one. Tonight’s two half-hour segments were vastly superior to the movie. In fact, I got to see a Jedi, in this case, Yoda, stop a Sith Apprentice’s hands during a lightsaber strike against an unarmed potentate. Yoda then used the force to remove both lightsabers from her hands directly into his. For nerds like me, that was something we’ve wanted to see for a long time.

The point of this blog is not to critique the fulfillment of nerd fantasy in the television series, however. I want to speak to a theme that I recognized in both of the showings tonight.
If you are unaware of exactly what the "clone" means in Star Wars: Clone Wars, this is a reference to those villains more commonly known as "Stormtroopers." Although we didn’t learn this in any of the first three movies (actually last three, if anyone is counting), the more recent movies informed us of how and who the stormtroopers really are. They are all clones, exact replicas from a hired bounty hunter named Jango Fett.

In both of the shows tonight Jedi are teamed up with a few stormtroopers, i.e., clones, as they go out to fight the war against the droid army. To be sure, no one to date has ever cared much of anything about stories pertaining to stormtroopers save to know who they are. Having known this we are content to see them either kill or get killed in battle.

Lucas evidently wants us to know more about them- particularly to sympathize with them and recognize them as unique individuals. For example, in one scene of tonight’s shows, Yoda has a sit down with three stormtroopers and uses the opportunity to hold a training session. Yoda explains that though they are all the same, i.e. clones, they are all different and have different needs and strengths. In the second cartoon this evening, another Jedi, dispatched again with three stormtroopers, informs them straightly that their lives are worth something to him and that he would die himself so that they might live.

I found this to be a very interesting piece of this science fiction. Science fiction, more so than other genres, is generally accepted as a moving word picture of various moral or social elements common in our world. Lucas had confessed that the whole intent of Star Wars was to reinvigorate some kind of religious belief in people, primarily through pantheism and animism. It appears that in the clone wars cartoons he is out to deal, in part at least, with the issue of individualism and cloning. I might be overly critical in what I am about to say. It could be that Lucas wants us to see the compassion of the Jedi order lived out as the clones and the Jedi are slung all over the galaxy in the war. My most educated guess, however, is that Lucas wants to develop a mindset not only in the children he knows will watch the cartoons, but also with adults such as me. That mindset is that 1) Cloning needs to be done and 2) There is no moral dilemma with cloning because all the clones are unique and we can view them as having worth.
I state the above as a point of contention with Lucas because he, like all excellent filmmakers, is not content to make and tell action adventures apart from teaching morality through their works. As Christians we can learn from this endeavor, particularly as it relates to the cartoon episodes shown tonight.

First, we must be ever on guard because the works of Satan are deceptions that almost always come to us entirely by subtlety. Note that when Peter likened Satan to being a lion, he did not say that he "growls" or "roars" so as to give away his position. Rather he roams, prowls, stalking and surveying the landscape for prey (1 Peter 5:8). When you add with this the fact that Satan commonly appears as "an angel of light" (2 Corinthians 11:14), our watch against his schemes must be kicked up a notch or two.

Secondly, the whole concept of making a case for the unique self worth and sanctity of clones is nothing less than a direct attack against the biblical witness. God has precisely ordained the way in which human life is to come to existence in creation. That process is through procreation, not genetic manipulation (Genesis 4:1). Any perversions of this order, cloning included, will not serve to "add" another unique personage to the world but rather diminish the rightly inherent dignity of we "normally born" life forms. History itself is a witness to this as well. Anytime regimes have taken to perverse and often cruel ways of understanding and developing human life (such in Hitler’s Germany), you can rest assured a part of the whole of humanity will have their lives viewed as less than human.

As Christians we must be able to read into the worldviews and mindsets that those in the world, and especially those who practice in storytelling, are really trying to convey. And as for Lucas, my advice is to stick to what really works for your stories. We don’t need (nor care) for having a sympathetic view to the supposed dignities of clones.

Blessings,
TJ