Freud Strikes Back!

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and 'resolved'.

'Starwars' , which we now know was a mere slice of a planned multi-part mythology which will take us beyond the year 2000, a kind of ongoing mythological self meditation b by monopoly capitalism, does exactly this.

In the left corner we have Darth Vader, dark lord of the universe, deep-breathing like some bronchitic Crusader through the built-in life-support system of his sinisterly gleaming helmet.

Asthmatic

From the right corner leaps snub-nosed Luke Skywalker, a cross between cowboy and cosmonaut, ready to do battle with the black-cloaked asthmatic imperialist.

So far so good. But the latest chunk of the tale, The Empire Strikes Back, holds a spinechilling surprise in store for 'Starwars' fans, which I shall ruin by revealing.

Teetering on the brink of some enormous womb-like funnel in empty space, locked in life-and-death combat with the wheezing Vader., Skywalker hears from the hollow depths of the dark lord's helmet a freezing message which all but unmans him.

Vader is his father! It's not a con either, a cowardly. Vader dodge to escape impalement on Luke's laser-beam: somehow, somewhere, deep down, who knows how, sparkling-toothed Luke knew it all along.

Before delivering his unwelcome news, Vader, in an unfatherly gesture, has j ust cut off Luke's hand. (Don't worry: it's repaired by robot sur gery at the end).

Womb-like

Struck all of a heap, as they say, freckled-faced Luke vacillates for an instant, then plunges into the womb-like abyss at his feet, hurtling downwards through infinite space in a delirious, defiant moment of self-abandonment, leaving his old dad up top to cool his outVader sized heels, cheated of his prey.

George Lucas, it would seem, has actually been reading up on the Oedipus complex between trips to the bank.

For the Vader/Luke confrontation re-runs the classic conflict Freud outlined between fathers and sons.

Vader's cutting off his son's hand is darkly symbolic of a rather more unpleasant mutilation; and the tensions he sets up in Luke-guilt, fear, aggression, loyalty, -rivalry-are classic oedipal symptoms.

Elsewhere in the film, we are granted a quick, forbidden peep at Vader's horribly mutilated head, veined and bulbous, just before his cosmetic helmet is decently lowered upon it. This, too, is straight out of the Freudian textbook, though it isn't quite the father's head that the child both envies and desires to spy on.

What does all this heady intellectual stuff mean, and why are they poisoning our children with this Freudian nonsense on Saturday afternoons?

Yoda Tousled-haired into mysticism; one can be sure My own six-year-old, a convinced Jungian, was disgusted.

Is George Lucas Georg Lukacs?

Not quite. It means that the wars' cycle. old, outright mythical opposition between Good and Evil will no longer quite do in late Images of women in these epics monopoly capitalism. Tousledleave a little to be desired: the haired Skywalker is dramatically exposed as the child of evil.

Thirties glamour-girl Princess from the loins of a corrupt, The all-American boy springs Leila, keeps suitable company with two robots and a shaggy perverted history of powerstruggles and exterminations, an eight-foot ape. Empire which stretches all the level. 'The Empire Strikes Back' way from Alpha Centuri to has great macho fun playing off The pathetic, love-lorn Leila The innocent child is the against the swaggering, hard-toconcealed image of his blood- get space-bandit Hans Solo. stained father, and it's that terrible knowledge which tive to Vader beside the womb. tempts him into guilty complic- If you don't care for your real ity with the very system he rather, land who'd cuddle up to Vader?) yOU can always Skywalker the snub-nosed fantasise about a spiritual liberal is a recycled version of Vader the metal-nosed imperial- replacement. ist, and the worst thing was that 'If the actual capitalist America he suspected it all along. is a nasty mess of weaponry, But all is not lost. If the cas- imperialist paranoia and scary trating father stalks above you, breathing, there's always an below you yawns the welcoming ideal America lurking behind it, womb of the mother, inviting you to fall endlessly into it.

If only you would let your. self go, murmurs the seductive 'Starwars' ideology, renounce your stiff self will and surrender to the Force, all may yet be well.

'Starwars' recognises, quite correctly, that salvation isn't possible within the system; it's just that it calls the implacable power • which opposes that system 'the Force' , rather than the revolutionary working class.

Infantile Torn between father and mother, between a mutilating capitalist technology and an infantile regression to maternal dependency, the epic plumps firmly for the latter.

What more grotesque indictment of such technology could there be, by a film dripping with it,. than the moment in 'Starwars' when loose-limbed Luke, homing in on the deathplanet in his souped-up spacecraft, finger on bomb-release, jacks in his complicated navigational guides at the last moment and trusts to the Force?

It's a pity they didn't try Terry "The l Back' on revil Strike: that in the skies of Vietnam. A in the shape of the transcentop heavy rationalism keels over dental wisdom of JDt Ben Kenobi. they eat microbiotic food and (Guinness, having earned practice yoga on the multi- enough money in 'Starwars' to million dollar sets of the 'Star- finance the whole US space programme single-handed, is The womb, then, is one modestly reluctant to appear for available exit from history. more than a few seconds in the sequel; but don't worry, his place as a symbol of wisdom is only female character, faded appropriately delegated to a six inch warty gnome, named after Carter's press secretary.)

It's a wise man who knows who his father is, Shakespeare That, we take it, is about her wrote somewhere; and American bourgeois liberalism certainly seems confused.

The further the 'Starwars' epics push out progressively into space, the deper they regress But there's another alterna- into primitive myth.

Four decades ago, Europe witnessed the logical extreme of this coupling of technological fetishism and mythical magic: it was known as fascism.

But of course we're beyond Alec Guinness, for example. all that now, as the capitalist film industry pushes out bravely towards the year 2000. It actually thinks it will get there Luke

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WHERE NEWS SOCIALIST PRESS, Manufacturing output in British industry continues to fall, as a result of Tory economic policies.

This means that while working class families struggle to afford a roof over their heads and the basic necessities of life, and while on a world scale