The Curious Case of George Lucas
When the creation escapes the creator.
I can’t think of a single other time that anyone has found themselves in a situation like that of George Lucas. It’s a situation that is cruelly poetic, and farcical in a way that feels tailor-made for a Coen Brother or Wes Anderson screenplay.
He, Dr. Frankenstein, with great labor, sweat, and toil, breaching many a boundary, created his monster -Star Wars. But when we, the village people, came-a-knockin’ pitchforks and ticket stubs in hand, we didn’t come for Frankenstein’s monster. We came for Dr. Frankenstein. We found him guilty of bad parenting and snatched his creation from his bearded teat.
Isn’t that weird?
Why would his nipple have a beard?
I digress.
It is weird. It is strange. That the man who created Star Wars was ultimately unfit to keep it. That the mind that did the thinking, the mulling, the imagining,was ultimately incompatible with what it had thought, mulled, and imagined. How does that even happen?
Yes, you can point out that while the idea-man was Lucas, the execution and crafting of the original three was a collaborative effort from many, many people. But that’s boring.
There are more interesting ways of looking at it.
Star Wars could be an artifact of a singular stroke of brilliance. The scorched soil where lightning struck, and was destined to never strike again.
Or Star Wars was an accident. What Lucas had in mind when he walked out into the Tunisian dessert was something completely different to the thing he walked out with. Maybe the Star Wars we got was the one that Lucas thought he botched.
That’s one curious facet to look at.
Another is the relationship between creator and creation. How must it feel to be told by the masses that what you created is better than you? Beyond your own capabilities. Is that even logically possible?
I’m sorry that I just keep asking questions, but that’s what interests me about this. The questions it unearths and forces upon the spot in my mind where I should be thinking of actual, important, life-affecting things.
If your really force it, it could be seen as a compliment. What Lucas made came to life so vibrantly that it inspired the collective brain of our culture to improve upon it.
Maybe that truly makes him like Dr. Frankenstein; inventor of something autonomous and capable of operating without its master’s strings glued to its feet, knees, elbows, and head.
It could just make dear old George a tragic figure in a real life poem. After all, his own creation, the thing that brought him out of the mountainous cave of general anonymity, was used as the reason to exile him into a very different kind of cave. But it’s a cave nonetheless.
