Since I made fun of George Lucas Yesterday…

it’s only fair that I quote this today:

If there was a moment when the culture of enlightened modernity in the United States gave way to the sickly culture of romantic primitivism, it was when the movie “Star Wars” premiered in 1977. A child of the 1960s, I had grown up with the optimistic vision symbolized by “Star Trek,” according to which planets, as they developed technologically and politically, graduated to membership in the United Federation of Planets, a sort of galactic League of Nations or UN. When I first watched “Star Wars,” I was deeply shocked. The representatives of the advanced, scientific, galaxy-spanning organization were now the bad guys, and the heroes were positively medieval — hereditary princes and princesses, wizards and ape-men. Aristocracy and tribalism were superior to bureaucracy. Technology was bad. Magic was good.

Michael Lind, being a subcriber to Utopian Nitwittery, says this like it’s a bad thing. But Daniel Larison, not being a utopian nitwit, points out where Lind errs. Hint: it has to do with the obliviousness of both Lind and Roddenberry to the fact of original sin.

This is why I also appreciated JMS’ Babylon 5, an even less gleaming future completely lacking in leotard-clad conflict resolution counselors and the conviction that we will get rid of money in 200 years and spout secular nostrums. His future is full of corruption, labor strikes, conspiracy, tormented relationships and, last but not least, religion (and even Catholics) that Roddenberry foolishly assumed would go the way of the dinosaur. Lucas’s dumbed-down Force worship was the first nod to that fact after the secular happy face desert created by Roddenberry. Give credit to the man for breaching the dike.