Monday 26 December 2016

The Ownership of Evil



Every man pays a price for redemption.
This is yours.

Lamont Cranston: 
I'm not lookin' for redemption!


You have no choice


You will be redeemed, because I will teach you to use your Black Shadow to fight evil.


Get me outta here! 
Refractory a Journal of Entertainment Media 
(ISSN:1447-4905

“‘You cannot run from your darkness.’

‘Who says I’m running?’:
Buffy and the Ownership of Evil” – Erma Petrova
March 6, 2003 by angelan

In this essay, Erma Petrova argues that, whereas the first seasons of Buffy focused on external threats that sought to corrupt the order of the world, the later seasons shifted the threat towards the internal – the result being that the show’s main characters embraced a side of themselves that was also evil, irrational, or dangerous. The Slayer is the one who must maintain the difference between good and evil and makes sure that good doesn’t become evil. At the same time, she is the most ambiguous one, the one who is ready to cut all ties with family and friends and kill people she loves, if necessary.

The requirement that she know exactly which side she must stay on (regardless of where those she loves are) gives her the responsibility to keep the other “other” at all costs even at the cost of becoming an “other” herself. Paradoxically, she protects the line that separates good from evil by crossing it and by becoming more and more “other.” 

While the first seasons of Buffy are structured around an external threat seeking to corrupt the order of the world, later the source of the threat becomes increasingly internal, and the characters must embrace a side of themselves which is evil, irrational, or dangerous. When Giles kills an arguably innocent Ben, he does not suffer the moral ambiguity that Willow encounters when she kills a guilty Warren. Willow has to deal with an evil internal to her in a way Giles does not, and this apparent discrepancy is the result of a general evolution of the series, rather than a double standard.

The murder of Ben is comparable to the murder of Warren, even though Ben is mostly innocent and Warren is mostly guilty. They are both human, and their deaths are necessary to stop further evil. Even though Ben cohabits the same body with the hell god Glory, he, as an independent being, is innocent of Glory’s actions, as the Scoobies uniformly agree: “What about Ben? He can be killed, right? I mean, I know he’s an innocent, but, you know, not, like ‘Dawn’ innocent. We could kill… a regular guy… (no we couldn’t) God.” Even the script directions (“no we couldn’t”) suggest that the way Xander delivers these lines should emphasize the moral impossibility of killing Ben as a way of stopping Glory. Being Glory is to Ben what being the Key is to Dawn: it could make him “other” but it cannot make him either good or bad on Glory’s behalf. It is true that Ben is guilty of other things — he summons the demon who kills (or merely finishes off) Glory’s brain sucked victims; and, in “Listening to Fear,” there is even a real chance that Joyce might get killed because of him (an event which Buffy prevents from happening).

It is also true that Ben betrays Dawn and humanity in general by selling his soul to Glory and agreeing to help her in exchange for his life (or, rather, his immortality). But the Scooby gang doesn’t know about any of these things and, even though Dawn obviously knows that Ben is a weak and, by virtue of the circumstances, treacherous human being because of his weakness, Giles certainly has no knowledge of any of Ben’s immoral actions when he kills him. Giles is acting on the assumption that Ben is completely innocent but powerless to stop Glory, should she ever wish to return for purposes of payback. Giles realizes that something needs to be done and that whoever does it will be incurring feelings of guilt — otherwise he would have left Buffy to do it. By saving her from the act of murder, Giles acknowledges the moral ambiguity of the act itself, the (apparent) innocence of Ben, and the inevitability of guilt for whoever happens to do what, in Giles’ view, has to be done. (Similarly, he would have killed Dawn, if he had to). But, we notice, feelings of guilt never come, and the ambiguity of this act never surfaces (script directions describe Giles during/after the murder this way: “Giles’ expression never changes”). Giles objectifies the evil — it is not in him, but he is merely the carrier, the means for an act which must be done, one way or another.

In contrast, when Willow kills Warren, a situation uncannily similar (i.e., a Scooby killing a human) results in entirely different moral consequences. Warren also, presumably, deserves to be killed, and, one way or another, somebody will have to do it. But the series makes sure we understand that there are restrictions to who can do it and that Willow is not morally eligible for it. In the case of Ben, anyone could be allowed to kill him (if we agree that he has to be killed), and the only requirement is that the “killer” is in fact physically capable of doing it and ready to take the responsibility for the act (similarly, when Giles realizes that Dawn may have to be killed, he knows that he cannot physically do it (because either Glory or Buffy would stop him), so he appeals to Buffy to see what has to be done). In the case of Warren, on the other hand, even though Willow is more than willing to take the responsibility and to perform the act (with great creativity), this is not enough anymore.

She needs a different kind of authority, the authority of not having chosen this solution. If the murder had been forced on her as the only way to protect Tara (and in time to protect her), then Willow would have had the right to take a life.

In the case of Ben, Giles is aware of the fact that there is no one else to kill him (the police are not capable to grasping the danger he represents, and Buffy is not ready to take the responsibility). In the case of Warren, there are multiple options for killing and/or arresting the “bad guy,” and Willow is not in a situation (e.g., self-defense) which compels her to do it herself. We are shown that, if other options are available, one should not take the responsibility for violence oneself.

And the series presents us more and more often with situations where other options are in fact available, which places on the shoulders of the characters the responsibility not to choose them; e.g., Willow has the option to kill or not to kill Warren; Buffy, in her dream vision of the mental hospital in “Normal Again,” has the option to kill or not kill her friends (both options seem acceptable to her), and even Spike, who can hardly be said to have any choice at all in the matter, somehow manages to discover more than one option (soul or not soul).

Multiple options in themselves are initially seen as a good thing: while “The Gift” begins with the grim prospect of Buffy either killing Dawn or destroying humanity, the gang works together to find another solution, and by the end of the episode new options have been found, foreshadowing both the availability of multiple choices without a right answer (both killing Dawn to save humanity and letting humanity be destroyed by not killing Dawn can seem like the right choice), and the self destructive solutions which all of the characters will eventually choose in season six (beginning with Buffy giving up her life at the very end of season five — an option that was not the preferred or even foreseen result of the search for new options, options which everyone was desperate to find).

While the series doesn’t really give us any choice in Giles’ murder of Ben, it increasingly centres on the complexity of situations where a choice is waiting to be made, and it is not immediately clear which course of action is the right one.

In the case of Willow, it is conceivable to say that the action she chooses (killing Warren) is the right one, but there is something wrong about her being the one to choose it, or about this murder being a matter of choice at all. There is a sense in which the murder could only be justified if there weren’t any other options to choose from. (If the Slayer kills demons, it’s because no one else can; we could even say that the Slayer is the name for not having any other choice but to kill, which is what upgrades the killing to “slaying”; a Slayer would not be possible in a world where the normal human authorities are capable of doing her job.)

After working so hard to increase the number of options available to them, the characters still end up choosing the most self destructive one. The expansion of the range of available choices puts the emphasis on the character who has to choose. We don’t know what the character will do. The good is not That Which Buffy Chooses, and the bad is not always that which Buffy fights. It is no longer the case that the character will necessarily choose the right action: the moment the right action becomes a matter of choice, it is no longer something that “always” happens.

The measure of good and evil in Buffy is choice. We cannot say that Giles is evil when he kills Ben, because he doesn’t seem to have any choice about it. Choice is the difference between Buffy’s attitude toward Dawn when we first meet Dawn (Joyce has to force Buffy to take care of her sister: "Buffy? If you’re going out, why don’t you take you sister with you?” [“Buffy vs. Dracula”]), and Buffy warning everyone that she will take care of Dawn no matter what (“I’ll kill anyone who comes near Dawn” [“The Gift”]). In any other hero narrative, Buffy would have been faced with a situation where she must save Dawn at all costs, and her heroism would come from her determination to do what she has to do (cf. Giles and Ben); in other words, she would have no choice but to save Dawn.

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, however, this is not enough to make a “good guy,” and the heroine is in fact faced with the opposite situation: she does not have a choice but to kill Dawn in order to save the world, but, even though she is not given any other options, somehow she manages to choose an other option. In other words, while the standard hero does what he must, Buffy does what seems the right thing to do even if this is not available as an option at all and all the options are “wrong”:

I sacrificed Angel to save the world. I loved him so much… but I knew. What was right. I don’t have that any more. I don’t understand. I don’t know how to live in this world, if these are the choices, if everything’s just stripped away then I don’t see the point (“The Gift”).

Buffy clearly does not want to choose any of the options given to her (option 1: Kill Dawn; option 2: Destroy The World). However, we can argue, against her own words, that she knows what’s right: for example, she knows that it is not right for Dawn to suffer “for something she has no control over? (“Spiral”).

The problem is not that Buffy doesn’t know what’s right but that what she thinks is right is rarely the same as what “must” be done (if we define what “must” be done as the closest thing to what is “right” that can be done, without actually being the right thing). As Giles says to Ben before he kills him, Buffy even knows that [that she must kill Ben/Glory, just as she knows she must kill Dawn], and still she wouldn’t take a human life. Because she’s a hero, you see. She’s not like us.” In these words, Giles redefines heroism for us as being able not to do what must be done, which is the opposite of the standard hero definition found in most narratives (a definition parodied in “Smashed,” where Andrew, desperate to save the action figure Spike is threatening to behead, solemnly acquiesces to Warren’s plan with the rhetorically inflated “Do what you need to do”).

Choice is what happens to Buffy when she grows up, partly with the help of Faith, who opens up all the “other” options of what the slayer can be. Faith shows Buffy that there are options, and that one can choose the wrong ones which, ironically, also frees the slayer from choosing them, because, if the slayer can do anything she wants, then she is not forced to do things that are evil.

While Faith wants to shows Buffy that she doesn’t have to be “good,” Buffy tries to convince Faith that she doesn’t have to be “bad.” Neither of them is entirely stuck in her own moral space, and each of them gets a taste of the other’s world view — Faith is a “good girl" for a while, imitating Buffy, and then Buffy is a “bad girl" for a while, trying out the "darker side” of slayers. Their development is very much symmetrical — Faith doesn’t go on with the being good experiment for any longer than Buffy experiments with being irresponsible and Faith-like.

Their mutual understanding and role- playing culminate in “Who Are You,” where they occupy each other’s bodies for a while.

Significantly, none of Buffy’s friends, including her boyfriend Riley, can distinguish between the two; it is conceivable to the characters that Buffy might behave like Faith in “Who Are You” because she did behave like Faith in "Bad Girls.” The recognition that there is something wrong with Buffy in “Who Are You” comes in fact from an outsider, Tara, who hasn’t even met Buffy before. This suggests that there is something objectively wrong with Buffy’s occupying another body in general, but not that there is something wrong about Buffy being Faith, specifically; or, more precisely, the fact that Faith-in-Buffy-body is different from both Faith and Buffy (in that her spiritual aura doesn’t match her body) is not proof that Buffy-in-one-piece is essentially different from Faith in one piece or at least the Scoobies cannot distinguish between them, and what Tara is able to distinguish is someone in one piece from someone not in one piece, but not Buffy from Faith. Tara’s detection of the body/spirit discrepancy does not mean that either Buffy or Faith is “bad,” but that there is something Frankenstein-like and wrong about mixing their body and soul parts. But this doesn’t mean that Faith in Buffy-body is noticeably “worse” than Buffy, or that Buffy in Faith-body is noticeably “better” than Faith (in fact, Buffy-in-Faith-body lays quite a few punches on people in order to escape from the Council bloodhounds in “Who Are You,” just as Faith kicks some butt in her escape from Wesley and his attendant Council muscle in “Consequences”).

The symmetry of this moral battle between the two slayers comes to show 1) that Buffy can be as bad as Faith, that sometimes she is tempted to ("Bad Girls”), and that when she really seems to be (i.e., Faith-in-Buffy-body in “Who Are You”), her friends wouldn’t even notice the difference; and 2) Buffy is no more good than Faith is evil: Buffy is never perfect in her actions (especially in season six), and Faith is never entirely free of moral conscience: she not only accept the demands of rehabilitation (on Angel), but, even before her rehabilitation has begun, saves Buffy’s life in “Consequences” (GILES: “Faith saved you?” BUFFY: “She could have left me there to die, Giles. But she didn’t”). Both Buffy and Faith acknowledge and imitate the other side: e.g., Buffy trying out Faith’s definition of “slayer” when they’re breaking into the store in "Bad Girls”: “Want, take, have. I’m getting it”; and Faith practicing (and mocking) her Buffy lines in the mirror in “Who Are You”: 

“You can’t do that…. Because it’s wrong.”

However, it seems that Buffy has a deeper commitment to the “Dark Side” than Faith does to the “Good Side” (at least while on Buffy). On a number of occasions Buffy internalizes evil or darkness, so much so that it can be described less as an occasional dark prank (e.g., Buffy’s slow dance with Xander in “When She Was Bad”), and more as an ongoing, deeper state of mind: her darkness is not an imitation of what she’s not but a search for what she is. Buffy actively seeks and receives help from Spike on many occasions, but most notably in “Fool for Love,” where she takes lessons in slayage from the killer of slayers. Spike and Dru are the only vampires we know to have killed slayers (if we don’t count the very brief murder of Buffy by the Master), and Spike has killed more than Dru; if the slayer is to have an arch enemy, Spike would be a good choice.

And yet, because of that, he is also a good choice for a sort of a mentor for the slayer, showing her her weaknesses and strengths, giving her inside tips about how to fight evil (and, by extension, him). In effect, he is coaching his worst enemy on how she can defeat him. This encounter is equally destructive for both of them, and equally necessary.

Buffy’s positive interaction with evil is foreshadowed earlier in season five in Buffy’s encounter with Dracula. Dracula’s sales pitch, his appeal to Buffy is not that she can get closer to evil, but that she can get closer to herself, gain a deeper understanding of what a slayer is. The slayer always contains the possibility for evil, an evil she must understand before she can kill. Like Spike, Dracula teaches Buffy something about her own nature: “There is so much I have to teach you. About your history, your power… ” The connection between the Slayer and the Evil she “hunts” (as Dracula puts it) dates back to ancient times, as we see in the ambiguous figure of the First Slayer, who is good in relation to evil but also evil in relation to good (i.e., evil to the Scoobies she threatens to kill). Dracula encourages this ambiguity and plays on the slayer’s killer instinct: instead of getting a taste of her, Dracula wants her to get a taste of him, reversing the normal tendency of evil to consume the good and offering the good (in the face of Buffy) the opportunity to consume the evil:

a little taste… I didn’t mean for me…. All these years, fighting us — your power so near to our own — and you’ve never once wanted to know what it is we fight for? Never even a taste?

It is interesting that Buffy’s (rather weak) rejection of Dracula’s argument is "I don’t… need to know… “; in other words, she is not saying that she won’t learn anything from him about herself, but that she doesn’t want to learn. To taste is to know, and the taste of a vampire leads to the forbidden knowledge of the “dark side” (“Smashed”).

It is not accidental that a human can become a vampire only if he returns the vampire’s gesture and drinks from the evil that drained his body. To be bitten is to be a victim of evil; to bite is to be the evil itself. Buffy bites Dracula. In doing that she acquires the forbidden knowledge of evil which would both jeopardize her “good” nature and help her distinguish between good and evil by acquiring knowledge of both.

Normally, in the Buffyverse, people drink from vampires only when they’re on the verge of death, so they don’t have much choice: for them, to drink means to live (or, to be undead is the only way not to be dead). Conversely, Buffy is not forced to drink in self-defense; she drinks, we could say, in self-offense, since she is nowhere near death and she bites into the dark side without being forced to (both literally in Buffy vs. Dracula” and metaphorically in other episodes, such as “Smashed”).


If we take Buffy’s susceptibility to Dracula’s hypnosis as symbolic of her inability to distinguish between good and evil (she does not recognize Dracula as evil while she is under his influence), her taste of evil opens her eyes to this distinction. The forbidden knowledge is a knowledge that allows her to be good without being innocent, to choose good while also knowing that she is equally able to choose evil; in other words, being good is defined as having the ability to choose evil and yet not choosing it. To choose evil before tasting it would be impossible (because this would not be a real choice); both choosing evil and rejecting evil require the taste of evil. (This goes for Willow’s destructive magic as well: in her case, being good without being innocent means learning to control the magic she knows she has (season seven), rather than avoiding magic at all costs (season six); it would be impossible to distinguish between good magic and evil magic by avoiding all magic.)

Conversely, characters who externalize or avoid their Dark Side rather than internalizing and trying to understand it tend to leave the series: e.g., Oz, who expels his wolf side, discovers that a no-wolf Oz is incompatible with Willow (being with Willow prompts intense emotions which bring back the wolf in him), and Riley, who gets the chip out of his body, turns out to be too “good” for Buffy, a goodness she mocks because it is based on innocence: “Is that regulation or something? You have to do those [exercises] every single morning?… And then you have your perfectly balanced breakfast and call your mother” (‘New Moon Rising”). While all characters start out as Riley – good by default (the state of default being the state of innocence) – they all “grow up” over time and learn to be “good” by learning about evil: 


“You think you know. What you are, what’s to come… you haven’t even begun…. Find it… the darkness…. Find your true nature” (Buffy vs. Dracula).

Just as Buffy’s "true nature” is, to a certain extent, self-destructive (after all, "death is [her] gift” [“Intervention”]), Spike’s nature also leads him along a self-destructive path. When Spike asks Angel, “Don’t you ever get tired of fights you know you’re gonna win?” (“Fool for Love”), he shows a resistance to pre-determined choices, a resistance similar to Buffy’s death wish, which can be seen as a resistance toward the impossibility of losing the battle with evil (after all, Buffy can never lose unless, on some level, she wants to [“Fool for Love”]).

To have no choice but to win is another manifestation of the moral determinism we saw Buffy reject.

Spike rejects it too. If he wins, he wants to win despite the option of losing, not in its absence. He must pick fights he can, realistically, lose, and after having killed two slayers, killing a slayer is not the new challenge he is looking for. But not killing a slayer is (“I knew the only thing better than killing a slayer would be [doing a slayer]” [“Smashed”]). Again, as with Buffy, we see a rejection of what Spike must do (kill the slayer) in favor of what would be seemingly impossible for him to do (not kill the slayer). As an evil creature, Spike would be perfectly justified in killing Buffy (the way Buffy would be justified in letting Dawn die in “The Gift”). But this justification bordering on predetermination is not enough, since there is no choice involved. Spike doesn’t like being predictable: “I hate being obvious. All fangy and *grrr.* (shrugs) Takes all the mystery out.” (“The Initiative”).

If the Slayer doesn’t want to be merely a killer as an instrument of goodness, Spike doesn’t want to be a killer as an instrument of darkness. He does not enjoy being used by either Angel or Adam as an instrument to help them carry out their dark plans, even though the promised rewards of impending doom are considerable (and in both cases he switches sides at the last moment and helps the “good guys” instead). Spike is not prepared to follow somebody else’s orders (e.g., the Anointed One’s), even if they may ultimately lead to much relished destruction. Darkness is not good enough, if it’s not his own. Being evil on somebody else’s behalf is not a proposition that can tempt Spike, and he does not labor slavishly to bring any apocalypses if there’s nothing in it for him. He would do either good or evil, whichever is more interesting or lucrative. But Spike is never completely evil (even at his most evil, he is very much in love with Dru) and never completely good (he continually reminds everyone that he is still evil not only by his words (“Can’t any one of your damn little Scooby club at least try to remember that 1 hate you all?” [“This Year’s Girl”]), but also by his actions (“As You Were,” “Seeing Red”). Just as Spike refuses to be good just because he cannot be evil, he refuses to be evil just because he can.

The development of Spike is also based on the increasing (and constantly sought) possibility of choice: the chip does not exactly leave him without a choice to be bad (as we saw in “The Yoko Factor,” he can do a lot of damage by using his brain rather than his fangs), yet the chip introduces, however subtly, the additional possibility of being good. However, Spike is able to see the “good” side even before the chip, for example in his reaction to Kendra’s death in “Becoming,” part 2: “SPIKE (genuinely proud): Dru bagged a slayer? She didn’t tell me! Good for her! (off Buffy’s look) Well, not from your perspective, I suppose…”

Even before the chip, Spike is marginally capable of seeing the other’s point of view, even if it’s only to get said “other” to cooperate with him. He realizes that his evil sometimes needs the help of the “good” to achieve its aims: e.g., in order to save Dru (evil) he needs to save Giles (good); this is very similar to Buffy’s discovery that she sometimes needs a taste of evil in order to defeat it. At first, being civil, tolerant, or polite is for Spike what being mean is for Buffy in “When She Was Bad” — an acquired taste of the “other” side before it’s fully acquired, a forced imitation which mimics the external gestures and words of the other without really understanding or internalizing them. Later, Spike’s actions become more purposeful and reminiscent of the way Buffy and Angel “act evil” in Enemies” in order to fool Faith and thwart the Mayor’s evil plans: in Spike’s version, he “acts” good in “The Yoko Factor” to thwart the Scoobies’ plans.

Over time, the internalization of the “other” side becomes deeper; just as Buffy gradually internalizes the darkness she fights, Spike internalizes the good he fights. Not only does he “train” the slayer how to kill vampires, adopting her point of view against his own, but he also feels her pain over and above his own (the ending of “Fool for Love”), incorporates her into his dreams (“Out of My Mind”), personifies her guilt “Dead Things”), and, eventually, internalizes her definitions of good and evil by getting a soul (“Grave”). By getting the point of view of Spike, we see that the “dark” side can be recursively defined as the “other” side, so that for Spike, the “dark side” is everything “good.” The fight he doesn’t know he can win is the fight against his own tendency to be “good” — goodness is his own dark side, and fighting it is a risky business. Just as Buffy is drawn to the dark side in the face of Spike, Spike notices with annoyance and then despair (“God, no. Please, no.” [“Out of My Mind”]) that he is drawn to his dark side (in the face of Buffy), and, more than that, that he is in love with the Dark Side:


Because this… this thing with you — it’s wrong! I know it! Not a complete idiot! (gesturing to his heart) You think I like having you here?! Destroying everything that was me until all that’s left is you in a dead shell (“Crush”).

If The Dark Side is defined as the “Other” side (dark by virtue of being other), we see that the characters gradually become more what they’re not, recognizing and claiming their respective “others,” rather than renouncing them. We know, of course, that to be good Spike must not be forced into it (just as, to be evil, Giles must kill without being forced to and for purposes other than saving the world).

We know that Buffy refuses to recognize the lack of choice when she is told to kill Dawn — it is made clear to us that she must Save The World/Kill Dawn because she is “good,” but she refuses to be “good” at this price and publicly apologizes to her friends for letting them die: “I’m sorry. I love you all, but I’m sorry” (“The Gift”). Much like Buffy, Spike refuses to recognize that he is cornered in a similar way — in his case, trapped into being evil.

In both cases, the choice of anything that is “other” seems impossible, and yet both Buffy and Spike refuse to acknowledge the absence of an “other” option and somehow seem to choose that nonexistent “other” by creating it, conjuring up new moral choices like some kind of metaphorical thaumogenesis

The characters realize that they cannot be either good or evil without having an option to be and do the other (in all the senses). Having the choice to do evil as a requirement for the good is clearly a post lapsarian point of view, but the presence of demons in this series tells us that a pre lapsarian reality, where one can do good without tasting evil, is no longer possible in the Buffyverse. 

While vampires are looked down upon by other demons (as Giles explains, “Demons have no empathy for species other than their own. In fact, most consider vampires abominations mixing with human blood and all” [“Where the Wild Things Are”]), even demons are not pure evil: “You’ve never seen a demon,” Anya says to Buffy. “All the demons that walk the earth are tainted, are human hybrids, like vampires” (“Graduation Day,” part 1). (And if we want to cite post-ascension Mayor as an example of pure evil, we should remember that even in this form, he still has feelings for Faith.)

In the same way, there is nothing purely good either. Even though we naturally expect that going back in time might bring us closer to pure forms of both good and evil (after all, if demons have been contaminated, there must have been a time when they weren’t), this is not entirely the case. We see that ambiguity lurks even at the dawn of time Dawn herself, the embodiment of one of the oldest “good” forces in the Buffyverse, is revealed to be an ancient power which is neither good nor evil on its own, and the First Slayer inhabits a similarly ambiguous moral space, since she is neither absolutely good (she tries to kill the Scoobies), nor absolutely evil (well, she’s a slayer, one of the good guys, or possibly the first “good guy”). 

The beginning of the “good” is shrouded in ambiguity, and the First Slayer describes herself as a spooky amoral force: “I am destruction. Absolute. Alone.” (“Restless”). Moreover, this description is enough for Buffy to deduce that she is talking to a slayer (BUFFY (realizing): "The Slayer.), as if these words really capture the essence of the slayer and Buffy only needs one tiny bit of logic to derive “slayer” from “destruction.”

It seems that time was post lapsarian from the beginning: good and evil cannot be found in pure forms in the Buffyverse, no matter how deep we dig. Evil is always corrupted good (a vampire is a human victim bitten by a vampire) and good is always knowledgeable of evil, like Buffy, or atoning for evil, like Angel, or at the very least potentially corruptible good can always be bitten, and the more innocent it is, the greater the chance of corruption. 

If the Slayer is, indeed, the name for having no option but to kill evil (that “nice, non judgemental way to, you know, kill” (“Pangs”) never quite presents itself), Buffy refuses even this superior, noble, but still amoral job description. 

She outgrows even the slayer role to give it a moral responsibility. The fact that she quits the Council (as well as, on a much smaller scale, the Initiative), comes to show that she is not prepared to follow the “official” rules which exempt her from personal responsibility. (As Travers says in “Checkpoint” “The Council fights evil. The Slayer is the instrument with which we fight.”) This is what Buffy wants to get away from. When she kills, she wants to take the responsibility, to do it with the knowledge that she is right, not with the knowledge that she, as the chosen one, doesn’t have a choice; she wants to be less chosen and more choosing. 

Hence the difference between a killer and a slayer - the tool which the Council wants is basically a killer. 

In this sense, the Council sees in Buffy exactly what Dracula does just as a vampire can’t help but kill, the slayer as a Council tool can’t help but carry out their orders, Initiative style (conversely, we know that Buffy obeys only those orders she “was gonna do anyway” [“This Year’s Girl”]). 

Here is the difference between Buffy and Riley, for example Buffy refuses to follow orders blindly, whereas, even when Riley quits the Initiative, he does it because he is now following what Buffy tells him to do, which is stop following what the Initiative tells him to do:

BUFFY: You seem a little… somewhere else. Anything I can do?
RILEY: Give me an order. That’s what I do, isn’t it? Follow orders? 
 BUFFY: Don’t have to. 
 RILEY: You sure about that? 
 BUFFY: It’s an order. (“This Year’s Girl”)
 
If Buffy’s relationship with the Council were that of a Riley to an Initiative, she would have been properly called a “killer,” a specific tool for a certain kind of violence, very specialized and blindly unerring. And conversely, the possibility to err is a symptom of sight; by distinguishing a “slayer” from a “killer,” Buffy renounces the blind loyalty the council demands from her in favor of the possibility to choose, and to err (i.e., choose evil).

The self-awareness, the need to claim responsibility for both the good and the "less good” (“Smashed”) actions, is a need which goes beyond that of the slayer as such. Buffy would have been able to do her job very well without bothering to know why she does what she does; the only thing she really needs to know is how to kill. When Faith is temporarily “good” in imitation of Buffy, she can do what is right without exactly knowing why, for the simple reason that “good” is occasionally fashionable, easier, or temporarily useful for some other purpose. If Faith had continued this way, there is no reason to suspect that she would not have been a good slayer. The slayer, seen as a tool, a “killer,” is not expected to overdo the self-awareness bit. But Buffy surpasses all traditional definitions of the council and other slayers and watchers about what a slayer should be: “The slayer doesn’t walk in the world…. No… friends… just the kill… we are… alone” (“Restless”). It is safe to say that she is not what anyone would have suspected, and she may very well be the one to introduce the definition of “slayer” as different from “killer.” (BUFFY: “I prefer the term ‘Slayer.’ ‘Killer’ just sounds so…” DRACULA: “Naked?”).

Season six articulates more self-consciously this complicated interaction with evil, the recognition of evil as an integral part of fighting evil. It presents us with a Buffy who does things which are wrong (not according to some conservative Watchers’ Council but according to her own definitions of right and wrong), even though she is not herself “wrong” ("Dead Things”). The acknowledgment that the slayer (by virtue of being human, not by virtue of being a slayer) can do bad things without being evil shapes the whole season. This reinforces the margin between doing evil things (e.g., Giles killing Ben) and being evil. While season five shows that one can be evil without doing anything evil (e.g.Spike-with-chip: “What? That chip in your head? That’s not change. That’s just holding you back. You’re like a serial killer in prison!” [“Crush”]), season six has Buffy, Willow, and Giles doing “bad” things without being themselves evil (or not so much).

Season six features the realization of the inside-ness of evil. The monsters, originally carriers of evil and disruptors of order, in fact, become the anchors of order, as Buffy needs them to ground herself in the external world: she needs the outside threat of the monster in "’Normal Again” to come back to reality, and the demon in “After Life” to bring her out of the apathy and unwillingness to cope with life. While usually it is the external threat that redeems the internal capacity for evil (the internalized evil is worth it if it is required in order to fight an external threat e.g., in “Enemies”), in the absence of an external threat the internalized evil becomes unjustified (e.g., Buffy’s behaviour in season six would have been justified if there were something objectively “wrong” with her). And unjustified means chosen: when Buffy uses Spike and keeps secrets from her friends in (most of) season six, she does so without being forced to and despite other options (such as, well, not doing these filings).

Doing “bad” things is simply easier (killing her friends in “Normal Again” seems so much easier than facing reality) and temporarily “convenient” (which is what Buffy calls Spike in “Wrecked”). It is no longer the case that only one abnormally rebellious slayer (Faith) can do wrong; now we see that the slayer, any slayer, must understand and taste evil (and, conversely, it would be difficult to argue that Faith, who does evil things, really understands evil). The understanding of evil is not part of the slayer’s job, but of herself (the Council certainly doesn’t want Buffy going around tasting evil, even if it’s a soul-having one). But tasting evil doesn’t bring her closer to evil as much as closer to herself.

The Slayer is the one who must maintain the difference between good and evil and make sure that good doesn’t become evil (e.g., that vampires don’t turn humans into vampires): “at some point someone has to draw the line, and that is always going to be me. You get down on me for cutting myself off, but in the end the slayer is always cut off" (“Selfless”). At the same time, she is the most ambiguous one, the one who is ready to cut all ties with family and friends and kill people she loves, if necessary (e.g., Angel). The requirement that she know exactly which side she must stay on (regardless of where those she loves are) gives her the responsibility to keep The Other "other" at all costs — even at the cost of becoming an “Other” herself. 

This would be the moral equivalent of dying to save lives in “The Gift" — in this case, crossing over to the Dark Side in order to prevent others from doing it. Paradoxically, she protects the line which separates good from evil by crossing it, by becoming more and more “other.” 



"If you don’t understand your own weird, shitty side...

If you don’t understand the fact that there’s someone in there who will kill your mother, if need be – 

If you can’t take that on... 

If you can’t take that on board and realise that Charles Manson and me and you are not much different... 

That John Wayne Gacy and me and you are not much different 

– except that he did it

Y’know, there’s those days when I’m gonna kill that motherfucker over there – but we don’t do it.

But it’s in us, and it’s there. 

And so much of this is denial.
That we have no dark side. 

You know: the hippies, and those lovely people in the rave era who were all on ecstasy – they tried to pretend we have no dark side. 

And what happened was they got fucked up by their own dark side. 

As will ALWAYS happen.


So let’s kiss our Dark Sides

Let’s FUCK our Dark Sides. 




Get him down there where He belongs. 

And He can tell us stuff.

 Y’know, that thing’s useful.




But above all: let’s become plex-creatures. 

Complex, superplex – be able to take on new personality traits; able to take on new ideas; able to adapt; 

able to extend our boundaries into what was previously the ‘Enemy Territory’ – 

until the point where 
We Become what was once our Enemy

and They are Us

and there is no distinction."

Grant Morrisson





Lamont Cranston :
Do you have any idea who you just kidnapped?

Tulku: 
Cranston. Lamont Cranston.

Lamont Cranston: 
You know my real name?

Tulku: 
Yes. 

I also know that for as long as you can remember, you struggled against your own Black Heart and always lost. 

You watched your spirit, your very face change as the beast claws its way out from within you. 

You are in great pain, aren't you?

You know what evil lurks in the hearts of men, for you have seen that evil in your own heart. 

Every man pays a price for redemption; this is yours.

Lamont Cranston: 
I'm not lookin' for redemption!


You have no choice - 

You will be redeemed, because I will teach you to use your Black Shadow to fight evil.




 

Who Knows What Darkness Lurks inside the Hearts of Men..?

The Shadow, Knows...!

HA-HAAHAHAHAHAAA!!!!!!



"You know something that puzzles me Lamont,  how a man like yourself, who has absolutely nothing to do, can manage to be late for every little engagement..."

"Practice, Uncle 
Wainwright, lots and lots of practice..."

Edward de Vere's Bible





Roger Stritmatter explains that the Geneva Bible, in the possession of the Folger Library in Washington, D.C., once belonging to Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, is full of annotations and underlinings that resonate with the themes and turns of phrase in the plays of Shakespeare. 

Dr. Stritmatter eventually wrote a thesis based on his discoveries; this tape was made when he was a doctoral candidate, still examining the evidence.

This segment was produced by John Mucci and Gary Goldstein, and was photographed by David McGoldrick. Keith Darby is narrator. 

(This tape was taken from my VHS copy of the program, which unfortunately does not have the first few minutes of the segment. Once I can get the proper machine to transfer the whole thing, which will also improve the quality, the opening will be present)





Sunday 25 December 2016

Scorpion

George Lucas and the Moral Purpose of Art

Your Purpose cannot be Bought or Sold.


Disney :
"We want to make something 
for The Fans."


 "My God! If Only I Could Get Out Of Here"
-- illustration depicting plight of young women in "white slavery".
 Caption reads: "The midnight shriek of a young girl in the vice district of a large city, heard by two worthy men, started a crusade which resulted in closing up the dens of shame in that city."

 "...For the Frankfort School, the goal of a cultural elite in the modern, "capitalist" era must be to strip away the belief that art derives from the self-conscious emulation of God the Creator; "religious illumination," says Benjamin, must be shown to "reside in a profane illumination, a materialistic, anthropological inspiration, to which hashish, opium, or whatever else can give an introductory lesson." 

At the same time, new cultural forms must be found to increase the alienation of the population, in order for it to understand how truly alienated it is to live without socialism.

Do not build on the good old days, but on the bad new ones," said Benjamin.

The proper direction in painting, therefore, is that taken by the late Van Gogh, who began to paint objects in disintegration, with the equivalent of a hashish-smoker's eye that "loosens and entices things out of their familiar world." 

In music, "it is not suggested that one can compose better today" than Mozart or Beethoven, said Adorno, but one must compose atonally, for atonalism is sick, and "the sickness, dialectically, is at the same time the cure....The extraordinarily violent reaction protest which such music confronts in the present society ... appears nonetheless to suggest that the dialectical function of this music can already be felt ... negatively, as 'destruction.' "


The purpose of modern art, literature, and music must be to destroy the uplifting—therefore, bourgeois — potential of art, literature, and music, so that man, bereft of his connection to the divine, sees his only creative option to be political revolt.

"To organize pessimism means nothing other than to expel the moral metaphor from politics and to discover in political action a sphere reserved one hundred percent for images." 

Thus, Benjamin collaborated with Brecht to work these theories into practical form, and their joint effort culminated in the Verfremdungseffekt ("estrangement effect"), Brecht's attempt to write his plays so as to make the audience leave the theatre demoralized and aimlessly angry. "


Darth Vader was not aimlessly angry.

Darth Vader did not have Daddy issues, and nobody bullied him at school.

Which makes him The Ultimate Father - free of all neuroses.


BILL MOYERS:
 I’ve had psychotherapists tell me that they use “Star Wars” 
sometimes to deal with the problems of their child patients. 

And they’ve said that the most popular character 
among the children is Darth Vader.

GEORGE LUCAS
Well, Children love Power because 
children are The Powerless. 

And so their fantasies all center on having power. 

And who’s more powerful than Darth Vader, you know? 

And, some, you know, will be attracted to 
Luke Skywalker because he’s The Good Guy
GEORGE LUCAS: 
But ultimately, we all know that Darth Vader’s more powerful than he is.
And as time goes on, you discover that 
He is more powerful because he’s the — 

He’s The Ultimate Father Who is All Powerful.

BILL MOYERS: 
This is where I disagree somewhat with our friend Joseph Campbell who said that :

" The Young Man has to slay his father before he can become an adult himself. "
It seems to me, and I think you’re right on here, that the — that

The Young Man has to identify — 
has to recognize and acknowledge that 

He is His Father and is not His Father.



"TO BE OR NOT TO BE?"





But Vader isn't evil - he's a good man who does incredibly evil things under extraordinary circumstances and extreme duress to protect the people he loves.



And then when those things are apparently gone and taken away from him, he just surrenders and stops caring - about any one or any thing.


Fuck Apocalypse Culture.


Charlie Rose: 
You've had every honor that a man could have. You've got Oscars -- 

George Lucas:
No.

Charlie Rose: 
No Oscar? 

George Lucas:
No Oscar. I got the -- 

Charlie Rose: 
Why are they giving you this award then if you don't have an Oscar? 

George Lucas:
I don't have anything. I don't really have a lot of awards, to be very honest with you. I have the Irving Thalberg Award and I get a lot of little awards. 

Charlie Rose: 
Yes. 

George Lucas:
I've got two Emmys but I've never had an Academy Award. I have been nominated but I've never won. I'm too popular for that. 

Charlie Rose: 
Too popular? Meaning what?

George Lucas:
They don't give Academy Awards to popular films. 

Charlie Rose: 
Are you proud of the fact that you make films that people want to go see? 

George Lucas:
Yes. 

Charlie Rose: 
Popularity is OK with you?

George Lucas:
Popular is OK with me. I think it's a very important part of society and if you're making a work of art or a film or whatever and nobody sees it, I don't see where it does anybody any good. 

Charlie Rose:
I'll tell you who thinks it does do people good is Francis. Francis is making movies that satisfies one person. 

George Lucas:
That's right. But I'm not sure with society at large it's helping much. And of course that's what I'm going to do now. I'm going to make movies that only I want to see and I want to do. I've always wanted to do that. I fell into popular movies by accident. I always disliked Hollywood theatrical movies. I didn't want to have anything to do with them. So -- 

Charlie Rose: 
But you simply knew how to make them. 

George Lucas:
I mean, guess it was embedded in my DNA. It's that particular thing which is -- I'm not sure whether it's a coincidence that people like Steven and I grew up in the same environment -- 

Charlie Rose:
Steven Spielberg? 

George Lucas:
Steven Spielberg. We liked the movies. Same thing with Marty, there was a whole generation right there that were -- came of age in the '60s that grew up on movies. 

I didn't really grow up on movies but it was a part of my life in terms of it wasn't -- you know, I came up at the beginning of television. 

And the whole idea of visual storytelling and that sort of thing was at the right moment. I got in there and what we really -- what I wanted to do and what a lot of the people wanted to do was simply make films that people liked and enlighten them, entertain them. 

And that's what we were in the business for. 

We liked movies. 

Charlie Rose: 
But the irony of this is that you are considered one of the most innovative filmmakers ever in the history of cinema. 

George Lucas:
But the innovation part is because I -- like I just hate the word "artist", but I will say the word "artist" -- they, for thousands of years, were also the scientists, the engineers and the artists because in order to accomplish certain works, especially in architecture, you had to figure out how to accomplish it because, you know, I mean, they sat with the Duomo in Florence for hundreds of years because they couldn't figure out how to put the dome on it. And Brunelleschi did it, went and studied the Pantheon and other places where they had big domes because they used to do it in Rome. But by the time they got to the Renaissance, it was after the Dark Ages and nobody knew how to do that stuff anymore. So he had to actually invent the ratcheting pulley in order to be able to get oxen to pull bricks up that high. 


Charlie Rose: 
So that's what you have done, you have been able to create new things simply because no one had done it before and you had to do it on your own? 


 George Lucas:
Because I had a story to tell. There was a gap between what is possible and where my vision is and I've had to fill that gap, which is what -- you don't invent technology and then figure out what to do with it. You come up with an artistic problem and then you have to invent the technology in order to accomplish it. 

So it's the opposite of what most people think it is and any artist will tell you that. 




And art, on all levels, is just technology, which is why it's -- you know, people will say, well, monkeys can do paintings. 

Well, they can't really. They can do scribbling. 

They can do like what my 2-year old does. 

But if you want to say I want to convey an emotion to another human being, that's something only human beings can do. 





Animals can do it by roaring in your face or biting your hand off and that usually has an effect. 

But to do it in a painting, to do it in a play or in a story, in poetry or anything that's in the arts, you have to be a human being. 




Charlie Rose: 
So we talk about artists; filmmaker, innovator, director, storyteller -- 

George Lucas:
Well, a director is just somebody who's got a fetish with making the world to be the way he wants it to be, sort of narcissistic. 

Charlie Rose: 
That's you? 

George Lucas:
All directors, they're no different. 

Charlie Rose: 
And you're a director. 

George Lucas:
Yes. All directors are -- they're vaguely like emperors, which is I want to build the society to be -- to reflect me and what I want. And the great thing about -- you don't have to kill a lot of people and build a lot of stuff and spend a lot of money if you're a king and want to do that. It's good for society, obviously. But a director can do it with a lot less money and just say I'm going to create a world where people can fly.

Charlie Rose: 
So what do "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" say about the world you want to create? 

George Lucas:
Well, "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" were basically put together -- especially "Star Wars" more than "Indiana Jones" -- "Indiana Jones" was just done for fun to entertain people. And there were some messages in there about archeology and also what we believe in terms of myths and that sort of thing. But the real one is "Star Wars," and that was done in the same vein that what I was saying about the patron creates the propaganda and what I wanted to do was go back to some of the older propaganda, which was consistent through all the societies, which is mythology, but to say what do they all believe? 

Because they were all -- this propaganda was created independently. 

Charlie Rose: 
Yes. 

George Lucas:
And what are the things that they all actually believe? We're talking about relationships with your father, relationships with your society, relation to your history, relationships with the gods, all of this stuff is -- it's old. But there are psychological motifs that were created through storytelling, primarily oral storytelling, that explained what they believed in and who they believed in. 

So what I wanted to do is go back and find the psychological motifs that underlined that because those grow out of a popularism and to say that not all but a majority of people -- boys -- have a certain psychological relationship with their fathers. 

And that's been going on through history. 

And trying to explain that, to say we know your darkest secret and, therefore, you're part of us because we all know the same things. 

We know what you're thinking about your mother. 

We know what you think about your brother. 

We know what you think about your father, really. 

And those are the things that make people say, hey, this is why we believe this stuff.

And, again, the crudest part of that in terms of the religious/spiritual thing is some people have taken those ideas and then distorted them. 

And you end up in a cult, where they're using the psychological tools to make you adhere to their society. And part of it is they have to keep it closed. 

Charlie Rose: 
And to them. 

George Lucas:
And to them. But it's the same thing. I mean -- and again, you go through history, you know, and even though in most cases you had open societies, but they really were because you were going to kill the people to go outside the wall. So let's build a wall all around the whole thing so we can defend ourselves. So they were self-fulfilling, isolated human events. 

Charlie Rose:
Because you wear -- have worn all these hats, though -- filmmaker, director, storyteller, writer, a technological innovator -- what do you want the first line of your obituary to say? 

George Lucas:
"I was a great dad." Or, I tried. 

Charlie Rose: 
But do you consider yourself any of those things first -- writer, storyteller, filmmaker, problem solver? 

George Lucas:
Well, first is Dad. I mean, I gave up directing in order to become a dad. You know, for 15 years, directing, I just ran a company and was an innovator but it was not doing what I really liked to do, which is actually make movies. 

Charlie Rose: 
Because you wanted to be a dad? 

George Lucas: 
Because, yes, I -- and I never was -- it was one of those things where you don't expect it to happen. 

But once I was a dad, it was like a bolt of lightning struck me. 

And I ended up getting divorced around that time. 

And I just decided, well, I think I'm just going to take care of my daughter, because that seems like the right thing to do. 

You know, I made these -- it was right after "Return of the Jedi." 

I said I'd made all these movies and I'm not going to escape "Star Wars" and my central concern was my daughter. 

So I just said I'm going to raise my daughter. 

And then we -- I adopted another daughter and then I adopted another son and it wasn't until, like, 15 years later that I actually said, OK, I'm going to go back now and make, direct movies again. 

So it was very much -- and, in the meantime, I had developed a lot of technology to do things that I could not do when I was doing "Star Wars," because in "Star Wars," because it's a science fiction film, it's a fantasy film, it pushes the limit, the technological limits of the medium -- science fiction, fantasy, those sorts of things. 

You really -- there's many things can't be done, they just can't. 

And there is an equation ultimately, which is how popular is something, how much does it cost and then they subtract one for the other and decide whether they're going to do it or not. So a lot of the films -- when I was doing "Star Wars," right after "Star Wars" -- they didn't have room for spectacular. They only had room for street movies, which is what I had been doing before that. And so doing something that was sort of, you know, an epic, a historical piece, science fiction, fantasy, any of those things, you just couldn't do it because it cost too much money and technically you couldn't accomplish it. 


Charlie Rose:
 Kennedy Center honoree, that's a big deal. What does it mean to you? 

George Lucas:
Well, I could be glib -- 

Charlie Rose: 
No, just be real. I'm sitting here with a guy who's got -- who is the happiest he's probably ever been -- married, 2-year-old daughter, all the money he'll ever need -- sitting in this remarkable place where you live, so you've got everything. But here is a saying that you are really one of America's finest artists. What does that mean to you, that these people are going to honor you, sitting next to the president at the Kennedy Center? 

George Lucas:
Well, you know -- 


Charlie Rose: 
Don't be glib. Be real. 

George Lucas:
Well, I will be real. I'm not much into awards. It doesn't mean that much to me because I've gone through this. And I know it's just a group of people get together and say we're going to give you this award. And a lot of them, it's just basically you're there to draw eyeballs. 

Charlie Rose: 
But there are awards and there are awards. And I've got to believe that this means something to you. 

George Lucas:
Well, it does mean something to me. 

Charlie Rose: 
What is it? 

George Lucas:
I don't know. It's -- you know, again, I've got the Medal of Arts, I've got the Medal of Technology and I've got the -- 

Charlie Rose: 
So it's just another award -- you're just getting another award, you'll show up if you want him to but he doesn't care?

George Lucas:
Well, yes, it's -- you know, I know it's about the TV show, it's not about me. 

Charlie Rose: 
This is not a big TV show. The Kennedy Center Honors as a television show, doesn't do very well; it's shown in the middle of December. 

George Lucas:
I know. 

Charlie Rose: 
So it's not about a TV show. It's not the Oscars. This is in Washington, you know, where all of Washington turns out and it, in fact, selects only five people each year. 

And it's not based on what you've done that year, some -- one movie, it's based on what you have achieved in your career and, all of a sudden -- you know, and you're -- putting you up in a pantheon of people that you really admire, like your friend, Steven Spielberg. OK? 

George Lucas:
We give each other awards all the time. Francis and I give awards to each other all the time. We're in a group; obviously Marty and I do the same thing, where we all happen to be and you've got to remember -- 

Charlie Rose: 
Yes -- 

George Lucas:
-- I hate to say this but there are thousands of awards shows every year. 
So, you know, I'll take a few, a couple of the ones that are meaningful to me, like the Kennedy Center Honors. 
Those are the ones that I will participate in. 
But I get a lot of other ones. 

Charlie Rose: 
Is there a competition at all between you and Steven? 

George Lucas:
Sure. 

Charlie Rose: 
What is it? 

George Lucas:
Who can do the better work. 

Charlie Rose: 
And how do you compare -- 

George Lucas:
And it's not better work in terms of -- it's the "oh, wow" factor. If I can do something and Steve says, "Oh, wow," then I won.

And he makes 10 times more movies than I do so I have to say "Oh, wow," a lot more than he does. 

But I don't resent how many times. It's just that I enjoy the fact that I can see a movie and he can kind of one-up me and do something that I said, "Gee, that's unbelievable." 

Charlie Rose: 
Well, let me tell you what he says about you, "American Graffiti" is one of the best films ever made.

George Lucas:
Yes, but that's very easy to say. 

Charlie Rose: 
Because of what it was? 

George Lucas:
No, because he went "Wow." 

Charlie Rose: 
Because he went "Wow"? And why did he go "Wow" over "American Graffiti"? 


George Lucas:
Well, because it was so different and exuberant and -- 

Charlie Rose: 
And -- OK, go ahead. What else? 

George Lucas:
-- and had a lot of underpinnings of the kinds of things that a filmmaker wants to have in their movie, a lot of observations and sort of philosophical musings. And it was in the guise of an entertainment film. So most people didn't pay attention to any of that stuff but they knew it. They knew it immediately. You know, it's very -- again, critics have a tendency to be extremely glib. And they have to look at a movie a day or two movies a day and they just rattle off in an hour what their feelings are about it. As a result, you get a very surfacey kind of point of view or an ideological -- 

Charlie Rose: 
OK. I'm asking a filmmaker, I'm not asking critics about this film. 

George Lucas:
Filmmakers -- I know how to make movies. I went to film school, I have a knack for it, I studied it very well and practiced and I know what I'm doing. A lot of filmmakers try. 

But, on the technical, telling a story, how you put the story together, how you make it effective emotionally, I know how to do that.

 And part of it is I have a talent for it. Part of it is I've worked hard to create and figure out how to do it. And I'm reasonably effective at it. I've made a lot of movies -- as I tell people, I've produced more movies that were failures than successes. As a director, most of my films have been big successes except for one. So -- and a couple of ones I've produced have been huge successes but most of them haven't been. But I know that going in. I know what's going to work an what's not work going to work. But I do like movies. I love movies. And I know a lot of movies aren't popular and you can say that going in. 


One of the reasons I retired is so I could make movies that aren't popular because, in the world we live in, in the system we've created for ourselves in terms of -- it's a big industry, you cannot lose money. 

So the point is that you have to -- you are forced to make a particular kind of movie.

And I used to say this all the time when people -- you know, back when Russia was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. 

And they'd say, oh, but aren't you so glad that you're in America? 

I said, well, 
" I know a lot of Russian filmmakers and they have a lot more freedom than I have. 

All they have to do is be careful about criticizing the government. 

Otherwise they can do anything they want -- "


Charlie Rose: 
And so what do you have to do? 

George Lucas:
You have to adhere to a very narrow line of commercialism and there is only certain -- and, look, when I started in the '70s, it was like this. You know, I could say Russia was like this. But we were like this. You could do a certain kind of -- and I flaunted that system. 

I mean, "THX", my first film was definitely not an American film and I shoved it in sideways. 

Francis helped me trick the studio. 

Charlie Rose: 
Yes, right, right. 

George Lucas: 
-- but nobody -- they would have never let me make that movie if they knew what I was doing. 


Charlie Rose:
 Could George Lucas be George Lucas because early on he got the -- he owned the rights to make "Star Wars?" 


George Lucas:
Well. 

Charlie Rose: 
You negotiated that coming out of the first film -- and, therefore, it made you very rich and made you very independent. So you'd have to make movies because you had independence and you had also built a great business in addition to making films. So, therefore, you could preach to anybody you wanted to preach to because you weren't dependent on anybody. 

George Lucas:
Well, the issue is ultimately the reality of it, which is, I'm a unique blend of a practical person, pragmatic person and a fantasy -- completely daydreaming, you know, guy who's not very practical at all. 

Charlie Rose: 
And you combine those two.

George Lucas:
Well, I didn't but the DNA -- or we can say whatever force was at work there. 

Charlie Rose: 
To create -- whoever created George Lucas gave him those two skills. 

George Lucas:
Yes, and they're the opposites. 

Charlie Rose: 
Yes. 
         
One of them is a -- and I've always been that way. Francis, when we started Zoetrope and started making movies, Francis was very much -- it was odd because when we started he was a Hollywood director. 

Charlie Rose:
Right. 

George Lucas:
And I was this crazy kid doing art films. And I said I'm never going to go into the theatrical film business. I only want to do art films. I'm going to do documentary films, documentaries, cinema verite, that sort of thing was just coming in. And this is what I'm going to do. I'm excited. My ambition then was ultimately to be Michael Moore. And -- 

Charlie Rose: 
A documentary filmmaker?

George Lucas:
Yes. And, you know, and cause trouble because that's what I -- you know, and I grew up in the '60s, I'm a '60s kind of guy, I always have been. And I grew up in San Francisco Bay area and, you know, that's just -- that was my environment that I grew up in. And I was perfectly happy to do it. I did not want to make theatrical films. I was making kind of tone poems in school, I was winning awards. 
Francis and I moved to San Francisco because we didn't -- neither one of us liked 
the Hollywood environment. 
We started a company up here. 
And I got to take one of my student films 
and turn it into a feature, which was -- 

Charlie Rose: 
"THX." 


George Lucas:
Yes, but it was a tone poem film. 
It was just a visual storytelling. You know, the characters and the plot were not as important as the metaphor and the symbolism and, as a result -- and the emotional connection between the moving image and the audience. So I did that. 
And, obviously, it -- our company went bankrupt and Francis destroyed everything. 
But it -- like there is always a silver lining. 
You know, it caused him to be forced 
to pay off the debts, which meant 
he had to go do "The Godfather." 
He challenged me 
as he was walking out the door. 
He says, "Stop doing this artsy-fartsy stuff." 

Charlie Rose: 
Yes. 

George Lucas:
"Make a movie. Make a comedy. I dare you make a comedy." And I said, "Well, I can do that. That's no big -- I can do anything." I'm in my 20s. 

Charlie Rose: 
I'm George Lucas. 


George Lucas: 
No, it's not -- has nothing to do with George Lucas. 

It has to do with 
I'm 23, I can do anything. 

You know, that's what you think. 

By 30, you get that beaten out of you. 

But when you're young, you sort of think you can do anything, so I did it. 

And that was successful and that started me on a whole different train to do, -- again, when I started "Star Wars," I certainly didn't think it was going to be a hit, I didn't think "American Graffiti" was going to be a hit. 

I had no idea and -- beginning "American Graffiti" was -- the studio hated the film 
so much they shelved it 
and they said you can't -- 
we're not going to even release this. 
Maybe we're going to see if we can 
release it as a movie of the week. 

But we can't release it in theaters, 
it's not that good. So that's where I was. 

And then I started working on "Star Wars" and I was just doing it because I needed a job to pay, you know, to eat. And I wanted to do this kind of experimentalish -- in my mind -- idea about mythology and take films that I loved when I was young, which was Republic serials, and transform the kind of movie I wanted to make into a very popular genre. And out of that came both "Indiana Jones" and "Star Wars." 

But you know, it was -- I wanted the -- I thought that was my last movie of this thing, then I was going back to what I really wanted to do. And I said, you know, at least at the end, I wanted to have done an old- fashioned movie, an -- on sound stages with makeup people and, you know, sets and, you know, do the thing, make one of those movies before I'm kicked out. 

And, you know, it -- the fluke of "American Graffiti" becoming a hit was, like, oh, my God, now what? But I guess that will be the only time that will ever happen. So I got a hit, so I'll make this movie, which probably won't be a hit. But -- 

Charlie Rose: 
"Star Wars."

George Lucas:          
-- yes, "Star Wars." But you know when you describe "Star Wars," you're saying it's a space opera. It's not a science fiction film. You know, we have large dogs flying spaceships and you'd even describe it and people would say, oh, dear, this guy's off, you know -- 

Charlie Rose: 
He's in his own world.

George Lucas:
And, of course, most of my friends are of the -- where I was persuasion. I was further into the art world than they were. But I threw that all away after "American Graffiti." I mean, "Graffiti" was, again -- I mean, nobody expected me to do a comedy based on "THX." So I said -- and I'm not that funny a guy in real life. 


Charlie Rose: 
“I'll show Francis I can do a comedy.”

George Lucas:
I'll show those guys. And then -- but then when I was started going to "Star Wars," they said, why are you making a children's film? I said, well, because I can have more of an influence on people. I think I can have things to say that I can actually influence kids, you know, adolescents, 12-year olds and, you know, that are trying to make their way into the bigger world and that's basically what mythology was, was to say - - of saying this is what we believe in; these are our rules; these are -- this is what we are as a society. And we don't do that. The last time we were doing that was westerns. And of course, this was in th '70s and the westerns sort of fizzled out in the '50s. So it was like we didn't have any national mythology. So I said, I'm going to try this and see if it works. And I'm just doing it, you know. And it would be fun because, you know, I like spaceships and I like adventure and I like fun. I like all this stuff. So I'll do it. But I figured that would be the last -- I'll do it, I'll have done my thing. Then I got in trouble because the script got out too long and then I had three scripts instead of one script and then I had to try to get them all finished and you know, I got hooked into this tar baby and I couldn't get out. And it was a while before I finally realized that, no matter what happens, I'm never going to get out. I'm always going to be George "Star Wars" Lucas, no matter how hard I try to be something else. 

Charlie Rose: 
Just think about the career. At -- whenever you decide that there are no more movies to be made by George Lucas and you look back at a body of work, are you going to say "Star Wars" was my crowning achievement cinematically? 

George Lucas:
Cinematically, I would say probably yes. 

Charlie Rose: 
Yes, OK. In what way is it not your crowning achievement? 


George Lucas:
I don't know. Again, it's hard to -- you know, I have a pretty low opinion of my movies, so, to me, I've always said, well, these didn't really turn out the way I'd hoped they would and I can see all the flaws and I can see all the stuff. I mean, "American Graffiti" is the most fun movie I made in terms of what I created. The most fun movie to work on was "Indiana Jones" because I didn't have to direct it. 

Charlie Rose: 
You had Steven. 

George Lucas:
Yes, I had the best director in the world. It turned out better -- that was the one where everything went right, which happens very rarely in real life, you know. 
But it just gets better and better and better and 
you just can't believe how wonderful it turns out. 
The other ones you suffer through and you think they're terrible and then people say, oh, they're great. 

But it's hard to get that they're actually terrible, because I can see all the Scotch tape and the rubber bands and everything holding it together and that was particularly true of "Star Wars" number four because it barely got made and I was so disappointed about what my vision was and what it actually turned out to be. And I complained about it a lot during -- right after the movie when -- you know, in the interview, you should see it, I was like, ah, I came out to be 35 percent of what I wanted and all this kind of stuff. But I did have a vision. But my vision was way beyond what was possible and I did the best I could and then after a lot of people said, well, this is the greatest movie of all time, you have to -- ah, I said, well, OK, maybe it's pretty good. And we'll live with that. And then part of it then was to continue the story to -- was just a thing to finish the story. 

And then after that, I worked on the technology and I said, well, gee, now I can tell the backstory because the backstory seems to have gotten lost.

 And when it was one movie, it was much easier to see the backstory of Darth Vader. 

Charlie Rose: 
Didn't you intend to, in the beginning create, really three movies when you started and then you decided only to take one part of that life story? 

George Lucas:
Yes, I took the first act. 

Charlie Rose: 
Exactly. There were three acts and you took the first. 


George Lucas:
Yes. But then the first act didn't really work so I said, OK, what I'm going to have to do is take the ending of the third film and put it on the first film. 

You know, I -- 
which you do. 
You have got a bunch of stuff 
sitting on your desk as you're creating. 
It's, well, let me take that, stick that in here, 
make it -- so I wasn't worried that much about the sequels when I was actually making because I have to make this the best film because I want this one to succeed and work. 

So then when I moved on to the other ones, I said, well, gee, you know, 
Ben Kenobi is now dead. 
I killed him. 

Or that was a -- unfortunate. 
Well, how am I going to fix that? 

And what do I do about the fact that I already blew the Death Star up? 
And that's what the ending is. 

And so I went through until the story stretches itself and moved around. It is a creative process where you're doing things and you maneuver through your imagination. But part of it was simply when I got down to some of the other movies I was able to create an environment and a world that wasn't possible when I started the first one. So, to me, a lot of the things were just technical or, you know, in the end, getting Yoda to do a sword fight, which I had always wanted to do but I could never do it because he was a Muppet. 

Charlie Rose: 
You said famously Flash Gordon was the inspiration and The Bible. 

George Lucas:
Well, it wasn't the Bible by a long shot. It was the inspiration. But at the same time, with Flash Gordon, it was a matter -- I knew I wanted to make a movie based on those serials but I didn't -- I wasn't going to be -- it wasn't going to be Flash Gordon. 

So I did try to get the rights of Flash Gordon -- couldn't but that was good because if I had, it would have set me off in a funny -- 


Charlie Rose: 
OK. 

George Lucas:
Because I realized after I didn't get it, I said, well, I really don't want Flash Gordon. I don't want to do any -- I want a space opera that's like Flash Gordon. But if I were making that movie, I would probably take Flash Gordon out of it and take all that stuff, Mongo and all that stuff, I don't want to do that stuff because what I really wanted to do was more on the lines of "Star Wars" and less on the lines of Flash Gordon. There is a similarity between the two but there is definitely a difference in perspective about how they're doing it. So that sent me in the right direction of having to think up something completely new but inspired by -- but, of course, inspired by westerns. You know, people go through and say these are all the inspirations that were -- influenced "Star Wars" and they are. Just like whether you're a writer, no matter what, you're a painter, whether you're a politician, in theory, you have steeped yourself in the genre you're working in. And you know all the various kinds of things and you can pull the best parts of what you, you know, of what you learned in theory. It works everywhere except it seems in politics because they're doomed to repeat themselves every few years because they do not listen to history. 

Charlie Rose: 
Where did the idea of Thw Force come from? 


George Lucas:
The whole thing in "Star Wars" was to take, again, ideas, psychological ideas from social issues, political issues, spiritual issues and condense them down into an easy-to-tell story of those stories. 

The force basically came from, you know, distilling all of the religious beliefs, spiritual beliefs, go all around the world, all through time, finding the similarities and then creating an easy-to-deal-with metaphor for what religion is. And the point was -- is that the -- in the very beginning when you have people worshiping rocks and deer, they called it life force, they called it the force. That's what it was. 

And, so, where did the name come from? 
It came from basically life force 
of what the more primitive religions believed in. And then you go through all the other religions and they have the same thing. It's all the same -- you know, whether you believe in God, don't believe in God; believe in religion, don't believe in religion; the issue is that you either don't believe there is anything else out there, which is a little -- I think would be hard to live with at the same time. I mean, I believe something's out there, I just don't know what it is. I have no idea or would I dare to guess. But I do know religions aren't based on it. There are human psychological needs that have been put together mostly to create the society. 


Charlie Rose: 
But you believe something's out there? 

George Lucas:
Yes. 

Charlie Rose: 
So here's what's interesting to me about "Star Wars" too. To hear you talk about it, this was a very personal film.

George Lucas:
Yes. 

Charlie Rose: 
Very. 

George Lucas:
All my films are personal because I didn't -- 
I thought them up. I did them and you could say, well, but "Star Wars" was just a kiddies movie. 
I said, you know, the idea of making it for kids, 
the idea that it was a fun kiddie movie, all that stuff was very important to me. 

I liked that sort of thing and I like "Star Wars" and I did it not because I thought 
it was going to make any money 
because, in the end, we finished. 
We showed it to the board of directors of Fox. 

They hated it. And now I'm the head of the studio and he fought for me and got through there. But nobody thought it was going to be a hit, especially me. 

Charlie Rose:
OK. So personal film becomes, among other things, a blockbuster. 

George Lucas:
And, again, it was the second because "American Graffiti" was a very personal film. 

Charlie Rose: 
And also "Star Wars" became a cultural mainstay, as we've said. And here's what Steven said. He said, "It is the moment in which the entire industry changed." "Star Wars" is the moment when the industry changed. 

George Lucas:
Well, it changed for the good and for the bad.

Charlie Rose: Yes. 

George Lucas:
And, you know, it's -- again, when you invent things -- well, you don't invent things. I don't know. But when you bring new things into a society, you can either -- it's like the balance of the force. You can either use it for good or you can use it for evil. 

And what happens when there is something new, 
people have a tendency 
to overdo it. They abuse it. 

Now, there were two things that got abused 
with "Star Wars" and are still being abused. 

One, when "Star Wars" came out, everybody said, oh, it's a silly movie, it's just a bunch of space battles and stuff, it's not real, there is nothing behind it. I said, well, there is stuff behind it, it's not just a space battle. There is more to it than that. It's much, much more complicated than that. But nobody would listen. So they just, well, it's simple and we like the spaceships, we like the stuff. So they said fine. So the spaceships and that part of the science fantasy, whatever, got terribly abused. And of course, everybody went out and made spaceship movies and they were all horrible and they all lost tons of money. And you say, well, there is more to it than that. You can't just go out and do spaceships. And the other part, was at -- was the -- which is the technology, which is, oh, we'll just take this new technology; it's great, you know, especially when it came down later to digital technology, where you can really do anything, and then people just abused it all over the place, which they did with color, they did with sound. Whenever there is a new tool, everybody goes crazy and they forget the fact that there is actually a story and that's the point. You're telling the story, using tools. You're not using tools to a story. You understand that. 

Charlie Rose: 
I do. 

George Lucas:
The point was the other thing that got abused, naturally in a capitalist society, especially in an American point of view, which is the studios and everything said, well, wow, we can make a lot of money, this is a license to kill. And they did it. They just simply -- and of course, the only way you can really do that is not take chances, only do something that's proven. Well, let's not do any -- you got to remember, "Star Wars" came from nowhere. "American Graffiti" came from nowhere. There was nothing like it. Now if you do anything that's not a sequel or not a TV series, or doesn't look like one, they won't do it. They say we want something that we know -- 


Charlie Rose: 
So that's the down side of "Star Wars." 


 George Lucas:         
 That's the down side of "Star Wars" and it really shows an enormous lack of imagination and fear of creativity on the part of an industry. I mean, corporations are not known for -- maybe not Silicon Valley, but the old institutions are not known for being -- they're knowing for being risk averse. And movies are not risk averse. Every single movie is a risk, a big risk, like -- it's like the movie business is exactly like professional gambling, except you hire the gambler. 
David Fincher's Alien^3


You use some crazy kid with long hair who's, like, I don't get this guy at all, you give him $100 million and you say go to the tables and come back with $500 million. That is a risk. Now the studios have been going to think of it that way. They say, well, maybe if we told him that he couldn't bet on red, maybe if we told him because we did market research and we've realized that red wasn't -- so they tried minimize their risk. 
David Fincher, 1992


But once you -- and, of course, you're hiring the kid to be -- take risks, to be creative, to do things that never have been done before, never been tested.

 You have no idea whether they're going to work or not. 

That's completely the antithesis of what a big, modern corporation is. 

They want to test things 360 ways. 

Charlie Rose: 
So Hollywood is not like a big American corporation because it will just throw money away behind somebody and have him go or her go and figure out -- 

George Lucas:
But they don't know how to do that because they're basically corporate types. They think -- some of the worst things happens when they think they know how to do it, then they start making decisions that ensure it's not going to work. 


Charlie Rose: 
But you're George Lucas and you were 
ahead of your time with "American Graffiti." 
You were ahead of your time with Star Wars. 
Have you been ahead of your time since then? 

George Lucas:
Well, you know, 
I haven't directed a movie 
since then. 

Charlie Rose: 
I know that. 



George Lucas:
Producing? I don't know. I was sort of ahead of my time with "Red Tails," an all- black film. 

Charlie Rose: 
But you're the only person who could have gotten that made. 


George Lucas: 
Well, I paid for it myself. They wouldn't distribute it, they wouldn't make it, they wouldn't advertise it. 

Charlie Rose: 
Because of racism or because of what? 

George Lucas: 
They just said the market research says nobody will go to that movie. 


Charlie Rose: 
There you go. 

George Lucas:
And in Europe, nobody will go see it -- 

Charlie Rose: 
Market research said nobody would go to "Star Wars." Market research may have said no one -- 

George Lucas:
Well, not -- but they -- but this one was -- 

Charlie Rose: 
OK. 

George Lucas:
-- we know -- there is a certain now -- over time, a lot of these issues that were just becoming -- they were dimly aware of them -- have become institutionalized. Now they know that movie will do well in France, this movie will do well in Denmark, this movie you can't do in Asia. 

And they got their market, say, well, how much of share they get and do their little analysis and then they say, well, we'll not make the movie. 

It has nothing to do with what I do, which is making a movie, something that people can enjoy. It has nothing to do with that. 

I made money in spite of myself 
and I think I made money because I didn't care. 
I didn't care whether it was a hit or not a hit, 
I wanted to make this movie as a movie 
and that's the thing that they won't do 
and they can't do it, it's not in 
their constitution to do that. 

You know, I have a fiduciary duty to come up with the thing. I got a 10 percent a year, my stockholders, that's why I would never go public. 

And that's why I said I'm not going to be beholden to anybody. 

And that's why even now, with the company, when I sold, one of the reasons I sold it was I was starting to make movies that were more personal and were obviously losing a lot of money. 

And I said I really can't do this much more because the company will be dragged down and I had 2,000 employees. 

So I had people to think about. So I said the best way to handle this is to sell it and then take the money, put it in a bank account -- I call it my yacht because a lot of my friends have yachts.

I said I'm not going to buy a yacht but I will take the money that I would use to have a yacht and I'll put it in bank account. 

And I will use that to make movies that I know are experimental, that I have no way of knowing whether they will work or not. But I want to see if they work. And that means I don't have to show them to an audience, I don't have to have people -- 


Charlie Rose: 
So when are we going to see that move? 


 George Lucas:          
You're not. You might -- but you're in a world now, where everything is -- well, first of all, those movies, you know, they don't make money. 
And you can't -- like "Red Tails," perfect example. Not only does it not make money, you can't get anybody to distribute it. You can't get anybody to put any advertising money behind it. You can't -- so it loses money no matter how you do. So why in the world go through all that and get bad reviews, get all the crazy people yelling and screaming? Why not just make the movie for yourself and your friends? 


Charlie Rose: 
So that's where you are in your life today? 

George Lucas:
Yes, I'm doing what I wanted to do back when I started but I'm going to learn things. And the things I learn, possibly, I will pass on to other friends of mine and other people, who are directors, to say, you know, I didn't know you could do that. Because that's what directors do. They learn from what all their peers are doing. I'm doing this and I'm doing -- you sort of see how they manipulate film, the visual image, moving image, and doing things that have never been done before. And so that's what I want to do because in the movie business you cannot take a risk, you cannot do something that doesn't work. You don't get a second chance. I've taken second chances but I just take it to polish them. But at the same time, you can't -- there is no experimenting like at -- there is no experimenting in the movies. What you do is every day, on the set, what you're doing has to be right. If it's not right and you make the mistake enough, the film will fail. If the film fails, then the people lose their money and you usually don't get another job. 

Charlie Rose: 
But are you telling me -- and is this where you -- what you believe today that, in your life's experience, you know how to make a popular movie but that's just not what you want to do at this stage in your life? 

George Lucas:
Yes. Why would i? 

Charlie Rose
You don't need the money. 

George Lucas:  
 I don't need the money. 

My interests have shifted to more mature things.

 I mean, I did the kids' thing. I did it. 

To me, it's six films and --

Charlie Rose: 
Why do you say the kids thing? 

George Lucas:
Well, it is a kids film. 

Adults like it. It's for everybody, obviously.

 But the kinds of movies that I'm going to make now are much more demanding of an audience and most of the audience won't have anything to do with it and it's on subject matter that most people don't want to see movies about. So -- but I do. And you know, it's -- I've made movies for me that I wanted to see but I knew what they were. You know, I said, OK, this is this movie, this is this movie, this is this movie. And in producing films where I was able to get other people to put their money in, studios -- I wouldn't take it from real people; I'd only take it from corporations -- so, you know, it's a little bit of a Robin Hood thing. 

Charlie Rose: 
Yes, I know. Let me just talk about the upcoming 
Star Wars: The Force Awakens." 
How do you feel about it? 


George Lucas:
Well, it's -- you know, I made the decision to sell the company, the "Star Wars." I made that decision because I looked at the future, I looked at the thought that I was going to have a baby, I looked at the fact that was married and I looked at the fact that I wanted to build a museum and I looked at the fact that I wanted to make experimental films. So my life was going on a different track. I noticed the last few movies that I'd made were costing the company a lot of money and I didn't think that was fair to the people that worked there or the company. And so I had made a decision to move ahead on the next "Star Wars" series and we were starting to do that. 

Charlie Rose: 
So you were starting to make the next "Star Wars"? 

George Lucas:
Yes. 

Charlie Rose: 
You as director, filmmaker. 

George Lucas:          
So -- and we were working with a writer; 
it wasn't quite working out. But I was also, you know, I was also stepping away a little bit to -- and turning things over to Kathy Kennedy. 

And so what happened was 
Disney said, gee -- or Bob Iger said, 
gee, if you really sell your company, 
if you're thinking about selling it, 
because we were talking about retirement 
and what are you going to do 
after all this kind of stuff. 
And he said, 
“Well, if you really want to sell it, 
you know, we're very interested.” 
So that started that ball rolling. 

And I knew from -- you know, and I had the story treatments or outlines and we were working on scripts, 
so I sold it. 

But I knew when I sold it, I said, 
“I've tried to make movies where 
I step away to sort of "Empire
and Return of the Jedi

And after about a couple of weeks 
I knew I couldn't do that.

I had to stand over the shoulder 
of the director, help him, 
whisper in his ear constantly, 
no, do this, do that, do that -- 
and be there to help guide it. 

And it was much harder than 
if I'd just directed it myself. 

Charlie Rose: 
J.J. Abrams. 

George Lucas:
J.J. Abrams. He's a good director and he's good friends and all this sort of thing but he's also a top director, company, his own company and all this other stuff. 

And Disney, who was a little nervous -- you know, there's -- one of the issues was the first three movies had all kinds of issues. 

They looked at the stories and they said, we want to make something for the fans. 

So I said, all I want to do is tell a story of what happened. 

You know, it started here and it went there and it's all about generations and it's about, you know, the issues of fathers and sons and grandfathers. 

And it's a family soap opera, ultimately. 
I mean, we call it a space opera. 

But people don't realize it's actually a soap opera and it's all about family problems and -- in fact, it's not about spaceships. 

So they decided they didn't want to use those stories. 

They said they were going to do their own thing. And so I decided, fine. But basically, I'm not going to try to -- they weren't that keen to have me involved anyway. But at the same time, I said, I'm not going to -- if I get in there, I'm just going to cause trouble because they're not going to do what I want them to do. 

So -- and I don't want the control to do that anymore and all I would do is muck everything up. 

So I said, OK. 

I will go my way and I'll let them go their way and it really does come down to a simple rule of life which is, when you break up with somebody, the first rule is no phone calls.

 The second rule, you don't go over to their house and drive by to see what they're doing. 

The third one is you don't show up at their coffee shop or other things. 

You just say, no, go on, history; I'm moving forward, because every time you do -- and we all learn this from experience - every time you do something like that you're opening the wound again and it just makes it harder for you. 

You have to put it behind you and it's a very, very, very hard thing to do. 

But you have to just cut it off and say, OK, end of ball game, I got to move on. And everything in your body says, don't, you can't. And these are my kids. 

Charlie Rose: 
All those "Star Wars" films. 

George Lucas:
All those "Star Wars" films. 

Charlie Rose: 
They were your kids. 

George Lucas:
Well, they are my -- you know, I loved them, I created them. I'm very intimately involved in them and obviously to -- 



 "Dangerous Amusements--The Brilliant Entrance to Hell Itself"
-- illustration depicting methods used to seduce young women into the "white slavery" of prostitution.
Caption reads: "Young girls who have danced at home a little are attracted by the blazing lights, gaiety and apparent happiness of the 'dance halls,' which in many instances lead to their downfall."


Charlie Rose: 
And you sold them? 

George Lucas:
I sold them to the white slavers that take these things and -- 

Charlie Rose: 
OK, but having said all that and having talked to you for the last -- and known you for a while and admired you, I mean, it must hurt you. It's your family. It's the last story. It's your story. It's you.

George Lucas:
But I knew there are three more stories and I knew that was going to probably take -- you know, to do it right would take about 10 years. And I said, I'm 70. I don't know whether I'll be here when I'm 80. You know, every 10 years, the odds get less. And so I said -- and I'm not ready to do it because I wanted to do these other things. So I have to make the decision on my own that it's time for me to move on. So it wasn't like they were taken away from me or they were -- and they felt they knew -- you know, they wanted to do a retro movie. I don't like that. I like -- every movie I work very hard to make them different, to make them completely different with different planets, with different spaceships, with different -- you know, to make it new. 

Charlie Rose: 
So are you at peace with this? 

George Lucas:
Yes. 

Charlie Rose: 
As much as you can be? 

George Lucas:
Yes. No I was -- I said, look, I'm fine. Then you get to the thing, which is another thing that did I'd been through -- fortunately, I'm old enough to have been through all this stuff before -- and that was when I said, I had to do it then. And then you do end up with this thing which is, you know, you've got to live with it and people are going to talk about it and all that kind of stuff. It's like talking about your divorce or something, it's just it's awkward but it's not painful. 

Charlie Rose: 
Do you have within you something that's a series of small personal films, you've said, that's what you want to do? No more great "Star Wars" kind of adventure for George Lucas? That's over?

George Lucas:
Yes. These are little, tiny movies that are experimental. 
They aren't using the same structure. 

I'm going back to where "American Graffiti" was, where -- or "THX," where I completely changed the way you tell a story and using cinema. 

It's back -- I've produced a few films that were like this. 
But they weren't like what I would do. 

But they were using the visual style rather than the book. 


Charlie Rose: 
Here's what's exciting, George, what's exciting is that all of the stuff that's within you, that made all of this, whether it's "THX" or "American Graffiti" or "Star Wars" or all that you contributed to "Indiana Jones, it's all within you. It's who you are and you can apply that in any way because that, in the end, is what you brought. It is your ideas and your insight, is what you brought to film. 


George Lucas:
And at the same time, I have been fascinated with the medium and I have been fascinated with the true nature of the medium, which is very different. It's been used more as a recording medium than as an art form unto itself, and that's where the kind of movies that I made that are sort of -- they call them tone poems. 

But in the beginning, like in Russia, this was a whole movement of how you tell visual stories basically without dialogue, without all the things that you use to tell a story and you just use the film itself. 

It's kind of esoteric. I'm going to try to take it -- it hasn't come much further in 100 years. 

I'm going to try to take it into something that is more emotionally powerful than some of the -- 
most of the stuff we've done up to this point. 

Charlie Rose: 
Thank you for doing this. 

George Lucas:
Thank you.