Fin: Joe Biden is not Yoda, but 'Star Wars' was always political

Plus, 'Horizon' is a flop (or is it?), more Brat Pack fallout, a fake Pacino quote, and more in this week's notes column.

Amid all the fallout from President Biden’s terrible debate performance just over a week ago, there’s been an unfortunate side effect: A very flawed Star Wars analogy. 

That came up in the lede of a Wall Street Journal story about the Democratic donors who are pushing for Biden to stay in the race: 

Some of President Biden’s top donors have latched on to a “Star Wars” analogy aimed at keeping nervous supporters from defecting: President Biden is like Yoda—old and frail yet wise and influential—whereas Donald Trump is like Jabba the Hutt, a gluttonous and powerful gangster.

As was pointed out quite a bit after that piece appeared, the analogy might be apt since Biden (like Yoda in the prequels) failed to see the rise of fascism coming and went on to die in exile. Also, we’ve reached the point where Star Wars nerds control the purses of one major political party (and possibly both). 

The Trump/Jabba analogy, though? That is pretty spot on. I haven’t seen many people dispute it, in fact. 

Still, the anti-The Acolyte types harping about how Star Wars has “gotten political” under Kathleen Kennedy and Disney's yoke are missing something: Star Wars was always political, especially when George Lucas was running things. 

President Richard Nixon directly inspired the villain Emperor Palpatine in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, with the fall of the empire at least partly inspired by Watergate. 

In the ‘80s, Robin Williams did a stand-up bit about Ronald Reagan imagining Henry Kissinger as Yoda and Nancy as Princess Leia. After all, Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative was commonly referred to as “Star Wars.”

The prequel trilogy was a not-especially-subtle allegory for the Bush-Cheney Administration and the Iraq War. The villainous head of the Trade Federation in the prequels, Nute Gunray, was even thought to have a name similar to that of Newt Gingrich. Lucas said in a later interview that the politics of that movie were “prescient.” 

In 2002, the conservative writer Jonathan V. Last argued in The Weekly Standard that, at least up until Attack of the Clones, The Empire should actually be considered the good guys in Star Wars, and the Jedi the villains. Whether revisionism or neocon self-parody, the piece caught on at the time- and Last has since become a vocal never-Trumper; unlike most, he’s stuck with the “never” part.

If anything, the three Disney sequels, while driving certain fans crazy by hinting at things like representation and feminism, offered less commentary on major political figures. 

Luke Skywalker himself (Mark Hamill) visited the White House earlier this year, dubbed Biden “Joe-B-Wan Kenobi,” and has been a vocal Biden supporter. He also said he had visited the White Houses during the Carter and Obama Administrations, although I guess Bill Clinton wasn’t much of a Star Wars fan. 

Does Star Wars offer any solutions to our political dilemmas today? Almost certainly not. But to say it was never “political” until five minutes ago is ridiculous.