Movement 103

The increased 'cute' quotient in
this movie is where you can see what
The Phantom Menace's makers are
trying to achieve. lt isn'tjust that -
having used Ewoks 0n an unsuspecting
populace - George Lucas decided to
make every alien cloyingly cute in this
film (l shall not speak of the creature
known as J*r.,1*r B*nks). lt's that
Anakin Skywalker is portrayed as a
child, not a teenager which would
make better narrative sense for a
future relationship with the Queen (as
has been predestined). This is purely
and simply wish fulfilment for our inner
children - who didn't as a kid want to
be able to fly in a Star Wars do$ight?
- but also key identification for the
target audience of the film. Which is
what the target audience of Star Wars
has always been - namely, kids.
I suspectthat all George Lucas
has done is understood the needs of
today's kids and simply given them
what they want. The Star Wars
movies, for all of their hackneyed
mysticism, are essentially children's
f ilms. I don't believe this belittles the
series. There is much entertainment
primarily for children that can be
profound and provide great
satisfaction to adults - we need only
look to the works of C.S. Lewis, or
some of the better BBC children's
serials to understand this. lndeed,
George Lucas' primary inspiration for
Star Wars was Saturday Matinee
serials of the '30s and '40s - a
children's genre.
For the kids of 'my' generation
(and a generation orso afterwards)
Star Wars was a great kids movie. By
the late '70s and early '80s, when
the original series of films were made,
we had a cultural landscape and
language built by television, by
Sesame Street, by books and by the
very crudely-made early video games.
Perhaps The Phantom Menace is a
film designed to speak to the kids of
my goddaughter's generation - a
cultural landscape builtbyTV, byVH-1,
by Teletubbies, by hypertext and CD-
Roms and, frankly, Star Wars itself. So
we get a film that doesn't have
conventional protagonists, but has
cartoon antagonists; a film that
moves briskly from one piece of eye
candy to the next; a film that
references the entire Star Wars
phenomenon but doesn't define
much of an identig for itself as a
stand-alone film.
But perhaps that's alright. The
Star Wars franchise is simply adapting
to kids needs and reflecting the way
popular culture has changed overthe
past twenty years. And maybe that's
not brilliant film-making, but Star
Wars has never been Citizen Kane.
For that reason, l'll learn to live
with my goddaughter preferring lhe
Phantom Menance and putoffthe
exorcism for now. Just so long as she
doesn't ask me to give her a Jar.Jar
Binks action figure for Christmas.
Cyberpunk Christ
the represented, God, and thatwhich
represented the unrepresentable God,
the icon. ltwas God who guaranteed
this cohesion between the two. But in
the age ofthe sign, Baudrillard knows
that God is and was a simulacrum,
part ofthe unintenupted circuit of
meaning that has no reference or
guarantee. So what does Baudrillard
do? Surprisingly, he sides with the
iconolaters and exalts the performative
power of the spectacle, conjuring his
gods through spectacle, as the Jesuits
conjured God through the spectacle
ofthe Mass.
This is a morbid strategy, and
according to Baudrillard's terms, it
would be the right one. What else can
be done now that there is no Real?
What he doesn't allow for is
incarnation. The Jesuits did not try to
represent the unrepresentable, nor
did they see any rupture or gap that
could be closed by a guarantorgod.
Instead, they canied on the faithful
practices through which the
unrepresentable triune God presents
himself. There is no disjunction
between the represented and the
representation in a
world in which the
divine and the
mundane are not
separated, where God
and humanity find
themselves linked in
the frail flesh of God
us in the world, and in
this world of
simulation. ls it not
through the matrices of
our living that a true
saviour would live and
(cont.)
reveal himself? Through language,
the cultures and the lives we create
for ourselves, Christ speaks and lives.
We are made in the image of God, not
because we are copies, but because
we are engrafted into his life and
participate in him. Ourfallen
representations may never capture
and secure for us everything about
the unrepresentable God, but they are
able to allow him to mediate himself
to us. We have no need of a Real
outside this world, a separate Zion,
because ourZion is here and now, as
we participate in God. Our minds and
bodies are inseparable, and God is
inseparable from his own fleshliness.
We have neither need of despair, nor
an escape to a place that can be
more real than this absolutely Real
participation. After Pascal, perhaps
we can say that to know thyself is first
to dare to believe.
And usefully, deja-vu is explained
too: it's a glitch in the Matrix. Now we
know.
crucified and
Itlg M lonqcr
resunected.
rcldantto 9a! lhc rcal
Christ does not wda"di6l5".No tyetq ol
o. anavi' can
guarantee the
rcfcr t r)v @lW'
representation but
is actually incarnate to
Rrnsoru To Beuwe by Maurice Wiles
(SCM Press) sets out to respond to
"some of the most basic of questions
about Christian belief that perplex
many people both inside and outside
the Church." His responses are
interposed with'interludes' that deal
with underlying issues such as
language, the development of
doctrine and the role of the Creeds.
This approach runs the risk of
producing a disjointed work; in fact
the book is easy to read and has, on
the whole, a cohesiveness of
argument as well as a clarity and
density of style, necessary for a work
covering such a broad range of
material.
I was left with the impression that
several of the sections could have
been written as the initial
chapter of a book on their
particular subject; although
as an interested (but
probably not very well-read)
non-theologian I found the
majority of the text was
pitched at an appropriate
level. Particular sections of
the book provided at least
basic answers to questions I
had asked myselfas a result
of encounters with those
from traditions other than
my own, and Wiles provides a strong
further reading section for a more indepth
discussion.
lf Wiles did have a motive for
writing the book other than t0 set out
his understanding of the basic issues
of Christianity, then it
would seem to be his
need to question the
relationship between
Jesus and the Church.
The chapter about
other faiths is the
point at which Wiles
begins to discuss
whether the Church's
teaching is consistent
with the gospels.
One reason for the
disparity of approach
between earlier and later sections of
the book may be that Wiles assumes
that readers of later chapters have
already read the book up to that
point, and there is in fact a feeling of
shared journey between author and
reader in the latter sections. A certain
lack of objectivity is the price paid for
presenting a cohesive argument
rather than merely a consistent
approach. Some readers may be
disappointed by the ambivalence of
his conclusions but l, at least, would
consider such equivocalness
preferable to moral imperialism.
The preface implied that Wiles'
approach was to be one oftext-book
objectivity - yet inevitably it did not
achieve this. I would however certainly
recommend the book to other
interested n0n-experts wanting an
introduction with breadth but not
necessarily depth.
(CATHARINE CARFOOT)
movement 24