Despecialized Star Wars deconstructed part 4
The first of the main characters we are introduced to are R2-D2 and C-3PO. I was thinking that maybe George Lucas deserves credit for the idea of making robots main characters, but then I remembered the 1960s TV series Lost in Space in which a robot was one of the main characters.
R2-D2 and C-3PO also remind me of The Odd Couple which was a Neil Simon play, a movie and then a television series, about two men who live together but have very different personalities. Hilarity ensues when their personalities clash! C-3PO, a cultured pessimist, is most like Felix Unger, and R2-D2 who is happy-go-luck but not adept with spoken language, is more like Oscar Madison.
Why would anyone want to make a robot like R2D2? It (or he?) doesn’t seem to be useful for anything. Why was he not given the ability to speak except in chirps? Or hands? Why no hands? There isn’t even an LCD screen on his torso where he can display information to his human owner.
C3PO: We’re doomed.
R2D2: Chirp
C3PO: There’ll be no escape for the Princess this time.
R2D2: Chirp.
You would know which Princess C-3PO was talking about if you had read the crawling text at the beginning of the movie. Here, C-3PO seems to know the Princess and implies that he knows about her many close escapes in the past. But later in the movie when Luke Skywalker asks about the hologram of the Princess that R2-D2 displays, C-3PO claims that he doesn’t know who she is. Is C-3PO lying about that or is this just an example of George Lucas not paying careful attention to his screenplay?
That the robots talk to each other when there are no humans around is pretty interesting. Lucas clearly present them as sentient beings who have human emotions and who also have friendships with other robots which appear no different than human friendships. However, they are also owned by humans, so if robots, or “droids” as they are called in the movie, are sentient, then Lucas is endorsing slavery. And in fact, C-3PO calls his new owner Luke “master,” which is exactly how a slave would address his owner. Except that unlike slaves, C-3PO is happy to be owned.
* * *
It has just occurred to me that R2-D2 and C-3PO may also be modeled after Ernie and Bert. Bert was tall and yellow like C-3PO and both have an uptight personality. Ernie was shorter and would thoughtlessly plow ahead, just like R2-D2.
Lion of the Blogosphere 
One of the other posters pointed out that Star Wars hearkens back to a kind of medieval fantasy with swords and princesses. Of course the trope of the Faithful Servant fits in with this idea pretty well.
sabril
September 7, 2014 at 1:07 PM
I think much of Star Wars success hinged on it being the movie divorced fathers took their children to that year it was released.
The Latchkey Lion
September 7, 2014 at 1:15 PM
“latchkey lion” “the movie divorced fathers took their children to”… you’ve got issues that go deeper than Star Wars, man!
Howitzer_Joe
September 7, 2014 at 3:06 PM
Star Wars came out during the childhood years of the early batch of Generation X, so he has a point.
JS
September 8, 2014 at 12:08 PM
He is reenacting the relationship between the two ronin in “Hidden Fortress” and their relationship throughout the film. Don’t give him too much credit for thought
dana
September 7, 2014 at 1:57 PM
I think they are more like minor characters. The robots remind me of the Charlie Brown universe where the adults never interface with the children except the teacher mumbling
grey enlightenment
September 7, 2014 at 2:04 PM
Who needs an LCD when you can project a hologram?
Polentone
September 7, 2014 at 2:15 PM
Han Solo’s furry partner, Chewbacca, seems intelligent but speaks in a series of guttural grunts and roars that only Solo seems to understand.
Black Death
September 7, 2014 at 3:33 PM
Others understand it too, including C3PO. It makes more sense that Chewbacca wouldn’t be able to speak English, for morphological reasons, than R2D2.
Dave Pinsen
September 7, 2014 at 8:12 PM
Why would anyone want to make a robot like R2D2? It (or he?) doesn’t seem to be useful for anything.
He/It can communicate with other computers, store valuable information, and act as a cute foil for C3PO.
Is C-3PO lying about that or is this just an example of George Lucas not paying careful attention to his screenplay?
Pure laziness.
However, they are also owned by humans, so if robots, or “droids” as they are called in the movie, are sentient, then Lucas is endorsing slavery.
No. He’s being dumb and lazy again.
I think much of Star Wars success hinged on it being the movie divorced fathers took their children to that year it was released.
Star Wars and Jaws mark the end of the bleak, but great, ’70s dramas and the start of the care free ’80s action and comedy blockbusters. The fun stopped after the mid-90s when movies as well as the whole country went to hell in a hand basket.
The Undiscovered Jew
September 7, 2014 at 4:05 PM
What do you mean? 1999 is considered as one of the best years for film. Also, the nineties were considered “roaring,” and the only people upset were upset that Clinton got a blowjob. It will go down as one of the more fondly remembered decades of the century.
Vince, the Lionhearted
September 8, 2014 at 2:50 AM
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) vs. SW, ESB, ROTJ.
Toad
September 8, 2014 at 4:16 PM
It will go down as one of the more fondly remembered decades of the century.
lol, no
Samson J.
September 15, 2014 at 2:37 PM
Which 1999 movies hold up against those from 1980 to ~1996?
The decline in quality was well in effect by then.
The Undiscovered Jew
September 8, 2014 at 6:09 PM
Yes, I’m not sure if the commenter is thinking of the “80s” (in quotes because culturally it ended in the early 90s), which actually was awesome, and actually will go down as one of the greatest decades.
Samson J.
September 15, 2014 at 2:39 PM
3CPO and R2D2 are more like Doctor Smith and the Robot from Lost in Space than Felix Unger and Oscar Madison. Though outdated, RD2D is actually the more intelligent droid. It is evident that 3CPO is gay too, but in a fussy and peevish way.
Why is R2D2 still around when he has evidently been superseded by more capable and intelligent droids? Same reason that companies keep ancient Cobol programs running and eschew replacing them with new fangled Java apps; whatever their limitations, they usually do one or 2 things well and it is too bothersome and expensive to develop something new for their limited utility. Isn’t R2D2 able to translate something like 10,000 different inter-galactic languages? He has a useful role.
Daniel
September 7, 2014 at 4:23 PM
Same has been said about Felix Unger:
“Some recent interpretations have wondered whether Randall’s uptight, opera-loving Felix functioned as a “stealth gay stereotype” in the still-closeted world of ’70s prime time.” http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2004/05/odd_man_out.html
Lion of the Blogosphere
September 7, 2014 at 6:51 PM
Felix was always pining after Gloria, his ex-wife. Who knows, maybe she was a beard or some type of sub-text or something. Still, I never got a gay vibe from Felix.
Daniel
September 7, 2014 at 7:55 PM
1) Stealth? Pretty obvious to me. Randall dropped the pretense in Love, Sidney.
2) The C3PO/R2D2 relationship was parodied pretty well by the Kevin Smith characters Jay and Silent Bob.
ScarletNumber
September 7, 2014 at 8:07 PM
So many things have been ruined in modern society by homosexuals that it makes me cringe.
-Mazda Miata
-Rainbows
-Male Friendship (http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=18-07-021-f) Frodo and Sam aren’t gay at all, yet in our modern progressive view, of course they are!
-And, of course, Opera and cleanliness
Nothing can be done or enjoyed without someone questioning your sexuality. Similarly, a man can’t walk around in public with his young daughter or take his kids to the playground without being a suspected pedophile. I’m not sure why this is or what caused it, but it is disgusting and signifying of the insidious rot in our society.
jjbees
September 7, 2014 at 7:18 PM
You forgot Jeeps – learned not along ago these things might as well come stock from the factory with a permanent “Sodomite on board” decal etched into the rear window.
And if you’re a man walking by himself in a park where there are children, you definitely get women pulling their brood in closer. Remember the good old days when women had the sense to do that when africans came near but knew they could trust white men? Thanks to unceasing anti-white/pro-african hate images on TV, now women are wary of whites and at the same time are afraid to express their natural and rational fear when one or more of Obama’s Sons make an appearance.
mexidar
September 8, 2014 at 10:34 AM
3CPO is the translator since it is a protocol droid. R2D2 is an astro-droid and is suppose to work in vaccuum and be able to work on the outside surface of a space ship. Thus, little need to talk but the ability to repair things.
In some of the Star Wars Novels, it was explained with space ships used robots instead of a main computer. It had to do with security the number of people required to operate a ship.
superdestroyer
September 7, 2014 at 8:55 PM
Apparently Lion isn’t the first to make ‘The Odd Couple’ connection with Star Wars.
Mike Street Station
September 7, 2014 at 5:30 PM
Ha ha, that’s hilarious!
Lion of the Blogosphere
September 7, 2014 at 6:43 PM
Happy slaves exist in history. An educated Greek slave of a high-powered Roman patrician could become richer and more powerful than 99% of the population, and had nice indoor work in pretty buildings with good food. They also got to avoid dangerous front-line military service.
In fact, living in a Roman city with running water, hot baths, vacation villas accessed by safe paved roads, and delicious foods imported from as much as 1000 miles away meant these slaves lived better than any human being in the Euro middle ages.
A pretty German girl slave captured during the many Roman-German battles might be treated almost as well as a patrician wife, with her children becoming middle social status urban freedmen or soldiers.
mobat
September 7, 2014 at 5:48 PM
Right.
Though slaves almost certainly don’t like slavery, they don’t always favor the apparent alternatives either. Recall that after the Civil War up to one-quarter of the former slave population of the South died of starvation or disease (while under the protection of the Union Army). This eventuality was widely predicted and even Lincoln accepted it as the likely result of ending slavery. And many, if not most, slaves given an opportunity for freedom conditioned on re-location to Liberia did not take advantage of that opportunity.
Curle
September 7, 2014 at 8:08 PM
Antiquity Greeks and Romans happy slaves LOL. Why not happy Southern plantation slaves?. And I wonder, who peed in Sparticus’ cheerios?
Toad
September 7, 2014 at 9:32 PM
There was a Disney movie Song of the South, but that’s movie has been deep sixed by Disney.
Lion of the Blogosphere
September 7, 2014 at 9:38 PM
Roman Slaves were not necessarily brutalized in the sense Latin American blacks and, to a much lesser extent, Southern blacks were.
How pleasant their life was depended very much on what job they were performing. Greeks often served as white collar assistants. There were opportunities for them to regain freedom after a period of service. What Romans called slaves would today be considered indentured servants or even butlers. A slave who was used for hard manual labor in, say, moving slabs of marble, was usually doomed to a short, brutal existence.
The Undiscovered Jew
September 7, 2014 at 10:54 PM
Any liberal loves Classical Mediterranean olive pagan society and hates white-male Christian European society. There is no end to moral outrage over black slaves held by Southerners. Huge quantities of literature and movies have been made about it. Roots (“Your name is Toby!”), Django Unchained. Reparations, affirmative action.
When it comes to slavery in Classical times, it’s no big deal. White barbarian cannibals running naked in the forest would be so lucky to be a slave in Rome with running water. And it’s even better than living in middle-ages Europe when everyone wallowed around in their own shit. Slaves on the latifundium evolve into serfs on the manor over time, at which point it we can hate it because its now the evil Christian European medieval institution of serfdom.
“A pretty German girl slave captured during the many Roman-German battles might be treated almost as well as a patrician wife, with her children becoming middle social status urban freedmen or soldiers.”
The pallid sexually-repressed Christian bourgeois southerners didn’t allow masters to have harems or concubines. This is turned into a disadvantage because a slave culture that slows forced marriage to slaves can score points for the children being free. Ottoman Empire scores points frequently because of Roxelana, points which they couldn’t score if they didn’t have harems.
If there was a Colosseum of Atlanta, where Jefferson Davis watched black slaves fighting each other to the death while southern belles cheered, liberals would be flipping out over it, and it would now be a ‘Museum of Slavery’. The Colosseum of Rome gets a Discovery Channel episode about its awning that is reconstructed from holes in the top, and we marvel at Classical engineering skills. Poor medieval people got sunburned on the backs of their necks. If only they had been Roman slaves.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a quote by even Carl Sagan positive about Classical slavery. Do the same about Southerner slavery, and it would be borderline hate speech.
Toad
September 8, 2014 at 7:28 PM
I think of the robots in Star Wars more like dogs, or something. Dogs are sentient and have emotions and friendships with each other.
Rosenmops
September 7, 2014 at 6:36 PM
Lion – You seem to admire the Japanese. Would you consider Kurosawa, a Japanese “Bobo”? His films was a big inspiration to George Lucas (Star Wars has themes from the Hidden Fortress) and even Francis Coppola.
JS
September 7, 2014 at 6:37 PM
I need to watch the films.
Lion of the Blogosphere
September 7, 2014 at 6:52 PM
Also, droids suffer discrimination in at least parts of the Star Wars universe. Remember when Luke, Obi Wan, and the droids first enter the cantina in Mos Eisley, the proprietor angrily tells Luke that his droids aren’t welcome.
“Hey! We don’t serve their kind here.”
“What?”
“Your droids. They’ll have to wait outside. We don’t want them here.”
Oswald Spengler
September 7, 2014 at 7:16 PM
Far from being useless, R2D2 acts as a deus ex machina – he has whatever widget you need to open electronic doors or whatever.
And unlike Oscar & Felix, the two Star Wars robots are, archetypically, a bickering gay couple, perhaps the first in a mainstream movie.
Dave Pinsen
September 7, 2014 at 8:16 PM
They are not gay. They don’t have any sexual organs.
Lion of the Blogosphere
September 7, 2014 at 9:35 PM
R2’s screen appeal is his cuteness. He is short, chunky, stubborn, and incomprehensible, like a human toddler.
Also, his chirping seems to be a language the humanoids understand.
Sheila Tone
September 8, 2014 at 12:43 AM
R2D2 does quite a bit. He takes an active role in monitoring Luke’s Xwing and making on-the-fly-repairs and navigation for one and also interacts with other computers. He’s the whole reason the death star plans could be stolen in the first place!
Chucks
September 9, 2014 at 1:22 AM
I think lots of slaves were probably happy to be owned.
Anonymous
September 7, 2014 at 10:00 PM
C3PO probably did not know what the princess looked like as she employed a decoy who looked different.
jack-arcalon.livejournal.com
September 8, 2014 at 1:04 AM
I was thinking that maybe George Lucas deserves credit for the idea of making robots main characters, but then I remembered the 1960s TV series Lost in Space in which a robot was one of the main characters.
Henry Kuttner and Edmond Hamilton had robots as main characters with emotions in magazine stories in the 1940s, as heroes and as comic relief.
Francis Mchokumchild
September 8, 2014 at 1:40 AM
Given Lucas’ age Laurel and Hardy are more likely the inspiration for R2D2 and C3PO than Felix and Oscar. In any case, the idea of a tall thin nervous sidekick paired with a short fat aggressive sidekick probably dates back to ancient Greek comedies.
The idea that the droids seem sentient makes a lot of what happens to them in the Star Wars series very disturbing if you take the premise seriously, which we shouldn’t.
There is also the well known theory, easily found on the internet, that R2D2 is actually a Kaizer Soze like figure who has been manipulating events from the beginning. Surely not Lucas’s intent, but his “prequels” are so sloppy that the theory does fit what we see on the screen.
Peter Akuleyev
September 8, 2014 at 5:55 AM
“The idea that the droids seem sentient…”
Isn’t there a bit in the first film where C3PO describes himself as having ‘human cyborg relations’. I took this as meaning that he was part human, rather than being merely a robot.
Prolier Than Thou
September 8, 2014 at 1:46 PM
Tatooine in Star Wars was probably inspired bythe inner city ghetto. All those greasy and repulsive aliens in Star Wars were basically a caricature of NAMs. Luke living with his uncle in Tatooine was Lion’s take that being poor signifies you’re stuck with riff raff as your neighbors.
JS
September 8, 2014 at 8:12 PM
And proles!!!
JS
September 8, 2014 at 8:13 PM
LotB is wrong as usual, as R2D2 is conspicuously competent and saves the lives of major characters several times. He does this even as he’s beset by the risible and near-pointless golden douche. Here’s a list of his more important actions (it’s written by a commie so it’s LotB approved) by movie:
Episode I: Fixes the shield generator on the Naboo starfighter, takes young Anakin to the droid control ship and gets the fighter off autopilot.
Episode II: Fixes C-3PO, stops Padmé from being liquefied by molten metal.
Episode III: Wails on those two battle droids in the hangar of the Separatist ship, stops the elevator from killing Obi-Wan in free-fall.
Episode IV: Carries Leia’s message and Death Star plans, finds Luke, delivers the message to Luke, finds Obi-Wan, delivers the message to Obi-Wan, shuts down the garbage masher, delivers Death Star plans to Alliance.
Episode V: Fixes the hyperdrive on the Millennium Falcon.
Episode VI: Carries Luke’s lightsaber with him when he infiltrates Jabba’s palace, shoots it off the Luke when Luke’s about to be killed, frees Luke, Han, Chewbacca, C-3PO and himself from the Ewok trap.
runindogs
September 10, 2014 at 1:06 PM