george02.jpgAccording to boingboing, a right-wing movie blog called Libertas has planted the seed that's sprouted a web-wide wave of conservative invective against George Lucas. It all goes back to an online-only Q & A associated with this month's WIRED cover story, in which Lucas expresses criticism - but, apparently, the wrong kind of criticism - of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.

Lucas brings up Fahrenheit twice in the course of a discussion on his own desire to explore a more experimental style of filmmaking. "With a film like Fahrenheit 9/11," he tells Scott Steve Silberman, "you can affect people who already believe that way, and they can say “Right on,” but you can’t affect people who have made up their minds the other way." He goes on to indicate his preference towards imparting ideology through metaphor and myth:

LUCAS: If you could look at these issues more open-mindedly -- at what's going on with the human mind behind all this, on all sides -- you could have a more interesting conversation, without people screaming, plugging their ears, and walking out of the room like kids do.

SILBERMAN: And you do that by --

LUCAS: By making the film "about" something other than what it's really about. Which is what mythology is, and what storytelling has always been about. Art is about communicating with people emotionally without the intellectual artifacts of the current situation, and dealing with very emotional issues.

Lucas clearly diapproves of Moore's filmmaking methods; the problem, according to Jason Apuzzo at Libertas, is two-fold. First, in "dismissing Moore, simply because Moore is too obvious," Lucas might as well be condoning the ideology behind Moore's "sloppy" methodology.

Secondly - and this point is fleshed out more in the comments section, specifically by the Libertas readers - Lucas seems to be advocating a "subversive" injection of ideology into mainstream film. Some commenters seem to think that this subversion is a crime in and of itself; most make it clear that Lucas' subversion is especially dangerous because he is inherently liberal. Apuzzo points out specific statements Lucas has made in the past drawing a relationship between The Empire and Richard Nixon, The Rebel Alliance and the Vietcong. And you thought a lightsaber was just a lightsaber...

Silberman, for his part, doesn't understand how anyone got any of that from his interview. He posted on Apuzzo's blog, "I don’t know what interview you’re reading, but it wasn’t the one I had with Lucas. Lucas ... merely drew a distinction between his own methods as a filmmaker and Moore’s, which he characterized as something along the lines of preaching to the  converted, rather than trying to tell the story of a film in such a way that people with differing views are not put off." The most vocal of the commenters maintains that the interview's "subtext" betrays that Lucas "not only saw Fahrenheit 9/11, but was appreciative of its message."

After Apuzzo's initial post last week, the "controversy" was picked up by conservative sites Instapundit and The National Review. But, as Silberman told boingboing, "[W]ith the exception of Libertas -- Lucas' 'statements,' particularly re: Fahrenheit 9/11, are being condemned with no link to the story or the online Q&A, as if Lucas' supposed opinions are just in the air somewhere."

Silberman then made an effort to get these bloggers to link to his original story, so that readers could do their own crawling around in the subtext. This effort drew more comment fire, with one Libertas reader wondering why the article's author would rush to defend his subject. "Is Silberman a journalist or a publicist? Is he a reporter or a Hollywood butt-boy press agent? A smart reporter might use it as an opportunity to snag another interview to “clarify things"." Silberman's response? "Why should I expend my reportorial capital trying to “snag” Lucas to “defend” something he didn’t say from attacks from the sort of people who call journalists “butt-boys?” It’s beneath him, and beneath me."