A pleasure Granny!
First, to the source of the "force" of Star Wars fame.
According to Muriel Verbeeck (Translation: Sylvie Busser):
http://ibelgique.ifrance.com/sw-anthropo/txt/religiontxtangl.html
"According to my sources, Lucas was baptised in a Methodist
church and was raised with protestant values. Accessible, by
his anthropological processes, to other forms of spirituality,
among others the oriental spirituality and particularly buddhism,
he defines himself today still as a ‘believer’ - and directly
stresses the difficulty to precise ‘in what or whom’."
Later on the above page, an interview given to Bill Moyers by
George Lucas, entitled ‘Of Myth and Men. The meaning of the Force
and the true theology of Star Wars’, George Lucas is quoted as
saying:
" ... I put the Force into the movie in order to try to awaken a
certain kind of spirituality in young people--more a belief in God
than a belief in any particular religious system."
Jeremy Halcrow, editor of Australia's Southern Cross Newspaper, says:
http://www.shootthemessenger.com.au/u_jun_99/c_phant.htm
"Commentators have been debating for years whether Star Wars draws
more heavily on Christianity or the pundits' favourite, Buddhism
(Star Wars is based on Japanese Samuri films). But Lucas, who
describes himself as a Buddhist-Methodist, has made it clear that
e consciously wrote Star Wars to reach a 'universalist' view of
religion."
As to the "force" and George Lucas being connected to Alestair
Crowley, why not go (just for fun!) all the way to the head honco
o' evil himself?
http://ooze.com/toolofsatan/
A connection between Frank Herbert's "Dune" and Obeah does not
surprise me one bit as "Dune" et al contains such a polyglot of
religions.
As for the Obi-Wan synthesizer connection, a fan's Star Wars page
has "Ben Burtt Creates Sounds for an Alien World"
http://www.pitt.edu/~kloman/starwars.html
"In 1977, he signed on as George Lucas' sound designer for Star
Wars, creating R2-D2's voice by recording human baby talk, fooling
around with it electronically, and using his music synthesizer to
add the whistles and beeps."
The Official "Star Wars" site shows Ben Burtt at a synthesizer:
http://www.starwars.com/episode-i/feature/19990118/indexp2.html
George Lucas is not above creating character names in a happenstance
manner:
http://www.starwars.com/episode-iv/classic/2000/04/classic20000410.html
"R2-D2 cropped up when we were dubbing American Graffiti. We were
working late one night and looking for Reel 2, Dialogue 2, and somebody
yelled out 'R2-D2.' Both Walter Murch, who was mixing the film, and I
loved that name so much we decided to keep it."
Alas, I can't find a hard connection between Ben Burtt having an
Oberheim OB-1, even though it would not be surprising that he might
have had one back in 1977.
And equally alas, no other source to connect the OB-1 to Obi Wan.
That said, I couldn't find anyplace (well, reputable) that states
anything different.
Just spurious connections between Obeah and Lucas as well, I
(strongly) suspect.
Looking Forward, denco-ga |
