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By Root 415 0

production is from bronze [matter] and sphere [form]—the form is imported [from outside the matter] into this stuff and the result is a bronze sphere.”144 In nature, form operates from within matter, as, for example, an acorn grows from within to become an oak tree. The difference is that between Sony’s mechanical dog and a real dog. C-3PO is a more sophisticated version of Sony’s mechanical dog. Neither grows from within; both are produced artificially from without.

The issue is not simply one of looking at modern technology with a new admiration. Both real and fictional heroes have famously felt affection for the tools of their trade, admiring the beauty and craft of their weapons, and occasionally speaking to sword or arrow in hoping aloud for victory or a sure hit in the “Don’t fail me now” tradition. Yet, when technology is accorded the capacity to behave in human terms, the relationship between man and tool changes considerably. The transformation is striking in The Empire Strikes Back, as Lucas substitutes robots for some of the traditional secondary adventure characters, and in so doing shifts audience responses by directing affections away from human characters to these ingenious (often cute) products of technology. The human emotion generated on behalf of technology becomes accentuated by the absence of strong feeling for what should be emotionally charged relationships. Despite the inclusion of traditional adventures from epic and romance, along with a budding love relationship between central characters Han Solo and Princess Leia and the depiction of loyal bonds between comrades, the film repeatedly deflects attention and feeling away from these human relationships, particularly by constant deflation of the incipient love story.

Aristotle would take an entirely different approach to droids, clearly distinguishing them from nature and people (who are at the apex of nature’s hierarchy). He would classify R2-D2 or C-3PO as “instruments of production.” In the Politics, Aristotle seems to anticipate the likes of Empire’s futuristic robotics, imagining how an “instrument” (or robot) “could do its own work, at the word of command or by intelligent anticipation like the statues of Dedalus or the tripods made by Hephestus.”145 Clearly, Aristotle does not conceive of them as loveable creatures or like members of a family—something that Lucas is inclined to do.

Placing Empire’s robots in familiar human roles radically alters the nature of the audience experience by blurring the distinction between life and technology. To illustrate the extent to which Lucas preserves the experience of robots as characters, it’s instructive to compare the composition of his group to a set of counterparts in the film version of The Wizard of Oz. The whining, worrying C-3PO is reminiscent of the lachrymose Tin Woodsman, who himself has all the appearance of a robot; the meddlesome R2-D2 sniffs out mischief like Dorothy’s Toto; and, as if to emphasize these similarities, Chewbacca the Wookiee has a mane and a sentimental roar like the Cowardly Lion. And when C-3PO is shattered and then put back together, it scolds its mender in just the exasperated tones of the Scarecrow when Dorothy patiently replaces his straw.

The parallel points up important differences in the way the characters appear to the audience; Frank Baum’s story uses Dorothy’s dream as a framework to distinguish fantasy from reality, as opposed to Lucas’s depiction of a science-fiction fantasy as real, even to the point of eschewing the usual preliminary credits. Instead of framing off the adventure as a fantasy, Lucas goes in the opposite direction by obliterating the frame and drawing the audience into the film’s galaxy—dodging meteorites that fly off the screen, ducking explosions from stereo speakers surrounding them. However real the Tin Woodsman seems, he remains framed off within a dream, one calculated as a reminder that the relationship between Dorothy and her friends, however delightful, remains clearly an imaginative experience from which Dorothy and the audience