Posted on 04/10/2018 5:57:04 PM PDT by EdnaMode
If there’s something The Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood knows about, it’s life imitating art.
And now, in a wide-ranging interview with Variety, which recognized the celebrated author as one of its Power of Women honorees, Atwood has made a surprising claim about the way she thinks pop culture influenced another event: She said the 9/11 terrorists attacks were borne out of a plot point from Star Wars.
Atwood was recounting how a 2000 opera of her acclaimed novel (and now Emmy-winning Hulu series) began with “a film reel going across the top of the stage and showing various things blowing up” including the Twin Towers. She then said that, after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, this aspect of the production needed to be removed. “They didn’t get that idea from my opera, don’t worry,” she added, referring to the terrorists. “They got the idea from Star Wars.”
When Variety asked Atwood if she “really believes that,” she clarified why she, in fact, does. “Remember the first one? Two guys fly a plane in the middle of something and blow that up? The only difference is, in Star Wars, they get away,” she said. “Right after 9/11, they hired a bunch of Hollywood screenwriters to tell them how the story might go next. Sci-fi writers are very good at this stuff, anticipating future events.”
Atwood seems to be referring to a scene in the original Star Wars in which Luke Skywalker and fellow Rebel pilots launch an attack on Darth Vader’s planet-destroying weapon, the Death Star. Guided by the Force, Luke fires a proton torpedo that sets off a chain reaction and blows up the battle station; he then maneuvers away.
A representative for Atwood did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is not the first time Atwood, who shared in The Handmaid’s Tale‘s PGA Award win for Episodic Drama as a supervising producer, has attracted controversy for her comments. She recently drew criticism for promoting Andrew Sullivan’s New York magazine essay railing against the #MeToo movement, as well as for her own article in which she asked if she was a “bad feminist” for, among other things, being concerned about the movement going too far.
The idea is older than that. In WWII Japanese kamikaze pilots deliberately crashed into US warships with some regularity.
April 7,1994
Didn’t that JAL 747 take out both sides of the aisle requiring replacements for Congress. . . ?
She recently drew criticism for promoting Andrew Sullivan’s New York magazine essay railing against the #MeToo movement, as well as for her own article in which she asked if she was a “bad feminist” for, among other things, being concerned about the movement going too far.
"The Lone Gunmen" episode had the actual idea. She's right about MeToo, wrong about this. Thanks EdnaMode.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2776478/posts
Here’s an old thread about Vietnam vet Rick Rescorla. I believe he it the person on the cover of the book “We Were Soldiers Once and Young” regarding the Ia Drang valley battle.
Shortly after the first attack on the towers with the van in the basement, Rick and another vet discussed what might be next. (Rick worked security for a firm in one of the towers). They determined that an airplane strike would be it. He trained the company employees for that.
IIRC they were in the second tower to get hit. As soon as they heard something had happened to the first one, he started herding his people down to the ground level, rather than “shelter in place” as they had been officially told.
Pretty amazing man.
Yes.
I have not read the sequel, Executive Orders. It is a long book, about 1300+ pages, and is supposed to be very good.
About the time the book came out, I stopped watching TV, reading fiction, and was busy with many other things.
May be I should read it. It is the culmination of the Jack Ryan series, which started with the Hunt for Red October.
She’s also yet another stridently delusional old white female feminist.
This is a contagious brain disease, I swear.
While I won’t say whether Atwood is in any way correct about her statements (she has shown a lot of ignorance for kamikazes, though I will note that Star Wars did have the heroes engaging in a LOT of Kamikaze attacks), I can’t say I’m surprised if al Qaeda did in fact take inspiration from Star Wars when doing 9/11, considering that Revenge of the Sith had in fact been used as terrorist propaganda in Iran. Don’t believe me? Read this:
Besides, Lucas made it very clear that he rooted for the Vietcong during the Vietnam War, and in fact had the so-called “good guys”, the Rebel Alliance, be based on the Vietcong while the so-called “villains”, the Empire, were supposed to be us Americans, and based on what he said at Cannes Film Festival, he most likely supported al Qaeda as well, certainly Iraq.
CurlyDave wrote:
...The idea of terrorist using an airliner as a weapon goes back to a Tom Clancy novel...
The idea is older than that. In WWII Japanese kamikaze pilots deliberately crashed into US warships with some regularity.
Yes, indeed they did! A related question: Why did kamikaze pilots ear helmets? JK
ear = wear helmets? JK
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