From Otoh Gunga to Skywalker Ranch

1. Cultural reference as a condition of credibility
2. Otoh Gunga and Art Nouveau
3. Anthropology in housing: the Gungans
4. Anthropology in housing: the Skywalker Ranch

I. Cultural reference as a condition of credibility

In a work of fiction, the credibility of the story is linked for a great part to the previous reference, which I can establish with my own experience of the real world. Unconsciously I make a series of comparisons which enable a shift from what I know to what I don't, which in fact already leads to a new knowledge perceived as the natural consequence of what I have already known as real. Therefore, confusion sometimes arises: since I find the same logic, the same coherence in fiction as well as in my life, I can without problem go from one to the other. As to Star Wars, you will find on the Web very serious Jedi academies, which explain how you can live everyday according to the principles of the Masters of the Great Council. A more recreational page will explain how to seduce according to the principles of the Star Wars heroines!
In brief, I can only "enter" a story through a familiar door. The creator of Star Wars understood this better than anyone, and applied it with great skill. The "Making Of" gives some information about this, which I have exploited in the article "The Star Wars Religion". I'd like to come back to it through another example, which takes me back to the initial subject of anthropology: Otoh Gunga, capital of Gungans.
During the first vision of the film, the appearance of Otoh Gunga was a magical moment for me. John Williams' music probably had something to do with it. But beyond the poetic and surreal image, these luminescent bubbles continue to cause a particular emotion in me. In fact, they raise cultural - and later very personal - recollections. It can be a coincidence or an accident. But as a matter of fact, the reference was explicitly desired by G. Lucas, and implemented by Doug Chiang and his team (by the way, have I ever taken the time to say how much of a genius I think Doug Chiang is?)

"Otoh Gunga was difficult to visualise, because it's a completely strange world. But George always insisted for the concepts, either extraterrestrial or not, to be inspired by elements belonging to reality. (...) To root Otoh Gunga into reality, Lucas suggested getting inspiration from the Art Nouveau. It's a very particular style, with a very organic appearance. As soon as I had this idea to hang on to, the conception of the city became a lot easier"

II. Otoh Gunga and Art Nouveau

If Coruscant is totally vertical, if Theed links horizontal and Renaissance perspectives to the measured elevation of Roman-Byzantine domes, Otoh Gunga is all spheres and roundness: just like those oxygen bubbles which you see coming back up in ponds.

These spheres are not bare: they are set in architectures with supple shapes, which escape geometrisation.

One more word about lighting, whose effects fill up submarine scenes: opalescent, iridescent, it reminds people both of stained-glass windows and Tiffany lamps.

You can find these characteristics of Otoh Gunga in a well known, even if ephemeral, architectural and decorative style: the "Art Nouveau". It flourishes in the last quarter of the 19th century, between 1885 and 1900. "Beautiful and useful", "Art in everything", "Art for everyone", are the slogans of the artists, in reaction to the historicising academicism of the 19th century, who will exploit fauna and flora in an essentially organic conception, using lines as supple and sinuous "whiplashes". It is a social and political art, since it intends to integrate and re-interpret the experience of modernism in a functional way and for everyone. Architects and decorators pose a dynamic link between shape and structure, which unites elegance and function. In this way, Art Nouveau clearly marks the beginning of industrial aesthetics.

For about twenty years, this trend flourishes in various expressions: Arts and Crafts in England, in the line of William Morris, German Jugendstil with Hermann Obrist, the Secession in Vienna, led by painter Gustav Klimt and Otto Wagner in architecture, the French circles of Paris, illustrated by Guimard and his metro entrances, or glass artists Lalique and Daum, and finally the school of Nancy, represented by Emile Gallé. One name is missing from this long list - the one of the architectural initiator of the trend - who probably brought about the recollections mentioned previously: honour is due to Belgian Victor Horta.
For those of you who will find my talk a little too dry, let's pose some visual parallels:

III. Anthropology in housing: the Gungans

Let's see briefly what we can understand of the Gungans through their housing. Firstly, their status of amphibians. Otoh Gunga is under water, the sacred city is on earth. The aquatic city can evoke oxygen bubbles emprisoned in water. The sacred city, on the other hand, is set up on relics: one hesitates to create a link between the colossus of Nemrut in Turkey, or the Burmese or Indonesian cities. Those reversed statues are those of ancient gods, of which one supposes they were not Gungans. Boss Nass and his subjects evolve without scruples among them.

The Gungan environment appears primitive, in contrast to that of the Naboos: but it's not the same primitivity as the Ewoks', for example. While the Ewoks represent "savages" in the evolutionist anthropology, Gungans are "barbarians", which means they are somehow conceptually and technologically developed: the protective shields and energy balls are far from the sling and the catapult, and Boss Nass's getup evokes a Mongolian sovereigns rather than aborigines ones. Gungans are intelligent, even if different from the Naboos' "big brains". Their faculties are completely turned to the symbiotic adaptation, and the latter is as little "interventionist" as possible. They do not harness nature, but they integrate into it and respect diversity.

Architecturally organic Otoh Gunga demonstrates this perfect adaptation. The shape perfectly hugs structure whose aim is to shelter. Its elegance, which is not decorative, is created from this appropriateness. Otoh Gunga conflicts with Theed, capital of the Naboos, which states its refinement and its culture by a tasteful eclecticism and a wanton manifestation of art (see the statues). This eclecticism already prefigures a form of decadence: the queen's ship constitutes another example of a perfect shape, covering borrowed elements -which precisely don't have this functional aspect anymore!

Finally, choosing Art Nouveau to illustrate the Gungans' characteristics was particularly judicious: let's remember that the concept of this art movement was to adapt shape to function, and the amphibian people showed on this occasion a perfect adaptability to the environment - and the situation.

IV. Anthropology in housing (continued): Skywalker Ranch

Let's precise from the start that I can only tell this from hearsay (but has been verified) and I am using the very few available photographs. The place is very private - people say that Lucas would have refused access to Ronald Reagan himself. Just like the president, I was -alas - not lucky enough to visit Skywalker Ranch. French journalist Jean-Pierre Lavoignat was however privileged to spend a few days there, to prepare the article published in June 99 in Studio Magazine. I'll borrow some descriptions from him and also from Geo Perry, who proposes on the net a "virtual tour" of the Ranch as he visited it in 1986. The property, which is now approximately 4700 acres, has entirely been created out of imagination and the will of its owner: in the wilds, between lake, hills and vineyard, haven of calm and serenity where the only means of transportation allowed is the bicycle, Skywalker Ranch was conceived as the ideal working place.

"I have always been a frustrated architect, and I like to build things. The Ranch was born out of this desire. And also out of the will to create an ideal working place which shows how, in my view, creators should be able to work"

The Victorian main building and its annexes integrate harmoniously to the landscape. Case for the most advanced technologies, they have indeed been designed to match functionality and respect for the environment.

George Lucas chose Art Nouveau to dress up this dream whose tiniest detail has been taken care of, up to the interior decoration. Unfortunately I do not have photographs of the projection room, situated in one of the few brick buildings of the property: it impresses all its visitors because of its harmony, but also its exceptional acoustics.

Below, behind Rick Mac Callum, you can see the hall and the first floor of the main building. You will note the lighting on the ceiling and the floral lamps, characteristic of the Art Nouveau style.

Finally, if a place shows Lucas' architectural success, then in my view it's the library.

An enlargement is available by clicking here. You will appreciate better the details below:

 

Pastiches of Art Nouveau are deplorable and I find them incredibly kitsch. But it seems that Lucas has found the very essence of the trend, its dynamics and its deep originality, which is in fact a simple understanding of the organic aspect of things and suitability of shape to function. The exercise is all the more remarkable that a century of invading technologies separates Skywalker Ranch from the first realisations of this style, and that the constraints are more obvious. The whole nevertheless appears functional, coherent and harmonious at the same time: an architectural success.
But Skywalker Ranch is also a biting refutation for those who only see a fan of new technologies in the creator of Star Wars. Here, back to their place of simple tools for creation, they only show incidentally and are never part of the set. In his working environment, Lucas reveals himself, as he admits it himself, as "essentially Victorian". That is, turned (with nostalgia?) towards a somewhat idealised past, an ephemeral period after all, where one could dream of a world, which would unite humanism and modernism.