Several things go through my mind here. 1. George Lucas is said to have very dry humour, so it might be easy to mistake him as serious when he is joking. And the fact he wouldn't let them onboard his spaceship makes the joke even funnier. 2. Seth is a comedian, so he might be more sensitive to humour than I am, which might mean he knows what he is talking about. 3. Seth is a comedian, he could be making shit up just to get a laugh.
xD
George is a an epic troll. That said, the world
did kinda end when George sold Star Wars; and yes, the
exact completion date for the sale was also the exact date that the world was meant to come to an end, according to a popularised (and overly simplistic) interpretation of Mayan time-keeping. That date was December 21st 2012. Or expressed numerically: 21/12/2012
What makes that date extra wild, in relation to Star Wars, is that the whole series potentially derives its name from an archaeological find of a glyph at a series of Ancient Mayan cities, which was interpreted in the 1960s as
denoting a state of war (the city-states warred with one another), and was named the
star war glyph. One of the cities is located in Tikal, Guatemala, which was also the filming location chosen for the exterior of the rebel base in ANH, from which the "star war" in the film is launched (per the opening crawl: "Rebel spaceships striking from a hidden base"). The glyph itself is described as "a star showering the earth with liquid droplets, or a star over a shell", the latter of which is basically the Death Star -- albeit inverted (i.e., the Death Star is physically and conceptually "a shell over a star"; or a shell or encasing
called a "(death) star").
Embedded directly in the series title -- the yellow STAR WARS logo that opens every Saga movie and functions as the series logo entire -- is also a set of "2" glyphs: four to be exact. Which is the same number found in the Americanised Mayan end-of-the-world date. Their presence might seem non-obvious, but they are foretold (or should that be four-told?) by the opening 20th Century Fox logo, which the main theme music is a direct emulation of (the classic 20th Century Fox fanfare is something GL specifically wanted incorporated at the start of the movie). The 2s are mirrored and upside-down in the distinctive S-shape ("Lock S-foils in attack position") that starts and ends the words "STAR" and "WARS":
Then there is how the so-called
Tikal Temple I, located at the same city ruins as the location of the rebel base, quite strikingly looks like an upturned Star Destroyer.
Whether GL did any of this with conscious intent or not is open to debate. To my knowledge, he has never spoken directly about these links; though, he has emphasised a long-standing interest in anthropology (which he studied at college), and which he clearly further explored through the "Indiana Jones" movies, and he has
also said that Star Wars has
"a lot going on" and that it is
"a much more intricately made clock than most people would imagine".
Also, to clear up one or two details in particular, which you can learn about by reading the Wikipedia entry on the
2012 phenomenon:
The calendar was not a Mayan calendar, per se, but one used by various peoples living in Central America (like how must of us in the West now live by the
Gregoran calendar).
Further reading on the 2012 end-date and how -- as usual -- we projected our own fears and anxieties onto a vanished civilisation:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20764906eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2012/12/13/apocalypse-not-maya-end-of-world-a-mistranslation/1768143/www.reuters.com/article/uk-mexico-maya-prediction-idUSLNE7B100K20111202Perhaps the Ancient Mayans were sufficiently far back in history, yet just tangible enough in their sense of striving for harmony and order, that we could just about relate to them and treat them as an authority on our times -- a very different period in human history.
Interestingly, to make a fanboy digression, Elvis himself frequently adorned himself in his last months with a bold "Mexican sundial" motif; part of his iconic on-stage jumpsuit apparel that defined his look in the 1970s. The term itself is something of a misnomer, as it wasn't really a sundial motif, but more loosely based (I think) on the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar. "Sundial" seems like a more apropos designation, however, due to the fact that Elvis began his recording career at Sun Records, under the legendary producer Sam Phillips, in Memphis, Tennessee. Thus, a sun emblem splayed across his chest became something of a bookmark symbol; even a boast that EP was the self-actualised "sun king" or
Sol Invictus of popular music in the 20th Century -- the same century that George literalised in Star Wars with the aforementioned embossing techniques, both visually and (via John Williams) musically.
Elvis and Star Wars are literal visual and musical sensations of the very century in which radio, cinema, and television became the dominant forms of entertainment and messaging for millions across the globe, and as one died in 1977, so was the other born (a very important FORCE DYAD for me). Take a look at some weirdly spectral images of Elvis performing in aforesaid jumpsuit the very day that Star Wars went on general release in the United States:
elvisconcerts.com/pictures/c770525.htmI can't explain it beyond the notion that Elvis' soul was ready to depart; ready for the next stage of its journey. EP fans have noted that the calendar emblem is itself comprised of basic patterns of eight and sixteen components, and Elvis died on August 16th, or 08/16, or 08/16/1977 -- the latter of which "adds up" (if the slashes are changed to pluses) to 2001. 2001. A cinematic motif with enormous relevance to Star Wars (Elvis also used the famous Thus Spoke Zarathustra musical tone poem to open his live shows in the 1970s and even starred with Gary Lockwood in "It Happened At The World's Fair" in 1963). What is even stranger is that Elvis' last full day on Earth was August 15th 1977, which was the day that the famous
Wow! signal was received at the
Big Ear radio telescope in Ohio. Quoting the Wikipedia entry:
This was, to put it mildly, a thrilling thing to detect and add to the storehouse of human knowledge. To this day, it remains a tantalising glimpse into the unknown -- every bit as remarkable as it is frustrating. In short, it is a beautiful example of Freud's concept of the
uncanny (on a cosmic scale, no less):
Are we alone in this universe or not? To quote Arthur C. Clarke, the titanic science-fiction intellect behind "2001" (along with Stanley Kubrick himself):
"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."
It's funny that TROS itself contains references to these events, both in the form of a celebration on Pasaana that, according to the gold-plated (sun-droid) C-3PO, happens "only once every forty two years", which calls back broadly to the celebrations that occurred to mark the end-date of the 5,126-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar on December 21st 2012 (the date that THE FORCE AWAKENS was truly born?), to the age of the nine-film Saga itself at 42 years (the time spanning the release of ANH in 1977 and TROS in 2019), as well as the lifespan of Elvis (born in 1935 and died in 1977); and in Douglas Adams' science-fiction comedy "The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy", 42 is the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything".
The Wikipedia entry for the number 42 also captures a variety of other meanings.
In any case, the timing of the Wow! signal is certainly peculiar for this Elvis fan. One day shy of that "2001" date with destiny for Elvis. August 15th was also a date of awesome significance for Elvis. It was the date of his beloved mother's funeral in 1958. Her passing almost certainly had something to do with his later tailspin into drugs and depression, and it's probably no coincidence that he perished the very next day in 1977 -- almost as if the Wow! signal (which, like the Star Wars glyph, if you flip it, has another meaning upside down: it spells "mom") was calling him home. I guess it all depends how much significance you place on the "time" aspect of the word spacetime. Or, in the words of Qui-Gon Jinn: "Your focus determines your reality."
The universe, like Elvis and his gleaming jumpsuits, seems to be adorned with shimmering beauty and layered, sequined intent that we can't understand; and perhaps may never be able to 100%. Everything seems to fit together into some bigger pattern; but nobody can quite work out what that pattern is. Even the very word "cosmos" means "to adorn"; while, of course, the term Milky Way, the name of the galaxy in which we live (and galaxies
plural only officially became an empirical thing in 1929 thanks to Edwin Hubble, who settled the
Great Debate held in 1920 between fellow astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis) refers to breast milk, since it is derived (like a lot of Western terms and idioms) from Ancient Greek myth:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way_(mythology)Thus, in many ways, we conceive of the sky, or our native galaxy, as a maternal province -- albeit, as the Greek myth suggests, maybe not a completely witting one; one, in fact, where men still dominate, and women are coerced or must scheme to overcome the worst of the oppressive patriarchy.
Of course, all these metaphors help us to better secure our position within a dizzying sense of nothingness: an enveloping dark that cares nothing for human concerns, even if it did ultimately seed consciousness in the universe (or may yet seed consciousness in the universe; or the
multiverse) in ways presently beyond our comprehension.
The Wow! signal is further interesting because it is essentially comprised of a six-digit alphanumerical integer: 6EQUJ5. Followed by a few lesser integers and numerical fragments of note (as the signal faded away). A bit, you might say, like the luminous, six-movie Star Wars Saga boldly made and transmitted into human consciousness by George Lucas, followed by some more minor pieces fashioned into being and broadcast by The Walt Disney Company, gradually merging with the random background noise.
