Category: Opinion

What Will You Become: Saw Gerrera and Armed Revolution

Posted on August 12, 2016by Six on the Wild Die

saw-whitaker

The Star Wars universe, despite originally depicting a very Manichean struggle between good and evil, has become in the decades since the original movie a very morally nuanced place. I’ve mentioned before that if I look at the current status of the franchise, I’m tempted to consider Star Wars to be more of an anti-war story than a war one, but that’s a debate that we’ve had on this website very recently. Personally, I feel that although the original trilogy no doubt romanticized armed insurgency, George Lucas’s point of view on war and violence had evolved and become considerably more pacifist by the time the prequels and The Clone Wars rolled in.

Behind the curtain of space fantasy, George Lucas told the audience about things like false flag operations, the military-industrial complex, and factionalism in insurgencies. The heroes of the story, the Jedi, lose because they get involved in war. War itself is bad. If we look at the totality of the material that Lucas himself produced under the banner of Star Wars, behind all of the heroics and the swashbuckling, it sure appears to tell us that war sucks. But is there a way to add a bit more nuance to this message without negating it? Read More

Star Wars and the Myth of Redemptive Violence: Continuing Thoughts

Posted on August 8, 2016by , and Guest Editorials, Not A Committee

obi-chosenone

“Don’t read the comments”—that’s what people are always telling you about the internet, right? That being the case, I have to say that I’m enormously proud of the comments we get here at Eleven-ThirtyEight; even when there are disagreements, they tend to resolve amicably, and input from our audience often results in a deeper understanding and appreciation of the topic in question for all involved.

A couple weeks back, we published a guest piece from Andrew Berg called Star Wars and the Myth of Redemptive Violence, which considered, put simply, whether Star Wars as a franchise was contributing to (or in opposition to) the Western cultural obsession with violence as a just solution. As the days after the piece went on, a discussion continued between Andrew and two longtime ETE commenters—Eric Brown, an occasional guest writer himself, and John Maurer. I find this topic fascinating my own self, and so robust and interesting was their exchange that I eventually sought, and was given, their approval to republish the whole thing as a new piece in its own right.

This piece will also function as a special extension of the conversation if anyone else wants to weigh in further; due to an issue we used to have with spambots, I had to disable comments on pieces older than two weeks, meaning that the original is now closed for good. Here’s to continuing this excellent line of discourse. – Mike, EIC Read More

Europe 2016: A Celebration of the Lucasfilm Story Group

Posted on August 3, 2016by The Works

swce-storygroup

During the “Future Filmmakers” panel, the final event of Star Wars Celebration Europe 2016, Episode VIII director Rian Johnson revealed that he had spent six weeks in San Francisco with the Lucasfilm Story Group developing the story for the film before writing his screenplay. Sitting in the audience, I was at first surprised to learn this, but in retrospect I shouldn’t have been. It confirmed a feeling that had been growing with each panel I had attended throughout the weekend: that the role of the Story Group is wider, and more central to every aspect of Star Wars storytelling, than I had thought.

It is a common misconception that the Story Group exists to ensure continuity between the various media in which Star Wars stories are being told: films, novels, comics and video games. This is certainly part of their role, and we can see the fruits of that in the two most recent novels, Claudia Gray’s Bloodline (which had input from Johnson himself) and Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath: Life Debt. Both books draw together story elements spanning existing novels and films, and also give us tantalizing hints of what may be to come in the sequel trilogy. At the “Star Wars Publishing” panel on Saturday, Matt Martin from the Story Group mentioned that aspects of the Adventures in Wild Space series, ostensibly written for children, will soon make their way into stories aimed at adults. The revelation at that panel that the Rogue One tie-in novel Catalyst will be written by James Luceno also implies an intention to ensure continuity between the film and Luceno’s previous novel Tarkin, which covers the early days of the Death Star project. Read More

Star Wars and the Myth of Redemptive Violence

Posted on July 20, 2016by Guest Editorials

geonosisplosions

Stories have power—and the narratives our societies choose to focus on will, for better or worse, begin to define our reality. The concept of Manifest Destiny helped usher in an age of colonization and imperialism that resulted in millions of deaths and the enslavement of millions more. The narrative of the “American Dream” fostered economic growth and productivity on a scale never seen before, though often at the cost of work-life balances and to the exclusion of those denied equal access to economic institutions. The 1980s conception of the “Welfare Queen” embedded itself into American consciousness and to this day inhibits anti-poverty efforts while encouraging racial animus.

Stories have power—and because of that, we must make sure we are not focusing on a narrative that may ultimately cause harm to others.  With that thought in mind, I worry: Does Star Wars promote the myth of redemptive violence (defined simply as “the belief that violence saves, that war brings peace, and that might makes right”)?

Recently Roy Scranton, an American veteran of the second Iraq war, argued in the New York Times that in Star Wars, “the violence of war has a power that unifies and enlightens…It’s a story about how violence makes us good.” In essence, Scranton argued that Star Wars is simply another piece of America’s cultural myth of redemptive violence. This myth, he argues, is emblematic of the US addiction to war and ultimately helps prop up the same powers that even now wreak violence around the globe.

If his critique is true, then every fan of Star Wars is part and parcel of systemic evil that the myth of redemptive violence has brought upon the world. As a fan, the possibility that this critique might be true frightens me. But is it? Read More

If Star Wars Was Real…

Posted on July 18, 2016by

deathstarisborn-mouseears

Stories like Star Wars exist to take us away from the mundane reality of life, to transport us to a more wondrous place.  Recent weeks have been, in real life, very sobering for those in the UK in the wake of the result of the referendum to stay or leave the European Union. So, in the style of bleak, gallows humour, what might the world of Star Wars really be like? Cue snapshots of an alternative history of the galaxy, far, far, fucking far, away….

Luke Skywalker crashed his landspeeder after being sold illicit moonshine by Wuher, who was subsequently shot by a customer who thought he was being poisoned. Investigation of Wuher’s bar showed that that accusation was not without merit. Fortunately for the galaxy, Skywalker recovered and Wuher was more attentive to merely covertly poisoning his customers from then on.

When told the Death Star was the ultimate in asteroid clearance technology – the galaxy believed it because the Coruscant Star was never wrong. The Emperor had closed meetings with the owner to discuss how to really run the galaxy. Said owner also assured the Emperor, in great detail, that the magazine’s journalists would never, ever slice Imperial communications in pursuit of a story. In similar vein, the documentary A Death Star Is Born was buried for being too accurate a representation of Imperial policy-making. Read More