why do people level these charges at star wars?

[Darth Yan]

While searching the internet, I discovered that there are many people who seem to level charges against star wars such as that it "ruined American Cinema from when it was a golden age" or "paved the way for the rise of ronald reagen" or that it encouraged us to dehumanize other people.

Examples: 1.) http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=6680

2.) http://www.poppolitics.com/archives/200 ... ars-Menace

3.)

A Macdonald's meal of a movie, all fat sugar salt and caffeine, supersized with whiz bang special effects. Tastes great while you're eating it, but short on nourishment. They did it well enough that this junk food has squeezed pretty much everything good off the menu. The pic is just mediocre, but the trends it started have been horrid. Cornball plotting and dialog is one thing, but the simple-minded good vs. evil masquerading as some sort of authentic spirituality is vomit inducing. The sequel, with its Freudian undertones, has some real conflict and character development and is actually a pretty good popcorn movie. But the original may be the most over-rated movie of all time.

4.)

Paul to the Corinthians - 'when i was a child, i thought as a child and played as a child; but when i became a man, i put away my childish things.'

i was living near new york city when this film was first released - i think this was a test release in the new york area; the original promo suggested a serious science-fiction story, along the lines of the cult-favorite 'dune'. it bombed. shortly afterward, on re-release Lucas got the promo he really wanted - part fairy-tale, part Jungian Ur-myth, part retro-serial - and the rest is history. but the history of what -

this film marks the beginning of the end of serious film-making in America. fairy-tales are for children; the old serial films were fun, but badly made; and 'Jungian Ur-myths' constitute a debatable psycho-babble theory; thus what Lucas was really telling his audience, in both film and promo, was that we all needed to be children watching bad films written by Carl Jung - or at least Jungian literary theorist Joseph Campbell, who was actually hired as consultant on this film.

humans, to maintain their self-respect, need to grapple with difficult moral issues, we need to mature, and to learn how to relate to other human beings in complex and sometimes difficult situations; and we need the freedom to think for ourselves in such matters, to risk our own happiness and to live with the consequences. no one is saying that children should not enjoy fairy-tales, and perhaps they really do need these for psychological development. but even eventually children need to 'grow-up' - to stop being children.

'star wars' would not have been so damaging to this culture if it had presented itself as a children's film. but Lucas was quite explicitly targeting, as audience, burnt out hippies, participants of the failed 'cultural revolution' of the '60s; and in doing so, he began steering them toward the political decisions that would at last put our culture and its economy, and its future, into terrible jeopardy - voting for Reagan, selfishly demanding tax cuts, mockery of dissent and dissenters, and flocking into paganistic 'fundamentalist Christian' churches seeking 'spiritual awakening' and, as many now proclaim, apocalypse.

well, obviously, just one movie isn't going to accomplish all that. what the success of star wars did was to distract adult attention from ethically mature films where moral choices could be examined in their complexity; to such an extent that Hollywood - never all that supportive of such films, anyway - simply stopped making such films for a time. the bottom came in 1985, when the 2 best films to use truly cinematic storytelling to wrestle with mature choices were from japan - Kurosawa's 'ran' and 'Godzilla 1985'. and you know the world's doomed when a big green lizard has to be the one to make you ask important questions about the ecology, and history, and whatever place in the larger universe our tiny species finds itself.

i mention Godzilla not simply for rhetorical effect. like the old fairy-tales, Godzilla is best appreciated by the young and the young at heart; like the old serial films, the Godzilla films are filled with gaffs and silliness; like the typical Jungian Ur-myth or archetype, Godzilla calls to some deeper part of our psyche, which is why we are entertained by his appearance.

but unlike star wars, the Godzilla films never insist that they are the only show around - or at least the only worth viewing. and unlike star wars, they never pretend to be better than they are, or that they're accomplishing some necessary cultural mission. and unlike star wars, they do not insist that we remain 'forever young', only that we respect our having once been young, and that we respect the youth of others. and unlike star wars, they are inherently democratic - not because they insist we all be individuals, but rather that they insist that we all are already individuals, and yet to survive, we must come together and learn to depend on one another - democracy only has value to a collective of individuals, a human society. rabid individualists are monsters - rather like Godzilla's most intractable foe, king ghidorah.

well, that's the big argument. for those who prefer simple solutions - star wars is a crude, fascistic, socially-retarded scam that the ex-hippies foisted on what was once a great culture. whether it will ever achieve greatness again - or whether it shall have cinema when it does - remains open to question.

'now we see as through a glass, darkly, but then face to face.'

5.) http://nymag.com/movies/reviews/66799/

Finally, there are others who say that it is just for children.

I'm just curious as to why people come to these conclusions.

[Simon_Jester]

One legitimate charge that can be raised to Star Wars is that there's effectively zero social commentary in it- certainly true of the original trilogy, arguably true of the prequels insofar as they were plotted out long before the events some have said they were commenting on.

Star Wars is, frankly, escapist: a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. A lot of other science fiction done in the fifties, sixties, and seventies was very much the opposite: very much a commentary on social trends, and on the potential consequences of those trends raging out of control. To that much, I can see the point in (4): that Star Wars (and the many escapist-fiction films that have followed in its wake) tend to distract us from taking on that kind of thing.

Science fiction that makes us ask tough questions about bioethics, about the relationship between man and nature or man and machine, that serves a higher purpose that ultimately helps make enlightened adults out of us. It gives us internal humility and awareness that we can wreck our society through mismanagement; science fiction was quite successful in this role during the 1950s by presenting the specter of nuclear war in extreme, horrifying scope.

Star Wars, say what you will about it, does not serve that higher purpose. You can come to it as an enlightened adult and think about it as one, but watching it won't make you think if you weren't predisposed to do so.

And so what (4) is getting at makes some sense to me: that by steering a course away from social commentary and towards escapism for the Boomer generation and its descendants, Star Wars (and, again, many other films like it) do contribute to the mismanagement of our culture. We just don't think about these things as much as we used to, and when we do we're less likely to see our concerns reflected in cultural motifs that give us something to rally around.

[Srelex]

Plenty of scifi since Star Wars deals with social commentary--off the topic of my head, District 9 and Jurassic Park. And there was also plenty of dumb scifi before Star Wars, like random trashy giant monster or flying saucer flicks of the fifties. You could argue that they reflected things like the nuclear arms race, but if we go to such generalizations we can apply the same to Star Wars--the Death Star anyone? Representative of US inflated arms spending?

Ultimately, it just boils down to how deeply you look into such things. Some people called the Matrix a deep and insightful masterpiece, others just saw Keanu Reeves jumping around.

[Darth Yan]

what about the "it dehumanized people" or that it made cinema less good? Or that it's facistic. those charges struck me as somewhat far fetched

[Srelex]

what about the "it dehumanized people" or that it made cinema less good? Or that it's facistic. those charges struck me as somewhat far fetched

Cinema has always been a sea of shit with islands of diamond bobbing around. Star Wars may have encouraged vapid blockbusters, but it was hardly without precedence (e.g. Jaws) and it's not like the masses weren't flooding to see commercial trash before anyway..

As for fascistic...eh? The main characters are rebels against a giant authority. Prequels aside, SW doesn't really have much of an overt and direct political focus either way.

EDIT:Some clarification.

[Guardsman Bass]

Cinema has always been a sea of shit with islands of diamond bobbing around. Star Wars may have encouraged vapid blockbusters, but it was hardly without precedence (e.g. Jaws) and it's not like the masses weren't flooding to see commercial trash before anyway..

Exactly. I don't think it's fair at all to really blame Star Wars for a trend in movie-making that had much more to do with fundamental changes in the movie-making business than it did with the success of a particular film (or film series).*

* The biggest one of those changes was the rapid corrosion in audience size for films due to television. Studios (and theaters) responded by relying more heavily on films for audiences they could still herd in with massive advertising (particularly teens and children), and eventually on films that generate "back-end" in the form of merchandise, VHS/DVD/Blu-Ray, and so forth.

[The Romulan Republic]

One legitimate charge that can be raised to Star Wars is that there's effectively zero social commentary in it- certainly true of the original trilogy, arguably true of the prequels insofar as they were plotted out long before the events some have said they were commenting on.

You can find social/moral messages in them. The importance of forgiveness and redemption, for the OT. The dangers of cynicism and arrogance for the PT.

If you mean they aren't (by and large) trying to preach to the audience for the sake of propaganda, then yes. And that's a good thing.

You're right that they aren't the deepest films, of course.

[Darth Tedious]

I find number 4 a little farfetched.

but unlike star wars, the Godzilla films never insist that they are the only show around

When did the Star Wars franchise claim to be the only films around? I must have missed Uncle George's memo on that one...
Also:

or at least the only worth viewing. and unlike star wars, they never pretend to be better than they are, or that they're accomplishing some necessary cultural mission.

Again, when did Star Wars claim to be doing so? I thought Lucas was pretty clear that the cultural mission of Star Wars was to be fun, light entertainment.

As for the title question of the thread:
I think people sometimes feel they need to justify their dislike of Star Wars. It just isn't enough to say "I really don't think lightsabers are cool."

[Jim Raynor]

what about the "it dehumanized people" or that it made cinema less good? Or that it's facistic. those charges struck me as somewhat far fetched

Cinema has always been a sea of shit with islands of diamond bobbing around. Star Wars may have encouraged vapid blockbusters, but it was hardly without precedence (e.g. Jaws) and it's not like the masses weren't flooding to see commercial trash before anyway..

It's the "good ol' days" mentality. Everything old was smarter, more moral, or just plain better. When I actually go back and watch some of these old movies from before the days of CGI blockbusters, I laugh or cringe at the clumsy action, unsophisticated (often racist or jingoistic) writing, and corny acting.

As for fascistic...eh? The main characters are rebels against a giant authority. Prequels aside, SW doesn't really have much of an overt and direct political focus either way.

It's the stupid argument that David Brin brought up years ago, and which Wong dealt with on this site. It's based on the stupid misinterpretation that the Rebels were fighting to install Leia (or some other genetically superior Jedi) as their new dictator.

[Batman]

The OT most definitely had a fascist bend...for the Imperials. Which were, you know, the Bad Guys. As for the Rebellion trying to install Leia as the next Empress, not only is there zero evidence for that being their intention in the movies, but in the EU she repeatedly refused to BE head of state for precisely that reason.

[Darth Tedious]

Seriously, how stupid would one have to be to think that Leia would have been installed as the new Empress?

Clearly the job would have gone to Mon Mothma.

[Agent Sorchus]

It's interesting that the EU acknowledges the whole Mon Mothma for Emperor idea with the Garm Bel Iblis character. Truly the EU rose to the challenge in this case.

[Knife]

It is just plain and simple elitism. Their personal favorites were not the huge success they imagine them to be, so why not bag on someone's success and do a character assassination of it.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Seriously, how stupid would one have to be to think that Leia would have been installed as the new Empress?

Clearly the job would have gone to Mon Mothma.

Actually some Imperials approached the Republic Provisional Council to negotiate an end to hostility in the Galactic Civil War some time after Endor. The plan was that the Empire would be converted into a constitutional monarchy with Palpatine's adolescent grand-niece as the figurehead. However, before they got very far the Imperial who was spearheading the negotiations, a female Admiral named Betl Oxtroe, was assassinated by Noghri.

[Darksider]

Noghri?

Was it Thrawn's doing, or was palpatine pulling strings from Byss again?

[Simon_Jester]

Plenty of scifi since Star Wars deals with social commentary--off the topic of my head, District 9 and Jurassic Park. And there was also plenty of dumb scifi before Star Wars, like random trashy giant monster or flying saucer flicks of the fifties. You could argue that they reflected things like the nuclear arms race, but if we go to such generalizations we can apply the same to Star Wars--the Death Star anyone? Representative of US inflated arms spending.

True. I think the complaints are hung on Star Wars because it helped make escapist fiction into something on the A-movie list, rather than the B-movie roles occupied by trashy giant monsters and the like.

I wouldn't take any of this nearly so far myself, but I do understand the general basis for the argument.

One legitimate charge that can be raised to Star Wars is that there's effectively zero social commentary in it- certainly true of the original trilogy, arguably true of the prequels insofar as they were plotted out long before the events some have said they were commenting on.

You can find social/moral messages in them. The importance of forgiveness and redemption, for the OT. The dangers of cynicism and arrogance for the PT.

If you mean they aren't (by and large) trying to preach to the audience for the sake of propaganda, then yes. And that's a good thing.

It depends on what you mean by 'preach.'

One of the roles of art is social commentary- use the fact that your audience has stepped slightly out of phase with their everyday world to get them to think about what's happening in that world. That's been going on since classical times. Not all good art contains social commentary, and very little good art is dominated by social commentary (though there are exceptions; think about 1984), but it's often there.

Criticizing Star Wars on the grounds that its self-conscious "ur-mythic" plot leaves little or no room for social commentary is understandable.

As for fascistic...eh? The main characters are rebels against a giant authority. Prequels aside, SW doesn't really have much of an overt and direct political focus either way.

It's the stupid argument that David Brin brought up years ago, and which Wong dealt with on this site. It's based on the stupid misinterpretation that the Rebels were fighting to install Leia (or some other genetically superior Jedi) as their new dictator.

I don't think that's quite right.

The complaint pitched against Star Wars here comes from something else- the observation that while other people may play large roles in the galaxy, so much of its history comes about at the hands of a few specially empowered individuals, most of whom obtained their power by birth. Palpatine took over the galaxy thanks in large part to his magic powers; Anakin delivered the galaxy into his hands, a job he could do only because of his magic powers; Luke took the galaxy out of Palpatine's hands because, in turn, he had magic powers. In each case, they were born with the magic powers.

That is, like it or not, an aristocratic vision of the galaxy. The other guys may participate, may even play important roles, but it's like... like the qualitative difference between Achilles and Patroclus in the Iliad. Patroclus is a tough fighter, who leads troops bravely and turns the tide of a battle, but when you get right down to it his main role in the story is to get killed and motivate Achilles to action. Because where Patroclus is tough, Achilles is a murderous force of nature- his rage single-handedly routs entire armies and devastates his enemies.

The Star Wars universe isn't a 'tyranny of the empowered,' in the sense that the Force-empowered "royal family" runs the galaxy. But the power to decide important events, the points the narrative focuses on, tends to fall back into the hands of the empowered, the special, the chosen ones.

Others have an effect, but their effect is usually defined in terms of their effect on others. Luke destroys the Death Star, and only he can do it; Han's contribution boils down to... saving Luke's life so he can destroy the Death Star.

It's not a despotic or fascist perspective, but it's not an egalitarian one either. Some people like their fiction more egalitarian, with fewer supermen and more ordinary people playing their parts at the turning points of history.

[Bakustra]

Most of the vaunted social commentary in sci-fi film is and was frankly garbage as well. Not to mention that 2001 has no social commentary whatsoever, but none of these fuckers will dare say anything bad about it unless being iconoclastic for the sake of iconoclasm. There are sci-fi and fantasy movies that critique society reasonably, but those were never the majority of sci-fi flicks. So Star Wars only gets hated because it was popular and remains popular. This ressentiment is mildly amusing when presented in conjunction with complaints about its elitist nature, though.

Said complaints ring hollow because most of the people who make them cling to the Western Literary Canon like lice to the scalp, but the Iliad and Odyssey are far more elitist. Shakespeare equally so. Dickens only slightly less. It's only recently that such ideas have fallen out of favor, and ironically this arises from out of a tradition that denigrated the arts enjoyed by the proletarian public, and still does to a certain extent. In other words, in order to say that Star Wars is worthless because of said elitism, we would have to trash the majority of literature for doing it too.

In addition, brute social commentary rarely lasts long. Invasion of the Body Snatchers will be far less effective once the Cold War fades from living memory, and I suspect will transition into being a revelation of the paranoia and xenophobia of our age. "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" will survive longer with its effectiveness intact, because its commentary is not of an age but for many (though not all) because, while Communists will lose their associations, fear will remain intact in the human psyche. Shakespeare's commentary on his own times is only of interest to the historian, but his plays still move people because their insights will remain. And Star Wars may well survive too, at least in part because it is not a period piece.

In other words, what merit these charges have is lessened by the fact that they apply to so many other works of art, and at least one of them is actually a point for, rather than against, Star Wars. That is, unless you believe that applicability in art should be as little as possible, which is an odd position for a critic to take.

[dworkin]

My only hypothesis is that they were molested by the film reels back in the late 70's.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Noghri?

Was it Thrawn's doing, or was palpatine pulling strings from Byss again?

It's not mentioned who ordered the assassination, though it's first mentioned in the Dark Empire Sourcebook, so my first guess would be Palpatine through intermediaries.

[Connor MacLeod]

SW could be said to have "lessons" in it, althought hey're going to be of a different variety than what Simon is talking about. Rather "simpler" good vs Evil tpye stuff, or stuff pertaining more to mythology and such. There are always people who will analyze a given genre or medium for symbolism, subtext or something (including Star Wars.) and i'm sure some people consider that important, intellectual and relevant.

I also admit I tend to be more partial to the "softer" side of things simply because I get disgusted precisely with the "social commentary" type sci fi, especially the varieties that use sci fi or fantasy as a platform to espouse their own personal political/ethical/whatever views. Specifically, the problem is, lots of people do it, but few manage to successfully balance "issues" with "sci fi/fantasy" elements - many writers I've read tend to go far too overboard into the "issues/commentary" category, which sort of ruins it for me. The most egregious and obvious example being Terry fucking Goodkind and his "social commentary thinly veiled as fantasy" crap, but I know I've read a few sci fi authors that did similar (I found some of Asimov's robot stories to be rather bland in that regard, although I always liked the R Daneel mysteries, although Asimov never got pompous the way I feel some hard sci fi does.)

Also it tend to grate on me the way some "fans" of "issues/commentary" type fiction tend to get downright elitist (Orions Arm, I'm looking right at you.)

This is really an area that involves more of subjective opinion and value judgements than hard fact, so not everyone is going to agree on things. The best you'll get is that "everyone is entitled to an opinion"

[Darth Yan]

to be honest rosenbaums arguements that it caused people to have a more detatched views of casualties in iraq, as well as to make soldiers more detatched from killing the enemies struck me as the most niave and retarded (tied with schnakenberg's it ruined cinema arguement)

[Srelex]

to be honest rosenbaums arguements that it caused people to have a more detatched views of casualties in iraq, as well as to make soldiers more detatched from killing the enemies struck me as the most niave and retarded (tied with schnakenberg's it ruined cinema arguement)

Wait, what? Couldn't you apply that to hundreds of other movies? Such as just about every WW2 flick ever made?

[Eleas]

Western media has a long-standing tradition of mocking escapist fantasy. Consequently, a number of writers grew tired of their work being rejected on principle. They began placing greater emphasis on social commentary, literary deconstruction, themes, scientific plausibility and the like, thereby changing the perception of what "real" or "hard" Sci-Fi ought to be.

Now, enter Star Wars as a phenomenon. Star Wars did not pretend to sophistication or realism. It was unabashed space opera and swashbuckling adventure. It did not apologize for its bright colours and loud volume -- or its own success, for that matter -- and so flew in the face of established convention stating that Sci-Fi, in order to exist, had to say something profound about the human condition.

[Simon_Jester]

Eleas, in mitigation I'd say that science fiction is such a good tool for social commentary that it's reasonable to expect its leading lights to supply it. Modern Western civilization needs social commentary in a way few earlier eras have; ever since the 1910s we've had an ever-growing ability to destroy ourselves by arranging our society badly.

Not everything needs to serve that purpose, and I don't mind escapism as such. But when we talk about 'escapism,' it's worth preserving Tolkien's notion that there are two forms of 'escape:' that of the deserter and that of the prisoner. Tolkien himself wrote 'prisoner-escape' literature: a deliberate attempt to recapture something that he believed was being lost in the mass-industrial culture of early 20th century Britain. There was something there to escape from, and something to escape to.

The '60s counterculture even made a bit of a flagship out of what Tolkien was trying to escape to: the idea that there could be nobility in dissenting from the '50s postwar culture of mass man and mass production, that humanity's relationship with nature should mean more than "tear it down when it becomes inconvenient," and so forth.

So the question then is, fine, Star Wars is escapist. What is it trying to escape from, and what is it trying to escape to?

[Havok]

Star Wars was an escape from the bleary society of the 70s that was coping with many of the things we have today, loss of faith in government, a war that the country as a whole does not want to be involved in, unemployment rising, gas prices rising, a loss of identity as to who and what we are and where we stand on a world stage.

Sometimes escapism isn't academic, sometimes it is just enjoying yourself for a little while when you life sucks. And sometimes (not often, but sometimes) Tolkien can eat a dick.