Star Wars: An exercise in literary explication, courtesy Bill the Pundit Guy (The Jedi Council as traditional Catholic Church), Dean Esmay (original trilogy as collection of archetypal signifiers that lend themselves to endless allegorical attachments), and Nick Gillespie (medieval Knight-errant tale, ala Gawain).
All very interesting.
Personally, I’ve always seen Lucas’s sweeping intergallactic epic as a thinly-veiled wish-fulfillment narrative penned by a soft-spoken dork, with Lucas as Luke, and the defeat of the Empire a metaphor for getting into Barbie Benton’s panties. But then, it was the 70s, and I’m kinda shallow that way…
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update: more here (via Moxie)
Jeez. And my dumbass thought it was just a movie.
(which, of course, I haven’t seen yet.)
R2D2 and C3PO? Shiny, motor-powered “marital” aids…
Chewbacca? The bear skin rug he wanted Barbie laid out on…
Yeah, I remember that too, Jeff. And if I remember correctly, about 90 % of 70’s pop culture was geared towards getting into Barbie Benton’s panties and … no, wait … that was me. And about a blue million other guys.
Of course the link I was going to provide won’t work. Damn censors.
Gee, and here I was always thinking it was about the battle between good and evil.
Idea: a revisionist history of the Star Wars saga showing that the Jedi council & their “Republic” are the oppressors, with the Sith being the oppressed liberators, falsely smeared as reactionary by the goose stepping rebels’ propaganda machine.
After all, it would explain why all of the bad guys are so damn cool, and all the good guys are so damn annoying.