I've reached an age where I am suitably embarrassed by how late in life* I was still enthralled by Star Wars. In that respect, I am possibly in the minority: Star Wars is a cornerstone of the contemporary cultural encyclopedia of many a man child, rather than something they were interested in as a kid. How else can you explain Vodafone considering Yoda to be a suitable brand ambassador?
Star Wars is a useful piece of rights-of-passage filmmaking that saw many a young person through the darkness of an 80s childhood. It taught us many useful adult lessons, not least about technology, which should be viewed as either:
a) polite yet totally ineffectual (C3P0),
b) belligerent and utterly incomprehensible (R2D2) or
c) functional but occasionally requiring a kick to fulfill its potential (Millennium Falcon).
Indeed a major lesson of the original trilogy is that efficient technology and organisations are to be feared, because it is impossible to be technologically and/or organizationally efficient without being evil. This is perhaps the most effective message that Lucas portrayed, indeed he is at least partially responsible for making this counter-cultural concept mainstream. Whilst we all consume goods from vast corporations at a rate unseen in human history, we get nervous and edgy when these corporations become too vast, and rightly so. The Microsofts and Apples of this world maintain their market dominance by methods not dissimilar from those of the Empire (minus the killing people bit). As a consumer of goods from these companies you are basically told to either subscribe to their system wholesale or not at all: protectionist strategies that even in the late 70s were viewed as undesirable and old fashioned. So, oddly, the technological universe can still be divided into the factions defined by Star Wars: those who are happy to be conform, to allow a single, faceless, homogeneous organisation to form their world view in exchange for technological efficiency, and those who are willing to accept a ramshackle technological landscape inhabited by myriad worldviews, personalities, races and cultures. I will not make judgment, but Star Wars clearly does.
Of course, it is not just (70s/80s) adult attitudes to technology that are presented, young Luke Skywalker has to deal with all the pains of growing up, from learning to operate his 'lightsaber' correctly, to fulfilling the oedipal cycle by killing his father (although he gets off with his sister, due to his mum being entirely absent from the picture). On the way he has to deal with the fact that adults lie to you if they think it's in your best interest, the knowledge that everything is not always as it seems and that to achieve anything you have to put in quite a lot of effort (and literally fight against yourself, etc etc).
Yes it's tough growing up, and Star Wars helped us get there. However, that doesn't mean we need to spend all of our adult lives eulogising it. Surely it should be like any other part of our childhood, which we remember fondly, but with an adult understanding of what's past. In that respect, surely the Walt Disney company taking over the franchise appears wholly fitting, they are specialists in children's filmmaking after all. If you find yourself in the position of being a grownup with genuine concerns over what will happen to the franchise next, you are either George Lucas, a Disney employee, a little bit immature or hopelessly nostalgic. If you're any of the last three, it's time to move on.
*about 24
Star Wars is a useful piece of rights-of-passage filmmaking that saw many a young person through the darkness of an 80s childhood. It taught us many useful adult lessons, not least about technology, which should be viewed as either:
a) polite yet totally ineffectual (C3P0),
b) belligerent and utterly incomprehensible (R2D2) or
c) functional but occasionally requiring a kick to fulfill its potential (Millennium Falcon).
Indeed a major lesson of the original trilogy is that efficient technology and organisations are to be feared, because it is impossible to be technologically and/or organizationally efficient without being evil. This is perhaps the most effective message that Lucas portrayed, indeed he is at least partially responsible for making this counter-cultural concept mainstream. Whilst we all consume goods from vast corporations at a rate unseen in human history, we get nervous and edgy when these corporations become too vast, and rightly so. The Microsofts and Apples of this world maintain their market dominance by methods not dissimilar from those of the Empire (minus the killing people bit). As a consumer of goods from these companies you are basically told to either subscribe to their system wholesale or not at all: protectionist strategies that even in the late 70s were viewed as undesirable and old fashioned. So, oddly, the technological universe can still be divided into the factions defined by Star Wars: those who are happy to be conform, to allow a single, faceless, homogeneous organisation to form their world view in exchange for technological efficiency, and those who are willing to accept a ramshackle technological landscape inhabited by myriad worldviews, personalities, races and cultures. I will not make judgment, but Star Wars clearly does.
Of course, it is not just (70s/80s) adult attitudes to technology that are presented, young Luke Skywalker has to deal with all the pains of growing up, from learning to operate his 'lightsaber' correctly, to fulfilling the oedipal cycle by killing his father (although he gets off with his sister, due to his mum being entirely absent from the picture). On the way he has to deal with the fact that adults lie to you if they think it's in your best interest, the knowledge that everything is not always as it seems and that to achieve anything you have to put in quite a lot of effort (and literally fight against yourself, etc etc).
Yes it's tough growing up, and Star Wars helped us get there. However, that doesn't mean we need to spend all of our adult lives eulogising it. Surely it should be like any other part of our childhood, which we remember fondly, but with an adult understanding of what's past. In that respect, surely the Walt Disney company taking over the franchise appears wholly fitting, they are specialists in children's filmmaking after all. If you find yourself in the position of being a grownup with genuine concerns over what will happen to the franchise next, you are either George Lucas, a Disney employee, a little bit immature or hopelessly nostalgic. If you're any of the last three, it's time to move on.
*about 24
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