I have had the opportunity to watch Star Wars movies alot. Boy, 6, is enthralled with them. He has taken to using the force on automatic doors. He cops a pose near the door and moves his hand majestically, and the door opens. He is overselling it though, and he is going to start working on his subtle moves soon.
But while watching the movies again, I came to a pair of understandings. To other people, these may seem to be of the category “Gee, what was your first clue?”, but they are still interesting.
The first understanding is that they are not deep. There is nothing subtle about the dialog. George Lucas is famous for actually making the participation points on his movies worth something, and for these actors, they have earned them. Padme’s speech to Anakin is especially noteworthy. Natalie Portman’s ability to deliver those lines without simultaneously delivering her appendix is the stuff of which Academy awards are made. But all riffing aside, these are not movies that really speak to the universal elements of narative. These are B serial movies dressed up in 64 bit CGI. For all of the blather about Joseph Campbell and mythic structure, the only structure in these movies is held up by popcorn, as in, buy more popcorn and settle in for a while.
The second understanding is that we are a very un-Christian society. The Christians co-opted one of the two narrative paths that exist and want to own it. These movies show that people recognize that co-option. Paul Johnson, in “History of the Jews” writes that there were two systems of thought in the early Western world, say about 2500 years ago: the Greeks and the Jews. He says that the Jewish system of thought was more well developed and that the literature was richer. He actually says a lot more than that, but you’ll have to read the book. My take away from looking at the literature and the cosmology is that the Greeks venerated the tragic character arc. Man’s path was influenced by the gods, but once a certain point had been passed, the tragedy would play out. Aristotle, in his Poetics, thought that “Oedipus Rex” was the greatest, most pure, play. The Jews offered a different narrative arc: man could be redeemed, could become morally better, through faith in God. Being one of the chosen is kind of a footnote in all of this, but under the Greeks, Judaism was practiced by a wider group of people (See “Samaritan”) Hollywood has taken the later narrative arc to breast and just about every movie made in Hollywood has a happy ending. Those are the movies that people want to see.
I have gone rather far afield from my premise that we live in a very un-Christian society. Note how deeply the idea of “The Force”, minus the mitochondrians, has seeped. This is a very pagan idea, and people accept it as fact. Think about the universalist concepts that exist in those movies that are non-Christian.
It may seem that we are living in a society that is verging on fundamentalism, but with the ascendency of fundamentalism comes responsibility for answers to problems. Fundamental religions can no more solve major societal problems than they can change the tire on my car. What they can do is offer moral support for individuals who are trying to find answers on an individual level. Which is what they have always done.