A Small Defense of the Star Wars Prequels
***Sigh*** There are lots of problems with TPM, but its failure to be mythic isn’t one of them because that’s, in fact, the point of the entire prequel trilogy — demythologizing what we thought we knew about the Old Republic, the Jedi, and the rise of the Empire. The Old Republic wasn’t a “more civilized age,” it was a corrupt and flawed entity riven with divisions. The Jedi weren’t “guardians of peace and justice,” they were guardians of the status quo to the extent that it favored their privileged position in galactic society. The Empire wasn’t some exogenous force that crushed the Old Republic from without, but rather it was the Old Republic itself that rotted from within. Ben Kenobi talking with Luke about the past in SW:ANH wasn’t accurately and objectively describing anything — he was the equivalent of someone in the 1930s (witnessing various totalitarian regimes) explaining to a young person about what a golden age existed prior to World War I. I’m constantly annoyed at the number of people who don’t get this because, by the end of RotS, Lucas couldn’t have spelled this point out any harder than if he’d had theater box offices hand out copies of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism along with the tickets.
Notes:
Folksonomies: criticism mythology insightful
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Defense of "The Phantom Menace"