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Against Star Wars

I've often wondered why certain stories grab me and others don't. So I thought I'd share my wonderings. This post is by no means balanced. But, then again, balance is boring. I have several thoughts on why Star Wars hasn't got the grip of other stories and here is a short list. 1. No Food This is something my wife first pointed out to me: no one eats in Star Wars. This may seem like picking at nits, but hear me out. How much of your life is spent finding and consuming food? How many of your best friendships have been formed over a dinner table? It's in eating that a baby learns that his mother loves him. Arguably the most important artifact of any particular culture is its food. And what do we have from the Star Wars movies? Blue milk and I think a pear. Right now, Disney is working on a Star Wars wing at one of their parks. But what will they serve at the restaurants? Other than strangely hued dairy product, that is. Man shall not live by R2D2-shaped chicken nuggets alone. I've been reading through the Narnia books recently and there's is a whole section in Prince Caspian when the children are looking for food and at last they find an overgrown apple orchard. Then for the next few days they have to eat only apples. After a while they get grumpy because they haven't had anything but apples for days. But there is none of this is Star Wars. One of the most basic human feelings is that of hunger. And one of the most basic senses of satisfaction is having a big tasty meal with good people. If a character doesn't get hungry or enjoy a good meal, an audience's connection will be stunted. 2. No Sex Now by this I don't mean that I think there should be more bedroom scenes in the galaxy far far away. It's just that no one is attracted to another person. Rey and Finn's relationship is yawn-worthy. When they first meet, he tries to grab her hand and she swipes him away. And in the end, when he's laying on a bed because he got his spine sliced up by a lightsaber, she gives him a chaste kiss on the forehead and walks away. Baby, tonight, you look so...Platonic. I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me that this universe was populated via space stork. On a related note, there is no family. I understand that this is a strange thing to say about a series in which all the big dramatic turns are about parentage. But I might care about Kylo Ren killing his father if I had seen them getting along at some point in the past; perhaps over a meal. It's an attempt to break something without building it first. The same is true of the opening of Rogue One. Also, the entire prequel trilogy is about how Anakin's desire for Natalie Portman must be quashed. Don't you know, Annie, that desire leads to suffering. The morality is monkish in all the wrong ways. 3. No Good and No Evil All of my points have been, of course, related to the story's underlying religious elements, but this one is so most obviously. In the original three movies there is an imbalance in the force. So the goal is to bring balance back to the force. But the audience doesn't want a balance between light and darkness. An audience wants a decisive victory of light over darkness. Balance is boring. The underlying morality is Buddhist. All of life is suffering. Suffering is caused by desire. Eliminate desire and you'll eliminate suffering. This shows up most obviously in the prequels, but it's present also in the sexlessness and lack of food in the other movies. Conclusion So why do I care? Because stories matter. Kenneth Burke said that stories are equipment for living. ND Wilson said that stories are like catechisms for the impulses. You can't build a good culture full of laughter, feasting, and lovemaking if your raw material is noodle-spined people whose impulses were trained by Star Wars. I've tried to defend that thesis above, but If you disagree, I'd love to hear from you. 

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