(DOWNLOAD) "Star Wars' Saving Return (Critical Essay)" by Journal of Religion and Film ~ Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Star Wars' Saving Return (Critical Essay)
- Author : Journal of Religion and Film
- Release Date : January 01, 2009
- Genre: Religion & Spirituality,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 175 KB
Description
The Return of a New Hope for Reading Star Wars [1] In the 1970s traditional religion was out of fashion and the family structure was disintegrating. There was no moral anchor. Lucas remembered how protected he had felt growing up in the cocoonlike culture of the 1950s, a feeling he wanted to communicate in Star Wars. (2) The writer and director himself declared that he felt that he had wanted to use the SW films to teach morality during a time of increasing despair and introspection after Vietnam . Of course, such a self-positioning most readily invites critical attention on the matter and form of Lucas' self-proclaimed 'teaching' [cf. Jas. 3:1f.]. However, a comment made by Lucas concerning his offering simpleminded solutions to complex problems does not bode well for applauding the pedagogic worth of his cinematic product. (3) After all, the complexity of problems, by the very nature of their complex density, defy simpleminded solutions. And anything less endangers the usefulness of the proposed solution since distorted patterns of belief generate distorted practices, and the latter assume or shape the former. In fact, the morally nostalgic mood of 1977's ANH in particular, according to many, has ignored the 'lessons' of Vietnam and the proper suspicion concerning the political potential for hero-myths within a 'righteous us vs. evil them' type ethos its legacy encouraged. ANH 's depiction of good and evil is too clear cut and externalised, and its simplistic moral innocence rides roughshod over proper self-reflection and reasoned scepticism. (4) Such characteristics made it useful to President Ronald Reagan whose (in)famous 'Evil Empire' speech (March 8, 1983) proclaimed in an unself-critical rhetoric that taking the right side in this conflict against Soviet Communism was nothing less than the holy Christian duty of the American people. (5) Peter Lev is right to admit that while "Lucas is not responsible for the uses politicians and governments make of his film... the ease with which his ideas were put to political and military ends shows something about the Manichaean quality of the story." (6)
 "Star Wars' Saving Return (Critical Essay)" by Journal of Religion and Film ~ Book PDF Kindle ePub Free){kind=link}