Friends... these days it's tricky
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krislizbuff
Posts: 15 Member
With phone in hand all the time, by every human being. How does one make friends any more these days? I find it very hard to make friends my age. I don't go to church, I don't hang out in bars. My boyfriend just moved here from ct and it'd be nice to have some couple friends to do stuff with. What's everyone doing to make friends these days. Or am I the only loser?
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Replies
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Do you go to the gym? Perhaps some group classes to find others with similar interests?1
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When you find out tell me4
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Join the Navy?1
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All my friends enjoy Star Wars. Did you know the scene from The Empire Strikes Back, in which Vader tells Luke that he is his father, is probably one of the greatest and most famous movie scenes in history. The reasons why this scene is so great are many and obvious. Probably the most important reason is that of surprise. Nobody ever would have predicted that Luke could have come from Vader. This is especially true after Ben tells Luke that Vader betrayed and murdered his father.
The original Star Wars trilogy has many instances in which certain events are not expected by the first-time viewer (such as the destruction of Alderaan, Ben's death, Lando's betrayal, etc.). Part of George Lucas' genius in telling the original Star Wars story was his ability to surprise the audience.
Had the original Star Wars trilogy come out today, I do not think it would have done nearly as well as it did in the late '70's and early '80's. Why is this? Because of the rampant spoilers on the Internet. Even if meeseeksanddestroy is a thespian really tried, it would be impossible for Lucas to surprise the audience nowadays.
This rabid impatience of the fans to know everything about the story before seeing the movie has brought down the overall initial perception of the prequels, in m opinion.
Writing this essay, five days before Attack of the Clones is released, I know practically nothing about the Episode II story line. I have heard of the words Dooku and Jango, but I have no idea who or what they are. It has by no means been easy for me to avoid all of the spoilers for these three years.
Being an avid Star Wars fan, I frequent web sites like StarWars.com, TheForce.Net, and JediNet.Com. But the closer it came to May 16, 2002, the harder and harder it has become not to accidentally see something compromising of the story.
In the past several months I've hardly been to the official site at all, and there are large sections of the various fan sites that I have to avoid. However it will have been well worth it for me on the sixteenth when I see the story unfold over the course of the movie's two hour fourteen minute length. This is as opposed to seeing it unfold over the course of three years' worth of spoilers.
To get right down to the point, I think that the movies and the fan community as a whole are diminished in the long run by the ceaseless spoilers. While not always easy, waiting out the time between movies will greatly enhance the actual event for which we all are waiting. I know it will for me.
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All my friends enjoy Star Wars. Did you know the scene from The Empire Strikes Back, in which Vader tells Luke that he is his father, is probably one of the greatest and most famous movie scenes in history. The reasons why this scene is so great are many and obvious. Probably the most important reason is that of surprise. Nobody ever would have predicted that Luke could have come from Vader. This is especially true after Ben tells Luke that Vader betrayed and murdered his father.
The original Star Wars trilogy has many instances in which certain events are not expected by the first-time viewer (such as the destruction of Alderaan, Ben's death, Lando's betrayal, etc.). Part of George Lucas' genius in telling the original Star Wars story was his ability to surprise the audience.
Had the original Star Wars trilogy come out today, I do not think it would have done nearly as well as it did in the late '70's and early '80's. Why is this? Because of the rampant spoilers on the Internet. Even if meeseeksanddestroy is a thespian really tried, it would be impossible for Lucas to surprise the audience nowadays.
This rabid impatience of the fans to know everything about the story before seeing the movie has brought down the overall initial perception of the prequels, in m opinion.
Writing this essay, five days before Attack of the Clones is released, I know practically nothing about the Episode II story line. I have heard of the words Dooku and Jango, but I have no idea who or what they are. It has by no means been easy for me to avoid all of the spoilers for these three years.
Being an avid Star Wars fan, I frequent web sites like StarWars.com, TheForce.Net, and JediNet.Com. But the closer it came to May 16, 2002, the harder and harder it has become not to accidentally see something compromising of the story.
In the past several months I've hardly been to the official site at all, and there are large sections of the various fan sites that I have to avoid. However it will have been well worth it for me on the sixteenth when I see the story unfold over the course of the movie's two hour fourteen minute length. This is as opposed to seeing it unfold over the course of three years' worth of spoilers.
To get right down to the point, I think that the movies and the fan community as a whole are diminished in the long run by the ceaseless spoilers. While not always easy, waiting out the time between movies will greatly enhance the actual event for which we all are waiting. I know it will for me.
Tl;dr3 -
jenibethbu wrote: »Do you go to the gym? Perhaps some group classes to find others with similar interests?
No gym, I walk and bike. Great suggestion if I went to the gym.
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All my friends enjoy Star Wars. Did you know the scene from The Empire Strikes Back, in which Vader tells Luke that he is his father, is probably one of the greatest and most famous movie scenes in history. The reasons why this scene is so great are many and obvious. Probably the most important reason is that of surprise. Nobody ever would have predicted that Luke could have come from Vader. This is especially true after Ben tells Luke that Vader betrayed and murdered his father.
The original Star Wars trilogy has many instances in which certain events are not expected by the first-time viewer (such as the destruction of Alderaan, Ben's death, Lando's betrayal, etc.). Part of George Lucas' genius in telling the original Star Wars story was his ability to surprise the audience.
Had the original Star Wars trilogy come out today, I do not think it would have done nearly as well as it did in the late '70's and early '80's. Why is this? Because of the rampant spoilers on the Internet. Even if meeseeksanddestroy is a thespian really tried, it would be impossible for Lucas to surprise the audience nowadays.
This rabid impatience of the fans to know everything about the story before seeing the movie has brought down the overall initial perception of the prequels, in m opinion.
Writing this essay, five days before Attack of the Clones is released, I know practically nothing about the Episode II story line. I have heard of the words Dooku and Jango, but I have no idea who or what they are. It has by no means been easy for me to avoid all of the spoilers for these three years.
Being an avid Star Wars fan, I frequent web sites like StarWars.com, TheForce.Net, and JediNet.Com. But the closer it came to May 16, 2002, the harder and harder it has become not to accidentally see something compromising of the story.
In the past several months I've hardly been to the official site at all, and there are large sections of the various fan sites that I have to avoid. However it will have been well worth it for me on the sixteenth when I see the story unfold over the course of the movie's two hour fourteen minute length. This is as opposed to seeing it unfold over the course of three years' worth of spoilers.
To get right down to the point, I think that the movies and the fan community as a whole are diminished in the long run by the ceaseless spoilers. While not always easy, waiting out the time between movies will greatly enhance the actual event for which we all are waiting. I know it will for me.
Ummmm? Wth?2 -
forward0backward wrote: »All my friends enjoy Star Wars. Did you know the scene from The Empire Strikes Back, in which Vader tells Luke that he is his father, is probably one of the greatest and most famous movie scenes in history. The reasons why this scene is so great are many and obvious. Probably the most important reason is that of surprise. Nobody ever would have predicted that Luke could have come from Vader. This is especially true after Ben tells Luke that Vader betrayed and murdered his father.
The original Star Wars trilogy has many instances in which certain events are not expected by the first-time viewer (such as the destruction of Alderaan, Ben's death, Lando's betrayal, etc.). Part of George Lucas' genius in telling the original Star Wars story was his ability to surprise the audience.
Had the original Star Wars trilogy come out today, I do not think it would have done nearly as well as it did in the late '70's and early '80's. Why is this? Because of the rampant spoilers on the Internet. Even if meeseeksanddestroy is a thespian really tried, it would be impossible for Lucas to surprise the audience nowadays.
This rabid impatience of the fans to know everything about the story before seeing the movie has brought down the overall initial perception of the prequels, in m opinion.
Writing this essay, five days before Attack of the Clones is released, I know practically nothing about the Episode II story line. I have heard of the words Dooku and Jango, but I have no idea who or what they are. It has by no means been easy for me to avoid all of the spoilers for these three years.
Being an avid Star Wars fan, I frequent web sites like StarWars.com, TheForce.Net, and JediNet.Com. But the closer it came to May 16, 2002, the harder and harder it has become not to accidentally see something compromising of the story.
In the past several months I've hardly been to the official site at all, and there are large sections of the various fan sites that I have to avoid. However it will have been well worth it for me on the sixteenth when I see the story unfold over the course of the movie's two hour fourteen minute length. This is as opposed to seeing it unfold over the course of three years' worth of spoilers.
To get right down to the point, I think that the movies and the fan community as a whole are diminished in the long run by the ceaseless spoilers. While not always easy, waiting out the time between movies will greatly enhance the actual event for which we all are waiting. I know it will for me.
Tl;dr
I said....
All my friends enjoy Star Wars. Did you know the scene from The Empire Strikes Back, in which Vader tells Luke that he is his father, is probably one of the greatest and most famous movie scenes in history. The reasons why this scene is so great are many and obvious. Probably the most important reason is that of surprise. Nobody ever would have predicted that Luke could have come from Vader. This is especially true after Ben tells Luke that Vader betrayed and murdered his father.
The original Star Wars trilogy has many instances in which certain events are not expected by the first-time viewer (such as the destruction of Alderaan, Ben's death, Lando's betrayal, etc.). Part of George Lucas' genius in telling the original Star Wars story was his ability to surprise the audience.
Had the original Star Wars trilogy come out today, I do not think it would have done nearly as well as it did in the late '70's and early '80's. Why is this? Because of the rampant spoilers on the Internet. Even if meeseeksanddestroy is a thespian really tried, it would be impossible for Lucas to surprise the audience nowadays.
This rabid impatience of the fans to know everything about the story before seeing the movie has brought down the overall initial perception of the prequels, in m opinion.
Writing this essay, five days before Attack of the Clones is released, I know practically nothing about the Episode II story line. I have heard of the words Dooku and Jango, but I have no idea who or what they are. It has by no means been easy for me to avoid all of the spoilers for these three years.
Being an avid Star Wars fan, I frequent web sites like StarWars.com, TheForce.Net, and JediNet.Com. But the closer it came to May 16, 2002, the harder and harder it has become not to accidentally see something compromising of the story.
In the past several months I've hardly been to the official site at all, and there are large sections of the various fan sites that I have to avoid. However it will have been well worth it for me on the sixteenth when I see the story unfold over the course of the movie's two hour fourteen minute length. This is as opposed to seeing it unfold over the course of three years' worth of spoilers.
To get right down to the point, I think that the movies and the fan community as a whole are diminished in the long run by the ceaseless spoilers. While not always easy, waiting out the time between movies will greatly enhance the actual event for which we all are waiting. I know it will for me.
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krislizbuff wrote: »jenibethbu wrote: »Do you go to the gym? Perhaps some group classes to find others with similar interests?
No gym, I walk and bike. Great suggestion if I went to the gym.
I'm trying to be your friend and you just ignore me. That makes me sad. I'm sad. 
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You could try hanging out at Subway.3
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Volunteer, book clubs, meetup.com, talk to your neighbors, take a class, join a gym, ask someone from work out for coffee, join a civic organization,0
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OP!!!! DON'T DO MEETUP.COM! I did that once and I’m going to assume you know nothing about Star Wars. I’m going to assume, furthermore, that you may very well have negative associations with Star Wars. There is nothing whatsoever cool about Star Wars, after all. With neither the redeeming social messages of Star Trek nor the cult exoticism of Dr. Who, it instead reaffirms conventional family values and appeals to the lowest common denominator with whiz-bang special effects. The whole package, finally is gilded with populist New Age philosophical tripe.
Yet it lingers. It stuck. It stuck with aficionados and the general public. Even people who hate the movies know them. Most movies are disposable. Even a great director will only be remembered for a handful of truly great films, and most directors struggle their entire careers to find just one. Lucas will be remembered as a filmmaker long after most of his influences have been forgotten. Star Wars is ubiquity. The films will linger after much of the twentieth century is dust. They are the hegemon.
It’s different now. Star Wars was always going to be more than George Lucas intended. It’s never going to be the same, much as Spider-Man was never quite the same after Steve Ditko left. But Spider-Man lingered far past his expiration date due to being a popular idea owned by people who want to make a great deal of money.
I used to think it was important to specify that Star Wars wasn’t science fiction, and that it had little to do with science fiction other than the setting. It’s fantasy, so goes this argument. There’s no attempt to use the technology and environments in the films as anything other than tools and backdrops, to the degree that the same plots could be applied to any setting and remain legible. That’s intentional. Outer space works because it defamiliarizes the audience. We are told in the very first few frames, with those same ten words everyone knows by heart, that we are a long way from home, and that the events in this world have no possible resonance with our own. The existence of magic, then, takes the events one step further even from the already unfamiliar. We are in myth.
Go one step further, though: we are told to suspend our critical faculties. We’re safe. No ideology here.
But follow me a moment: what if I was wrong? Accept the premise that the setting of Star Wars does matter. The setting is centrally important. It’s not incidental. Everything you need to know about galactic culture can be extrapolated from the attitude that galactic citizens have towards technology and history. In turn, everything you need to know about Star Wars can be extrapolated from understanding this galactic culture – including why the story has lingered in our culture when so much else falls away.
So, how do the characters within Star Wars feel about science and technology in their universe?
No one cares. No one stops to gawk at technological marvels. There is little scientific exposition. No one stops to explain how something works to another character – no attempts are made to provide the same kind of authentication devices that other sci-fi reflexively peppers into dialogue. What little there is describes immediate cause-and-effect – press a button and something happens. Power converters convert power, it can be assumed from context. Assumedly that’s a useful function.
Han Solo fixes the Millennium Falcon the same way car guys work on old cars: spitballs and bailing wire, whatever gets it on the road. If you asked him to explain the ins-and-outs of how his faster-than-light drive works he’d probably be able to tell you about as much as the average gearhead about the chemistry of the internal combustion engine. Maybe some, but it’s hardly a priority.
No one who sees the Death Star marvels at the incredible scientific acumen required to construct a mobile battle station so big. Everyone in the galaxy is accustomed to a high degree of scientific accomplishment as a fact of daily life. It doesn’t need to be interesting, it just needs to be scary. No one cares about the how, which leaves the story free to focus on the question of why.
The beauty of Star Wars is that so much care has been spent making the universe onscreen appear normal for the people who inhabit it. No one is awkwardly walking around a sci-fi movie set because it’s the future and in the far future people are stiff and self-conscious. People are sitting down to family dinner, hunched around an awkward meeting table and getting yelled at by the boss, playing video games with dirtbag friends in their basement apartment. Everyone has technology but most can’t afford the good stuff – or at least the new stuff – so things break. Such very specific details paint a picture of a lived-in world, a world where people have hobbies, listen to music, go to sporting events, and take drugs. People in Star Wars get drunk, talk *kitten*, and are generally quite racist – even the good guys.
The conceit of Star Wars is that literally every character onscreen has a story. You don’t know that story. It entirely incidental to the plot. You probably don’t even know the character’s name. He looks like he’s been around, seen a few things. He adds nothing to the plot of the movie, but his presence sells the setting. When you watch a movie set in present day New York you take it for granted that an extra walking through the scene has a life and a story outside of the movie – obviously they do, they’re a person just like me and you. Likewise, extras in Star Wars get to be effectively interesting even covered in makeup and spray painted car parts. The camera lingers on “boring” verisimilitude that most other sci-fi doesn’t touch.
The galactic civilization in Star Wars is old enough that most people don’t need to know why technology works the way it does. Engineers are still quite popular, and necessary to design the latest ships and battle stations. But scientific breakthroughs have no immediate bearing on the story of Star Wars.
The characters are the inheritors of a very old universe. The technological infrastructure necessary to maintain a galaxy-wide civilization was constructed so far in the past that no one in these stories knows or cares. Who mapped the hyperspace lanes that allow near-instantaneous interstellar travel at speeds far exceeding “conventional” faster-than-light? No one gives them a second thought, and the lanes are regarded as a public utility. Who carved the crumbling fragments of Cyclopean masonry that dot the series? Every meeseeksanddestroy is a thespian planet in the galaxy is ancient, with tens of thousands of years of mysteries waiting to be uncovered. But the populace is so inured to ancient mysteries that they carry little interest to anyone but the locals.
There must have been a time even longer ago, before the time of the films, when the Galaxy was not yet so tightly connected. Before hyperspace it had to have been as hard to get between planets as it is for us, now. Then the galaxy became interconnected and suddenly trade was possible, massive resettlements and immigration were possible, cultural exchange was possible. War was possible. The galaxy has been what it is for a very long time.
Star Wars doesn’t do a lot of things that other sci-fi does:
It doesn’t assume that planets have only one government and culture. Planets have civil wars and competing states.
It doesn’t assume that technological advancement naturally leads to civilized enlightenment. There are peaceful isolationist races and noisy belligerent civilizations operating at roughly the same level of technology.
It doesn’t assume that inequality won’t exist. Some planets do better than others. Some races are better suited to travel and commerce than others. Some planets have really *kitten* up political situations, some seem to operate without much in the way of organized politics. A giant chunk of the galaxy is owned outright by a cartel of near-immortal xenophobic slugs that don’t even regard bipeds as fully sentient. (Probably not great for anyone else in that part of the galaxy.)
Star Wars does, however, assume that even advanced technological civilizations could never fully escape corruption and inefficiency. It assumes that history is cyclical, with devastating conflicts recurring throughout history with alarming regularly. It assumes that children are wise to be skeptical of their parents. Intelligence is no guarantor of virtue in these stories, but ignorance is punished severely.
Most races in the galaxy seem content to simply be. It’s humans who create the most problems, humans who build Imperial war machines to set the galaxy on fire to satisfy their egos. Humans don’t even have a homeworld, they’re just there, everywhere across the galaxy from Coruscant to the depths of Hutt Space, prolific breeders without much in the way of natural gifts save for their adaptability. This is a tactical advantage over many other races, and their ubiquity makes them the single most powerful species in the galaxy through sheer weight. Other races, one imagines, say unflattering things about humans when humans aren’t around.
So why is all of this important?
Immersion is the key sensation of Star Wars. Everything feels real, carries authority that makes every frame seem like a portal into another world, perfectly plausible on its own terms. A galaxy of adventure left for the viewer to explore independently. For the first two decades of Star Wars’ existence, this sense of projection was vital to the survival of the franchise.
It’s easy to forget, now, but Star Wars went away. After Return of the Jedi faded from theaters in 1983, attempts were made to expand the franchise with cheap spin-offs – the Droids and Ewoks cartoons, a pair of made-for-TV Ewok films. These didn’t take and without new movies on the horizon toy sales dried up. By the late 80s Star Wars was as dead as Star Trek had been in the early 70s. But just as generations of nerds learned Star Trek from seeing the original series on TV over and over again for decades, the Star Wars films never went away either. People loved them and watched them whenever they showed up on TV, which was a special event – but they were spoken of in the past tense. Star Wars was a thing that had happened.
Things used to go away and people took it for granted that they didn’t come back. Star Wars was very popular for a while, and then it wasn’t quite as popular anymore because it was gone. Even if everyone knew that Lucas had always spoke vaguely about the possibility of new films, no one ever seriously imagined it would happen. It was fun to talk about. Maybe someday.
In hindsight Star Wars really didn’t stay away for long. The property regained traction in the early 90s, expanding into a popular series of novels and returning to comics. There were a few years in the late 80s where the only new Star Wars material being produced were role-playing sourcebooks from West End Games. These books helped fan the waning embers of Star Wars fandom, ensuring there was still a core audience of die-hards left when Lucas ramped up production of new material set in the now defunct Expanded Universe.
I wasn’t paying much attention at the time. I didn’t care that there were new Star Wars novels on the shelves. I didn’t read Star Trek novels, and at the time I liked Star Trek better. There was a lot of Trek in the 90s. It fit the times. The 90s were optimistic. Everything was rotting under the floorboards but people were nevertheless pretty happy. In hindsight I wish I’d spent more time reading Star Wars paperbacks than watching Star Trek reruns.
The line I heard I few times when I was younger – not so much these days, I think, but definitely in the days when the first three films were the only canon that counted – was that Star Wars was about good and evil, and that good and evil is pretty basic. No nuance. Joseph Campbell and the Hero of a Thousand Faces – myth and superstition for an irreligious age. I heard it so much that I even tricked myself into believing it.
My opinion changed. I grew older. Rather than sharpening the nuance of my moral calculus years of hard luck simplified it, instilled the lesson that good and evil do exist. I see the proliferation of evil, evil beyond measure – but I also see a profusion of goodness, of hope despite the times. Cruelty is real. Kindness, too. We live with these facts as daily realities. They don’t lack nuance.
I think one of the reason the Prequels resonated so strongly with me was that the movies fixed the parts of Star Wars that had never sat well. It added a bunch of new stuff to the simplicity of the first three films. Some of it worked and a few things didn’t but overall every new addition to canon complicated, rather than simplified, the core ideas around which Star Wars coalesced. What the Prequels did that moviegoers could never forgive was make the main characters murky and complicated and even unpleasant, rarely defeated in open battle but undone by their own arrogance, ignorance, and corruption.
The newer movies had the temerity to point out that the classic good and evil set-up of the original was . . . not the whole story. Good and evil is what they tell pumped-up farmboys from Tatooine when they send them off to kill their fathers. What Yoda and Obi-Wan don’t talk about so much is how they worked closely alongside the Emperor for decades, helped him consolidate power, even saved his life dozens of times. They helped build the Imperial war machine. They have a lot of blood on their hands. Good and evil are real and solid things, and the people who have to navigate between them are small and fragile.
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krislizbuff wrote: »
That's a bummer. I forgot the difference in generational socializing style. I think your best option is meet up groups. You'll probably meet a bunch of people older than you, but some people your age would be there too.
Also, you could start your own meet up group for people in your age group who are not interested in social media and constant phone staring! I bet you'd get a great response to that and you could immediately start meeting in person. You're not the only young single person fed up with phone culture, for sure. You can break out of this. I'd take a proactive approach.
Holy crap! Did you just agree with me?!?!
Sorry. I was going to tag you and give you credit for a good idea but my post showed up a minute or two after yours
It was a good idea. Sometimes I just reflect on how good an idea is in the forums. I just sit there.... thinking about it. It's great.1 -
Took me 15 years to find some again after moving here. It happened because my daughter wanted a playdate with theirs! Then they introduced me to more people.1
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While I find it difficult to disagree with the above post, I think the key to meeting people, inside or outside the Star Wars universe, is the realization that we are alone. That might sound depressing, but it isn't. Everyone, even in the happiest marriages, is profoundly solitary in there most conscious moments. I think it is important to remember that the key, ironically, to connecting with people is recognizing that ultimately they share this loneliness. We need words and activities to recognize each other, but real companionship is in the pauses. It is in silence and stillness. A professor once told me real communication, that is, a communion of persons, takes place in the silence between the words.4
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krislizbuff wrote: »jenibethbu wrote: »Do you go to the gym? Perhaps some group classes to find others with similar interests?
No gym, I walk and bike. Great suggestion if I went to the gym. I'm trying to be your friend and you just ignore me. That makes me sad. I'm sad.
Dude sorry. I'm really confused by the star wars talk. But my star wars nerd boyfriend would probably get it. I honestly have no idea what the heck you were even saying. I've not even watched all the star wars so I'm afraid our friendship hasn't started yet. Lol4 -
patrick_star_trek wrote: »You could try hanging out at Subway.
Omg I saw this in another conversation. I guess picking up chicks in subway is the new thing!0 -
OP!!!! DON'T DO MEETUP.COM! I did that once and I’m going to assume you know nothing about Star Wars. I’m going to assume, furthermore, that you may very well have negative associations with Star Wars. There is nothing whatsoever cool about Star Wars, after all. With neither the redeeming social messages of Star Trek nor the cult exoticism of Dr. Who, it instead reaffirms conventional family values and appeals to the lowest common denominator with whiz-bang special effects. The whole package, finally is gilded with populist New Age philosophical tripe.
Yet it lingers. It stuck. It stuck with aficionados and the general public. Even people who hate the movies know them. Most movies are disposable. Even a great director will only be remembered for a handful of truly great films, and most directors struggle their entire careers to find just one. Lucas will be remembered as a filmmaker long after most of his influences have been forgotten. Star Wars is ubiquity. The films will linger after much of the twentieth century is dust. They are the hegemon.
It’s different now. Star Wars was always going to be more than George Lucas intended. It’s never going to be the same, much as Spider-Man was never quite the same after Steve Ditko left. But Spider-Man lingered far past his expiration date due to being a popular idea owned by people who want to make a great deal of money.
I used to think it was important to specify that Star Wars wasn’t science fiction, and that it had little to do with science fiction other than the setting. It’s fantasy, so goes this argument. There’s no attempt to use the technology and environments in the films as anything other than tools and backdrops, to the degree that the same plots could be applied to any setting and remain legible. That’s intentional. Outer space works because it defamiliarizes the audience. We are told in the very first few frames, with those same ten words everyone knows by heart, that we are a long way from home, and that the events in this world have no possible resonance with our own. The existence of magic, then, takes the events one step further even from the already unfamiliar. We are in myth.
Go one step further, though: we are told to suspend our critical faculties. We’re safe. No ideology here.
But follow me a moment: what if I was wrong? Accept the premise that the setting of Star Wars does matter. The setting is centrally important. It’s not incidental. Everything you need to know about galactic culture can be extrapolated from the attitude that galactic citizens have towards technology and history. In turn, everything you need to know about Star Wars can be extrapolated from understanding this galactic culture – including why the story has lingered in our culture when so much else falls away.
So, how do the characters within Star Wars feel about science and technology in their universe?
No one cares. No one stops to gawk at technological marvels. There is little scientific exposition. No one stops to explain how something works to another character – no attempts are made to provide the same kind of authentication devices that other sci-fi reflexively peppers into dialogue. What little there is describes immediate cause-and-effect – press a button and something happens. Power converters convert power, it can be assumed from context. Assumedly that’s a useful function.
Han Solo fixes the Millennium Falcon the same way car guys work on old cars: spitballs and bailing wire, whatever gets it on the road. If you asked him to explain the ins-and-outs of how his faster-than-light drive works he’d probably be able to tell you about as much as the average gearhead about the chemistry of the internal combustion engine. Maybe some, but it’s hardly a priority.
No one who sees the Death Star marvels at the incredible scientific acumen required to construct a mobile battle station so big. Everyone in the galaxy is accustomed to a high degree of scientific accomplishment as a fact of daily life. It doesn’t need to be interesting, it just needs to be scary. No one cares about the how, which leaves the story free to focus on the question of why.
The beauty of Star Wars is that so much care has been spent making the universe onscreen appear normal for the people who inhabit it. No one is awkwardly walking around a sci-fi movie set because it’s the future and in the far future people are stiff and self-conscious. People are sitting down to family dinner, hunched around an awkward meeting table and getting yelled at by the boss, playing video games with dirtbag friends in their basement apartment. Everyone has technology but most can’t afford the good stuff – or at least the new stuff – so things break. Such very specific details paint a picture of a lived-in world, a world where people have hobbies, listen to music, go to sporting events, and take drugs. People in Star Wars get drunk, talk *kitten*, and are generally quite racist – even the good guys.
The conceit of Star Wars is that literally every character onscreen has a story. You don’t know that story. It entirely incidental to the plot. You probably don’t even know the character’s name. He looks like he’s been around, seen a few things. He adds nothing to the plot of the movie, but his presence sells the setting. When you watch a movie set in present day New York you take it for granted that an extra walking through the scene has a life and a story outside of the movie – obviously they do, they’re a person just like me and you. Likewise, extras in Star Wars get to be effectively interesting even covered in makeup and spray painted car parts. The camera lingers on “boring” verisimilitude that most other sci-fi doesn’t touch.
The galactic civilization in Star Wars is old enough that most people don’t need to know why technology works the way it does. Engineers are still quite popular, and necessary to design the latest ships and battle stations. But scientific breakthroughs have no immediate bearing on the story of Star Wars.
The characters are the inheritors of a very old universe. The technological infrastructure necessary to maintain a galaxy-wide civilization was constructed so far in the past that no one in these stories knows or cares. Who mapped the hyperspace lanes that allow near-instantaneous interstellar travel at speeds far exceeding “conventional” faster-than-light? No one gives them a second thought, and the lanes are regarded as a public utility. Who carved the crumbling fragments of Cyclopean masonry that dot the series? Every meeseeksanddestroy is a thespian planet in the galaxy is ancient, with tens of thousands of years of mysteries waiting to be uncovered. But the populace is so inured to ancient mysteries that they carry little interest to anyone but the locals.
There must have been a time even longer ago, before the time of the films, when the Galaxy was not yet so tightly connected. Before hyperspace it had to have been as hard to get between planets as it is for us, now. Then the galaxy became interconnected and suddenly trade was possible, massive resettlements and immigration were possible, cultural exchange was possible. War was possible. The galaxy has been what it is for a very long time.
Star Wars doesn’t do a lot of things that other sci-fi does:
It doesn’t assume that planets have only one government and culture. Planets have civil wars and competing states.
It doesn’t assume that technological advancement naturally leads to civilized enlightenment. There are peaceful isolationist races and noisy belligerent civilizations operating at roughly the same level of technology.
It doesn’t assume that inequality won’t exist. Some planets do better than others. Some races are better suited to travel and commerce than others. Some planets have really *kitten* up political situations, some seem to operate without much in the way of organized politics. A giant chunk of the galaxy is owned outright by a cartel of near-immortal xenophobic slugs that don’t even regard bipeds as fully sentient. (Probably not great for anyone else in that part of the galaxy.)
Star Wars does, however, assume that even advanced technological civilizations could never fully escape corruption and inefficiency. It assumes that history is cyclical, with devastating conflicts recurring throughout history with alarming regularly. It assumes that children are wise to be skeptical of their parents. Intelligence is no guarantor of virtue in these stories, but ignorance is punished severely.
Most races in the galaxy seem content to simply be. It’s humans who create the most problems, humans who build Imperial war machines to set the galaxy on fire to satisfy their egos. Humans don’t even have a homeworld, they’re just there, everywhere across the galaxy from Coruscant to the depths of Hutt Space, prolific breeders without much in the way of natural gifts save for their adaptability. This is a tactical advantage over many other races, and their ubiquity makes them the single most powerful species in the galaxy through sheer weight. Other races, one imagines, say unflattering things about humans when humans aren’t around.
So why is all of this important?
Immersion is the key sensation of Star Wars. Everything feels real, carries authority that makes every frame seem like a portal into another world, perfectly plausible on its own terms. A galaxy of adventure left for the viewer to explore independently. For the first two decades of Star Wars’ existence, this sense of projection was vital to the survival of the franchise.
It’s easy to forget, now, but Star Wars went away. After Return of the Jedi faded from theaters in 1983, attempts were made to expand the franchise with cheap spin-offs – the Droids and Ewoks cartoons, a pair of made-for-TV Ewok films. These didn’t take and without new movies on the horizon toy sales dried up. By the late 80s Star Wars was as dead as Star Trek had been in the early 70s. But just as generations of nerds learned Star Trek from seeing the original series on TV over and over again for decades, the Star Wars films never went away either. People loved them and watched them whenever they showed up on TV, which was a special event – but they were spoken of in the past tense. Star Wars was a thing that had happened.
Things used to go away and people took it for granted that they didn’t come back. Star Wars was very popular for a while, and then it wasn’t quite as popular anymore because it was gone. Even if everyone knew that Lucas had always spoke vaguely about the possibility of new films, no one ever seriously imagined it would happen. It was fun to talk about. Maybe someday.
In hindsight Star Wars really didn’t stay away for long. The property regained traction in the early 90s, expanding into a popular series of novels and returning to comics. There were a few years in the late 80s where the only new Star Wars material being produced were role-playing sourcebooks from West End Games. These books helped fan the waning embers of Star Wars fandom, ensuring there was still a core audience of die-hards left when Lucas ramped up production of new material set in the now defunct Expanded Universe.
I wasn’t paying much attention at the time. I didn’t care that there were new Star Wars novels on the shelves. I didn’t read Star Trek novels, and at the time I liked Star Trek better. There was a lot of Trek in the 90s. It fit the times. The 90s were optimistic. Everything was rotting under the floorboards but people were nevertheless pretty happy. In hindsight I wish I’d spent more time reading Star Wars paperbacks than watching Star Trek reruns.
The line I heard I few times when I was younger – not so much these days, I think, but definitely in the days when the first three films were the only canon that counted – was that Star Wars was about good and evil, and that good and evil is pretty basic. No nuance. Joseph Campbell and the Hero of a Thousand Faces – myth and superstition for an irreligious age. I heard it so much that I even tricked myself into believing it.
My opinion changed. I grew older. Rather than sharpening the nuance of my moral calculus years of hard luck simplified it, instilled the lesson that good and evil do exist. I see the proliferation of evil, evil beyond measure – but I also see a profusion of goodness, of hope despite the times. Cruelty is real. Kindness, too. We live with these facts as daily realities. They don’t lack nuance.
I think one of the reason the Prequels resonated so strongly with me was that the movies fixed the parts of Star Wars that had never sat well. It added a bunch of new stuff to the simplicity of the first three films. Some of it worked and a few things didn’t but overall every new addition to canon complicated, rather than simplified, the core ideas around which Star Wars coalesced. What the Prequels did that moviegoers could never forgive was make the main characters murky and complicated and even unpleasant, rarely defeated in open battle but undone by their own arrogance, ignorance, and corruption.
The newer movies had the temerity to point out that the classic good and evil set-up of the original was . . . not the whole story. Good and evil is what they tell pumped-up farmboys from Tatooine when they send them off to kill their fathers. What Yoda and Obi-Wan don’t talk about so much is how they worked closely alongside the Emperor for decades, helped him consolidate power, even saved his life dozens of times. They helped build the Imperial war machine. They have a lot of blood on their hands. Good and evil are real and solid things, and the people who have to navigate between them are small and fragile.
Wanna hang out?
I find you to be both insightful and inspiring, but I am being forced to choose.
Sure.0
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