What Does Star Wars *Mean*?: A Reason Argument Hotter Than the Twin Suns of Tatooine
The Washington Post's Alyssa Rosenberg, Free Beacon's Sonny Bunch, & Reason's Peter Suderman fight over why we care.
George Lucas' Star Wars franchise didn't just redefine how movies got make and marketed in the 1970s. The series and associated toys, tie-ins, and spin-offs have continued to captivate audiences and fans around the world ever since and the latest installment, The Force Awakens, will likely become one of the top-grossing movies of all time when it's released later this month.
In a rollicking, free-wheeling conversation moderated by Reason's Nick Gillespie, cultural critics Alyssa Rosenberg (Washington Post), Sonny Bunch (Free Beacon), and Peter Suderman (Reason, Vox) discuss how and why Star Wars changed everything, how the original movies became political and cultural touchstones, and whether there's a case to be made that the Empire, not the Rebels, are actually the good guys in all of this.
This is an edited version of an event that was held at Reason's D.C. HQ on December 3.
About 32 minutes long. Produced by Joshua Swain.
For more Reason material on Star Wars, go here.
Watch the full video above, or scroll down for downloadable versions. And subscribe to Reason's Youtube Channel to catch up on our latest videos!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaB_G1WNT70
We're back to Roman numerals?
20 minutes is too long for a discussion of Star Wars.
XXXII isn't shorter, dammit!
I am not watching that but I am curious who would make the case that the empire is the good guy.
I suspect it is more drivel like the Zinn / Chompsky screed on how Sauron and the Orcs are the good guys in TLTR or Jesse Myerson telling us how spiffy the USSR was.
S.W. will always be 3rd fiddle to S.T. series, S.G. being a close second. But for a one-off you can't beat "Serenity".
I distinctly remember a U. of Texas socialist shrieking that Star Wars was a pentagon plot to condition the populace into acceptance of nuclear war as a policy tool. "Both sides" were estimated to have tens of thousands of deliverable weapons, so there was no shortage of shrill dinning over the topic. I also recall Reagan remarking that the Soviet choice of Star Wars as a negative-connotation monicker for the Strategic Defense Initiative was not a felicitous move.