November 04, 2005
I Love Star Wars ... But Why?
I love the Star Wars movies. Have since the first time I saw them (1995, when I was twelve years old). I'd heard seen a couple of things relating to Star Wars before that, but it was my first real exposure. My family bought the re-mastered original version (not the Special Edition), so I know that Greedo did not shoot first. :) The movies I saw started with a little advertising jingle that still sends tingles down my spine:
For those who remember ... for those who will never forget ... and for a whole new generation who will experience it for the very first time. (my memory of the next line is blurred because I can't quite trace all the action sequences that went across the screen that that point ... a common failing of my otherwise excellent memory for movies. When a whole lot of disjointed images flash for awhile, my internal recorder shuts off, it seems) Now, the entire trilogy, digitally mastered in THX for the ultimate in sound ... and picture quality. This will be your last chance to own the original version of Star Wars --- the George Lucas masterpiece that launched the Star Wars trilogy. The Force is forever ... for all generations. The original Star Wars trilogy on video ... one last time.
I figured it was a good idea to post that quote, even though I know that most of you reading it are rolling your eyes at me. After all, what's the point of quoting an advertising jingle for an outdated set of movies? The point is that I deeply loved those movies. That I think I still love those movies. And I intend to muse about why this is so.
The trouble is that I'm not sure what it is that I love in them. The acting in the films varies for downright terrible (Mark Hamil in the later films become almost catatonic) to quite excellent (Harrison Ford, of course). The special effects are quite good ... even today, they don't really detract from the movie. You can still (to a large extent) suspend disbelief when watching the movies ... the fact that it is a movie doesn't intrude into your notice very often, and that is good. But special effects alone do not make a movie (as many cynics would be quick to say regarding the latest three). Star Wars has magic, and not just for me. It's something of a cultural phenomenon in the United States (I'm not sure about the rest of the world).
Part of the original charm of Star Wars comes from the time it was introduced ( A New Hope came out in 1977). The seventies were a positively ghastly time for movies. My characterization (admittedly over-broad and certainly biased) is that you can define a seventies movie as follows --- the good guys aren't really good, the bad guys aren't really bad, and everybody dies. I hate seventies movies.
Star Wars is different. The heroes are good, the villains are evil, the good guys win and the bad guys lose, and not everybody dies. I think this was a huge factor in the initial success of Star Wars.
But why it should continue to resonate is harder to nail down. There are lots of movies around these days with genuine good guys and genuine bad guys where the good guys genuinely win. But none of them are Star Wars, or anything like it.
I think that there isn't really enough room in our hearts for more than a few excellent movies. So whichever one we see first is probably going to take first place forever against all comers. Perhaps the reason I love Star Wars so much is because I saw it first when I was young and impressionable. Maybe we humans have something like a duckling's "imprinting" ... the first good movie we see is our favorite forever.
That isn't the whole story either, though. After all, I saw Lord of the Rings quite a bit later in my life, and yet it ranks close behind Star Wars in my love. A really good movie, I think, can always have a shot at taking a special place in our hearts.
If you're reading this thinking that we're not getting anywhere in solving the mystery of why Daniel Leatherwood likes Star Wars so much, you're right. We're not. But I think there's something to that ... the idea that we usually don't have a good reason for loving the things we love. And I'm ok with that fact ... more than that, I think that it is right and good.
Taking a far more serious subject than my love of Star Wars (and there aren't many of those), why do I love my wife the way that I do? Of course, I have some reasons for that ... she's a lovely lady, she's cheerful, she smiles at me, she's wonderful to hug, she almost never complains, she loves me back ... I have lots of reasons, but none of them is a "killer". And part of it is imprinting ... she's almost the first girl I ever knew, and certainly was one of the first girls to show an interest in me. Yet there's more to it than that.
You could almost say that love doesn't need a why. It doesn't need a reason. You could say that love is primary, not incidental. Yet if we stop here, the thought voices itself that, in that case, love is meaningless. If love has no reason, than my statement "I love Star Wars" is a content-less expression. Mere babble. (A conclusion the more cynical among you may have already reached.) This thought produces an angry reaction from me ... the sort of reaction that tells me my conclusion is false. An angry reaction from myself is a heuristic I use to determine when my conclusion doesn't fit the world I believe in. This, of course, does not necessarily invalidate my conclusion. But it's something like a compiler error ... either your program or the compiler is at fault, and it's probably your program.
An additional statement helps understand that my saying "I love Star Wars" is non-content-free. I can also add, "I consider Star Wars worth loving." I invest time, energy, and emotions into those movies. If I myself have significance, then my love of Star Wars also has significance. Which means that it is important whether Star Wars is actually any good or not. It may be good or bad that I love Star Wars, but it cannot be neutral or meaningless unless I am also meaningless. A bit of myself is bound into that film.
