"Wars Not Make One Great": Redeeming the Star Wars Mythos from Redemptive Violence Without Amusing Ourselves to Death (Essay‪)‬

"You May Fire When Ready" [Grand Moff Tarkin, ANH]: A Violent Mythos [1] All human artefacts are culturally and contextually produced. Mythologies, for instance, express, through their judicious symbolic depiction of "archetypal" forms of living, the cultural (Latin, cultura) conditions that mark their location or setting. However, they also possess a certain transcendental quality which enables them to recultivate or transfigure, either subtly or radically, perspectives of their cultural instantiation by offering imaginative alternatives which themselves can become effective through their ritualistic telling and retelling. What these claims do is argue that mythological stories can provide powerful unconscious forces for the motivation and justification of the collective behaviour of those various cultures in which they are told and retold as being existentially meaningful narratives. (2) Put another way, they are formed within webs of significance that determine what we learn to value. Thereby, through their mediations, these ritualised story-telling performances significantly contribute to "socialising" us. It is precisely "because culture matters so much," Ben Agger claims, that "it deserves full critical attention." (3) Speaking specifically of the hegemonic role of the cinema, a particular form of the power of cultural production, Miles and Plate argue that