Zizek on Star Wars.

I saw this in German some time back and was just now wondering if it'd appeared in English anywhere. Sure enough, In These Times is running Slavoj Zizek's "Revenge of Global Finance":

The political connotations of the Star Wars universe are multiple and inconsistent. Therein resides the "mythic" power of that universe - a universe that includes a Reaganesque vision of the Free World versus the Evil Empire; the retreat of the Nation States, which can be given a rightist, nationalist Buchanan-Le Pen twist; the contradiction of persons of a noble status (Princesses, Jedi knights, etc.) defending the "democratic" republic; and finally, its key insight that "we are the bad guys," that the Empire emerges through the very way we, the "good guys," fight the enemy out there. (In today's "war on terror," the real danger is what this war is turning us into.) Such inconsistencies are what make the Star Wars series a political myth proper, which is not so much a narrative with a determinate political meaning, but rather an empty container of multiple, inconsistent and even mutually exclusive meanings. The question "But what does this political myth really mean?" is the wrong question, because its "meaning" is precisely to serve as this vessel of multiple meanings.

A must-read, if for no other reason than to discover why "the true companion piece to Star Wars III is Alexander Oey's 2003 documentary, Sandcastles: Buddhism and Global Finance."

Posted by dwhudson at June 2, 2005 12:06 PM