The Force and Freedom
Season 1
by Chandler Hatch
Star Wars is a story about freedom and threats to freedom. You might not have thought that it has a lot to say about this, since the dialogue never poses any deep questions about it. But the dialogue isn't what's interesting about Star Wars. What's most interesting about Star Wars are the visuals, and the visuals communicate a lot about freedom and threats to it. In this episode, I run through some of what the visuals of the first two minutes of Star Wars: A New Hope (after the opening crawl) communicate. For a complete transcript, visit https://theforceandfreedom.libsyn.com/transcript-visual-storytelling-in-star-wars
The central threat to freedom in A New Hope is fear. When you're afraid of someone, you do what they want, even if you'd rather not. After briefly discussing some of the other interpretations of Star Wars, I show how A New Hope introduces the problem of fear through a series of scenes centered on the Death Star. These scenes tend to contain visual reminders of the Death Star, like the interrogation droid of the remote Luke trains with. I conclude the episode by discussing Han's and Obi-wan's opposed strategies for responding to fear. For a complete transcript, visit https://theforceandfreedom.libsyn.com/transcript-the-problem-of-fear
This time I begin by connecting Star Wars's message about fear to events from George Lucas's life. Then I trace the two approaches to fear outlined at the end of last episode. Han illustrates his attitude towards fear by preferring a straight fight aboard the Death Star. Luke and Leia illustrate an alternative approach closer to what Obi-wan recommends. They constantly rethink the terms that are presented to them. For a complete transcript, visit https://theforceandfreedom.libsyn.com/transcript-two-responses-to-fear
Obi-wan's adventures aboard the Death Star are in stark contrast to the other heroes'. Where they narrowly escape danger after danger, desperately thinking their way out of jams, Obi-wan wanders through the Death Star unnoticed, fully in control of the situation. Obi-wan doesn't have to overcome fear because he is so good at setting the terms of engagement that no one ever threatens him. Until Vader shows up. Vader is as cunning as Obi-wan, and their duel involves layers of strategic gambits, each aimed at controlling the conflict and its outcome. But Obi-wan has an advantage over Vader, something that gives him a kind of freedom in spite of Vader's strategic brilliance. For a full transcript, visit https://theforceandfreedom.libsyn.com/the-freedom-of-the-jedi
I return to the early scenes of A New Hope to pick up on some early ideas about freedom. C-3PO and R2-D2 are opposite extremes: 3PO totally unfree, R2 remarkably free. The desert settings of Tatooine are the perfect place to set up questions of freedom because it echoes the setting of the Western, a genre preoccupied with freedom. I then summarize the evidence that the film can be seen as an autobiography of George Lucas and connect that with Lucas's preoccupation with freedom. Finally, I briefly explain my approach to film interpretation. For a full transcript, visit https://theforceandfreedom.libsyn.com/transcript-a-portrait-of-the-artist