The Last Jedi

Class Race Corporate Power, 2018

Star Wars: The Last Jedi was probably the most political movie of the franchise so far. In this piece, I analyze how this film has subverted much of the SW lore by, interestingly, making its political dimensions significantly more real (and hence more complex). Throughout the piece, I use this reflection as a heuristic device to comment on how the movie might teach us how to interpret, critique, and deal with politics in a more sound, effective, and hopeful manner. E. H. Carr is invoked to assist in this endeavor, as I reflect upon the themes of (neoliberal) war profiteering, the efficacy of heroism, and the traps of political idolatry and ideological fanaticism.

This essay attempts to disclose a uniquely volatile nexus that implicates -and perhaps, reinvigorates -a postcolonial analytics of insurgency. This nexus includes three strands of inquiry: the first is the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), which really is -albeit in a qualified sense -revolutionary. War is doing new things with time and space through culture, media, and data technology, and in the process is mutating not only what it means to be a part of this or that national group but is also changing what it means to be human. The second strand of inquiry focuses on the legacy of postcolonial studies, particularly the notion of 'writing back' which, I contend, is an apposite starting point for writing critically about the RMA. Apposite though it is, there are limits to postcolonial studies in the contemporary war context. This is so because while the divisions of individual difference are shifting, the coherence of the nation state itself is undergoing radical change. Moving outward in scope to a planetary scale, the human being per se is no longer a primary category by and for which war is happening today. Thus the third strand of inquiry is focused on the residual anthropomorphic tendencies within postcolonial studies that too narrowly limit discussions of violence and collective belonging. The concept of the human being per se remains reliant on early models of technology and media (namely, writing and literature, usually novels). Therefore, in the context of an ever-expanding global war machine, 'writing back' is a concept that requires fine-tuning and revision.

The overall ideology of the Star Wars movies defends that those who choose the power of the individual against the state, and a divine ‘power’ against the rationality of the mind are different and important. It is a symbol of the idea that the fight for freedom against the Empire can be started by individual initiative, and holds a mirror to the ideological struggle against collectivism and populism. The Force Awakens, released many years after the latest installment, is similar to A New Hope in some respects, but there are significant ideological differences. Old enemies try to reach their goals in the galaxy using the same methods, and the new heroes, although they are less skilled than before, are more successful. These differences have something to do with the transition in Hollywood movies from modern and individualist discourses to postmodern ones. The relationship between postmodernity and mass culture, supported by global capitalism, shapes the ideology of Hollywood in the 21st century. Given that Star Wars is a product of global mass culture, the Eurocentric views represented in the movie have the potential to become worldwide norms, and influence audiences’ views on many things, from cultural criteria on what is right and what is wrong to what to consume. This study aims to examine the transition from modern to postmodern discourses in Star Wars movies, and to discuss what this reproduction of the mass culture means in the context of neoliberal policies.

George Lucas spoke about the didactic role of cinema and about his own work being presented through the “moral megaphone” of the film industry. A considerable body of scholarship on the six-part Star Wars series argues (unconvincingly) that the franchise promoted neo-conservatism in American culture from the late 1970s onward. But there is much in Lucas’ grand space opera to suggest something more ideologically complex is going on. Engaging with Critical and Deconstructive theories this book challenges the view of the saga as an unambiguously violent text exemplifying reactionary politics, and discusses the films’ identity politics with regard to race and gender.

Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, 2010

This paper intends, in assuming that the pop philosophy of Star Wars possesses resources to be a multi-volume set of a publicly ethical texts, to unpopularly tackle populist approaches to issues of the cultural relation between this American saga and questions of violence, in particular attending to its possible performance of the 'myth of redemptive violence'. The contention is that violence takes several forms in the multi-part saga, ranging from something akin to a 'holy violence', through more of a sense of 'just war', to an ethical philosophy approaching a full-blown redemptive 'non-violence'. In fact, there may well be in the performance of the last theme vital potential for subverting that very 'myth of redemptive violence', or talk of 'a good war', itself.

Du Bois Review, 2017

Distinguished scholar and public intellectual Cornel West has characterized the 2016 U.S. Presidential election as a choice between a "neo-liberal disaster and a neo-fascist catastrophe." For some, this characterization is unfair to the left and for others it is unfair to the right. I see it as an almost surgically precise analysis of the choices mainstream politics put before the nation in 2016. The clear majority of American voters opted for the neo-liberal disaster of seasoned national politician Hillary Rodham Clinton. As result of the Electoral College system, however, the keys to the White House went to Donald J. Trump, a newcomer to national politics, and standardbearer for the neo-fascist catastrophe. The thin margin of voters that decided the outcome of the Electoral College ballots, and thus of the election, leaves the door open to many possible accounts of "what happened." It could be attributable to Russian meddling, FBI director James Comey's decision to reopen the investigation into Clinton's emails, media favoritism of Trump, sexism, a failure of messaging by the Clinton campaign, Clinton's long-time high negative personal poll ratings, or some mix of all of these. Nonetheless, it seems fair to observe, as did Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson (2017), that: Clinton, with all her vast experience and proven ability, was defeated by Donald Trump, a reality-television star who had never before run for office, displayed near-total ignorance of the issues, broke every rule of political rhetoric, and was caught on videotape bragging of how he sexually assaulted random women by grabbing their crotches. That's not just unlikely, it's impossible. At least it should have been, according to everything we knew-or thought we knew-about politics." At some point we must recognize, at a minimum, that the Trump campaign's combination of openly anti-minority rhetoric-demonizing both Mexican immigrants and Muslims while grossly stereotyping African Americans and bellowing the political at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

2002

This paper explores the tensions between those in government and business who wish to control the internet and those who wish to use its capabilities to introduce new types of services, and also between those who lessen the power of the individual and those who create synergisms between individuals and groups. The authors have provided an eclectic set of examples of initiatives which illustrate both trends. The paper concludes that while a conspiracy theorist might see a general pattern emerging, in fact these represent, on the one hand actions of large institutions which are attempting to retain their pre-internet business and governmental models, and on the other hand, the actions of individual groups trying to preserve the original spirit of the internet.