Why the politics of Star Wars still matters (part 4): “Someone has to save our skins”

This is a series of posts drawing on my forthcoming book Welcome to the Rebellion: A New Hope in Radical Politics (published in June 2020 by Zero Books).

The previous post discussed the Death Star looming over all of us: the unsustainability of our global system of industrial capitalism, and the dark impulses that lie behind it. This post discusses how Star Wars dramatizes what we do once we recognize the true nature of the empire we’re up against.

Five years after A New Hope and two years after the darker The Empire Strikes Back, audiences were treated to another visionary depiction of the future in Blade Runner. Harrison Ford’s involvement meant that many filmgoers were expecting another rollicking sci-fi adventure. What they got, the relatively few who saw it at the time, was a dour, dank neo-noir.

Pauline Kael, the prominent film critic of The New Yorker (professional critics were more important back then) had been dismissive about A New Hope (“exhausting …like taking a pack of kids to the circus”). But she wasn’t any happier with the considerably slower and seemingly much more adult Blade Runner either:

“[It] treats this grimy, retrograde future as a given – a foregone conclusion, which we’re not meant to question... The sci-fi movies of the past were often utopian or cautionary; this film seems indifferent, blasé... satisfied in a slightly vengeful way.”

As Kael noted, Blade Runner’s world has gone to shit, but nobody tries to change it, yet alone rebel against its towering mega-corporations (the replicant “skin jobs” do revolt, but out of a desperate desire to extend their own lifespans).

In many ways, despite its commercial failure, especially compared to Star Wars, Blade Runner has been much more influential as a template for imagining the future. Subsequently, historian Jill Lepore has identified a radical pessimism in contemporary dystopian fiction. Whereas it used to be a “fiction of resistance,” it has now become a “fiction of submission,” of helplessness and hopelessness. In contrast, Star Wars, which is deeply unfashionable in cultural theory compared to Blade Runner, doesn’t just depict a dystopian future but focuses on fighting it. It says that another galaxy is possible – if we want it.

This agency, our ability to choose a different future, is what Cass Sunstein, a leading constitutional scholar, thinks Star Wars is all about, our ability to make the right decision when it really matters. Sunstein, who among other things pioneered the study of ‘choice architecture’, emphasizes that the main characters in Star Wars are resolutely active:

“Star Wars also makes a bold claim about freedom of choice. Whenever people find themselves in trouble, or at some kind of crossroads, the series proclaims: You are free to choose... the foundation of its rousing tribute to human freedom.”

In Star Wars, the new hope lies in young people. Luke is described as being 18 years old in the script. Leia might be 19, but she’s maybe the most important rebel in the galaxy. From the first time we meet her, she refuses to be intimidated by Darth Vader and the Empire’s extensive apparatus of fear. And after the Empire comes for Luke (or rather, the droids that have come into his possession carrying the plans for a new super weapon), he doesn’t hesitate. Indeed, rebellion seems like a liberation to him. It’s also worth noting that, given their age, these young people had never known anything but the Empire, and yet they envisage its overthrow.

As George Lucas reflected: “One day Princess Leia and her friends woke up and said, ‘This isn’t the Republic anymore, it’s the Empire. We are the bad guys. Well, we don’t agree with this. This democracy is a sham, it’s all wrong.’”

Lucas has never been a socialist. Star Wars is what it is because he was living through revolutionary times in which young people were increasingly faced with a choice between two sides, empire and rebels. But this makes his story all the more effective: a call for rebellion from a mainstream liberal guy in extraordinary circumstances.

We talk about ‘radical’ politics. But as the actor and activist Ellen Page says, “We need to stop claiming the political activists are ‘radical.’ The people who are fucking radical are the people who want to keep destroying our water and our topsoil and our air in order to give a few people billions more dollars.”

In our world, as in Star Wars, it’s the empirists who are the extremists. Being ‘radical’ is now the only way to be responsible. We face a planet-destroying empire – ideologically-driven, deceptive and dangerous. Our most likely path is toward the dark side: violent, exploitative, racist and authoritarian (I’ll discuss the lure of the dark side in the next post). Unless we change course, unless we rebel against the system that’s leading us there. And who is the rebellion? It’s whoever realizes we can’t go on like this, that compromise and accommodation and conciliation with empire is no longer possible.

Paradoxically, this is why, along with its fantasy setting and sheer entertainment value, Star Wars is often dismissed as childish: the criticism allows us to distance ourselves from taking action, from, as Denis Wood (not a professional critic, but an early and insightful fan of the series) suggested, “real living, consulting your feelings instead of your attitudes, your being instead of your position, your sense of humanity instead of your career line.” The series says that, despite everything, we can rip out our constraining bolts and challenge the system. And an unjust universe has no place for pessimism and passivity, since as George Lucas argued:

“If you can’t do anything about the Empire, the Empire will eventually crush you ...To not make a decision is a decision... What usually happens is a small minority stands up against it, and the major portion are a lot of indifferent people who aren’t doing anything one way or the other. By not accepting the responsibility, those people eventually have to confront the issue in a more painful way – which is essentially what happened in the United States with the Vietnam War.”

In the next post I’ll discuss how Star Wars represents generational conflict – a kind of civil war that, as in the 1960s, is once again relevant today.

Welcome to the Rebellion: A New Hope in Radical Politics, will be published in June 2020 by Zero Books. You can pre-order your copy now at:

US: Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million, Indiebound

UK: Amazon.co.uk, Zero Books, Waterstones, Foyles, Blackwells

Rest of the world: Chapters/Indigo, Booktopia, Book Depository, Goodreads 

A FREE preview of the introduction to the book is available on Amazon.