{"id":4202,"date":"2015-12-26T06:58:24","date_gmt":"2015-12-26T11:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/?p=4202"},"modified":"2015-12-26T22:11:29","modified_gmt":"2015-12-27T03:11:29","slug":"why-we-love-star-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/2015\/12\/26\/why-we-love-star-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"Why We Love \u201cStar Wars\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"star-wars-which-classic-film-have-you-not-seen-ftr\"<\/a>By<\/strong> Bennett L. Schwartz, Ph.D.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Heroes in the real world are in short supply and usually ambiguous.\u00a0 Consider the three brave men who took down the terrorist on a train in Belgium.\u00a0 I certainly think of them as heroes, and they did likely save many lives, but, in reality, they waited until it was apparent that the terrorist\u2019s gun had jammed before they rushed him.\u00a0 In the movies, such heroes would bring down the villain amidst a hail of bullets.<\/p>\n

In the original \u201cStar Wars,\u201d a lone orphaned \u201cfarm boy\u201d with only some folk wisdom to guide him single-handedly attacks and eliminates the Death Star, the most lethal weapon ever invented.\u00a0\u00a0 For forty years now, many of us have waited with much anticipation for the next installment of \u201cStar Wars,\u201d expecting to escape from our own ambiguous and complex world to \u201ca long time ago in a galaxy far far away\u201d in which good and evil are easily distinguished.<\/p>\n

According to Dr. Jeffrey Green, a social psychologist at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, contemplating acts of heroism inspires us to find meaning and virtue in our own lives.\u00a0 Green invokes the concept of \u201cterror-management,\u201d which refers to the manner in which we deal with the dread of our own mortality.\u00a0 We know we are going to die \u2013but what of our lives will survive our death?\u00a0 Heroes \u2013 from real ones like Martin Luther King, Jr. to fictional ones like Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter – achieve an immortality through their heroism.<\/p>\n

In Green\u2019s view, by identifying with the hero, we perhaps find a bit of immortality for ourselves.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For this reason, we identify more with heroes who \"SausageServlet-4-379489\"<\/a>are like us in some fundamental way. Luke Skywalker, from his humble beginnings, must find the courage to do the right thing.\u00a0 In this way, Luke is an American hero, self-taught, self-made, accomplishing great things because of his will, his inner belief in himself, and just a bit of manifest destiny.\u00a0\u00a0 Thus, his triumphs are also ours.<\/p>\n

But \u201cStars Wars\u201d provides other archetypes \u2013 so, if Luke is not the hero we identify with, there are other we can.\u00a0 Hans Solo acts not to right the wrongs of the world, but embodies heroism through loyalty \u2013 he won\u2019t leave behind a friend in trouble.\u00a0 Princess Leia, is already a hero at movie\u2019s start – we admire and aspire to her intelligence, courage, and determination. Obi-Wan Kenobi is a hero past who sacrifices himself so Luke can do what\u2019s right.\u00a0\u00a0 Regardless of who we identify with, through that identification, it brings meaning and comfort to our own struggle to make sense of the world.<\/p>\n

According to Green, the true hero sees his or his archenemy as redeemable.\u00a0 This is a fundamentally Christian notion, that even the worst of us can repent and find salvation.\u00a0 The true hero recognizes this and offers this change to the enemy. In \u201cStar Wars,\u201d this Christian notion of forgiveness emerges many times over, including in the final scene of Episode 6, in which Luke\u2019s faith in the goodness of Darth Vader allows Darth Vader himself to conquer both the evil in himself and the evil that controls him.\u00a0 At first, this ending may make us uncomfortable \u2013 for years, \u201cDarth Vader\u201d was a synonym for evil.\u00a0 But we also see the complexity of our own lives reflected in the epic struggle of hero and villain, leaving us uplifted by this concept of redemption, so central to our belief system<\/p>\n

Thus, deliberately, George Lucas has created an enduring epic myth that appeals to some of our most fundamental beliefs, which spares us \u2013 at least for two hours at a time \u2013 of the buzzing confusion and ambiguity that is our normal lives.<\/p>\n

– – – – – – – – – – – – – –<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bennett L. Schwartz, Ph.D. Heroes in the real world are in short supply and usually ambiguous.\u00a0 Consider the three brave men who took down the terrorist on a train in Belgium.\u00a0 I certainly think of them as heroes, and they did likely save many lives, but, in reality, they waited until it was apparent … Continue reading Why We Love \u201cStar Wars\u201d<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1159],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fictional-heroes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/phawtM-15M","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}