Home > Messages from the Ether > OSV

What? Devoid of "drinking". What about the seedy Cantina? (See Star Wars). What about the dive, electronica bar in Episode II?

He's giving props to Tolkien's "flinty perfection"? While Tolkien maybe big on imagination and breadth but isn't he considered to be bad writer?

I did find his "breaking me a fuck give" retort to be excellently timed and I admit I giggled when I read the line again in the original article.

This guy is reaching (I haven't seen the movie yet, but he seems to be bashing the whole enterprise of Lucas's "septic world" or "terrible puritan" fantasy.) I guess this guy would balk at classical mythology.

He needs to reach for the Pepto Bismol as one should not write articles with upset stomachs brought on by sour grapes.

"Sour grapes"? I'm not sure in what context his criticisms could be considered sour grapes. Are you saying that he liked the movie but was acting like he didn't?

The original was praised for it's moments of gritty realism--trash in the streets, broken-down robots. The subsequent films, specificaly the first two, have had little of that realism. If it can be valid as praise then it can be valid as criticism.

And "classical mythology" this is not. Pop culture could be examined in some ways as a modern mythology, but I don't think it maps completely onto older mythologies.

Does it map to classical mythology? I wouldn't say completely but I think a good number of people have suggested that the story has attributes and archetypes that interfaces with classical mythology on some levels: good vs. evil, the unwilling hero, light and dark, the heroine, the begatting of children and the thread of conflict that will follow them later in the story, the lonely journey, etc.

Heck, even the dialogue, which one NYTimes reviewer described the script forces the characters to "speechify" where the themes of the story are "stuffed into the mouths" of the characters. This reminds me somewhat of classical Greek plays. Perhaps I read a bad translation. ;)

I don't believe it can completely divest itself of "pop culture" elements but I'm not ready to agree that this enterprise can be unwittingly tossed into the scrap heap of failed and shallow attempts to tell a story.

Sour grapes might have been a misapplication. I do think it's highly pretentious and he probably would have been a bit more convincing if he wasn't trying to sink the entire ship that is Star Wars. To me, the article wasn't mcuh more than a mad, aimless rant that did have a couple of humorous moments. It wasn't a complete waste of time. ;)

While I can understand analyzing today's books or movies within a mythological or archetypal framework, I can't agree with calling them myths. The Three Stooges could be analyzed as archetypes--that doesn't make them equal to Classical mythology.

You had suggested that the reviewer's criticisms of Star Wars are inconsistent with an appreciation of Classical mythology. I think that's an inappropriate comparison.