Four ways to reinterpret Star Wars

Star Wars is like nerd scripture: moral homilies, scrupulous exegesis, debates over canonicity, commentaries on commentaries, gnostic gospels, and after-the-fact revision and then purging of the source texts. But some of the secondary writing that tries to resolve the contradictions in the series (especially between the beloved original trilogy and reviled prequels) is just plain fun.

• “A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope” was my introduction to this genre, and it’s still one of the best. It takes the prequels as canon, and argues for an intriguing, sinister subtext to Episode IV.
• Another approach is to just reinvent the stories altogether, changing whole plot points at will. I tried my hand at this at a short-lived but wonderfully fun group site called Counterfictionals. (Scroll down for the better posts, or check the whole archive for terrific stuff by other writers on Star Trek, Batman, etc.)
• At HiLobrow, Joshua Glenn maps a virtuoso cultural interpretation that I can’t summarize, except to say that it involves the use of a semiotic square and the use of the word “quatsch.”
• Finally, this one comes out of the Kottke archives. Aidan Wasley argues that the whole six-part-series is “the greatest postmodern art film ever,” relentlessly self-referential, where mysterious elements like “the Force” stand in for the artifice of plot itself.

Let’s just say that under this interpretation, James Franco is giving Lucas a run for his money.

• counterfictionals
• HiLobrow
• Star Wars