I just stumbled across David Brin’s brilliant essay that takes the whole mythology of Star Wars to task for being elitist, pompous, and anti-democratic.
Above all, I never cared for the whole Nietzschian Übermensch thing: the notion – pervading a great many myths and legends – that a good yarn has to be about demigods who are bigger, badder and better than normal folk by several orders of magnitude. It’s an ancient storytelling tradition based on abiding contempt for the masses – one that I find odious in the works of A.E. Van Vogt, E.E. Smith, L. Ron Hubbard and wherever you witness slanlike super-beings deciding the fate of billions without ever pausing to consider their wishes.
Brin continues to distinguish two trends in science fiction and critique the Joseph Campbell worship that pervades Star Wars. Science fiction at its best is a fiction of liberation that rejects the Homeric-heroic literary tradition in favor of a future in which questions are asked. To Brin an example of the ideals of SF can be found in Star Trek
Above all, “Star Trek” generally depicts heroes who are only about 10 times as brilliant, noble and heroic as a normal person, prevailing through cooperation and wit, rather than because of some inherited godlike transcendent greatness. Characters who do achieve godlike powers are subjected to ruthless scrutiny. In other words, “Trek” is a prototypically American dream, entranced by notions of human improvement and a progress that lifts all. Gene Roddenberry’s vision loves heroes, but it breaks away from the elitist tradition of princes and wizards who rule by divine or mystical right.
As I read this I was reminded of another essay by Michael Moorcock “Starship Stormtroopers“
Star Wars carries the paternalistic messages of almost all generic adventure fiction (may the Force never arrive on your doorstep at three o’clock in the morning) and has all the right characters. it raises ‘instinct’ above reason (a fundamental to Nazi doctrine) and promotes a kind of sentimental romanticism attractive to the young and idealistic while protective of existing institutions. It is the essence of a genre that it continues to promote certain implicit ideas even if the author is unconscious of them. In this case the audience also seems frequently unconscious of them.
