The World According to Star Wars

Book review by Deane Barker • • tags: star-wars, science-fiction, philosophy, media •
An image of the cover of the book "The World According to Star Wars"

This book is odd but lovable. I can’t imagine how it got written.

It’s about Star Wars. But not about any particular aspect of Star Wars. Rather, it’s a meditation about the…ideas (?) of Star Wars?

The book was written right after The Force Awakens was released. That was the first film in the third trilogy.

The author is all over the map. He starts by talking about how much of a cultural phenomenon the original film was, back in 1977. Then he talks about frameworks and paradigms for understanding all the movies and putting them in some master paradigm – everything from Christianity to feminism to Oedipus complexes.

That last one is also a recurrent theme. There are strong father-son commentaries in the films – Luke and Darth, Luke and Obi Wan, Darth and Obi Wan, etc. It turns out that concepts of fatherhood play out through the entire story.

In the second half is a long political discussion about rebellions and what causes them, which dips into the philosophies of “information cascades” and how we filter stimuli and input.

Like I said, the author is all over the place. He’s a professor at Harvard, and he wrote Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, which I enjoyed.

I can’t fault the book. I imagine it is what it set about to be – a celebration of one guy’s love of a film series. I don’t imagine the author had any particular point here, and if you read it with that in mind, you’ll probably enjoy it.

Book Info

Author
Cass R. Sunstein
Year
Pages
240
Acquired
  • I have read this book. According to my records, I completed it on .
  • A hardcover copy of this book is currently in my home library.
Links both to and from this – Informational Cascade September 7, 2023
This is the tendency for other people’s decisions to affect our decision. When a group of people is faced with a choice, and they make their decision sequentially, and people making the decision later can see what earlier decision-makes decided, will tend to make the same decision. This is a form...
Links from this – Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness October 1, 2022
This is a book about behavioral economics – why humans make the choices they do, and how they can be persuaded to make other choices. Well, not “persuaded” so much, but rather – wait for it – nudged . A “nudge” is a change to how a choice is framed or presented that causes people to pick an option...