Is Star Wars for Kids?
Once upon a time, Star Wars was the kind of story you could show your kids without a second thought. Nor was it accidental. George Lucas didn’t set out to craft a noir epic for burned-out Gen Xers or a political allegory for grad students. He made Star Wars for children, and he’s never been shy about saying so.
It’s a film for 12-year-olds. This is what we stand for. You’re about to enter the real world. You’re moving away from your parents. You’re probably scared, you don’t know what’s going to happen. Here’s what you should pay attention to: Friendships, honesty, trust, doing the right thing. Living on the light side, avoiding the dark side.
Screen cap: Disney
You don’t get clearer confirmation than that. Star Wars was always supposed to be a mythic primer for adolescence: a coming-of-age metaphor wherein the trappings of adulthood were symbolized with robes and laser swords. It worked because it was honest; unashamed to play timeless truth straight.
So it should be no surprise at all that Current Year Hollywood gets Star Wars disastrously wrong at every turn.
The recent wave of Star Wars-branded television product has introduced sexual themes that were not just absent from the original, but antithetical to its core purpose. We’re not talking about love stories, which have always been mainstays of myth. We’re talking about the innocence-destroying plague that infects every corner of modern media.
The rot isn’t confined to Star Wars properties, either. The practical disappearance of shows aimed at adolescents now has kids watching unambiguously adult fare.
Related: How ACT Helped Kill Adolescent Entertainment
The Gen Y hipsters at Red Letter Media have taken their fair share of flak, including some from me. But one thing their controversial review of The Phantom Menance got right was its assertion that Star Wars was, at heart, a live-action cartoon show for kids.
Ask yourself: Who is this material for? Children aren’t demanding it. And while you’re thinking it over, take a look at the viewership numbers. Teens aren’t tuning in. Families aren’t gathering around the tube like they did when the saga was at its height. Instead, Disney is playing to an aging, fragmented, and largely disillusioned remnant.
Star Wars did one job storytelling job better than most IP: guiding the wide-eyed kid up to the threshold of adult morality with a flashlight and a map. Luke Skywalker and Han Solo showed kids how to be brave. Obi-Wan showed them how to be loyal. Darth Vader gave them a dire warning about the potentiall catastrophic consequences of making the wrong moral choice. And more importantly, he gave an iconic example of what it means to accept responsibility for sin and embrace repentance.
Related: The Moral Grandeur of Brother Luke
Today, Western society’s map to adulthood has been redrawn. The arbiters of culture have erased the compass and added sketchy detours nobody asked for. Now, the culture that once protected childhood seems hell-bent on warping it.
The result? Nobody believes in myths anymore. As I’ve lamented here before, the term itself has become synonymous with "lie.” That’s the default view of the kids exposed to this slop, the parents who allow—or even encourage—them to consume it, and of course, the people who write it.
Say what you will about his ability to execute, George Lucas understood what the corporate usurpers of his creation have wilfully forgotten: Kids shouldn’t be dragged into adulthood. They should be offered clear examples of mature virtue and stories that teach them how to wield it.
The real tragedy isn’t that megacorps ruined a kids’ franchise. It’s that everyone seems to have forgotten what kids actually need.
If you want to tell stories about space wizards to twelve-year-olds, do it with conviction. If you want to manufacture a prime time cable soap opera for moral idiots, call it something else. Because Star Wars stopped being Star Wars the moment it stopped being for kids.
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