From: dkemper@oolong.hacks.arizona.edu (David Kemper)
Subject: Re: BOOK: The Force of Star Wars
Organization: University of Administrative Incompetence
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 18:58:52 GMT
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In article <1992Dec30.001429.1883@cs.unca.edu>, mcmahan@cs.unca.edu (Scott McMahan -- Genesis mailing list owner) writes...
>I found a book today never seen before or mentioned on this newsgroup!
>The Force of Star Wars by Frank Allnutt. No ISBN listed, (c) 1977
>by the Bible Voice, Inc.

Actually, it has been mentioned on this newsgroup by me.  Allnutt also wrote
a follow-up after ESB and ROTJ came out, taking those movies into account
in an expanded version of this interpretation, but I don't know the title of
this other book nor have I ever been able to find a copy.

>This isn't a story, and it isn't criticism, I don't know what to call it.
>I dunno how he got to use the Star wars trademark. It has little
>to do with Star Wars.

Well you don't need special permission to write a book about an
interpretation of Star Wars, any more than you would to write a movie
review.  As I recall, he doesn't use the stylized STAR WARS logo anywhere,
and the cover illustration is a slight variation on the common picture of
Luke holding the lightsaber in the air with Leia next to him.

>The guy's basic point is that SW is an allegory for Christianity.
>Even though evil looks good, and is the easiest way to go, good will
>triumph in the end through perseverance. I go along with that, but
>he takes it to such absurd proportions that he shoots himself
>down. He reads this tremendous allegory into SW about how each character
>represents some aspect of Christianity (there's a table of these in 
>the back, for crying out loud), and ignores the whole point
>of the film, escapism. He gets so close to the real point of why
>SW is popular, but completely looses it. The text I've read so far
>is sprinkled liberally (to say the least) with incredible digressions
>into the history of Christianity. The points are almost obscured by
>all this exposition that's off the topic.
> 
>What I really can't buy is the allegory, and reading it shows how
>desperately he is clutching at straws to make it stick. A cynical
>person could say that this book is using the SW name to lure unsuspecting
>readers into a speil on Christianity (this arguement could be
>supported by the "..if you have received Jesus Christ..." order
>form in the back of the book). Which makes me wonder how they let
>this book bear the SW logo. There's a certain tendancy for people,
>especially in literary criticism and fanatical religious beliefs,
>to read a lot more into things than is necessarily there, and to
>try to tell people the way the thing is to be interpreted. This
>author is fully involved with these two concepts :)

The neat thing about religion is that it's so all-encompassing you can take
any creative work on the face of the planet and find an interpretation of
it that shows how it's a religious allegory.  In a similar vein, you could
probably compare a lot of literature and movies to Star Wars and find
parallels that "prove" that that work is a Star Wars allegory.  (There was
a post a while back that someone took from a book comparing the Wizard of
Oz and Star Wars something like this, going so far as to find parallels in
characters and locales.)

--Gallandro

    "Take it easy, kid.  It's only a movie."   --Ham Salad, "Hardware Wars"
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.starwars