The Ritual of Star Wars (Movies?

)
(The Star Wars Movie Rituals?)
I would like to write about a ritual that is built around/surrounds? a movie franchise. It is what we
would/one might? call a meta-story, a story that is about passing on to the younglings the
experience of the ancestors, and its a familiar one to many of you. I would like to write about Star
Wars-The Force Awakens.
Let me be honest with you: I just did a J. J. Abrams. I borrowed the tone of the last paragraph
from a speech given by famous anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff. The charismatic lady is mostly
known for winning the Academy Award in 1976 for her short documentary Number Our Days.
See Clip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aZY1IZc2MU
But Myerhoff was more than an Oscar Winner, she was also one heck of an/tremendous/outstanding
anthropologist. In her most famous work she studied the story of a Jewish Passover Seder, a several
hour long ritual, which retells the Exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt. By dissecting this
particular rite Myerhoff wanted to analyse one of the defining building blocks of civilization: The
transmission of culture.
Well, you ask: What does a religious ritual have to do with The Force Awakens? Believe me, a lot,
and, for me, its the only viable explanation why this strange movie worked so well for many
people.
Before I go deeper into the thematic complex/matter?, I have to mention one big rancor in the room:
I truly dislike the The Force Awakens. For me, as a writer, it just/simply? does not work as a movie.
The drama doesn't feel earned cause the pacing is too rushed: The characters jump from plot point
A straight to plot point C, but by leaving out B, C feels weightless. Worse, there are often? no
consequences to actions and events. Its a And then story, not a Thats why story, and, worst of
all, the characters and the world feel paper-thin.
And you know what: Nobody seemed to? care(d). Most people really enjoyed TFA. And at first,
that really bothered me, not because I was alone in my pretentious ranting about good art, but
because I couldnt wrap my head around the psychological reasons for all this love. And so I asked
myself:
Why? Why did people like The Force Awakens?
And thats my theory: The TFA Experience is more than a movie. Its a ritual!
Only if we look at it through/with an? the anthropological lens/eye? the reception of the movie
starts to make sense: The Force Awakens nails it as a ritual. Its the best example of a postmodern
Popculture Passover Tale you/one? could possibly imagine.
Listen closely to how most people react to the movie. They seldom speak about the reasons why
The Force Awakens was great. Instead, they take it on a personal level: First they usually tell you
what Star Wars means to them, then they state how they were first introduced to the universe. After
that follows a vivid retelling of their favorite scenes in the first trilogy, they speak about how old
they were watching A New Hope, with whom and in what context they experienced it. Then they
usually rant what disappointment they the Prequel Trilogy was. That George Lucas butchered
THEIR Story, and, that now finally, The Force Awakens put Star Wars on the right track again.

Because TFA was like the Star Wars they remembered, because The Force Awakens FELT how
Star Wars is supposed to be.

Its hard to argue with that logic, and maybe you just cant. Because such things are always
subjective, a matter of personal taste and, taste being so closely knit to the inner core of ones being,
that most people cant explain WHY they like some things and dislike others. However, you can try
to rationalize, why people feel a certain way, and it goes straight to the eternal question: How does
art impact people?
To start/First?, lets dissect what The Force Awakens has in common with a religious ritual. Read
this excerpt of Myerhoff speaking about the Jewish Passover ritual and pretend for a minute its The
Force Awakens she talks about:
Now as we looked at this ritualthis storytelling ritual, this performance of a storytrying to figure out what
was going on and how to tell other people what was going on, what quickly became apparent to us was that
we were struggling to tell two stories at the same time. One is the chronological story of the ritual which has
a certain set of procedures, of fixed events that have to occur in a given order, and the other is the story of
the family that is performing the ritual. And every family performs it differently, and every year it is performed
differently, although one of the great myths about ritual is that it is always the same. This is the essence of
ritual. It is the story that says: This is always the same.

Great stuff, isnt it? Lets look at one of Myerhoffs thoughts more closely and work out, how they
connect to The Force Awakens.
This is the essence of the ritual: It is a story that says: This is always the same.
And, Boy, if there is one movie that can claim to be the same as its forerunners, it has to be this
one. The similarities are obvious, The Force Awakens basically uses the basic plot structure of the
almost forty year old A New Hope and adds some sprinkles from Episode five and six on top. I
dont want to get deeper into that because the whole internet is already spilling over with people
pointing this fact out. But if you are interested: This guy did a great job summing it up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNAy7yCMyBw&t=1m1s
So nobody can deny it: The Plot of The Force Awakens is A New Hope with a fresh paint job
sprayed over it.
However, and that is crucial, most people dont care about the repetition. They like/welcome? it. A
friend of mine made a great observation by comparing her Force Awakens experience to a revival
concert of her favorite band. The Force Awakens let her relieve the feelings of old times, and she is
right: The movie feels like listening to one of these special songs from? your youth. The kind of
song, from which you only need to hear one chord and a million butterflies spread their wings in
your gut. Remember Myerhoffs words: Its always the same. Its repetition and tradition, that
provide people with comfort. Its the longing for a world, where the good old days stay forever or at
least come back to you from time to time. I mean, why does everyone love CHRISTMAS?
But lets read what else Myerhoff has to say about rituals:
But of course the ritual isnt always the same. Common sense which ritual banishes, and which it is
supposed to banish in order to induce belief tells us that, if we look at it immediately, every ritual has to be
different. There are different performers, its a different world, a different year. And yet we accept the claim to
perpetuity that ritual makes. Because it is rhythmic, because it is repetitive, because it uses a special

vocabulary, ordinary things and makes them extraordinary. The means it uses are everywhere the same.
Whether its an African initiation ceremony in Botswana or a Jewish storytelling session in Los Angeles, ritual
sets the ordinary apart by its use of language, gesture, costume, posturesensuous things. And those
sensuous things are very persuasive and invite us to suspend disbelief, exactly as we do in a theater....

What can we learn from that excerpt for the movie? Its easy: The Force Awakens gets the
sensuous things right.
We are just wired that way: Familiar sounds, smells and pictures, effortlessly dig
up/unearth/uncover/evoke? long-forgotten emotions, Sensuous things, as Myerhoff calls them.
The visual language of The Force Awakens just feels right, the language of the characters, their
gestures, their costumes and their postures, all of that stuff that is persuasive and invites you to
suspend disbelief. The Force Awakens succeeds brilliantly in capturing the more widely accepted
surface texture of Star Wars and, thereby, triggering the warm fuzzy feeling people had the first
time watching the original trilogy. Its Ritualistic Storytelling at its finest.
But still, movies other than TFA would get shot and left in the desert of Jakku for such narrative
laziness. But not this one. And thats because Star Wars already gained the status as a collectively
owned narrative. Maybe never before in the history of mankind was there a non-religious story as
widely known as this one(or: more widely known than this one). Sorry, Jesus, but lets ask little
Timmy about your crucifixion. The kid will most likely shrug at you. No emotional connection. But
lets ask little Timmy about the Skywalkers and you have to punch that little bugger down to stop
his confused ramblings.
And who is better to revitalize a collective owned narrative than J.J. Abrams. This director does not
make movies, he creates time-machines for emotions. His style of film making is perfect for this
franchise. Why? Because its mostly devoid of an own identity, its empty at heart.
To be clear/clarify?: On the surface Abrams film making is dense and rich. He knows how to stage
a scene, to find the right shot to beat the emotion you are supposed to feel in your head. Its deeply
manipulative on a psychological level and, even if he just mimics the visual style of Lucas,
Zemeckis and Spielberg, for a film maker, thats truly a marvelous achievement. But, if you look at
his movies more closely, in their narrative core, the pictures are empty. And Abrams even admits it.
Ever heard his talk about the Mystery Box?
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpjVgF5JDq8
To sum his theory it up: The narrative tool of the mystery box leaves room for viewer speculation,
for imagination, for infinite possibilities, for filling in your own emotion. The story of his movies
serve as a blank page, so the audience can fill in whats left. The richer your imagination, in theory,
the richer the world. Mystery Box Storytelling is encouraging Fan Fiction in its Default mode.
Thats why Abrams is the perfect director for long established franchises such as Star Trek and Star
Wars. On a widely known and stable narrative foundation this guy can build an immensely
entertaining tower. However, they are shaky constructions(sic), and as soon as you blow a little
thought at them, they fall over.
The Mystery box is empty in the sense as we only find ourselves in it.- J. J. Abrams.
To make this clear, I dont think this method is bad. Its just one crafting tool among others.
However, what is good drama?? Well, let that be a question to be answered for another time.

See what I did there? No, you have to do the thinking for me.
No seriously, maybe at a certain point of the production, Abrams and Co. realized, that the less they
showed of the world and the characters, the more the fans can claim the movie to be theirs. The
Force Awakens is not interested in telling a self-contained story, its too aware of its target
audience to do that. TFA purposely provides only the skeleton of a story, the makers knew, the
audience will mold the flesh around the bones.
And maybe thats fine! At least for a world with a rich history like Star Wars, then/because? now
we, the audience, the fans can fill in the narrative for TFA. The fans know how Star Wars works,
perhaps better than anyone, better than George Lucas, better than Abrams, its already their own,
and so they have no problem writing the background? story for the characters in the movie, writing
the background? story for the worlds, writing fan fiction in their head as they witness one action
scene follows on another.
Remember Myerhoffs words: As long as you get the sensuous things right, the people will provide
the meaning behind the otherwise empty actions. I mean, why should you drink wine and pretend it
to be the blood of Gods Son? Its all in your head, son. The ritual has meaning, because you
believe in it. TFA has meaning, because you believe in it and because....Its the force, stupid!
So what? Why does that matter? Well, a lot: as we perform a ritual, there is a second story going
on. It also tells a story about us.
Notice how many fans organized themselves to watch TFA in a group. TFA was meant to be a
singular/personal? experience, it was a movie destined to be shared with others. Even the build up
to the picture was a shared endeavor, merchandise was shown to one another, screenings of the old
movies were organized. It seemed as if there was a subconscious desire to be fulfilled: The longing
for a collectively shared story, a defining narrative, which has the power to glue all of us together.
The build up was part of the ritual: The ritual of TFA was performed to give us the kind of cultural
identity older generations seem to have. To give our time meaning, to give us meaning.
Where does that need stem from?
I know that sounds weird at first, but philosophers like Jean Baudrillard pointed this fact out for a
long time: Reality vanished. We live in the age of digital defragmentation, in a world where people
just need to put/whip/whisk? out their Smartphone to put their personal, augmented reality over the
world. The digital revolution isolated us from one another in the sense, that we all go trough life
listening to our own customized soundtrack. There is a lack of shared space between people, a lack
of shared thought.
Ever noticed the growing of importance of one question in our times: What TV Show are you
watching? Or What movies/music do you like? Its such an interesting question in social
interactions as in reality it asks for so much more. It asks: What reality are you living in at the
moment? It asks: Do we share the same reality? And it asks: Do we both enjoy this shared
reality? The question What do you like? transformed over time to a tool of testing character.
Why did that happen/How come??? It happened because our world is overflowing with information
and stories. They are getting made by growing hordes of creators. These armies are crafting
countless alternative realities for us to lose ourselves in. All these crystallized thought has of course
a feedback effect on our material reality, it encourages a Disneylandification of everything. The
fictional worlds strive to become reality as they are the new standard to measure the material world.
Therefore, reality became fictional, an ideology among others.

Thus, its no wonder ritualized storytelling is getting stronger and stronger. We already have SO
many realities in our head, so many story-structures woven in our fabric, so many drama templates
in our thinking that we only need ritualized triggers to make a complete story out of it. Thats why
stories, seem to get faster and faster. In the age of Youtube Clips; Shorthand Storytelling ala Family
Guy is the ruling way of telling tales. We are bored by slow traditional drama, just give us the
ritualized triggers, and our subconsciousness will do the rest.
Its why politicians like Obama and Merkel are so widely loved, their surface texture is highly
ritualized, the way they act and speak just feel right to us, they serve as a mystery box for people as
they tell you nothing about what they actually stand for. What their true thoughts are, nobody
knows. Yes, we can is mystery box story-telling at its finest. Fill in your own Utopia, dummy.
Its already in your head anyway.
Without us noticing it/Unwittingly?, politics, movies, advertisement, they all became highly
ritualized. In a world where all is known, where all has been seen, nothing needs to be explained
anymore, the content is irrelevant as YOU are the content. We see the right motions on the surface
and we assume the actual content is in tune with our own expectations.
Or as Baudrillard once said: When the real no longer is what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its
full meaning.
Coming back/Returning? to Star Wars-The Force Awakens. Event though we seem to live in the age
of superficial rituals, thats exactly the reason I believe that the content discussion matters more
than ever. Theres a simple reason: Children. As Myerhoff points out, kids are the main reasons for
performing/maintaining/holding on to? rituals. With rituals we transmission culture from one
generation to the next. Children didnt yet internalize the drama templates their parents/elders?
adopted, so stories and rituals serve as a tool to teach them that. In contrast to us older people, they
take what they see at face value. And so we have to be actually more watchful than ever, in what we
actually convey to our younglings.
And thats why the ensuing discussions about the essence of Star Wars are more important than we
think. Because its one of the few collectively owned stories we have right now and so we have to
discuss the moral sub-text of the story.
And I believe what we actually morally learn from TFA is deeply problematic. But thats a question
to be answered for another time.
See, what I did there? ;)
THE END