So, I've been reading "Culture and Imperialism" and one of the first things that made me stop and think of how I engage with and interpret literature (and, by extension any other media) was this quote from "Dombey and Son":
Note how Dickens is not making any value judgments about the British Empire here — he is not implying that it is an advantageous way of structuring society, that Britain "deserves" the servitude of the colonies or that the subjected peoples are in any way inferior. He actually takes quite a mocking tone relative to Dombey's way of thinking; this is clearly a character who is full of himself and the reader should be quite aware of his pomposity.
Instead, what Said is arguing about Dickens is that the notion of empire was so pervasive for a 19th century novelist like him insomuch that he could not envision a world without it. The Empire simply is. It's not that it's good or bad, it's that it exists and will continue to exist and no events could possibly threaten the permanence of empire. There is nothing to stop Dombey, in his conceit, to think of his world in such geographically expansive terms, because he is a British citizen and the sun never sets on the British Empire, after all, so of course that rivers, seas, ships — all these elements could reasonably be involved in his business dealings.
Anyway, Said explains it much more eloquently that I ever could, so I won't insist, but it did get me thinking into how this can be applied to Star Wars (ofc it did, this is a fandom account).
We are all aware of George Lucas' obvious orientalist markers by now: Jar Jar's accent, the Neimoidians, Queen Amidala's wardrobe, the white Western men dressed in Samurai clothing etc. I won't go into that. I have noticed, though, that there is a segment of the fandom that have convinced themselves that, even with these very unsubtle indicators of problematic representation when it comes to non-white, non-Western cultures, the Jedi philosophy and social organisation, as conceived by Lucas, could somehow be a faithful, faultless depiction of East-Asian ways of life. Even more so, that it somehow represents an optimised lifestyle that sometimes even surmounts criticism.
One of the more popular themes under discussion lately, as per my observations, has been the idea that fans should not impose on the Jedi their concepts of the nuclear family, as that is a Western construct and the Jedi have a communal way of raising children and structuring their daily lives. Related to this is the idea that marriage and romantic love is similarly perceived by fans through a very Western lens, which leads them to launch unfair criticisms towards the Jedi, when they simply have a different social system.
Except... that is exactly what George Lucas himself does.
Think of the kind of stories and conflicts he prioritises in his works (movies 1-6), because it sure as hell isn't the communal living Jedi content to live ascetically and aromantically. No, it's romance and the nuclear family. Everything else is window-dressing. The communal-living Jedi are not interesting enough to write a story about: Anakin Skywalker is. And what does Anakin Skywalker want? He wants his mother (Shmi), his father (Obi-Wan), his wife (Padme), his children (Luke & Leia) and his sister (Ahsoka). He is thee Chosen One. The most specialest boy to ever exist, the son of the Force itself.
You can definitely argue that his methods are wrong, but his vision is the one that wins out simply because it is the story being told. Similarly to Dombey, all of the rivers and the seas and the ships in this world exist to tell Anakin Skywalker's story. Lucas created Jedi society as a vehicle for Luke/Anakin, not the other way around. Jedi society has to exist in such a way as to fit Anakin's story, his downfall and his redemption. It is subservient to Anakin's story and if some element of it does not fit Anakin's character arc, it will be changed at will.
One of the main ideas in "Culture and Imperialism" is how the selection of plots, settings, characters and conflicts matters just as much as what is not being told. By not focusing on this alternative social organisation, Lucas is essentially relegating it to shadows. It it mere decoration for this protagonist, a pretext for the hero's conflict. I would thus argue that representation of alternative social structures can't really be that important to Lucas after all and that it is difficult to believe that deep down he would even consider them "better" or "desirable". If it were indeed so, why didn't he emphasize this topic in the first place? Why is his protagonist the opposite of that? Why is it dismantled and never to be seen again?
And if the prequel trilogy is the tragedy, the OT is the redemption. The romance between Luke and Leia was brushed aside, but it's so obviously there — another marker that there was nothing objectionable to a classical love story. No one in the OT mentions any interdiction Luke's father had as a Jedi to marry his mother, because such a conflict did not exist back then and was only added later — an additional argument that the Jedi society is structured in such a way as to give Anakin a reason to carry out his arc. Leia, supposedly a Force user with as much potential as her brother, goes on to have a family of her own. So does Luke in Legends. So how is it "the fans" who are pushing their own nuclear family agenda onto the Jedi when the creator himself was the first one to do it? It literally is the entire plot of the movies.
Regardless of what George Lucas has ever said in his interviews and how many times he retconned his own work, Said would argue that there is an unconscious, unacknowledged bias at play here. If living communally as monks was such a productive way of life for Force-sensitives, why isn't that vision reinstated in Star Wars at the end? Why is the focus throughout the entire work still on romance and family?
This is where the divide between intention and execution comes in. I have often felt that Lucas convinces himself he properly conveyed an idea, when, in reality, he is not really aware of how his execution comes across; neither is he aware of his own biases and blind spots as an essentially straight, white, Western, Christian man. That is how you get interpretations that swing wildly between "the Jedi were right all along" and "the Jedi did Anakin a great disservice". In reality, the Jedi as a concept are subordinate to Anakin's character arc. Anakin wants romance and a family because that's probably an aspiration George Lucas can relate to, it isn't more complicated than that. Consequently, there is a need for obstacles in our hero's quest. Why couldn't Anakin simply achieve those things? Well, in order to create narrative friction, the Jedi must somehow sit in opposition to those goals. Considerations such as whether their designated ideology is actually feasible in its intricacies will always come second.
