A Sacrificial Crisis Not Far Away: Star Wars as a Genuinely Modern Mythology

The chapter analyzes the Star Wars saga in light of Girard’s insights about the “history of mythology.” The analogies with standard mythical narratives cannot be merely explained, Bubbio argues, with the fact that George Lucas’s story was shaped, in part, by ideas described in mythologist Joseph Campbell’s 1949 work The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Star Wars, and its widespread prominence in popular culture, can be better explained, it is argued, via Girard’s conception of myth. The Star Wars saga, Bubbio contends, derives its value precisely insofar as it reflects the situation of the community in which it is produced, either by concealing or by revealing (and sometimes concealing and revealing at the same time) mimetic contagion and the spread of violence; and this sometimes happens despite the conscious intention of the films’ creators. Moreover, Bubbio argues that the Star Wars prequel trilogy features a rationalization of the themes of the original trilogy and turns the Star Wars saga into a tragedy (with everything that this implies for mimetic theory). Finally, the first two films of the recent Star Wars sequel trilogy are also explored as providing evidence of, or at least commentary on, the presence of a real sacrificial crisis happening in Western societies.