As I was reading the comments on an article chronicling the efforts of a historian to confirm the total numbers of North Carolinans who died as a result of The Slaveholder's Rebellion (sometimes "the Civil War"), one commenter mentioned that we were coming up on the 150 year anniversary of the onset of hostilities, and as such those wondering why this article was so prominently featured on the main page of the Wall Street Journal should resign themselves to a surge in retrospectives and other atteention paid to the subject in the months to come.
So lately I've had that on my mind, which is only meant as preface to explain why I was struck by some ways in which one could use that subject productively to think about Star Wars, specifically the original trilogy (OT) as it relates to the prequel trilogy (PT).
The essential idea was, to speak syllogistically, as the PT is to the OT, so is Gone With The Wind to The Slaveholder's Rebellion.
Pros:
-Kenobi and Yoda can be seen not as intentionally untruthful and/or senile, but as 'lost causers' who can't come to grips with what their society/code really was based on, denial of love and the importance thereof (i.e. those who claim that it was really all about state's rights)
-Luke's refusal to simply kill Vader becomes more heroic/messianic, since he disregarded the instructions that he knew weren't the right way to do things in favor of accepting love and the consequences of it
-The PT can be regarded as lost cause propaganda and means that the 'real story' about the events of that time period is not known
-Imagining the Jedi Order as an institution overthrown in some kind of revolutionary struggle followed by the corruption of that element which came to power (the Senate 'swept away' by Empire, relegated to a footnote in history like most idealistic transitional governments) is more in keeping with human history as I understand revolutionary theory
Cons:
-'Real story' will never be made
-Probably harder to bend one's mind around that interpretation of the PT (possibly OT, for that matter) than I think
-Still not as cool as if the existing PT had never been made and something had instead been done by actually talented people
-Complicated Eco-esque interpretation of narrators being unreliable in Star Wars probably not very appealing to large markets
-My fixation on saving Star Wars is about as productive as any other lost causer's lost cause
