Mythological Characters and Concepts in Star Wars
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Mythological Characters and Concepts in Star Wars
Star Wars is a contemporary myth, saturated with mythological features, patterns, stories, and characters. Contemporary mythology is a recently developed term to describe modern stories which bear a resemblence, either in content or in cultural significance, to traditional mythology such as Greek Mythology or religious stories. In the same way that ancient mythology provided explanations of the world and its origins, contemporary mythology provides modern people with a metaphoricial language which helps us to explore, share, and understand our perceptions of the world. It also provides common reference points to facilitate the discussion of social and philosophical ideas. The term is usually, though not always, applied to stories of the fantasy and science fiction genres. The term is also used to describe the internal rules or concepts employed by a particular story or fictional "world."
As a prominent example, the fictional world of Star Wars has very detailed rules, history, population, physics, religion, etc. All of these make up the contemporary mythology of the Star Wars universe. Though many ancient myths still have great resonance, contempoary mythology may have more immediate applications and is more likely to be connected to common experience. Put simply, it is more likely that a person in America will have seen the Star Wars movies than it is that they will be familliar with the details of Greek mythology...