When reading Thomas Frank’s article about consumerism, the nerd in me kind of came out. I immediately correlated Storm Troopers to “It is a stiff, militaristic order that seeks to suppress instinct, to forbid sex and pleasure, to deny basic human impulses and individuality, to enforce through a rigid uniformity a meaningless plastic consumerism.” The only thing I felt like was different was that Storm Troopers live to serve Galatic Empire, while Frank’s drones serve the empire of the monopolized media-based consumerism. When Frank said “The Establishment demands homogeneity; we revolt by embracing diverse, individual lifestyles,” I immediately thought “Jedi.” The Jedi were people that chose to use the forces of good instead of evil for the sake of the “free world” or the New Republic. Storm Troopers and the rest of the Galactic Alliance cannot love. An example would be how Padme dies after Anakin Skywalker becomes evil.
Ultimately, it turns out that this article had nothing to do with Star Wars because Frank says “As existential rebellion has become a more or less official style of Information Age capitalism, so has the counterculture notion of a static, repressive Establishment grown hopelessly obsolete. Princess Leia sent a message saying “Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you are my only hope,” showing that there was no way to embrace the surrounding culture and turn it into a counterculture full of options.
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