"What I told you was true, from a certain point of view."

Many STAR WARS fans, especially those who are vocal on the internet, seem to need a little reminding of a certain salient fact: the STAR WARS universe exists only in their minds.  It is a human creation, and from its general nature to its tiniest details its existence and meaning are entirely dependent upon human interpretation.

This isn't necessarily to say that we shouldn't imagine that this galaxy actually did physically exist far far away a long time ago.  This practice, which I call metaphysical realism, is in a broad sense the same practice on which the entirety of human civilization is built.  Governments and laws exist because people imagine they exist.  They exist as well in the human mind, and an authority is an authority because people agree about its authority.  In general, they agree that it is an authority either because they believe the authority is there to help them, or because they believe, rightly or wrongly, that the authority has the means to hurt them if they don't agree.  The habit of developing a name for the authority, such as "king", and saying that the authority "is" a king, is what metaphysical realism is.  "Metaphysical" because we are talking about the fundamental philosophical notion of things "being" (and to distinguish from psychological realism and poetic realism and other terms used by the dramatic and literary critic).  "Realism" because of the notion that those things that "are" belong to a set of things that are "real."  Metaphysical non-realism would not assume that anything actually is "real" and would say instead that things are, well, something else, such as ideas we construct or accept in order to make living our lives easier.  You might say, "Anything is real from a certain point of view."

Don't worry if you can't entirely get your head around metaphysical non-realism.  It isn't necessarily a useful philosophy, and all of the languages of the earth are based on its opposite, metaphysical realism.  It is certainly no surprise that a habit which is at the center of our language and intelligence shows up in our interpretation of fiction, STAR WARS included.  Indeed, without the "suspension of disbelief" which allows us to assume that we read or see on film is a representation of real events, fiction would be pointless.  When you are actually watching STAR WARS, at least the first few times, you should definitely assume you are watching something real.

But suppose we didn't apply metaphysical realism to fiction when we weren't engaged by it, but tried to consciously avoid it.  After all, it would be bad if ended up living in an entirely fantastical world because we couldn't tell the difference between reality and fantasy.  Fantasy might help us understand reality, but we wouldn't want to get them too confused.  Indeed, suppose instead of having one verb "to be" we had two, one for reality and one for known fiction.  Suppose for anything that you know isn't "real" you use the verb "to bep."  Just add a "p" after every use of the verb to be.  "Is" becomes "isp", "are" becomes "arep", "were" becomes "werep", etc..  Now instead of saying "Yoda is short" you would say "Yoda isp short," in order to signify to your listener that you are talking about a fictional character.

Now suppose that you went to a website such as Curtis Saxton's STAR WARS Technical Commentaries and replaced every "is" with an "isp."  My point is that when you read it, you would be more fully aware of the fact that you were talking about a fictional universe, and you would more readily realize that you could likely be doing more useful things than reading about the fact that Super Star Destroyers arep between eleven and twelve miles long.  "Although the [Star Destroyer] bridge nodules arep about ten meters thick in the vertical direction, the scale of the bridge interior isp much smaller."  It begins to seem pointless unless you are sharply aware of why you might want to know such a thing.  Of course, knowing the dimensions of the bridge of a real ship, say the USS Missouri, isn't likely to be any more useful for the average person, but, well, I haven't found any web pages that tell me that (and I looked).

Actually, the Technical Commentaries aren't half bad.  They at least represent serious research and exploration of real issues. What's really beginning to irk me is the prequel rumorists who are really concerned about whether Anakin Skywalker falls into a pit of lava, especially because they usually don't realize that the real answer to that question is "He won't if it means the film doesn't get a PG rating."  What it says in the novels matters a whole lot less.  Moreover, most of the prequel rumorists are far more concerned with silly things like making people's ages come out right than with thematic content.

Indeed, one of the problems with metaphysical realism is that it tends to require logical consistency.  If one story is the real story then another different story must be "fake" or misleading.  This not only chokes creativity and artistic expression, but it can lead us to ignore what is good in both stories.

As I said earlier, fantasy can help us understand reality.  Of course, it can also screw with our notions of reality in a way that is unhelpful. But let's assume that STAR WARS, at least in the films, doesn't do that. Let us instead assume that STAR WARS enlightens us as to what struggles we face, what is ultimately powerful and weak, and what is ultimately good and bad.  After all, if millions of people love STAR WARS and pay money to see it, there must be some good reason for watching it.

One would think that our reasons for watching STAR WARS have little to do with the size of Star Destroyer bridges.  One would think that we would be most interested in The Force, in STAR WARS' take on technology, in why Han and Leia fall in love.  What does it really mean to have power, or to be respectful of different species?  Wouldn't aliens play jazz, or wouldn't they?  There are so many interesting questions that seem to get ignored.  I even take a genuine interest in what hyperspace might really be like, but that's about the edge of my envelope.

Here is the point I really want to make clear.  George Lucas didn't intend STAR WARS to be a universe where everything is perfectly consistent.  Lucas isn't J.R.R Tolkien.  He doesn't care whether we ever know what "really" happened or who "really" exists, or what the Force "really" is in the STAR WARS universe.  Obviously, he wants to keep enough continuity that the themes he is interested in don't get undermined.  But in the end, any story can be true "from a certain point of view."  Lucas is far more concerned with telling a story that teaches us something valuable about our culture and morality, something which is about spiritual truth and moral rectitude rather than physical accuracy.

Perhaps I speak only for myself, but I agree with Lucas that what STAR WARS informs us about our selves and our lives is far more important than whether it is logically plausible.  Consider the Force.  The Force was never logically plausible to begin with, but it was always interesting, dramatic, and transforming.