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The central threat to freedom in A New Hope is fear. When you're afraid of someone, you do what they want, even if you'd rather not. After briefly discussing some of the other interpretations of Star Wars, I show how A New Hope introduces the problem of fear through a series of scenes centered on the Death Star. These scenes tend to contain visual reminders of the Death Star, like the interrogation droid of the remote Luke trains with. I conclude the episode by discussing Han's and Obi-wan's opposed strategies for responding to fear.

For a complete transcript, visit https://theforceandfreedom.libsyn.com/transcript-the-problem-of-fear

Star Wars is a story about freedom and threats to freedom. You might not have thought that it has a lot to say about this, since the dialogue never poses any deep questions about it. But the dialogue isn't what's interesting about Star Wars. What's most interesting about Star Wars are the visuals, and the visuals communicate a lot about freedom and threats to it. In this episode, I run through some of what the visuals of the first two minutes of Star Wars: A New Hope (after the opening crawl) communicate.