zombie84 said:

I share Lucas sentiment in that Campbell was far more powerful as a speaker than a writer. I can't stand his books; I sold my copy of Hero a few years ago--it had Luke Skywalker on the cover actually.

 For the few I know his writtings, I'm not that surprised. I found much better food between some great book on Scandinavia ancient Runes and a few other mythologic / symbolic subjects I've been interested in... Not mentioning the great Lord of the Rings wich looks like the closest blueprint of Star Wars I know.

Sorry for the "ignorant" enthusiasm in my first post above. :/ :P

Don't worry, most people think that, and with good reason since that is reported in many official sources. Bill Moyers, in Empire of Dreams, seems to be giving the impression that Campbell actually mentored Lucas through the screenplay in real life, which is preposterous. But that's part of the whole mythology-of-the-mythology. The Lucas-Campbell connection is way overstated, but both of them sort of went along with it, and I can kind of see why, because it was an opportunity to get young people interested in comparitive mythology. I never would have been reading Campbell at age 17 if it wasn't for Star Wars--although to be honest, I never finished Hero with a Thousand Faces. It was just excruciating, and I wanted to like it. I've picked it up every few years since, hoping my immature brain didn't appreciate it, but nope, same reaction.

As a speaker, he is phenomenal. I have a collection of bootleg lectures from him, plus a few audio cassette series he put out, and they're all fantastic. As a lecturer he was very powerful, and really did have an encyclopedia-like ability to just recall any sort of obscure story when it was relevant and connect it to his narrative. The best book with his name with it is the Power of Myth book, because it's just a transcription of an extended interview with him by Moyers.

Thanks for the tip, very interesting.

Harmy, you might want to check out this chart:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.05/starwars.html
(bigger version here): http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/star-wars-influence-map.gif

It was featured in Wired back in 2005, and illustrates the people, companies, technologies, and entertainment industries that were affected by Star Wars.

This won't be helpful but boy do I wish I had access to the Lucasfilm Research Library.

*drool*

I'm from Europe.I saw star wars in 1977 and I was 7. At 7 i naturally took everything for granted.  At the time the whole NASA and space thing was quite new and was something that attacted the interest of the general population anyway.

Star wars was a brilliant ground breaking film in many ways, but what propelled it into cultural icon status was one simple innovation: movie merchandising.

For the first time I saw characters from the movie in the supermarket. On lunchboxes in my school. I remember once when my family was at catholic mass (church), my brother was wearing a star wars tee shirt and by chance he was chosen to bring some offering up to the altar, so everyone in the church ended up seeing darth vader .

A perfect combination of a faiy tale movie, based in space at a time when space was 'glamorous' with the goodies and baddies being foisted on the population through merchandising.

Merchandising is the conduit through which a great movie made it into the general awareness of the world. It hadn't been done before. There were great movies before. I honestly can't overstate the importance of movie merchandising at a time when movie merchandising wasn't being done.Take it from someone who was there!

Harmy did you finish your thesis? How did it come out?

Oh, not by far. I do have a month to do it and I intend to use it. I have to consult with my supervisor and stuff and so far he likes what I've got. I want to include a chapter on the LoC and the foundation of the NFR and the general cultural value of movies and the importance of their preservation, which is what I'm working on now, so I didn't really even get to writing much about STAR WARS yet.

I've finally finished the thesis, it's here if anyone wants to check it out :-)

It's called "Star Wars Trilogy: American Cultural Heritage" though it's mainly just about the first film :-)

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions, they really helped, and thanks to Michael Kaminski (zombie84), whose great book and articles were my main source.

Just finished reading it. My favorite part was the word:

nejd?ležit?jšími

which is awesome.

The rest of it was great too. I especially liked the "preservation" section.

I know I should probably keep this to myself, but... I found a typo.  Ronald Reagan has TWO A's in his last name.  This is probably not helped by the fact that his Treasury Secretary was named Donald Regan with only one A.

Still, great to know you've finished.  That's a lot of work!

No, that's good, I'll only be printing it tomorrow, so if you find anything else, please do point it out :-)

And thanks for reading it guys, I didn't expect that anyone would want to :-)

Harmy said:

And thanks for reading it guys, I didn't expect that anyone would want to :-)

Workprint withdrawal.  A few more weeks and we'll pay money to see your dirty laundry.

Harmy said:

No, that's good, I'll only be printing it tomorrow, so if you find anything else, please do point it out :-)

And thanks for reading it guys, I didn't expect that anyone would want to :-)

Thanks, that's ok, I'd already printed (prunt?) it before I saw the message anyway.