Star Wars doesn't have a space Jesus
Also, I'm looking for a city where we'll never die
I think I’ve managed to squeeze in a few more memes this week while still doing a bit of an essay about Star Wars. I’ve also included a short reflection on making stuff on platforms that encourage certain kinds of behaviour in order to go viral, which I hope makes sense and isn’t too self-indulgent. Anyway, I hope you enjoy!
Same Kristina, same.
Star Wars is politicial (and religious)
This week a screenshot of a guy calling Anakin Skywalker “space Jesus” got a lot of attention. Like everything else, Star Wars has been drawn into the broader cultural conflict and this is part of that (Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day did a great write-up), but for the purposes of this newsletter, I’m focussing on the space Jesus part, obviously.
It’s always been interesting to me that the second highest-grossing film franchise of all time focuses on an order of mystical space monks and their conflict with the government. I don’t think this is the primary frame the moviegoing public would use to describe the series, but I think it’s a useful one, and partly explains why Star Wars is so popular with alt-right extremists and Nazi sympathisers, despite the film using Nazi imagery for its villains.
The Jedi are an explicitly religious order, but like I say, I don’t think this looms large in the minds of most people. Once I wrote a quiz question for a show I worked on asking, “What is the name of the order of monks central to Star Wars?” The presenter couldn’t believe I was talking about the Jedi, and none of the guests could guess the answer. Either the Jedi didn’t tick all the boxes for a religion in their minds, Luke Skywalker et al didn’t tick all the boxes for “monk”, or the idea a monk could be such a widely beloved action hero seemed impossible.
Partly I think it’s because it’s so difficult to transpose Christocentric ideas onto what we know about the Jedi religion in the films. To me, they have a belief system closer to faiths like Buddhism and Taoism — balance, nonattachment, restraint — and there is no central deity as you would find in Abrahamic faiths.
So, space Jesus? In The Phantom Menace we learn Anakin Skywalker was conceived by midichlorians and thus has no temporal father. He is prophesied to be the Chosen One — pretty Jesusy! But what kind of messiah did he turn out to be? Maybe this is also why a Gamergate-type guy likes the idea of him being space Jesus, but I would see it as a critique of messianic ideas rather than an endorsement of them. But that hasn’t stopped our good friends from The Church of the Rock from doing a Star Wars passion play.
In Jack Jenkins’ Think Progress review of Rogue One he explores the political and religious dimensions of the Star Wars universe and how the two interact in times of war. Rogue One takes a step back from the Jedi Order, but explores the less formal religious devotion lay people express towards the Force and we get a glimpse of an occupied holy city. Of course, a real multispecies intergalactic empire would probably have more than one religious tradition. I guess the Mandalorians count? But whatever, I’m sure Disney will get to it. Who’s this guy praying to?
We always knew Tomatoes were Christian
That’s a link in the title in case you missed it.
“British Priest Reacts to Christian TikToks”
These “British priest reacts” videos on Jolly featuring Rev Chris Lee are usually pretty entertaining, and this one is also a good digest of some Christian-y TikToks.
Rev Chris (who is brother-in-law to Ollie, one of the hosts of Jolly) is probably the most famous Anglican you’ve never heard of — he has more followers on Twitter and Instagram than the Archbishop of Canterbury. This article on Premier Christianity gets into his attitudes towards doing Christian ministry online and some of his theological leanings.
My friend Jono sent me this TikTok
@enollsCrazy Christian Movie Review #movie #film #cinema #christiantiktok #filmtiktok #movietok #movierecommendation
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This guy summarises and reviews bad movies, which means he does a lot of Christian ones lol.
Robot witches summoned the Devil and that’s not protected by Nortons
I swear I’m not going out looking for people linking AI with witchcraft but it’s a consistent theme I’ve encountered since I started this newsletter. People seem quite concerned/excited! At first I thought the guy above might be a wiccan of some description but he’s actually a Christian and he’s being very serious.
I found these tweets via this thread by @cpp999x who says, “none of the things anyone on here says about AI make any sense or have any groundimg in reality but about half of them go insanely hard so its fun to read”.
Nightcrawler isn’t a priest anymore and thank God for that
This article by friend of the thread Fr Jim McDermott about why as a Catholic priest and X-Men fan, he is relieved Nightcrawler is becoming less Catholic.
I can’t stop posting about Looking for a City
This is self-indulgent but I feel like my behaviour on Twitter has been so weird the last week or two I need to explain. I have written about Looking for a City before — where Happy Goodman gospel group members Vestal Goodman and Johnny Cook compete to see who can sing the highest — but in the months since then I’ve watched this video about once a week, usually with friends at YouTube watch parties. I’m incredibly fond of it, partly because it’s so campy and partly because it reminds me of my friends. I’ve started making memes.
In the final episode of the Guardian’s Saved for Later podcast (RIP), they spoke about “dead internet” theory. So much of Twitter and Facebook feels kind of fake: the same post formats appear again and again, partisan political posts have gotten so cooked they feel like false flag operations for the other side, garbage content gets hundreds of thousands of likes and gets pushed into your feed. How could this be? Is it all made by bots? In reality it’s the result of people being so coached by algorithms that they begin acting algorithmically because they want to keep going viral.
These posts will never go viral. I am getting absolutely no engagement and people don’t even know what the hell I’m talking about. Maybe content like this is best saved for a private group chat or Discord, but I feel like all the weird stuff I used to see online has retreated to those private internets and all we’re left with is generic gruel and reaction bait. So I want to encourage you to make stuff that brings you joy and put it online. Plus, if it’s about religion in any tangential way, it makes putting this newsletter together a little easier for me. In the meantime I hope you don’t mind my Looking for a City posting.