Star Wars was not so obvious in its real world parallels as Star Trek was.
I did not mean that Star Wars contained absolutely no “message” about ethics or morals. All entertainment art contains a message. As humans, it is not possible to create entertainment that is completely void of this, as such a piece of media cannot entertain a human. (Just to clarify, I mean entertainment art that has a storyline. Tetris, for example, is entertaining as a puzzle game, but it does not have a story. Tetris would therefore be excluded). Rather, Star Wars did not present real world social issues to its audience in the way that Star Trek did.
The Jedi were good, but also demonstrated that a person that becomes too imbalanced can also become just as evil as a Sith. Star Wars also showed that even an evil Sith can change their mind and become good again. Fantastic messages that are easy to understand and applicable to any person, place, or time.
Star Trek, on the other hand, openly debated the benefits of something like religion or slavery. Still timeless messages, but presented in a very different way. An alien race would believe a religion or have slaves, and the benefits of such would be clearly presented. Maybe the aliens were happier with a religion or their economy was reliant on slaves to continue otherwise their world would fall into economic collapse or whatever. Then the Enterprise crew would talk about the down sides, maybe the religion was oppressive, or the obvious downsides of slavery. Usually, in the end the crew of the Enterprise would choose to not interfere with the aliens, for fear of damaging their culture or something. They never made an “evil” choice, but they never made a choice that caused the viewer to feel like the writers of the show were telling them how to think.
I will make an exception this one time, but I have a personal policy to block anyone talking about current world politics. I will not engage in that discussion myself, because I do not want to.
Star Wars was not so obvious in its real world parallels as Star Trek was.
I did not mean that Star Wars contained absolutely no “message” about ethics or morals. All entertainment art contains a message. As humans, it is not possible to create entertainment that is completely void of this, as such a piece of media cannot entertain a human. (Just to clarify, I mean entertainment art that has a storyline. Tetris, for example, is entertaining as a puzzle game, but it does not have a story. Tetris would therefore be excluded). Rather, Star Wars did not present real world social issues to its audience in the way that Star Trek did.
The Jedi were good, but also demonstrated that a person that becomes too imbalanced can also become just as evil as a Sith. Star Wars also showed that even an evil Sith can change their mind and become good again. Fantastic messages that are easy to understand and applicable to any person, place, or time.
Star Trek, on the other hand, openly debated the benefits of something like religion or slavery. Still timeless messages, but presented in a very different way. An alien race would believe a religion or have slaves, and the benefits of such would be clearly presented. Maybe the aliens were happier with a religion or their economy was reliant on slaves to continue otherwise their world would fall into economic collapse or whatever. Then the Enterprise crew would talk about the down sides, maybe the religion was oppressive, or the obvious downsides of slavery. Usually, in the end the crew of the Enterprise would choose to not interfere with the aliens, for fear of damaging their culture or something. They never made an “evil” choice, but they never made a choice that caused the viewer to feel like the writers of the show were telling them how to think.
I will make an exception this one time, but I have a personal policy to block anyone talking about current world politics. I will not engage in that discussion myself, because I do not want to.