I begin with a roundup of the fascinating features of The Empire Strikes Back that I'll be discussing this season: striking parallels between the beginning and end of the film, repeating themes that don't get resolved in the typical way, Luke upside-down four different times, Han and then Luke living the passion narrative. I close by pointing out a puzzling fact about Luke in this film: He hasn't learned the main lesson Obi-wan taught in the last film. He hasn't learned Jedi freedom.

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 (after the opening crawl) communicate.

For a full transcript, visit https://theforceandfreedom.libsyn.com/the-visual-storytelling-of-star-wars-transcript

I return to the early scenes of A New Hope to pick up on some early ideas about freedom. C-3PO and R2-D2 are opposite extremes: 3PO totally unfree, R2 remarkably free. The desert settings of Tatooine are the perfect place to set up questions of freedom because it echoes the setting of the Western, a genre preoccupied with freedom. I then summarize the evidence that the film can be seen as an autobiography of George Lucas and connect that with Lucas's preoccupation with freedom. Finally, I briefly explain my approach to film interpretation.

For a full transcript, visit https://theforceandfreedom.libsyn.com/transcript-a-portrait-of-the-artist