That old grouch Spengler dislikes Star Wars & Harry Potter & Wagner’s Ring. They are too European pagan for his tastes, which evidently run in the direction of the Hebrew Bible and heathen Chinese Empire. What would Nietszche say?

George Lucas will inflict yet another Star Wars film on us momentarily. I detest the series, along with its successor, Harry Potter, and its antecedent, Wagner’s Ring cycle. Luke Skywalker is a retreaded Siegfried, with inborn powers that make him nearly invincible, asserting his will against authority (Wotan/Darth Vader). There are minor differences; at least Harry doesn’t have to kill Dumbledore. George Lucas explained on a recent American Movie Channel retrospective that he dipped into this swamp first as an anthropology student, reading the likes of Joseph Campbell.

Skywalker/Potter/Siegfried are a carryover of the pagan idea of heroes, which is simply the pagan idea of a god: a being who is like us, but better. …

I suspect that the popularity of Star Wars and the Potter series arises from the generation of obese, pimply-faced young losers we are now raising, who know their real-life prospects to be miserable, and compensate by playing the hero in video games. Very few of them know how to code a computer, to be sure, and even fewer know how to build one.

Think of Skywalker/Potter/Siegfried as the pop-culture equivalent of the self-esteem movement in education. If we can’t persuade our kids to accomplish anything, at least we can enrich their fantasy life.