Star Wars Movies Research Articles

A Filosofia da Liberdade na Saga de Filmes Star Wars – Parte 1

O artigo analisa as noções de liberdade e de escolha humanas que permeiam a saga de filmes Guerra nas Estrelas, do cineasta George Lucas. Além de abordar a narratologia da série a partir das teorias do monomito de Joseph Campbell, o autor demonstra que as estórias também podem ser compreendidas à luz da noção de imaginação moral de Russell Kirk. O autor discute os aspectos filosóficos e praxeológicos da estória e ressalta como estas narrativas podem ser apropriadas como exemplos ilustrativos de algumas propostas teóricas da Escola Austríaca de Economia.

Por que a percussão de uma mola produz o mesmo som de “pistolas laser” do filme Star Wars?

When a stretched metal spring is hit sideways, a whistler is produced. The whistler is a sound effect that has become part of today's culture due to its popularity as the sound of a "laser gun" in the movie Star Wars. The whistler occurs due to sound dispersion in the metal, but the revision of High School textbooks and University education shows that a discussion of this phenomenon is not present. We present an experimental activity that can be conducted in High School, in order to detect the whistler and analyze it with a sound editing program. The graphical analysis allowed us to approximately determine that the frequency of propagating sound and its time detection are inversely related.

Pulmonary Pathophysiology in Another Galaxy

Case studies from popular culture have previously been reported to be helpful teaching tools for conveying and integrating complex physiological principles.1 A most enigmatic case that has puzzled some anesthesiologists and respiratory physiologists for decades is Darth Vader, “the chosen one” from the Star Wars franchise; his continuous need for a whole-body armored suit that supports his breathing as well as his characteristic breath sounds indicate that complex pulmonary pathophysiological principles are at stake. Although the Star Wars movies apparently take place “a long time ago in a galaxy far far away” and people there have something called “midichlorions” in their cells (a fusion of mitochondria and chloroplasts?), we assumed that the respiratory physiology of Darth Vader was similar to that of Homo Sapiens on Earth, in an attempt to decipher the nature of his pulmonary disease and use him as a case for teaching pulmonary physiology and pathophysiology to medical students in our ward.

Společenství Cesty Síly

This article deals with Fellowship of the Way of Force, which is the only representative of Jediism in the Czech Republic. It was founded in 2012, and presently has 19 members. Their members consider Jediism as their "life belief". Jediism represented by Fellowship of the Way of Force is a typical example of contemporary postmodern religiousness, often referred to as spirituality. We understand spirituality in this theoretical framework in the manner that L. Woodhead and P. Heelas have defined it in their book The Spiritual Revolution (Oxford, Blackwell 2005). This theoretical introduction is followed by an analysis of two aspects of Jediism. One is the inspiration stemming from the Star Wars movies, and the second is the spirituality of Jediism. Also, we open the issue of mythology and its influence on the Jediism in general. The next part deals with the contemporary situation in the Czech Republic, describing the most important influences and movements present. Furthermore, we analyse the issue of whether the Jedis consider Jediism as a religion. They do not, however, consider it as such, since they reject its institutionalized form and strictly rooted doctrine. The negative opinion of the majority of Czech society towards religion in general is another factor. Jedis put emphasis on an individualistic approach. Jediism as such, as well as its followers, takes inspiration from various religions, traditions or techniques. One includes what they prefer in "their own Jediism". The conclusion of this treatise introduces the concept of the Force in Jediism and puts it in the wider context of contemporary spirituality in the Czech Republic.

Special Section Guest Editorial: High-Energy Laser Systems and Components

Almost every adult today holds some concept of a laser weapon and many children have at least one toy laser among their possessions. Fascination with these ideas reaches as far back as Archimedes' legendary defense of Syracuse with solar reflectors in 212 BC. Other examples include the Martian invaders of Earth who used heat rays with chilling efficiency in H. G. Well's 1898 War of the Worlds and the now-classic Star Wars movie series. While most fictional depictions of laser weapons (and some news stories) are without sound basis, these devices do offer the potential for a whole new class of weapons and capabilities that complement (but do not replace) existing kinetic energy weapons and electronic warfare.

Multiliterate Star Warians: The Force of Popular Culture and ICT in Early Learning

CAN POPULAR CULTURE AND information communication technologies (ICT) broaden early years' multiliteracies experiences? This paper presents a case study that begins with boys role-playing Star Wars action scenes at the commencement of the school year, and concludes with an end-of-year school community celebration of a new DVD Star Wars movie sequel, designed and performed by the boys. The Children's Star Wars Project was developed in a small Western Australian independent community school committed to the Reggio Emilia educational philosophy. The case study provides an exemplar of the integral relationship between early childhood pedagogy, multiliteracies metalanguage, and multimodal designs of meaning. Implications for educational research are that popular culture and ICT can be readily integrated with early childhood education (ECE) to broaden multiliteracies experiences. As shown in this case study, these experiences facilitate the achievement of The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia outcomes.

The Right Thing to Do

The Right Thing to Do

Making Connections in the Connectome Era

As Obi-Wan Kenobi of the Star Wars movies fame could have told you, there was a substantial shift in the (data sharing) force recently. With the public release of the “1000 Functional Conectomes” project at the Neuroimaging Informatics Tools and resources Clearinghouse (Biswal et al. 2010; Luo et al. 2009), an order of magnitude more resting state fMRI data is now freely available in the public domain. Collected from over 30 sites, and comprising resting state fMRI data from over 1,200 individual subjects, the “1000 Functional Conectomes” project promotes both data and methodological sharing, and quantitatively demonstrates the power of pooled data analysis. The effort has seen a great public response (Dolgin 2010; Pastrana 2010), including mention in the National Institute of Mental Health director’s blog, and has engendered over 4,000 dataset downloads in it’s first 3 months in the public domain. Biswal et al. (2010) demonstrate a consistent architecture of positive and negative functional correlations as well as a consistent pattern of inter-individual foci of variability. In the normal population, these patterns of functional connectivity are modulated by age and gender. Overall, the report supports the suggestion that resting state fMRI data can (and indeed should) be aggregated and shared. This work represents a third chapter in an intriguing story of the utility of resting state fMRI. Building upon evidence of the local stability of the resting state map (Shehzad et al. 2009) and the characterization of the sensitivity of the resting state map to development (Kelly et al. 2009) and various diagnostic conditions (Castellanos et al. 2008; Cullen et al. 2009; Di Martino et al. 2009), this work demonstrates that, despite the variability of multi-site design, remarkably loose control of acquisition details yields resting state data that is remarkably consistent across sites. This holds dramatic promise for enhanced pooling, integration, and emphasizes the need for enhanced neuroinformatics infrastructure to support such international data integration efforts going forward. The “1000 Functional Conectomes” project site, however, highlights that true ‘data sharing’ is much, much more than ‘data file sharing’. Like with software that can be downloaded, data that can be downloaded is greatly enhanced by a ‘community’ of users and developers (acquirers and compilers in the data instance) working in concert to maximize understanding, quality and utility of the product. Again, analogous to the software development cycle, the “1000 Functional Conectomes” has already demonstrated multiple cycles of user feedback, and data improvement. Factors that have been improved and updated include small-scale instances of slice timing detail correction, laterality correction, addition of community-requested demographic details, etc. All data providers for such large scale sharing effort take a risk in public release of data; a risk that some ‘issue’ will be raised concerning you data. The investigators that take this risk should be lauded. The community that understands these risks, and works constructively with the data source providers for the greater good of the science and the community are also to be lauded. Public vetting of data makes for better public data, which is in everyone’s best interest. As more examples of this process going well, for both the investigator and community, are accumulated, one 2 http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2010/tracing-the-brainsconnections.shtml 1 http://www.nitrc.org/projects/fcon_1000/

Transnational American Studies in the Digital Age

Transnational American Studies in the Digital Age YANOULA K. ATHANASSAKIS and ERIC LARS MARTINSEN Technology is moving at lightning speed, and as editors of an online journal we find ourselves trying to keep up with the pace and scope of both life and work, all of which hold so much more than we had imagined. Near the end of a talk on robotics and warfare at the University of California at Santa Barbara in January 2010, international relations scholar Peter W. Singer motioned to the stream of images behind him that displayed machines and robots resembling those of the Star Wars movies (old and new). 1 Cognizant of the audience’s awestruck reaction, he commented that, while we might assume he was speaking of the future, he was actually referencing the past. We, too, seek to use the past, and the ever‐changing present, to illuminate the future. The second issue of the Journal of Transnational American Studies, or JTAS, comes in the wake of worldwide outbreaks of natural and manmade devastation and economic depression. These events are global in scope, yet hit close to home, thereby crystallizing what the editors of JTAS are working hard to illuminate: the multivalent entangled connections between and among events and cultural phenomena across the world—or what Shelley Fisher Fishkin points to as the “transnational turn” in American Studies. 2 We write this at a critical time in American Studies, when warring ideologies seem to be drowning out reasoned public policy, and purveyors of divisive rhetoric from around the world are outshouting voices of reason and compromise. We write this at a time when it has become increasingly obvious that American bodies, American borders, and American policy are all being submerged in acts of violence both perpetrated against the US and stemming from it. 3 This turbulent epoch calls ever more for an examination and reflection of the seismic shocks that remain and have manifested themselves in the stories of our times. Theorist Judith Butler suggests in her 2004 book Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence that most Americans “have probably experienced something

Macrophages and Inflammatory Mediators in Chemical Toxicity: A Battle of Forces

Macrophages function as control switches of the immune system, providing a balance between pro- and anti-inflammatory responses. To accomplish this, they develop into different subsets: classically (M1) or alternatively (M2) activated macrophages. Whereas M1 macrophages display a cytotoxic, proinflammatory phenotype, much like the soldiers of The Dark Side of The Force in the Star Wars movies, M2 macrophages, like Jedi fighters, suppress immune and inflammatory responses and participate in wound repair and angiogenesis. Critical to the actions of these divergent or polarized macrophage subpopulations is the regulated release of inflammatory mediators. When properly controlled, M1 macrophages effectively destroy invading pathogens, tumor cells, and foreign materials. However, when M1 activation becomes excessive or uncontrolled, these cells can succumb to The Dark Side, releasing copious amounts of cytotoxic mediators that contribute to disease pathogenesis. The activity of M1 macrophages is countered by The Force of alternatively activated M2 macrophages, which release anti-inflammatory cytokines, growth factors, and mediators involved in extracellular matrix turnover and tissue repair. It is the balance in the production of mediators by these two macrophage subpopulations that ultimately determines the outcome of the tissue response to chemical toxicants.

Association for Academic Surgery Presidential Address Episode VI: The Return of the Surgeon

As a young boy growing up in rural Wisconsin, 1977 was a special year. In that year, the original STAR WARS movie was released. I must have watched it five to six times that year. Since then a total of six episodes have been filmed, which detail the struggles of the good Jedi Knights against the evil Empire. During this address, I want to illustrate the similarities between the Jedi Knight in the Star Wars series and modern day surgeons. As the Jedi utilized high tech light sabers to battle against the evil Dark Sith, surgeons utilize high tech laparoscopes and robots to battle against evil human diseases and pathology (Fig. 1).

Impact Factor Wars: Episode V—The Empire Strikes Back

T oo bad it is not ‘‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away . . . ’’ Instead, it is the 21st century and European, Canadian, and American scientists are now in the grips of a menace that threatens their livelihood: the journal impact factor (a proprietary calculation based on journal citations and produced by the monolithic news and information empire Thomson Reuters) is being used in many places to determine academic employment, rank, tenure, and funding. In the past, few voices have protested the abusive power associated with journal impact factor, and publishers generally shrank in terror at the prospect of their journals being subjected to the ‘‘death penalty’’—removal from the Thomson Reuters journal impact factor listing. However, in 2007, the Executive Director of the powerful Rockefeller University Press, along with the Executive Editors of the Journal of Experimental Medicine and the Journal of Cell Biology, courageously questioned the validity and reliability of the journal impact factor calculations. These editorials (by Mike Rossner, Heather Van Epps, and Emma Hill) emboldened others to voice concerns about the use of an unverifiable and proprietary metric—journal impact factor—to evaluate the quality of scientific work. In the initial 1977 film (now designated ‘‘Episode IV’’) of the epic Star Wars movie series by George Lucas, the Galactic Empire uses a lethal show of force (the Death Star) to destroy the relatively insignificant planet Alderaan in order to frighten the rest of the galactic inhabitants (particularly those on the larger planets) into submission. Apparently, Thomson Reuters has decided to use a similar tactic: wielding its enormous power in a show of force against a tiny journal. As has been widely described, the journal impact factor is calculated by summing the total citations during a given year to articles published in the previous 2 years and dividing this by the number of ‘‘items’’ (a number derived secretively by Thomson Reuters) published in the journal during that same 2-year period. The ability of journal editors and publishers (particularly large and influential ones) to manipulate (and negotiate) the journal impact factor to achieve higher values has been well documented. Unfortunately, journals from small subspecialty fields are at a distinct disadvantage with fewer articles for possible citation, a smaller population of investigators, and little leverage to finagle higher journal impact factor values. Nonetheless, 2 clever scientists, Harm K. Schutte and Jan G. Svec, who work in a small scientific field published in the year 2007 an editorial in the official organ of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics (IALP)—Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica (published by S. Karger AG, Basel)—in which they cited all 66 articles published in that journal during the years 2005 and 2006. This strategy of self-citation raised the journal impact factor from a value of 0.655 for 2006 to 1.439 for 2007 and jumped the journal’s ranking by 9 places in the subject category of ‘‘Rehabilitation’’ (which only contains 27 journals). For investigators whose only scholarly outlet is publishing in this journal, such changes in journal status could profoundly affect their ability to compete for an academic livelihood. This permutation probably would have gone unnoticed but for a letter published in the September 11, 2008, issue of Nature. Subsequent reaction by Thomson Reuters was swift: just 4 weeks later on October 9, 2008, in Nature, James Testa reported that self-citation is ‘‘reviewed each year’’ and that journals will be removed from Journal Citation Reports until the ‘‘problem of excessive self-citation resolves and we can publish an accurate impact factor.’’ One strategy by journal editors to manipulate the journal impact factor has been to demand that authors cite articles from recent years of the journal (ie, self-citation). Thomson Reuters does not provide any criteria for acceptable self-citation, although it has been reported that up to 20% self-citation is common in most journals listed in the Journal Citation Reports. Received December 29, 2008. Accepted for publication December 29, 2008.

From the inside Out: A Look at Testing Special Education Students

Ms. Meek invites us into her classroom to watch what happens when Dominic, one of her students with learning disabilities, has to take the same high-stakes test as his regular education peers. She wishes that everyone setting today's testing policies or asserting that they are good for the Dominics of the world could witness such a scene. ********** IN RECENT years No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has focused the educational lens on testing children rather than on teaching them. Much to the dismay of many educators and parents, the burden of this yearly ritual falls most heavily on learning disabled students, who are often tested inappropriately. (1) And a clear picture of what these special-needs students experience when taking a high-stakes test is, and should be, troubling. In this article, wish to present such a picture. Here is an inside look at the first day of the California Standards Test in 2005. Susan, the assistant teacher in our elementary school resource program, and fan out to collect the children from their various classrooms. We know full well that they will not be rushing into the resource room on their own during testing week. Our school has blended special education students with other children who require similar testing accommodations. After much encouragement and, yes, downright bribery in the form of a pizza party for perfect attendance, seven of the eight students scheduled in our first group are rounded up and herded back to the resource room. The arrangement is a little tricky, as our space is small and several students who are not familiar to the rest of the group are joining us. We know special education children sometimes have a more difficult time with transitions and changes. But where is Dominic? is a volatile child who has most of a full deck of cards stacked solidly against him at this point in his life. He has a medical diagnosis of ADHD compounded by a low-average cognitive ability, according to several formal measures and classroom data. A third-grader who has attended eight schools in the four difficult years of his brief academic career, is still receptive to the materials and lessons being presented to him both in the classroom and in his resource reading period. His short-term memory often fails him, and his delicate ego collapses easily. Multiple school-related frustrations are obvious. In spite of these many hurdles, we feel he is starting to lift academically. The phone rings. Dominic is in my office, says Nurse Kathy, he looks fine to go to collect him. I can't do it, he says. These are the first words out of his mouth as enter the nurse's pristine office. I'm tired. It's all we do in class. Test. I know, Dominic. But want you to at least try. Come with me. We'll take lots of breaks. Dominic's look is one of resignation, that lively spirit temporarily tucked away. A split second later, he kicks the wastebasket as we leave the room, not hard, but with emotion. ask him to straighten the wastebasket, which he does without protest. know he is entering the testing window (as it is affectionately called) already burned out after days of test preparation. The nurse and share a knowing look. We both know this little guy needs to blow off steam, not sit at a testing table for four hours. takes his seat next to David, an autistic third-grader on a 504 plan. David is high functioning and tested at or nearly at grade level last year. His general education teacher is collaborating with his previous teachers to design an amazingly effective set of classroom accommodations for him. nix this seating arrangement and put David in an area where he is less likely to be distracted, because distracting other students is exactly what could excel at this morning. Around them sit a cast of characters as different as the patrons of the bar on Tatooine in the first Star Wars movie, though infinitely more attractive and lovable. …

C&EN TALKS WITH

I F YOU RE CURIOUS ABOUT WHAT THE Star Wars movies, the Jefferson Memorial, and stem cells have in common, try tuning in to Preston MacDougall's radio commentary. He's a chemistry professor at Middle Tennessee State University with a weekly gig on the Murfreesboro/Nashville National Public Radio station, WMOT. For the past two years, MacDougalTs given a chemical interpretation of everything from firecrackers to immigration policy by means of a Friday science column called Chemical Eye. The columns fill five minutes of airtime, the length of a typical current affairs feature, and they are broadcast twice on Fridays during rush hour. His Scottish ancestry evidenced by a thrush of red hair and an energetic wit, MacDougall also occasionally peppers his columns with topics close to his Canadian heart, such as hockey. Fear not, he slips some science in, too: namely, the hockey-stick-shaped increase in global temperature predicted by climate- change simulations. In fact, MacDougall's hallmark is ...

Field Trip to a Galaxy Far, Far Away

The fictional worlds of the Star Wars universe can be effectively used as teaching examples in planetary science. Because of the immense popularity of the Star Wars series, most students are already familiar with the movies and the worlds featured in them. Using fictional planets as teaching tools provides a context in which there are no right or wrong answers and no authoritative textbooks to consult, only the geological evidence present in images. This encourages students to think critically and produce their own arguments rather than simply looking up answers. Because the methods of planetary geology are strongly dependent on image interpretation and comparative planetology, surprisingly complex arguments can be made regarding the geologic history of fictional planets. We discuss here the planets Hoth, Tatooine, and Naboo from the Star Wars movies as examples, but this approach can be used for any planet from any science-fiction series.

A Red Light Sabre to Go, and Other Histories of the Present

A Red Light Sabre to Go, and Other Histories of the Present

PROTEIN PROGRESS POWWOW

In his best imitation of actor James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader in the movie Star Wars, Gregory A. Petsko invited participants at last month's Symposium of the Protein Society in San Diego to come over to the Dark Side and study protein function. Petsko is chemistry and biochemistry professor and director of the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center of Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. Because it's so hard to get functional information on proteins, Petsko said, function is sort of the Dark Side. It's the side where, if you follow that path forever, it will dominate your destiny. I think we all need to move over to the Dark Side, he added. I don't see how we can avoid it. Petsko pointed out that in the past 25 years, we've had three gigantic revolutions in our studies of proteins. The first was the revolution of molecular biology. ...

Modeling full-length VBR video using Markov-renewal-modulated TES models

This paper describes a general methodology for constructing accurate source models of long sequences (full-length movies) of full-motion compressed VBR (variable bit rate) video, directly from empirical data sets of observed bit rate (frame size) records. The main idea is to first cluster scenes into classes and use TES (transform-expand-sample) processes to carefully model their duration and bit rate processes, and then modulate these scene class models by a Markov-renewal process that governs scene transitions. The resulting model is a Markov-renewal-modulated TES (MRMT) process. The fidelity criteria imposed are relatively stringent in that they call for the simultaneous capture of empirical histograms and autocorrelation functions, as well as the qualitative appearance of the empirical data, including burstiness. To illustrate the methodology, the paper provides a detailed description of the modeling procedure, using a JPEG-like coding trace of the Star Wars movie as a working example. The resulting MRMT model was validated by comparing its simulation-based statistics to their empirical counterparts, and by a performance study of the corresponding loss rates for various buffer sizes. The results support the efficacy of the modeling methodology and suggest that suites of realistic and compact source models can be developed for other types of movies under a variety of coding schemes. These may be used to drive realistic Monte Carlo simulations of broadband telecommunications networks.

"Exam Wars" and the Toronto Territorial Connection

The movie Star Wars, part four of nine-part projected saga of same title by Charles Lucas, revived interest in science fiction when many thought it was dead. Using title of Star Wars saga as a parallel might seeem like intergalactic overkill for a paper focussing on a rather narrow view of two disputes about musical examination. l Yet these battles took on a slightly bigger scope in rivalry between Toronto musical organizations and those of London, England. The exam wars of title borrows from popular lore of Star Wars rather than any extant term used in archival papers of some of Toronto's various musical institutions, specifically, Toronto Conservatory of Music (TCM) known since 1947 as Royal Conservatory of Music of Toronto (RCMT), University of Toronto (U of T), Trinity College, Toronto College of Music - or from local press. There is no attempt at sustaining parallel allegory of Empire versus rebel cause of local musicians, although the force is strong, as a Darth Vader might say. Rather analogy is to popular culture. Where Charles Lucas succeeds in childlike appeal of his first Star Wars release of 1977 (originally called Star Wars and subsequently retitied A New Hope) is partly in his use of popular culture. There are reminiscences of The Wizard of Oz in Tin Man-type figure, and so on. Today we peruse our local newspapers to find icons of popular culture of early 1990's such as Madonna or Bart Simpson dominant. Hollywood takes precedence over local or national serious musical events. Even recent separation of RCMT from U of T, which received its final reading and approval by Ontario Legislature on Wednesday 26 June 1991, found little resonance in print other than brief notices in Toronto newspapers. Whereas this on one hand reflects way in which television news coverage dominates our lives, it on other reflects our priorities and values about music and culture in general. Little over a century ago, even a Methods controversy, concerning sol-fa teaching of A.T. Cringan versus American John Holt in 1 880's could arouse passionate responses from music teachers. And, in 1890's, disputes about examination territory, whether graded musical examinations or music degrees in Toronto and in London, England, could provoke fierce public controversy on both sides of Atlantic. It is on that territorial dispute that this paper focuses. What was popular culture of 1880's and 1890's? By 1882, according to Ottawa musician Gustave Smith: . . . thechasefor dollars and luxuries had corrupted custom of spontaneous music-making among friends, and among musicians avons peu d'artistes - en profession, mais nous comptons, en revanche, beaucoup de professeurs sans profession. Music now became chiefly an accomplishment of young ladies who played piano and delighted their suitors with waltzes, polkas and assorted salon pieces, pretty and sentimental ... . Upright pianos and parlour organs appeared now in every middle-class home, but serious practicing was shunned, and an artistic career, like any other pursuit not aimed at acquisition of wealth and social position, was regarded with suspicion.2 Only five years later, TCM's first Calendar of 1887-8 stressed importance of playing piano: The piano is now an accompaniment to civilization, and it has grown to be an almost indispensable article in every household where there are pretensions to culture and refinement. It is well-nigh an orchestra in itself, and is indeed people's instrument.3 The piano manufacturing industry was one of major industries in Toronto in 1890's. The most important industries were agricultural machinery (the Massey Manufacturing Co.), breweries and distilleries (Gooderham and Worts); next came clothing, engineering and book publishing; piano manufacturing was in next group, ranking along with furniture manufacturing and meatpacking. …

Darth Vader: Masks, Power, and Meaning

The psychiatric treatment of a schizophrenic male with the delusion that he was Darth Vader stimulated an investigation into this character from the Star Wars movies. The name itself is infused with inherent contradictions and multiple meanings. “Vader” is related to Indo-Aryan terms for father—“pater” in Latin, “Vater” in German, “vader” in Middle English. “Darth” is a perfect word for ambiguity, meaning both “glory” and “scarcity” in Middle English, with suggestions of “dark,” “death,” and “dare.” The black mask emphasizes rigidity and mystery. Since there are no facial movements visible, the characters and viewers cannot accurately judge the feelings or intentions, enhancing the sense of threat. The mask also indicates a secret to be hidden, and an urge to unmask others. The enormous power of Darth Vader adds to his fascination. The revelation that he is Luke’s father caused shock and astonishment in many viewers; the exact words used became an intrusive mental preoccupation for this schizophrenic patient. The temptation and threats from Darth Vader coincide with themes and fantasies of childhood and adolescence. His final actions of sacrifice and redemption allow these themes to come to a successful and inspiring conclusion.