Brief Introduction: My name is Keishawn Smith, and I enjoy basketball, playing guitar, listening to music, video games, and I am a big star wars fan (safe assumption to make when you look at the class I am in) I am from Chesapeake, Virginia which is a similar area to Farmville, just a bit more urban.
The purpose of this blog is to take the concept of high culture and apply it to the Star Wars universe for the second blog post in “Star Wars and Pop Culture.” High culture in our general society is drawn in a comparison to the perceived high culture
The definition of high culture is a privileged set of cultural goods like paintings, classical music, literature, and other forms of creative expression. Usually the “rich” or wealthy are the ones commonly seen appreciating or partaking in high culture. As most things in high culture are expensive or hard to come by, it makes sense that the majority of the people who enjoy high culture are the wealthy ones due to the exclusivity. In the Star Wars universe the Jedi could be seen as the wealthy of the galaxy, but not necessarily for their money, but for their ideals and the stigma around their place in society. Jedi are similar to monks in that they do not believe heavily in relationships or making decisions out of emotion and promote logic and reasoning for everything. The Jedi also have a big emphasis on literature in their culture and are seen by others as snobby or inhuman due to their lack of emotion when dealing with other species or political issues that involve them. Not everyone is fit to be a Jedi which makes it a coveted and generally well respected “job” or lifestyle and makes the Jedi heroes that the children of the galaxy look up to. Now one of the things the Jedi can relate to with the books definition of high culture is their promotion on creativity and finding different ways of situations. For instance Obi-Wan Kenobi using the Jedi mind trick in the infamous scene to avoid any casualties or unnecessary violence to escape. If I was to define high culture I would say its the smaller percentile of a community who have an emphasis on certain values and virtues, literature, and have a degree of pacifism and a focus on oneself intertwined in their beliefs. Due to all those things they typically view themselves as above the people who fall in the other categories of culture. Whether they know it or not the Jedi have placed themselves above the average person in their society and have a perceived moral high ground over the citizens and innocent they look over. Meditation is also a large part of Jedi society to achieve peace with themselves and any emotional turmoil they might be suffering from. In this way the Jedi serve as the example of high culture in the Star Wars universe. In our society today, what do you consider to be high culture, whether it be values, professions, ideals, or place in society?
I would say tea is a bit of a high culture thing as well ~Keishawn
