Today, as a teacher of English Language Arts in ninth and eleventh grades, I often must supply my students with the historical contexts and field of discourse (understanding of dialect or jargon) necessary to enable them to understand the text and its meaning.

This is true of the early American texts I teach my juniors, such as Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne and Civil War-era writers such as Ambrose Bierce. It is true for my Shakespeare lessons to freshmen as I explain the archaic language of those early years of Modern English, the circumstances of Britain at the turn of the seventeenth century and the spread of the Renaissance, theatrical presentation. I often explain it via the travel and evolution of the Sonnet from the hands of Petrarch in Italy at the birth of the movement to the hands of Shakespeare in an England that lustily embraced the Renaissance as its key to a grand future, a great culture, an Empire.

All of this helps my students to understand and evaluate literature. With older students I even teach the concept of literary criticism, and show them critiques by more well-regarded critics from the past as well as things like movie and music reviews. I show them segments from Cliff's Notes (not always the enemy of an instructor if he knows how to use them!). I show them how they can analyze literature and make decisions about its quality and what it teaches if they know enough about it.

Bodies of well-regarded criticism are collected by scholars interested in the process of evaluating cultural works and passed on in collected volumes for the purpose of assisting the study of evaluative thought and to assist in the passage of great works from one century to the next, guaranteeing its value in the minds of later generations. I studied from such books when I was in college, particularly when acquiring my teaching certification. Surely this scholarly practice will continue throughout history as we continue to create and change, developing new traditions of creativity and new media.

By the time Humanity sees the year 2500 anno domini, assuming we somehow survive our malaise of capital-driven warfare and ablative exploitation of everything and everyone on the planet, there should be an immense body of literary, cinematic, and yet unforeseen criticism of works in media yet uninvented. By then, knowing that technology (particularly media) advances continuously and quickly (again assuming that this process is not contravened by some sort of cultural interregnum), Star Wars may be very old hat. However, since Star Wars' creative contributors are pioneers of multimedia storytelling and the audience is so vast and multigenerational (meaning the popularity is enduring, now 30 years), some form of it may well survive into that time in a media form that would amaze even technology-jaded Westerners like most of my readers. By that time we may well have holocrons, holo-suites (ala Star Trek, originally predicted by the Animated Series in 1973) and even possibly access to alien mythologies. Think of the explosion of creativity and interpollination then!

But all of that is to prepare you for this question: What will future critics say of the Star Wars we know in 2006, looking back from 2500 AD?

Presently we measure the caliber of a body of mythology by certain enduring standards: you will recall Beowulf, the first written English-language work (in very old Germanic English, the unintelligible but original form of our language); Greek mythology; Arthurian and Celtic mythology; Norse Mythology; preserved ancient mythologies and today's great literary works. We also have a body of cinematic critique, which points to Orson Welle's' 'Citizen Kane' as the greatest motion picture ever produced. It is well-agreed that Star Wars is successful and that it is a classic, but resistance to the legitimacy of the science-fiction and fantasy genres as 'substantial' filmmaking hamper its entry into the 'canon' of 'great' films. Who is to judge? How are we comparing these works to new creations?

Star Wars has gained enough legitimacy as a great work to garner the attention of people who write books analyzing Star Wars from philosophical and spiritual perspectives. It also is managed by a 'principal creator' who from the beginning has been mindful of the structure, characterization and philosophical and moral content of all of the epic stories which inform it. In this way George Lucas and his staff have tried mightily to guarantee the quality of the character of the story of Star Wars in all respects, all the way to the root of its messages, the way it speaks to the audience, and the way its stories and characters develop in its wondrous setting. Lucas has worked hard to guarantee that the Star Wars canon will be worthy of a place amongst all of Human storytelling.

For every element of character, plot, conflict, mysticism and moral teaching found in any other epic work throughout history, Star Wars has an answer. Even if revised one day by a future generation, as great mythologies often are, that future generation of storytellers will have a mighty foundation with which to work. Even the soundtrack is legendary and adds emotive power to the story as motion picture soundtracks rarely do; operas have been preserved over centuries complete with orchestra scores, stage productions the same. Surely John Williams' music will continue to stand as a high standard for the power of music to increase the impact of a performance for a very long time to come, especially with roots in the music of acclaimed composer Wagner.

With all of this to consider, what will future critical thinkers say of our mythological playground of choice?