{"id":9122,"date":"2017-07-26T22:50:29","date_gmt":"2017-07-27T04:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=9122"},"modified":"2017-07-26T22:50:29","modified_gmt":"2017-07-27T04:50:29","slug":"the-archeology-of-our-modern-mythology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2017\/07\/26\/the-archeology-of-our-modern-mythology\/","title":{"rendered":"The Archeology of Our Modern Mythology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Being a Star Wars<\/em> fan was different 25 years ago. Before the Special Editions. Before the prequels. And of course long<\/em> before Disneyfication made a steady flow of new Star Wars<\/em> movies not only possible, but inescapable. Way back in the mid-1990s, there was actual scarcity<\/em> associated with the franchise. We had the first new novels and comic-book miniseries that would grow into the Expanded Universe, and Hasbro had tentatively introduced a new line of toys. But the red beating heart of the franchise, the movies — and remember, at that point, there were only three movies, the original trilogy, the Holy<\/em> Trilogy —<\/em> had happened a very long time before. In a very real sense, they felt like ancient history. So how appropriate was it that an archeologist named David West Reynolds chose to treat them as<\/em> ancient history and go to Tunisia in search of the real-world locations that had once stood in for the fictional world of Tatooine?<\/p>\n

I remember reading West’s article in the old Star Wars Insider<\/em> magazine and feeling the same sense of wonder I might have experienced if he’d been talking about the ruins of Troy. I’d always known<\/em> that those places really existed somewhere on the globe, but no one had thought (as far as I knew) to actually go see them, and seeing his photos and reading his descriptions of how they appeared nearly 20 years after the shoot was fascinating for me.<\/p>\n

As it happens, West didn’t just take still photographs during his expedition; he also shot hours of videotape. And now he’s shaping that video into a documentary for hardcore Star Wars<\/em> fans to geek over. Naturally, he’s using Kickstarter<\/a> to raise some money for post-production, and just as naturally, I’m quite excited about the whole idea. Here’s his pitch:<\/p>\n