If you went back to the 1970s and told people you thought Star Wars was a political movie, they would think something was really wrong with your thought process. The themes, characters, and the basic structure of the story (the Hero’s Journey / monomyth) was old when the Greeks invented democracy. It certainly predates anything we could call politics, it predates almost everything about us. It is probably one of humanity’s oldest inventions that’s still in common use.

Bob Dylan was always political, by the definition I would use, because he talked about issues of public policy and society in his songs. A New Hope was never political and still isn’t. If a person wants to define the new and more inclusive Star Wars, and Sesame Street, as “political,” then fine, although I will probably want to probe their definition and probably will try to make the case that the way they’re defining this neologism is part of a toxic propaganda structure they’ve unintentionally absorbed.

I don’t usually like to get into extensive wrangling about what words mean what things, but this one I do think is important because of how it features in a particular type of propaganda structure which is good to call out.