Evangelicals and Star Wars: Appropriating a Culture from a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Blind Warriors, Supercrips, and Techno-Marvels : Challenging Depictions of Disability in Star Wars

John Williams may have dominion over the Star Wars film scores with eighteen hours of music across nine films, but the mantle of responsibility for the Star Wars musical canon en masse has been undertaken by scores of many different composers, especially video game composers. Scholars of John Williams’s music such as Frank Lehman have analyzed Williams’s nine film scores, but there has been little research into the more than 100 Star Wars video game scores, which raises the question: how has Star Wars music developed without the guidance of its progenitor John Williams? Frank Lehman’s “Complete Catalogue of the Themes of Star Wars: A Guide to John Williams’s Musical Universe”1 cataloged the themes, motifs, source music, and thematic relationships of the nine films and proved musicologically insightful as well as incredibly useful when one seeks an understanding of the intricacies of Williams’s Star Wars film scores. Lehman’s research provides an ideal foundation for the ludomusicological inquisition of the hundred plus Star Wars game scores. The interactive nature of gaming mandates that the scores take player input into consideration leading to many unique methods of musical deployment that have changed from game to game. This research preludes the creation of a Star Wars sound and music anthology, similar to the Norton Anthology of Western Music, where ludomusicality found within scores from video games in the Star Wars universe are analyzed, cataloged, and explored. Each game/series would get its own unique catalog within the greater anthology consisting of a collection of analyses of the motifs, themes, and anything else of particular ludomusical interest. This poster presents a preliminary analysis of the deployment of motifs in the video games Star Wars Chess (1993) and Star Wars: X-Wing (1993), the first steps taken toward cataloging these video game scores. This proposed catalog will include analyses of ludomusicality within the Star Wars video game scores, showing how the player and computer interact to customize the listening experience of original and borrowed themes from the Star Wars movies. Combining Lehman’s method of cataloging with methods of ludomusicological analysis2 will be useful for understanding the plethora of themes, motifs, source music, thematic relationships, lyrics, diegetic music, and ludomusical methods found within the scores of each game. To present an example of this combination of analyses, Lehman’s motifs (denoted by quotation marks) are presented in combination with original analyses and transcription by the author, demonstrating the overlap between the musical material of the Star Wars movies and video games. This series of catalogs would be an excellent resource for all future Star Wars ludomusicological research as well as further expanding the literature in the field.

The Rise of Skywalker.Among the interviewees featured in the report was Thomas Manglitz, co-founder of the fan-run museum 1 Stars of the Galaxy in M€ onchengladbach, Germany (hereafter SOTG).Housed in a former indoor swimming pool vacated by the city, SOTG displays production materials and merchandise from a variety of science fiction productions.However, the vast majority of the amateur museum's displays are dedicated to the Star Wars franchise, ranging from action figures to LEGO sets, replicas, and collectible figurines.Because of this focus, SOTG has become a popular destination for local and regional press, as well as fellow fans, to interview Manglitz about Star Wars, including the history of the films, the success of the franchise's merchandise, its fan community, and the story behind the museum itself.Although Manglitz himself frames the project as a hobby without any economic agenda in such reports, the curatorial work of the fans behind SOTG should not be considered as mere leisure.Rather, following Mel Stanfill's plea to study fan practices and projects through a labor framework and "ask who benefits from these activities" (131), fan curating should be acknowledged as a form of work that creates cultural and economic value for different agents.

Certainly Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (Abrams US 2015) appears simply to wallow in nostalgia, to merely mimic Star Wars (Lucas US 1977, later re-christened Episode IV: A New Hope). We find in it another desert planet; another force-using, orphaned protagonist; another Death Star. Information crucial to the fate of seemingly everything is once again hidden inside a droid, planets are destroyed in demonstrations of force, and weird creatures mingle in a bar. Structurally and thematically, audiences are treated to a hero's (or, rather, heroine's) journey, which culminates in the death of a potential mentor or even father-figure.Certainly J.J. Abrams and Disney Lucasfilm had found themselves in a tough spot with regard to the marketability of the franchise. The prequels (1999-2005) disappointed many fans of the original trilogy even as they introduced a new generation of fans to the Star Wars universe. Thus The Force Awakens had to somehow recapture the older generation of fans - many of whom were now bringing their children and grandchildren to theatres - while still maintaining the younger one, and create a means by which to draw in even more fans by way of this film as well as the endless sequels and spin-offs the world can now expect in perpetuity. That The Force Awakens plays to the past of the franchise even as it tries to look forward should not therefore be surprising. The film's very first line, 'This will begin to set things right' - a sentence that has garnered much attention for what it metatextually suggests about the state of Star Wars in December 2015, as in the title of J.D. Connor's Los Angeles Review of Books essay 'Making Things Right: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens' - attests to the complex terrain The Force Awakens had to navigate. Nonetheless, as this discussion suggests, the allegiance that the most recent instalment in the Star Wars saga - a cinematic event which, until a few years ago, was nearly unthinkable - demonstrates to the past, and the manner in which it re-deploys familiar conventions, cannot be understood only in the context of this single film. Whatever we gain as critics from analysis of The Force Awakens remains limited until we consider it in the context of the franchise from which it was born and for which it provides a new hope.In the context of The Force Awakens as a discrete and coherent object of interpretation, the critic (and fan for that matter) might easily ignore that the film is framed by two deaths. The second death, which begins the film's final act, and to which I will turn below, seems the more important one. It certainly carries more emotional weight for fans of the franchise. The absence of Han Solo (Harrison Ford) from the prequel films - or even a character remotely like Han Solo - is part and parcel of those films' failure with fans who grew up with the original trilogy as their touchstone for the franchise. His return, again unthinkable until very recently when Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012 for US$4 billion, promised the return of a certain swagger, a certain irreverence, a certain humour to a franchise that had become mired in the sheer boringness of the monk-like Jedi and the retconned origins of one of American cinema's great villains as little orphan Ani (Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen).As important as Han's death is, however, it's the earlier death, which perhaps barely registers for even the most hardcore fans, that signals something important for the franchise known as Star Wars: the disposal of nostalgia.Few fans, of whatever degree, could have been familiar with Lor San Tekka (Max von Sydow) before he utters the first words of the franchise reboot, the aforementioned 'This will begin to set things right'. Indeed, even Wookiepedia, probably the most comprehensive source of publicly available Star Wars information, offers little helpful, specific information about who he is or about his place in the Star Wars universe. …

Nostalgia is a necessary element of Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008–20) and the ‘new’ Star Wars comics (Marvel, 2015–19), recent serial narratives in the ever-expanding transmedia Star Wars universe. The anticipation (and consequential reception) of these works is, in part, driven by nostalgia: the original Star Wars film, A New Hope, was released in 1977 and as the series has expanded in the decades since, in film and other media, nostalgia has become ingrained within the fandom as audiences are invited to repeatedly return to ‘a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away’. As a result of decades of content, there is a sense of ‘ownership’ amongst the fandom and, at times, a resistance to new content that attempts to ‘weaponize’ nostalgia as a marketing tool, such as in the ‘Sequel Trilogy’ (2015, 2017, 2019). The Clone Wars, first mentioned in A New Hope, is set between two Star Wars (Prequel) films that feature key events in the overall saga, while the Star Wars comics take place between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back (1980). The Clone Wars and the Star Wars comics succeed where the sequels (and prequels) arguably do not because they use nostalgia to serialize and capitalize on transmedia, allowing the audience to revisit characters and narrative events that have already been established for decades. Both works allow for character and narrative development between two fixed (cinematic) points in the story canon, with the spaces in between and around those points that frame their place in the Star Wars universe allowing for rich exploration.

In 1977, Star Wars blazed across the screen to become one of the highest grossing and most beloved movies of all time. It was followed by two sequels and three prequels, all of which became blockbusters. Comic books, novels, graphic novels, and magazines devoted to the films have added to the mythology of George Lucas’s creation. Despite the impact of the franchise on popular culture, however, discussion of the films from a scholarly perspective has not kept pace with the films. In Myth, Media, and Culture in Star Wars: An Anthology, Douglas Brode and Leah Deyneka have assembled an intriguing collection of essays addressing the influences that shaped the films, as well as the impact the franchise has had on popular culture. Contributors to this volume discuss the Star Wars universe and what its connection to various cultural touchstones—from fairy tales and Joseph Campbell to Disneyland and Marvel comics—mean to viewers. Essays examine the films in the franchise as well as incarnations of the Star Wars universe in video games, comic books, and television programs, including the films’ influence on new generations of filmmakers. A companion volume to Sex, Politics, and Culture in Star Wars, Myth, Media, and Culture in Star Wars is a diverse collection of criticism that investigates the dynamic force that Star Wars has become in popular culture, from every imaginable angle.

Since George Lucas’s film A New Hope was first screened in 1977, the Star Wars saga has become a pop-culture phenomenon incorporating films, videogames, books, merchandise, and a quasi-religious philosophy, but linguistic research on Star Wars is scarce and has mainly focused on language use in the films. There is as yet no investigation of the impact of Star Wars on the English language, and the present study fills this gap using corpus-linguistic methods to investigate the extent to which characteristic words and constructions from the Star Wars universe have become established in English. Five Star Wars-derived items included in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), namely Jedi, Padawan, lightsabre (with spelling variants), Yoda, and the characteristic construction to the dark side were analysed regarding their frequency of occurrence in four corpora of present-day English (COCA, COHA, BNC, BNC Spoken 2014) and coded regarding their level of independence from the original films. The results show that over one-third of the uses of the investigated Star Wars-derived items are innovative (like the BNC example Other imbibers have gone over to the dark side of beer, rejecting the pasteurised lager produced by the breweries) and thus well integrated into the English language.

Non-sentient animals have appeared in the Star Wars universe in roles both integral and decorative since A New Hope premiered in 1977. From beasts of burden like the dewbacks and banthas of Tatooine and the Gungans’ kaadu, to monsters like the wampa, rathtar, and dianoga; to the myriad of critters large and small that inhabit interstellar environments, animals are as much a part of the fabric of the Star Wars tapestry as the various non-human sentient species. In some cases, these creatures are mainly exotic window dressing, but in other instances, these animals are used instrumentally to advance larger narratives.
 To frame my examination of the use of animals in Star Wars, I borrow performance studies scholar Una Chaudhuri’s useful neologism “zooësis.” Coined by Chaudhuri to articulate “the way culture makes art and meaning with the figure and body of the animal,” encompasses the feelings that animals inspire, and so the affect of animals is an important part of understanding the place of the animal in the Star Wars universe (1). Ezra Bridger’s interaction with animals to explore the Force and to aid the Rebellion in Star Wars Rebels offers one example of how animals are instrumentalized, and Ezra’s affective response to “the figure and body” of these creatures – affection, awe, revulsion, or horror – are fairly straightforward. But the lowly porg from The Last Jedi inspires different feelings: the complex affect of cuteness, combined with the desire to consume and devour the bodies of these animals. In what follows I invite my reader to consider the use of animals in Star Wars, and to question how agency is granted and denied to non-human animals in these narratives.

This article is devoted to the study of the specific features of the display of social networks and computer technologies in the late 70s of the XX – early 20s of the XXI century in the fantastic Star Wars universe created by American filmmaker D. Lucas. In this scientific work, the authors argue for the relevance and scientific novelty of the problem under consideration. The study examines the peculiarities of the influence of social networks and computer technologies in modern conditions. The article provides a justification for the need to analyze the reflection of this issue in fantasy art as an auxiliary factor in the development of the prognostic function of science. This paper provides a reasoned explanation of the choice of the Star Wars universe as an object of research, taking into account its importance in the fantasy genre, as well as in order to refute stereotypes according to which Star Wars is a collection of entertainment materials in which there is completely no semantic load. The authors analyze the fundamental differences in the coverage of the studied problem in such genres of art as literature and cinema in the context of Star Wars. The article examines the features of the evolution of the display of cybernetic technologies and communication network platforms in the Star Wars universe in the mid‑1970s – early 2020s, as a reflection of the real development of scientific and technological progress, as well as an example of the impact of political, socio‑economic and moral factors on the use of online platforms and computer technology during the period under study. In this article, using the example of the Star Wars universe, the features of the transformation of the role of specialists in the field of high technology through the prism of the attitude of artists to them – more specifically, writers and cinematographers – are also considered. The article also examines the moral and ethical aspect of the use of computer technology and social networks, considered by artists who have made a significant contribution to the development of the fantastic epic of Star Wars.

The Mothership Strikes Back Andrew Parker's The Theorist's Mother, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012I am your mother, Luke, said no Star Wars character ever. While Luke Skywalker negotiates relationships with a succession of father figures (Uncle Owen, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Yoda) before Darth Vader declares himself to be Luke's true father and hacks off his son's hand with a castrating blow from his phallic lightsaber, Luke's remains obscured in his incestuous romance with Princess Leia, who is ultimately revealed to be his twin sister. Just as it would have been unthinkable for Darth Vader- much less any Jedi Knight-to have been Luke's in the Star Wars universe, when Jacques Derrida was asked, What philosopher would you have liked to be your mother? he responded, It's impossible for me to have any philosopher as a . . . my couldn't be a philosopher. [Switches to French] A philosopher couldn't be my mother (Derrida 2007). Derrida's horrified reaction is used by Andrew Parker as a launching point for his own proposal in The Theorist's Mother, which suggests what unifies the otherwise disparate traditions of critical theory and philosophy from Karl Marx to Jacques Derrida is their troubled relation to (1).With fifty-six pages devoted to notes and a bibliography, the dense but elegant in the other one hundred fourteen pages of this accidental provide both a challenging and pleasurable reading of Jacques Lacan and Gyorgy Lukacs in their roles as legitimate heirs to the traditions fathered by Freud and Marx. Preceding the three main chapters and a coda, the introduction in which Parker lays out his theoretical groundwork is the most compelling portion of the book. While claims to paternity have always been doubtful, those of maternity were assumed to be unambigu- ous until advances in reproductive technology made it possible for motherhood to be split along genetic, biological, and social axes. Because the identity of the has been revealed to be a social construction instead of a biological cornerstone, Parker concludes that such indeterminacy reveals three problems with employing the as a signifier: the distinction of the literal (procreating body) from the figurative (creativity), the relationship of the singular (my mother) to the general (the Mother), and the border between a theorist's life and writing (22-25).More or less corresponding to the three kinds of trouble identified in the introduction, the main chapters of The Theorist's Mother deconstruct the relationship between texts and their supplements-becoming supplements themselves, located both inside and outside of the original texts. If the work of Freud and Marx were to be compared to the Star Wars original trilogy, and the work of Lacan and Lukacs to the Star Wars sequel trilogy, then Parker's book could be viewed as a highly sophisticated form of fan fiction that exposes the assumptions of canonical readings by rereading them from the perspective of a minor character. In the Star Wars sequel, the drama is driven by Chancellor Palpatine's tug-of-war with ObiWan Kenobi over Anakin's loyalty as a disciple; yet the death of Anakin's and his brief romance with Luke's function as fulcrums in the transformations of both Darth Vader's pathology and the political economy of the Star Wars universe. Returning to the universe of The Theorist's Mother, Parker's work tries to locate the role of the Queen as a unif ying agent-both biological and social-in the reproduction of modern theory.In the first main chapter, Parker attempts to ground this project in his own experience by describing his original exploration of the boundary between the mind and the body in a 1985 essay he wrote about his mother's hypochondria. Parker then segues into a discussion of Lacan reading his critics' responses to his earlier work while he was giving his famous seminar on female sexuality. …

From the books and movies that inspired George Lucas to imagine the Star Wars universe, to early screenplay drafts that were never filmed, to short biographies of many people who made key contributions to the movies' success, Star Wars FAQ explores every aspect of the original Star Wars trilogy (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi). Along the way, it unearths underreported stories and illuminating minutiae often skimmed over or completely ignored in other histories of the legendary film series. Highlights include details about the Star Wars Holiday Special debacle, the Ewok TV movies, the rise of Star Wars fiction and its importance in the revival of the franchise, and thewave of Star Wars imitators and parodies that flooded theaters and TV screens in the late 1970s and early 1980s – along with dozens of rare publicity stills and photographs of vintage memorabilia. Offering an original analysis of the series' enduring appeal and cultural impact, Star Wars FAQ tells a story as thrilling and action-packed as the movies themselves, with bold characters facing apparently insurmountable odds, full of frantic chases, narrow escapes, daring victories, and tragic setbacks, culminating in an unlikely triumph that changed the course of the galaxy – or at least of Hollywood.

Music and religion have a long and constitutive history. When considering the potential religious dimensions of the Star Wars universe, musical elements should not be ignored. This article explores the iconic musical scores of John Williams for the Star Wars franchise as a form of worship music. Worship music, especially in Western contemporary Christian contexts, is employed for embodied expression, emotional experience, and spiritual encounter. In a similar fashion, the musical themes and sound world of Star Wars can engage fans in a visceral experience of, and encounter with, something beyond the natural. This article establishes the criteria and effects of contemporary worship music and applies that framework to Williams’s key themes for the Star Wars universe.

Star Wars is a multigenerational saga. To look at it from a certain perspective brings with it the nostalgia as everyone who was born in the 70s or 80s has a personal history with Star Wars. However, it is no coincidence that the franchise made it this far, both globally and temporally. Precise strategies have been used throughout its marketing. I took on this project to examine these strategies. This study has three objectives: First, it examines Star Wars as a form of transmedia storytelling and its effect to create global culture, and; second, it focuses on internet memes and their global production and circulation. Lastly, it dissects the marketing strategy for merchandise behind the highly new and popular character “Baby Yoda”. While researching, I used marketing and transmedia literature and market research. This research finds that marketing techniques for <i>The Mandalorian</i> (2019-) are linked with nostalgia, that global memes are used for marketing as well, but also that global mélange is on the horizon. I will then conclude by discussing my findings which include how nostalgia marketing is used in Star Wars universe and why this universe keeps expanding. It is very timely that media recently relies heavily on nostalgia marketing.

Scholars have been arguing for years that Star Wars is more than light sabers, Wookies, Millennium Falcons, and troubling familial relationships. Star Wars is an exciting space fantasy that we can explore from multiple academic perspectives, such as philosophy and psychology. This volume adds to that conversation by asking, “what would it look like if we analyzed the Star Wars universe theologically?” In Theology and the Star Wars Universe, contributors from various theological traditions take on this task by exploring the nature of the Force, the spiritual role of the Jedi, nonviolent and liberationist readings of the Franchise, and the enduring power of hope. Written for the restless, curious academic but accessible to diehard fans, Theology and the Star Wars Universe is an exciting foray into the study of theology and popular culture.

The subject of the article is to indicate the primary aspects of the creation and evolution of the heroines of the film trilogy from The Star Wars Universe in the example of three characters: Princess Leia, queen/senator Padme Amidala and the teenager Rey. Its purpose is to show, via the example of their creation, how feminism postulates are adapted and at the same time invalidated, which is reflected in the ways of presenting them and the process of “revealing” their role function. This results in the emancipation of Star Wars heroines and taking over the functions of real leaders and com-mander-in-chief of the Republic and the Resistance Movement (Princess Lea — Queen/Amidala Ambassador — General Leia Organa) and a change in sex, being the main character of the story, the chosen one (Luke Skywalker — Anakin Skywalker — Rey Palpatine-Skywalker). At the same time, this process reflects cultural changes over the four decades that relate to women’s social functioning. The subject of the article is to indicate the primary aspects of the creation and evolution of the heroines of the film trilogy from The Star Wars Universe in the example of three characters: Princess Leia, queen/senator Padme Amidala and the teenager Rey. Its purpose is to show, via the example of their creation, how feminism postulates are adapted and at the same time invalidated, which is re-flected in the ways of presenting them and the process of “revealing” their role function. This results in the emancipation of Star Wars heroines and taking over the functions of real leaders and com-mander-in-chief of the Republic and the Resistance Movement (Princess Lea — Queen/Amidala Ambassador — General Leia Organa) and a change in sex, being the main character of the story, the chosen one (Luke Skywalker — Anakin Skywalker — Rey Palpatine-Skywalker). At the same time, this process reflects cultural changes over the four decades that relate to women’s social functioning.