Star Wars Multiverse

By Carmelo Esterrich

Star Wars may have started out as a film about a Manichean battle between good and evil, but as countless filmmakers, novelists, animators, fan artists and even cosplayers have taken the opportunity to play in the fictional world George Lucas created, it has expanded into something far greater, resulting in a richly layered and diverse Star Wars multiverse. 
 
Drawing from a full range of Star Wars media, including comics, children’s books, fan films, and television shows like Clone Wars and The Mandalorian, Carmelo Esterrich explores how these stories set in a galaxy far far away reflect issues that hit closer to home. He examines what they have to say about political oppression, authoritarianism, colonialism, discrimination, xenophobia, and perpetual war. Yet he also investigates subtler ways in which the personal is political within the multiverse, including its articulations of gender and sexuality, its cultural hierarchies of language use, and its complex relationships between humans, droids and myriad species. This book demonstrates that the Star Wars multiverse is not just a stage for thrilling interstellar battles, but also an exciting space for interpretation and discovery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Release date: Aug 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781978815278

Book preview

STAR WARS MULTIVERSE

QUICK TAKES: MOVIES AND POPULAR CULTURE

Quick Takes: Movies and Popular Culture is a series offering succinct overviews and high-quality writing on cutting-edge themes and issues in film studies. Authors offer both fresh perspectives on new areas of inquiry and original takes on established topics.

SERIES EDITORS:

Gwendolyn Audrey Foster is Willa Cather Professor of English and teaches film studies in the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

Wheeler Winston Dixon is the James Ryan Endowed Professor of Film Studies and professor of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

Rebecca Bell-Metereau, Transgender Cinema

Blair Davis, Comic Book Movies Jonna Eagle, War Games

Carmelo Esterrich, Star Wars Multiverse

Lester D. Freidman, Sports Movies

Desirée J. Garcia, The Movie Musical

Steven Gerrard, The Modern British Horror Film

Barry Keith Grant, Monster Cinema

Julie Grossman, The Femme Fatale

Daniel Herbert, Film Remakes and Franchises

Ian Olney, Zombie Cinema

Valérie K. Orlando, New African Cinema

Carl Plantinga, Alternative Realities

Stephen Prince, Digital Cinema

Stephen Prince, Apocalypse Cinema

Dahlia Schweitzer, L.A. Private Eyes

Dahlia Schweitzer, Haunted Homes

Steven Shaviro, Digital Music Videos

David Sterritt, Rock ’n’ Roll Movies

John Wills, Disney Culture

Star Wars Multiverse

CARMELO ESTERRICH

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS

New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Esterrich, Carmelo, author.

Title: Star Wars multiverse / Carmelo Esterrich.

Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [2021] | Series: Quick takes: movies and popular culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020045571 | ISBN 9781978815254 (paperback) | ISBN 9781978815261 (cloth) | ISBN 9781978815278 (epub) | ISBN 9781978815285 (mobi) | ISBN 9781978815292 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Star Wars films—History and criticism. | Star Wars fiction—History and criticism.

Classification: LCC PN1995.9.S695 E88 2021 | DDC 791.43/75—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045571

A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Copyright © 2021 by Carmelo Esterrich

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is fair use as defined by U.S. copyright law.

∞ The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

www.rutgersuniversitypress.org

Manufactured in the United States of America

TO BECKA, WONDERFUL FRIEND

TO JOSEPH, HUSBAND EXTRAORDINAIRE

CONTENTS

Preface: Seriously, Star Wars

1. Navigating a Multiverse: Watching, Reading, Wearing Star Wars

2. Humans and Creatures + Droids: Hierarchies of Life

3. Imperial Desires: War, Order, Colonialism

4. Beyond Princesses and Flyboys: Gender and Sexuality in Star Wars

Conclusion: Star Wars, Seriously

Acknowledgments

Further Reading

Works Cited

Filmography

Index

About the Author

PREFACE

Seriously, Star Wars

When you really pay attention, Star Wars is surprisingly tricky. It has harrowing films like Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, with Anakin Skywalker spiraling downward into the darkness of Darth Vader, and it has delightfully clever droids like R2-D2 and BB-8. It has disconcerting events, like the carnage at the Battle of Umbara on the television show The Clone Wars or the horrifying encounter between Leia Organa and Eneb Ray in Marvel comics, but it also has Ewoks, Porgs, and the irresistible Grogu from The Mandalorian. Star Wars straddles horror and cuteness, despair and optimism. Star Wars is disturbing and sentimental, charming, humorous. Star Wars is paradox and simplicity.

But there’s a tendency to focus on its simplicity: the mythical and archetypal nature of the narratives; the obviously symbolic names of many characters (Greedo, Savage Opress, Darth Tyranus, Skywalker); the seemingly simple notion of the Force, with its dark and light sides; the perennial presence of hope in so many of the stories.

Focusing on these elements has led many people to dismiss Star Wars as merely for kids, and indeed it is partially marketed that way. Star Wars has toys galore; it has graded readers and Little Golden Books. Some public libraries even have their Star Wars movies and television shows in the juvenile section, in the same room with Pikachu and Dora the Explorer. Possibly because of the impression that this world is fundamentally for children, Star Wars is not often taken very seriously—certainly not as seriously as other American space narratives like Star Trek or recent television shows like Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse.

But we should take Star Wars seriously.

The world of Star Wars is more than cute creatures, thrilling battles, and awesome explosions. It is also filled with thought-provoking ideas: the social and cultural effects of war; political oppression and colonialism; discrimination, patriarchy, and xenophobia. And elements like the Force, as we watch and read the narratives carefully, become less and less simple.

Kids are not the only consumers of Star Wars. And, besides, even if it was kiddie stuff (including the kid in us adults), children’s culture still deserves a meticulous, astute examination, because it is inevitably informed by serious and significant cultural, social, and political ideas. Furthermore, understanding our stories—particularly the ones we experience through media—sensitizes us to how we view the world and how we interact with it.

This book leads off from the premise that Star Wars is as otherworldly as it is familiar. It is only seemingly, fictionally, in a galaxy far far away. As an undeniable American cultural product, Star Wars reflects our own world. It portrays very particular notions of empire, democracy, and authoritarianism. The sentient beings that inhabit it are gendered and racialized in specific Western ways; some are socially privileged, others are marginalized. The well-known reactions to the first appearance of Jar-Jar Binks in Episode I: The Phantom Menace indicate how acutely aware audiences are of the connections in Star Wars with our world.

Scholarly or journalistic, in print or online, serious examinations of Star Wars tend to fall into a few general categories. Some writing focuses on Star Wars as a phenomenon—its fans, its appeal, its popularity. Some center on the stories, either regarding it as a modern myth that borrows from an entire tradition of popular narratives (ancient myths and legends, Hollywood and Japanese film, comics) or pointing out how specific political, cultural, and social elements in Star Wars connect to (mostly) American culture and history. More recent work has done important analyses of gender, politics, and media. And to be sure, many of these are engaging, useful, and suggestive approaches.

With this book, I would like to shift the focus. Instead of studying the specific connections between, for example, the original trilogy of films and the Cold War, or the Jedi Order’s appropriation of Buddhism, I want to examine how the fictional world of Star Wars, as a world informed by our world, operates culturally and socially. Instead of universalizing Star Wars as a modern myth, I would like to particularize it, acknowledging that, for better and for worse, Star Wars replicates our globalized, American world. What is the social and cultural relationship between humans and droids? What about all the nonhumans that inhabit the galaxy—how do they fit in the social hierarchy? How do language and accent (and subtitles!) play into all this? How does Star Wars think about war and empire? What articulations of masculinity and femininity are favored in this world? I want to examine the intricacies of the fictionalized cultural makeup of Star Wars without ever forgetting that the cultures from the galaxy far far away are all constructed from the complex fabric of our own.

Except in recent publications, most Star Wars analyses tend to focus only on the films. Today, that would amount to an irresponsible act. As I argue in chapter 1, there is a multiplicity of Star Wars beyond cinema in comics, television, and fiction; there is also a rich amount of material produced by fans, artists, and filmmakers who, outside the control of Disney and Lucasfilm, manage to expand Star Wars in revealing ways. This book wants to survey an all-inclusive Star Wars.

There are a few things this book is not. I am not going to engage in a value judgment of Star Wars artifacts. I am not interested here in cinematic, televisual, or literary quality but in what Star Wars reveals through these artifacts. This book is most definitely not a fan memoir, but it would be foolish to assert that my identities will not frame and influence how I approach Star Wars. Though I am sure the film scholar will temper the fan, the fan might at times sidestep the scholar; the Puerto Rican man, in his colonial experience, will inform notions of empire and citizenship; the gay man, all too aware of the social constructions of gender and sexuality, will reframe the discussions of how male and female and femininity and masculinity get articulated in Star Wars storytelling.

If you are actually holding this book, as opposed to reading it electronically, you’ve already noticed that it is not a large tome. This is not the space to be exhaustive or completist or encyclopedic (that’s what Wookieepedia is for!). The objective of this book is to kick-start more conversations and not to be the last word on Star Wars. I have tried to pick examples from inside and outside the screen, from films and novels, television and comics, that are illustrative of what Star Wars does, what Star Wars signifies, how Star Wars represents; but there will always be many more examples out there. Also, in our lightning-speed world of posting and reacting, slashing and ranting, I hope a book, that deliciously slow medium, can produce a space to think and critique with judicious excitement and composed thought processes. Rather than the knee-jerk reaction of social media, books allow us to ruminate—a healthy activity indeed.

Stephen Colbert was the host of the Star Wars Celebration Chicago panel on the then forthcoming Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker. He began by saying that we go to Star Wars to escape and to dream. It’s hard to disagree with that. But with this book, I want to argue that we can go to Star Wars to think, as we ponder and wander through its layered and complex worlds.

STAR WARS MULTIVERSE

1

Navigating a Multiverse

Watching, Reading, Wearing Star Wars

Star Wars is not one universe. It is a multitude of them.

Though the narrative is all set in one huge galaxy (nominally far far away), experiencing that narrative is multifaceted. There are the movies, of course. Since the mid-1980s, there have been television shows, many of them animated. There is fiction. Literally hundreds of novels and comics emerge from and expand stories and characters from film and television, including a vast array of young-adult novels and children’s books.