Star Wars Multiverse (Quick Takes: Movies and Popular Culture)

__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. "Star Wars Multiverse explores the many narrative platforms of the multiverse of Star Wars including through film, television, fiction, and comics. It argues that Star Wars is both familiar and other-worldly and persistently replicates and reflects our world. It is about the nature of 'wars' in Star Wars, its militariness; about the hierarchies of life in this universe (human, creatures, droids); about languages and accents (who speaks English--which accent of English--who does not speak English--WHY); about patriarchy, feminism and women in Star Wars; about the poli-masculinities of Star Wars (the Jedi, the Mandalorian, the Sith); about Empire and coloniality. Star Wars Multiverse examines gender and race, privilege, and otherness while also precisely locating the franchise as an undeniably American cultural product"-- Provided by publisher Drawing from a full range of Star Wars media, including comics, television, children's books, and fan films, Carmelo Esterrich explores how these stories set in a galaxy far far away reflect issues that hit closer to home on such topics as authoritarianism, colonialism, xenophobia, sexuality, and gender norms. Carmelo Esterrich. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Electronic Reproduction. Ann Arbor, Mi Available Via World Wide Web.