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 Cover Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication 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