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Overview
In October 2012, the Walt Disney Company paid more than $4 billion to acquire Lucasfilms, the film and production company responsible for Howard the Duck. But Disney, despite its history and success with duck characters, wasn’t after Howard; in buying Lucasfilms, it also bought the rights to the Star Wars franchise. Soon after the purchase, Disney announced a new Star Wars film was in the works and would be released in 2015, nearly four decades after the first film hit big screens around the world and changed popular culture forever. The continued relevance of Star Wars owes much to the passion of its fans. For millions of people around the world, the films are more than diversions - they are a way of life. Through costumed role-playing, incessant quoting, Yoda-like grammatical inversions and scholarly debates about the Force, fans keep the films alive in a variety of ways, and in so doing add to the saga’s cultural relevance.
The first book to address the films holistically and from a variety of cultural perspectives, Fan Phenomena: Star Wars explores numerous aspects of Star Wars fandom, from its characters to its philosophy. As one contributor notes, ‘The saga that George Lucas created affects our lives almost daily, whether we ourselves are fans of the saga or not’. Anyone who is struggling to forget Jar Jar Binks can certainly agree to that.
Academically informed but written for a general audience, this book will appeal to every fan and critic of the films. That is, all of us.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783200979 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Intellect Books |
| Publication date: | 05/14/2014 |
| Series: | ISSN |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 116 |
| File size: | 5 MB |
About the Author
Mika Elovaara is an author, teacher, coach, former professional athlete and a life-long fan of Star Wars.
Mika Elovaara is an independent scholar, writer, and soccer coach.
Read an Excerpt
Star Wars
By Mika Elovaara
Intellect Ltd
Copyright © 2013 Intellect LtdAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78320-097-9
CHAPTER 1
Star Wars as a Character-Oriented Franchise
Jason Scott
[right arrow] The Star Wars trilogies are reputedly the most successful film franchise in history. However, the films are only the beginning of the story from a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away; the character-oriented franchise Star Wars developed through merchandising, transmedia branding and cross-media storytelling. George Lucas, and his company Lucasfilm, achieved phenomenal box-office success with the films, but also initiated groundbreaking retail sales of an array of branded toys, comics, books, and other licensed and media products.
This commercial success was nurtured by their continuing appeal to both a broad range of consumers and also the enduring interest of fans, involved in patterns of repeat consumption. The spin-off extensions of Star Wars into new stories and media formats have been sustained by these same engaged fans. Comic books, novels and video games have allowed fans to extend their experience of the films, the Expanded Universe and its characters. Beyond this commodification, exploiting people's fascination with all things Star Wars, the fans themselves have also contributed to Star Wars, not simply as consumers but participating in creating and producing the Star Wars culture.
This chapter thus seeks to explain the complex relationship between the films and other authorized versions of Star Wars, and their emotional resonance and social use by fans, the foundation of which is the saga's character-orinetedness. Whilst Lucasfilm continue to develop and promote numerous lines of Star Wars product, fans repurpose these, creating their community through 'the different ways in which people engage with Star Wars, the role it has in their lives, and their relationship to it', noted by Will Brooker in his book Using the Force. This results in a fine balance, a tension, between the demands of brand management, merchandising and intellectual property control, on the one hand, and the freedom of participation, communal interpretation and ownership on the other. This is epitomized in the complementary ways Star Wars characters continue to be used, by both Lucas and the fans, as heroes and villains, mythic archetypes, icons, identities and objects of affection.
We will return to explore the various fan activities that encompass Star Wars characters, whether encouraged or supported by the official fan clubs and Lucasfilm websites or practiced more independently later in this chapter, but let us begin by considering how Star Wars consolidated a brand, what we might now call a transmedia franchise. In the creation, development and re-releasing of Star Wars, Lucas and his team adopted certain strategies which determined its status as a character-oriented franchise. Some of these approaches were already established in Hollywood, while other aspects were more pioneering. However, the ability of Star Wars, and its characters, to infiltrate the public consciousness, and be widely appropriated, was also dependent on the groundswell of affection with which audiences embraced the first film, and the ways this initial word-of-mouth excitement and attachment was maintained and developed by fans, providing the basis for their ongoing engagement. Several critics at the time of the release of Star Wars: A New Hope (Lucas, 1977) suggested what was distinctive about the film warranted this devoted response. A.D. Murphy, the Variety reviewer describing the film's 'movie magic', suggested that 'one identifies with the characters' and accepts their world, a distinction which arguably underpins much fan engagement with Star Wars. The critic Roger Ebert similarly praised the film's magic, distinguishing the film's involving narrative, with characters 'so strongly and simply drawn [...] to identify with'. This echoed the production notes, in which George Lucas stated that casting for the film was focused on making the characters 'believable to an audience [so] that they identify with [them]'.
Still, in the twenty-first century, Star Wars exemplifies a character-oriented franchise facilitated by interlinked media and ancillary products based around pre-sold or familiar proprietary characters. This resulted from organizing the films around a group of distinctive characters, and foregrounding them in all advertising, as well as dispersing these same characters through other stories and non-narrative forms. The release of a comic book and novelization before the first film served to introduce the characters and story, while early promotion and the marketing of the film around an ensemble of characters, rather than star actors, has been replicated for each re-release and sequel. Posters, trailers, comics and books of the films, and subsequently action figures (and their packaging), and a range of merchandise, functioned to consolidate the recognition of iconic characters. Unlike most blockbusters of the time, Star Wars was not sold on the basis of star actors. Instead, the trailers and posters relegated the star Alec Guinness (and Peter Cushing) to the periphery. Thus, George Lucas and Lucasfilm imitated the serials such as Flash Gordon (1954–55) that provided some of his inspiration, as well as film series, in developing proprietary characters. Rick Altman, in his book Film/Genre notes that Hollywood had consistently developed 'idiosyncratic and easily identifiable characters', in some cases adapted from other media such as comic strips and books, radio serials and pulp fiction, to provide the basis of series, sequels and remakes, 'so that each individual film could contribute to marketing the next'. Series of B movies were defined by their characters. According to Michael Allen in his book Contemporary US Cinema, Lucas adopted this customary practice, using Star Wars to create what Altman calls 'a brand-name-like feature', a brand embodied in the range of characters, to ensure audience appeal for subsequent films, but also readily adapted into toys and other merchandise, with 'the possibilities of replicating images and characters' built into the film. Lucasfilm also imitated Disney, which from its beginnings had 'created strong brands or characters [...] [marketed] through films and merchandise', as noted by Janet Wasko. First with Mickey Mouse, and then Snow White (Cottrell and Hand, 1937), Disney exploited the widespread recognition of something magical in each of these, with toys, comics, and even branded foodstuffs. Lucasfilm similarly embraced Disney's careful control of intellectual property to exploit characters, images, and stories through licensing, developing trademarked characters and titles within films, and for cross-promotion, which contributed to a similar shift of emphasis more broadly in the New Hollywood. Now, with Disney's purchase of Lucasfilm and the rights to the Star Wars saga, the two franchises with a very strong character-oriented essence, are under the same umbrella.
As described in greater detail in various chapters in this book, Star Wars transcended the success of a blockbuster in giving rise to a series of films, but perhaps more significantly, generating phenomenal sales in comics, publishing, toys, reconfiguring the licensed toy and action figure markets, and subsequently video games. The accumulated global grosses for the films of $4 billion (given in 2008) pales in comparison to the $15 billion retail sales of merchandise. Toys contributed up to $9 billion, with 250 million units sold by Kenner between 1978 and 1985, and Hasbro Star Wars toys consistently placed as the number one boy toy in the United States, since the prequel films. Alongside these toys, books and video games constituted the core merchandise, with 72 million Star Wars books in print, including over 70 New York Times bestsellers, and Star Wars video games eclipsing all other movie-based franchises. Very few film franchises achieve recurrent bestsellers across this range of media and products, and only Disney consistently profits from merchandise and marketing tie-ins on this scale. Furthermore, George Lucas has famously secured greater royalties and percentages of the box-office revenues of the films – another parallel with Disney.
Moving beyond managing and policing the brand of Star Wars, Lucasfilm have furthermore developed close supervision of the authorized stories featuring the Star Wars universe and characters, to ensure continuity, and consistency with what is termed the 'Star Wars canon'. Thus the integrity of the approved timeline of events, Star Wars characters and their actions is maintained. This is applied through the use of a series bible, providing authors and game creators with background information on the Star Wars characters and universe, but also monitored through Lucasfilm continuity and licensing coordinators. Whilst this has proven essential to the cross-media storytelling that has proliferated within the franchise, it also causes tensions with the fans of Star Wars who contest and debate their own elevated narratives and elements, defined as the 'fanon'. Chapter 4 in this book, 'Fans, fics & films ... "Thank the maker(s)!"' discusses fanfilms and fiction in greater detail, but for the purposes of a discussion of the character-orientedness of Star Wars, a closer look at the role of fanfiction and the Expanded Universe as part of the fan phenomenon is called for.
Unlike with most films, where fans' desire to know or learn more about the characters and their 'lives' is never satisfied, Star Wars fans are encouraged to follow the 'life' of the Star Wars characters through their continuing adventures in books and comics, and transmedia storytelling coinciding with the films has introduced new characters or provided complementary backstory to inflect the film narratives. Peripheral characters, or those who died early in the films, such as Qui-Gon Jinn, Darth Maul, Jango Fett and Boba Fett, have been revisited, allowing fans to re-experience them, and extend their story backwards, or fill in gaps. Apart from the transmedia interquel project Shadows of the Empire (1996), which coordinated a novel, comics and a video game, Lucasfilm has predominantly limited extensions within the timescale of the films. Hence Lucasfilm, whether with comics, books or video games, has prompted expanding the saga through secondary characters, whose stories parallel the protagonists of the film, or extending Star Wars with second generation characters, whether the immediate descendents, following the events of Return of the Jedi (Marquand, 1983) or precursors. These narratives constitute the Expanded Universe or the EU. To know the whole Star Wars story, fans of the EU are encouraged to buy all the books and/or comics. This builds upon the significance of the early comics, film novelizations and spin-off novels, but also the interest amongst fans of extending the stories of major Star Wars characters within their own fanfiction.
Preceding the EU, fanzines were commonly focused on fanfiction, poetry and fanart, but they also included editorials and articles which encompassed fan speculation, debates and interpretations of the films, as well as forms of news and information, transcribing interviews, compiling reviews, and collecting biographical details about characters and the actors who played them. Much fanfiction concerned extending the stories, or as one fan noted in Alderaan issue 3, as early as September 1978, 'developing' the characters from the film. Henry Jenkins, in his article 'Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars?', notes that fans began writing 'original fiction based on the Star Wars characters' within months of the first film, due to the fans' impulse to 'create and recreate [...] characters over and over again', expanding them beyond the 'single life of their original creation'. Commonly, this involved providing backstories to characters, for instance Han Solo in Falcon's Flight from 1978, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Darth Vader background stories within Jundland Wastes 2 (1981). Fanfiction in fanzines also placed the characters in different situations, and relationships to each other, defined as 'alternative universe' stories in the Fan Fiction archive hosted by TheForce.Net, with generic variations stressing romantic or sexual relationships, or strong emotions, such as angst, between characters. The broad spectrum of fan stories, these reworkings of the characters from the films, is judged by fidelity to these characters, whether they remain 'in character', and whether original characters created by fans are consistent, or idealized 'Mary Sue' personalities, a term derived from Star Trek fandom. Fanzines also included ongoing discussion about fans' right to rework or transform the characterization of canonical characters from the films, which was at odds with Lucasfilm's policing of copyright, and the official Lucasfilm Fan Club. Whilst this tension existed during the 1980s and early 1990s, Lucasfilm more widely intervened with cease and desist notices to fan websites in the late 1990s, and has continued to do so whenever fan writers have attempted to use commercial means to distribute their work. This ran parallel to their attempts to co-opt or regulate forms of fanfiction – for instance whilst authorizing fanfilms with Atom-Films, films limited to parodies and documentaries, fan home pages hosted by starwars.com enabled Lucasfilm to assert their authority over fan-produced material.
Brooker, in his article on 'Internet Fandom' has suggested the centrality within Star Wars fandom revolves around the fans' 'emotional investment in the continuing lives of the protagonists'. Fans are distinguished by the range of their ongoing responses to characters, including recurrent consumption of character texts, but also their interpretations and speculations about characters, their value judgements and distinctions, or participatory modes of extending characters themselves in fanfiction, art, fanfilms, cosplay and digital forms. Several accounts of Star Wars fandom suggest that the fans' continuing imaginative bonds with the characters, or their immersion in the EU, differentiates them from the general audience. Whilst some of these activities are elicited by Lucasfilm's transmedia storytelling, or encouraged by the official fan clubs and websites, core fandom can be distinguished by more autonomous activities. Fanzines and fan-produced websites stress fan selection, interaction and editorial control, but have diminished access to authorized material, cultivating the fans' sense of community and ownership of Star Wars. The fans' distinctive interests, values and ways of reading Star Wars negotiate the commodity elements of the franchise to stress their discerning taste and critical awareness, which is in contrast to Lucasfilm's dissemination of authorized information, often promoting consumption.
The fans' sense of ownership of Star Wars derives from their repeat viewing and imaginative engagement with memorable scenes, dialogue and characters, as well as other materials such as trailers, interviews, books, comics, and other forms of cross-media storytelling. Taken together, this enables their collective discussion of Star Wars, with distinct ways of understanding the films and characters, encompassing speculation and their exhaustive familiarity with the minutiae of characters. Whilst fans debate their interpretations, and hierarchies between films, scenes, and favourite characters, these disputes are premised upon their shared specialist knowledge, and the accumulative but always unfinished project to fully comprehend the saga and their object of affection.
Since before the first film, fans have speculated upon the significance of characters and scenes to the continuing narrative, dwelling on individual words of dialogue, description from the crawl that opens each film, glimpsed characters or events in trailers or publicity stills, or the extract from the 'Journal of the Whills' that introduces the Star Wars novelization. For instance, conjecture about the identity of 'The Other' – another person with whom 'The Force is strong' – followed the release of The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980), epitomized by fanzine discussion in successive issues of Jundland Wastes through 1981 and 1982. Seemingly every possible 'other' – Leia, Wedge Antilles, Vader, Boba Fett, Lando Calrissian and Han – was evaluated and deliberated. Developing scenarios that resolve such enigmas has also inspired much fanfiction. Similarly, the announcement of each film's title, part of Lucasfilm's regulated release of information, has generated both guesses at the likely names and hypotheses about the clues they offer to the film's narrative, and importance of characters. This constitutes one aspect of anticipation that sustains fans between every new film or book, the long wait for the prequels or even the DVD release, evidenced by the Internet fed frenzy in the case of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (Lucas, 1999).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Star Wars by Mika Elovaara. Copyright © 2013 Intellect Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Intellect Ltd.
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Table of Contents
Introduction – Mike Elovaara
Star Wars as a Character-Oriented Franchise – Jason Scott
Fashion from a Galaxy Far, Far Away – Jonathan Derosa
Fans, Fics & Films... 'Thank the Maker(s)!' – Marc Joly-Corcoran and Sarah Ludlow
Immersive and Interactive Adaptations and Extensions of Star Wars – Jason Scott
From Bikinis to Blasters: The Role of Gender in the Star Wars Community – Erika Travis
Jediism as a Religion? The Force as Old/New Religious Philosophy – Zachary Ingle
Greater then the Sum of Its Parts: The Singular Emergent Language of the Star Wars Universe – Kris Jacobs
Star Wars Generations – A Saga for the Ages, for All Ages – Brendan Cook
The Marketing of the Force: Fans, Media and the Economics of Star Wars – Neil Matthiessen
The Influence of The Force – Jason Davis and Larry Pakowski