Abstract
The wide influence of Star Wars has meant that its existence as a phenomenon of popular culture could not be ignored, yet by no means did it mean lack of criticism. As Brooker notes, the film’s popularity and simplicity seemed to have discouraged the academic circles from analyzing the Star Wars films as texts, instead focusing on it as a cultural phenomenon: its audiences, merchandizing, and special effects (2009, p. 8).
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Notes
- 1.
It should also be noted that the reference to Blade Runner was also observable in Clone Wars animated series. For instance, in an episode from Season 2: “Lightsaber Lost”, an old Jedi and Asuka go search for a thief. Not only does the investigation involve an old and retired “detective” but also in one of the scenes features a street bar resembling the sushi bar in Blade Runner. The animated series’ borrowings, allusions and pastiches are much more overt and direct than in Lucas’s feature film productions.
- 2.
At this point it should be noted that the connection between artificial or machine-supported lifeforms have become nearly synonymous with Frankenstein’s monster if only due to the use of electricity used to bring the creation to life. Apart from the more obvious hallmarks, such as heavy stomping and nearly unstoppable strength of the villain in Star Wars, the echoes of Frankenstein’s creature’s awakening scene echo also in numerous other works of science fiction, not only made in Hollywood, for instance in Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element (1997), which borrowed both from Frankenstein and Fritz Lang’s enormously influential Metropolis (1927) or in Japanese science fiction, perhaps most famously in the highly cinematic style of Tezuka Osamu, e.g. in the awakening of Astro Boy (in the manga of the same title, 1951) or Mitchy in Metropolis (1949) (McCarthy, 2009, p. 135).
- 3.
For instance, when Star Wars. Episode I: The Phantom Menace was released for Blu-ray, Lucas decided to replace the puppet Yoda with a fully animated CGI version of the character (Tassi). While only one of many such changes done by Lucas in subsequent editions of his works, it was perhaps the most invasive and easily perceptible by the viewer.
- 4.
The use of this technique keeps evolving and in some cases can be described as a new form of adaptation, since it increasingly involves the viewers in the world of the film even before it has been released, e.g. through the use of the social media and competitions. This has been successfully done in contemporary marketing techniques which made a crucial part of the Hunger Games adaptations—see Skweres (2015, pp. 213–226).
- 5.
In case of the series (henceforth: Clone Wars), Lucas gave the animators the task of developing “Star Wars like no-one has seen before” (Filoni, 2010, p. 6), visually distinctive despite being grounded in all six films. Lucas chose the television medium as a vehicle for Star Wars because he regarded it as an “experimental cauldron” in which he could test new ideas and experiment without the stress of producing a much more expensive cinema production. In Clone Wars they successfully made “a feature quality TV show: the lighting, characters, animation were all feature quality. And we did it on TV budget.” Yet the simplification was unavoidable when moving to the half-hour episode format, whose computer-animated aesthetics was openly directed at children.
- 6.
The word means strange monsters in Japanese and is a popular film genre in Japan.
- 7.
The references to the feudal structure of the antiquity and the Middle Ages can be seen not only in the presence of monarchs or slaves, but also in the non-democratic stability of the social structures, defying the myth American dream and the corruption in the senate, leading to the abolition of the Republic and establishment of the Empire, disclosing fears of similar events in American politics. The chance to become a hero is not given to everyone in Star Wars, and although the situation of the former slave, Anakin, can be seen as exceptional, his romance with the queen is kept a secret and has lamentable consequences. Also the main source of comedy stems from the adventures of the two main robotic protagonists, C3PO and R2D2, whose inadequate attempts at being human were compared by Kaveney to the failed aspirations of the bourgeois to become noble in Moliere’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (2005, p. 54). This also concerns the ability to use the force, being “force-sensitive,” which immediately puts the character at risk of being influenced or killed by the Sith.
- 8.
The wipes are also among the film techniques utilized by Akira Kurosawa, whose The Hidden Fortress has been noted to be a major influence on the shape of Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope.
- 9.
For instance, Rubey noted that the special effects, albeit more complex due to more advanced computer technology, show notable influence of Kubrick’s movie.
- 10.
The use of animalistic features in character design to make them more appealing (or dangerous) is prevalent in Star Wars, as well as in the later discussed Avatar.
- 11.
Apart from moon-sized Death Stars, entire planets are repeatedly destroyed in Star Wars films: Alderaan in the original Star Wars (1977) and Hosnian Prime as well as Starkiller Base in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015).
- 12.
See “McLuhan on Poe’s Maelstrom” at http://mcluhansnewsciences.com/mcluhan/2015/11/maelstrom-2-mcluhan-on-poes-maelstrom/ for an extensive list of publications in which he mentioned this work.
- 13.
Magic per se exists in Star Wars but seems not to be related to the Force. For instance, in Clone Wars animated series, which recovers many of the cultural artefacts rejected in the feature films, appear Dathomir's “Nightsisters”, for example Old Daka or Mother Talzin, who perform such kind of magic, including casting curses and raising the dead as zombies.
- 14.
The contrast between Darth Vader and the white-clad Storm Troopers is striking. Their “uniformity” makes them resemble white chess pieces which is their, essentially disposable and irrelevant, function. Troops are standardized, like machines, whose armors are mass produced, replaceable, and unremarkable like the people wearing them (Storm Troopers are related to the mass-produced Clone Troopers).
- 15.
A similar method of brainwashing “weaker minds” of the uninitiated was further explored in the Men in Black trilogy (1997, 2002, 2012). This was done to humorous effect, despite its serious implications of undemocratic information control and manipulation of the uninitiated by a secret, governmental organization into the mysteries which they are deemed too stupid to understand (and yet the same line of reasoning is not extended to the democratic process of elections, when the intellectual capacities of the general public are not looked down on in the same way. Men in Black treated the bystanders as too silly to understand the necessity of the governmental, often unlawful actions, and had absolutely no qualms about erasing their memories (thereby “switching their channels” to innocuous and receptive instead of inquisitive and demanding explanations). The appearance of the inquisitive common people is like the appearance of interactive media, ending the era of one way communication of television.
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Skweres, A. (2019). Star Wars as an Aesthetic Melting Pot. In: McLuhan’s Galaxies: Science Fiction Film Aesthetics in Light of Marshall McLuhan’s Thought. Second Language Learning and Teaching(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04104-5_2
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