Sex, Politics, and Religion in Star Wars

Sex, Politics, and Religion in Star Wars PDF Author: Douglas Brode
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 081088514X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
In 1977, Star Wars blazed across the screen to become one of the highest grossing and most beloved movies of all time. In Sex, Politics, and Religion in Star Wars: An Anthology, Douglas Brode and Leah Deyneka have assembled a provocative collection of essays that explore such hot topics as race and racism in the Star Wars galaxy, Judeo-Christian and Eastern religious themes, homosexual romance, and philosophical and political implications—earthbound and otherworldly. The wide range of essays collected here will engross readers, both fans and scholars alike.

Sex, Politics, and Religion in Star Wars

Sex, Politics, and Religion in Star Wars PDF Author: Douglas Brode
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 081088514X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Get Book

Book Description
In 1977, Star Wars blazed across the screen to become one of the highest grossing and most beloved movies of all time. In Sex, Politics, and Religion in Star Wars: An Anthology, Douglas Brode and Leah Deyneka have assembled a provocative collection of essays that explore such hot topics as race and racism in the Star Wars galaxy, Judeo-Christian and Eastern religious themes, homosexual romance, and philosophical and political implications—earthbound and otherworldly. The wide range of essays collected here will engross readers, both fans and scholars alike.

Sex, Politics, and Religion in Star Wars

Sex, Politics, and Religion in Star Wars PDF Author: Douglas Brode
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810885158
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
In 1977, Star Wars blazed across the screen to become one of the highest grossing and most beloved movies of all time, spawning an unprecedented merchandising phenomenon. It was followed by two sequels and three prequels, all of which became blockbusters. Comic books, novels, graphic novels, and magazines devoted to the films added to the mythology of George Lucas’s creation. Despite the impact of the franchise on popular culture, however, discussion of the films from a scholarly perspective has not kept pace with the films. In Sex, Politics, and Religion in Star Wars: An Anthology, Douglas Brode and Leah Deyneka have assembled a provocative collection of essays exploring some of the more intriguing aspects of the Star Wars phenomenon. Contributors to the volume tackle such hot topics as race and racism in the Star Wars galaxy, Judeo-Christian and Eastern religious themes, homosexual romance, and philosophical and political implications—both earthbound and otherworldly. These essays interpret the Star Wars universe from a variety of perspectives—including feminist and Freudian—offering insights from writers who bring a new passion to the subject. A companion volume to Myth, Media, and Culture in Star Wars, Sex, Politics, and Religion in Star Wars is an authoritative anthology incorporating scholarly analysis with engaging insights. It will engross readers, both fans and scholars alike.

Identity Politics in George Lucas' Star Wars

Identity Politics in George Lucas' Star Wars PDF Author: John C. McDowell
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 147666286X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
George Lucas spoke about the didactic role of cinema and about his own work being presented through the "moral megaphone" of the film industry. A considerable body of scholarship on the six-part Star Wars series argues (unconvincingly) that the franchise promoted neo-conservatism in American culture from the late 1970s onward. But there is much in Lucas' grand space opera to suggest something more ideologically complex is going on. This book challenges the view of the saga as an unambiguously violent text exemplifying reactionary politics, and discusses the films' identity politics with regard to race and gender.

The History and Politics of Star Wars

The History and Politics of Star Wars PDF Author: Chris Kempshall
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351382705
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
This book provides the first detailed and comprehensive examination of all the materials making up the Star Wars franchise relating to the portrayal and representation of real-world history and politics. Drawing on a variety of sources, including films, published interviews with directors and actors, novels, comics, and computer games, this volume explores the ways in which historical and contemporary events have been repurposed within Star Wars. It focuses on key themes such as fascism and the Galactic Empire, the failures of democracy, the portrayal of warfare, the morality of the Jedi, and the representations of sex, gender, and race. Through these themes, this study highlights the impacts of the fall of the Soviet Union, the War on Terror, and the failures of the United Nations upon the ‘galaxy far, far away’. By analysing and understanding these events and their portrayal within Star Wars, it shows how the most popular media franchise in existence aims to speak about wider contemporary events and issues. The History and Politics of Star Wars is useful for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars of a variety of disciplines such as transmedia studies, science fiction, cultural studies, and world history and politics in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The Politics of Big Fantasy

The Politics of Big Fantasy PDF Author: John C. McDowell
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476618208
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Bringing critical attention to a particular set of science fiction and fantasy films—Larry and Andy Wachowski’s The Matrix, George Lucas’ Star Wars saga, and Joss Whedon’s Avengers—this book utilizes a wide-ranging set of critical tools to illuminate their political ideologies, while also examining any resistant and complicating turns or byways the films may provide. What they all have in common ideologically is that they—or at least the genres they belong to—tend to be regarded as belonging to politically conservative frames of sociocultural reference. With the Star Wars saga, however, this idea is shown to be superficial and weak.

Understanding Religion and Popular Culture

Understanding Religion and Popular Culture PDF Author: Elizabeth Rae Coody
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000852377
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
Understanding Religion and Popular Culture 2nd edition provides an accessible introduction to this exciting and rapidly evolving field. Divided into two parts, Issues in Religion and Genres in Popular Culture, it encourages readers to think critically about the ways in which popular cultural practices and products, especially those considered as forms of entertainment, are laden with religious ideas, themes, and values. This edition has been thoroughly revised and includes five new chapters, updated case studies, and contemporary references. Among the areas covered are religion and film, food, violence, music, television, cosplay, and fandom. Each chapter also includes a helpful summary, glossary, bibliography, discussion questions, and suggestions for further reading/viewing. Providing a set of practical and theoretical tools for learning and research, this book is an essential read for all students of Religion and Popular Culture, or Religion and Media more broadly.

The Transmedia Franchise of Star Wars TV

The Transmedia Franchise of Star Wars TV PDF Author: Dominic J. Nardi
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030529584
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
While previous work on the Star Wars universe charts the Campbellian mythic arcs, political representations, and fan reactions associated with the films, this volume takes a transmedial approach to the material, recognizing that Star Wars TV projects interact with and relate to other Star Wars texts. The chapters in this volume take as a basic premise that the televisual entrants into the Star Wars transmedia storyworld are both important texts in the history of popular culture and also key to understanding how the Star Wars franchise—and, thus, industry-wide transmedia storytelling strategies—developed. The book expands previous work to consider television studies and sharp cultural criticism together in an effort to bring both long-running popular series, long-ignored texts, and even toy commercials to bear on the franchise’s complex history.

The Gospel according to Star Wars, Second Edition

The Gospel according to Star Wars, Second Edition PDF Author: John C. McDowell
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 1611648149
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
In a new and updated version of this best-selling book, John McDowell explores the many spiritual themes that weave throughout the Star Wars films. From the Force to the dark side, the issues discussed in the films have a moral and spiritual complexity that, if paid attention to, can help us better understand our place in the world and our relation to others and to God. George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, did not intend for his films to be mere entertainment, McDowell argues. Rather, he hoped his films would be used as a vehicle for moral education. This new version has been thoroughly revised to include discussion of The Force Awakens and other new developments in the Star Wars universe.

Star Wars in the Public Square

Star Wars in the Public Square PDF Author: Derek R. Sweet
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476623473
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Speculative science fiction, with its underlying socio-political dialogue, represents an important intersection of popular culture and public discourse. As a pop culture text, the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars offers critical commentary on contemporary issues, marking a moment of interplay whereby author and audience come together in what Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin called collaborative meaning making. This book critically examines the series as a voice in the political dialogues concerning human cloning, torture, just war theory, peace and drone warfare.

Music in Films on the Middle Ages

Music in Films on the Middle Ages PDF Author: John Haines
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135927693
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
This book explores the role of music in the some five hundred feature-length films on the Middle Ages produced between the late 1890s and the present day. Haines focuses on the tension in these films between the surviving evidence for medieval music and the idiomatic tradition of cinematic music. The latter is taken broadly as any musical sound occurring in a film, from the clang of a bell off-screen to a minstrel singing his song. Medieval film music must be considered in the broader historical context of pre-cinematic medievalisms and of medievalist cinema’s main development in the course of the twentieth century as an American appropriation of European culture. The book treats six pervasive moments that define the genre of medieval film: the church-tower bell, the trumpet fanfare or horn call, the music of banquets and courts, the singing minstrel, performances of Gregorian chant, and the music that accompanies horse-riding knights, with each chapter visiting representative films as case studies. These six signal musical moments, that create a fundamental visual-aural core central to making a film feel medieval to modern audiences, originate in medievalist works predating cinema by some three centuries.