First off, as you read Brooker’s final chapters, be sure to checkout some Star Wars fan films. TheForce.net has a huge collection, and I’d particularly recommend Troops, which he discusses at length. This link has a number of “slash vids” that are more typical of the female fan community he profiles. Also, the “Chad Vader” series is great – episode #1 is below:
[youtube 4wGR4-SeuJ0]
Please post any questions you have for Will Brooker here by Monday night at midnight our time – I’ll ask him to reply Tuesday morning in the UK, so hopefully some responses will be waiting for us for class.
(Note that posting a meaningful question for him counts toward your online participation requirement, as does the discussion questions for Tuesday…)
For Mr. Brooker:
What textual differences do you see between a humorous fan film and a Star Wars parody (e.g. Space Balls)? Authorial intentions? The framework the film follows? The contextual or inherent meanings within the text?
Thanks,
Jeremy
In your book, you are careful to not judge the subjects of your study. Do you personally ever draw the line between appropriate and inappropriate fan practices?
Mr. Brooker,
You mention in Using the Force that you see your own interest in Star Wars as “a benefit rather than a hindrance to academic research” (xiii). But did you find any limitations on account of your Star Wars fandom in analyzing data or writing this book? If so, what were they? And do you think your analysis would have been any different had you not been a fan?
Thanks,
Alana
Dear Mr. Brooker,
Four years after the release of the final installment in the Star Wars saga, have you seen your predictions and expectations of Star Wars fandom played out? If so, how or how not? And what do you view now as the future of Star Wars fandom?
Best,
James
With the relative failure of the Clone Wars animated movie, are we seeing a dip in Star Wars popularity after the prequel trilogy? Has the original generation of Star Wars fans successfully convinced younger fans that anything new and Star Wars is bad? I feel that most people our age (18-22) who grew up liking Star Wars have a mediocre at best view of the new films. Thank you for your time!
Dear Mr. Brooker,
How do you feel about the possibility of Lucasfilm releasing the Star Wars saga in 3-D? Is it possible that a child like Frazer might one day, in the spirit of his uncle, take a young relative to see Star Wars in 3-D and pass on the gift of Star Wars to a new generation?
Thanks,
Neil
Hi Mr. Brooker –
I was wondering what the repercussions (if any) were from writing your book. Are other Star Wars fans more willing or more reluctant to speak to you about Star Wars? How did writing a book on Star Wars affect you as a fan? Has it changed the way that you interact with Star Wars in a positive or negative way? Thanks a lot.
charlie
Hey,
Great book, though I did get a bit homesick at some points and had a sudden urge to curl up and drink fourteen cups of tea whilst watching all of Spaced On Demand…
I found the last chapter really compelling because Star Wars is a generational thing. And the next generation is out there; kids who were too young for ROTJ SE but saw TPM in cinemas, my wee brother falls into this group. He watched TPM in the cinema and then waited for episodes II and III before watching IV-VI on DVD. I’m wondering if you know if this was more common than watching I then IV, V and VI, then II? And also how do you think the role of the internet and sites such as starwarkids.com influence the way younger fans consume Star Wars? The internet wasn’t around in 1977, but was well established by 1999, obviously this is significant in the existing (older) Star Wars community, otherwise you wouldn’t have such an extensive book, but what significance, if any, does it play to people just discovering the world of little Anakin Skywalker?
Best,
Lily
Dear Mr. Brooker,
The first Star Wars film (1977) is seen by some film historians as having revitalized the science fiction genre in film, paving the way for future heroic sci-fi epics such as Superman and other superheroes. How does Star Wars Fandom compare with fandoms for other franchises such Star Trek or superhero characters such as Batman or Spider-Man? Is one more intense or devoted than another? If so, why? To what extent do they correlate? How does the diffusion of texts influence fandom? For example, I would guess that most people are familiar with Batman through secondary texts such as the film the Dark Knight as opposed to its primary comic book text; the reverse would be true of Star Wars. To what extent does early childhood exposure influence fandom and its intensity?
Thanks,
Ralph
Dear Mr. Brooker,
When your book was published in 2002, the massive expansion of the Lord of the Rings fan community in the wake of the films was only just beginning. The two trilogies (though LOTR’s status as a trilogy is, of course, debated) have much in common, from the seemingly endless intricacy of their universes to the astronomical box office success of the films. Of course, there are the obvious differences as well, namely that the Lord of the Rings films are adaptations, making their authorship more complicated. Now that the fan community for the LOTR films is established, what are the most interesting contrasts you see in this fan community and that of Star Wars?
Thanks,
Toren
It appears that some people feel that the Star Wars films have become more kid-friendly and appealing to a younger audience. They feel that they have become less developed in terms of story and character, focusing more on the basis of special effects, as a result of the prequel trilogy and the Clone Wars animated film. Do you feel that the appreciation of Star Wars has changed over the years as a result of mass merchandising for youth, such as video games, that has resulted in the change in fandom? Do you see the fandom continuing in this direction in the next few years with future Star Wars related projects?
Thank you,
Dustin
Jeremy, I don’t necessarily see any difference between a humorous fan film and a Star Wars parody. A fan film can be a parody. Any difference between this and something like Spaceballs is probably due to the level of insider knowledge, detailed, complex reference and subtle in-jokes offered by fan producers to their assumed (fellow fan) audience — a movie like Spaceballs and Galaxy Quest is going to have to hit broader targets, to appeal to an audience with only a general understanding of the text being parodied (though it may also include easter eggs for the fans within that more general audience). There will probably be differences in production values too, of course.
I think we all have our personal notion of what is “too geeky” — it’s always someone below ourselves on the geek scale! So, while I have written books about Star Wars, which is geeky to some — in a way, my career in film academia must be due in part to Star Wars — I wouldn’t personally design or wear a costume, or go to conventions, or draw lavish Star Wars art, or surround myself with merchandise. But if people enjoy and gain satisfaction from those activities (and they do) all power to them.
I don’t know if I would judge anything as “inappropriate”, even on a personal level. I didn’t much enjoy the slash I read about Leia and Jabba, or indeed the hurt/comfort slash about Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, which often involved sexual assault. There are certainly aspects of fan activity that are not to my tastes. But I don’t think they are “inappropriate” as I feel the SW texts are open to interpretation in any possible way, regardless of Lucas’ intention.
Alana, I don’t know if I am the person to answer that question, as it requires a level of objectivity about my own research position that I’m not sure I can achieve. Someone else could comment better on the limitations of my book.
However, looking back on it now, I feel it does stray towards the anecdotal, and that I was sometimes drawn towards easy laughs and personal confessions. Some of the material with the group of lads in Chatham, and the Star Wars Chick, is a bit lacking in rigor. I could probably have cut down some of the material about my own investment in Star Wars.
So, by being “inside” the culture, I feel my book is sometimes too celebratory, too willing to embrace any signs of community and creativity, and too uncritical. Actually, I feel it’s not a very scholarly book — there is not a lot of theoretical engagement there, more investigation of empirical evidence.
On the other hand, I think it is a book that speaks to fans and I hope encourages them to examine and explore their fandom, and the fandom of others who celebrate SW in different ways. Without my own investment, I don’t think it would have connected with fans the way it apparently has. And I don’t really think the world would have benefited from an objective study that treated SW fandom as a curiosity. Frankly, I don’t think I would have understood most of the raw material I was working with, if I hadn’t been deeply into the mythos and culture of SW myself.
James – my predictions, I think, ended with Episode III, whose rumoured title was “Rise of the Empire” (ouch!). And I was right in 1997 that Episode III would include Chewbacca! (p271)
I don’t believe I made any guesses in my book about how the fandom would develop, beyond the notion that Episode III would mark the last phase of speculation, detection and anticipation.
From a vantage point in 2009, I suspect that Star Wars fandom will die down to around the point it was at during the Zahn trilogy, sustained by Expanded Universe texts and becoming more of a specialist, die-hard culture, rather than (as was the case between 1999 and 2005) a huge part of the mainstream.
I suspect that divisions between types of Star Wars fan will increase, with people self-identifying in terms of the period, and specific texts of SW, they are a fan of. This will in turn relate to their generation and the SW texts they first encountered and became attached to.
For instance, if someone asked me now if I was a Star Wars fan, I’d probably qualify it by saying “yeah, of Star Wars between 1977 and 1980” — trying to mark myself out as a specific type of old skool follower.
There will be people out there now who actually prefer the Clone Wars movie to A New Hope, and certainly a whole generation who have only seen the saga in its “correct” sequence — someone who was 7 when The Phantom Menace came out would be 17 this year.
It is certainly the case in music fandom (see David Muggleton’s book on subcultures) that music followers make these distinctions between the original, hard-core fans and the hangers-on, who supposedly got into the music later and only engage with it superficially. It would make sense for SW fandom to go this way.
I don’t think I will go back and study it though, so it’s for someone like you to do that.
I don’t know whether the older generation has influenced the younger in terms of the SW prequels. You could think about that yourself, with your peers and fellow fans within your age group, and it would be an interesting study — to what extent has your opinion of the prequels been shaped by, say, older brothers and sisters, older friends you look up to, parents who were fans of the original trilogy, veterans on discussion boards, old fossil academics who remember seeing A New Hope in 1977?
Personally I don’t think anyone needs to be told that the Clone Wars animated movie is bad. It’s the first Star Wars movie I haven’t seen since the Ewok adventure — so I can’t speak from experience, but the trailer did not entice me to see the whole film.
My opinion is that a disappointing amount of the Star Wars mythos is pretty poor. Most of the Expanded Universe material is of a low standard, I feel. Return of the Jedi doesn’t stand up for me very well now. The first two movies in the prequel trilogy were, for the most part, just clumsy and artless cinema. The third seemed decent partly in its contrast to the first two, and partly because it began to connect to, and incorporate aspects from, the familiar, and superior, Episode IV.
I don’t know what Lucas feels he is doing, but my personal opinion is that his lifelong yearning for total artistic control has led to this point where the most recent Star Wars film had all the human element, all the spark, all the improvisation and warmth — everything that made the first film charming and endearing — squeezed out of it.
If the saga is losing its followers and the Star Wars commercial engine runs into the ground now, great. I think it would be better off dead than churning out Saturday morning CGI cartoons.
Then maybe in the future another director can produce a re-imagining of the prequels, as we have seen this decade with BSG and Star Trek. Someone who is more in touch with the spirit of the original Star Wars than Lucas can come along and rewrite his history. I’d appreciate that.
hi Neil – it’s very possible. My only reservation about a 3D remake of Star Wars is that I would not want Lucasfilm to convert the entire saga using a new technology, then effectively write the non-3D version out of history by refusing to reissue it on contemporary formats, and only ever reissuing the 3D version. It happened with the non-CGI, pre-Special Edition movies — they are still only available now (after fan protest) on a poor quality, limited-issue DVD, and for some time they were only available on VHS.
If the movies are re-released in 3D, I’m sure they will be technically accomplished. I just wouldn’t want them to be the only official version of the films.
As for whether Frazer would take his nephew along, and whether the kid would be bored out of his mind, or embrace a movie from 1977… that’s something for you to think about.
Would You Take Your Kid to See Star Wars?
(and would they enjoy it?)
A research question for you there.
Charlie, all my long-term research projects have the dual effect for me of confirming and deepening my love for a text, and putting me off it. Following the publication of Using the Force, I didn’t pay much further attention to the continuing culture and mythos of Star Wars, although I did get deeply involved in research around the production of Episode IV, and indeed Lucas’ previous cinema, when preparing to write my forthcoming BFI Film Classics volume on the first Star Wars film. [/plug]
Using the Force was a celebration of my own fandom and my relationship with SW, as well as an exploration of other people’s engagement with the saga. I find that writing a book on something closes the door on it for me, and in many ways I feel that the saga is now part of my past. That kind of in-depth involvement in any project is enough to make you sick of it for a while.
Star Wars fans, however, have been very positive about my book, and they continue to email me with feedback and questions. I see that as a real compliment and it’s heartening to know that my book is on many fans’ shelves — that it has connected with them and that they appreciate my open-minded and respectful approach to fan activity and community. I depended on fans for my research material, and I wanted to write something that “gave something back” — I think it worked in that way.
Lily, again I think this is an apt occasion for me to turn a question back to you, my young apprentice. I don’t know about the patterns of viewing of young people who grew up with the prequels; whether they experienced the saga in the “correct” order, or were perhaps guided by older mentors to watch the “better” movies first. I’d suspect that young people are for the most part introduced to Star Wars by an older sibling or parent, so it would be interesting to know whether their guide encourages them to view the supposedly inferior films (generally regarded as TPM, AOTC, perhaps ROTJ) with scepticism, and to embrace the “originals” (ESB is generally regarded as the most mature and sophisticated of the whole saga) — or whether the new generation prefers the state-of-the-art CGI of Revenge of the Sith to the more analog, perhaps old-fashioned Empire Strikes Back. I would be fascinated to learn how these young viewers respond to Harrison Ford, for instance, and relate his ESB performance to his more recent roles (Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). As you suggest, it would be worthwhile investigating the role of online resources and the multiple “paratexts” (games, novels) that now shape a young person’s entry into, and engagement with, the SW saga. But this is research for someone else to carry out.
Ralph, these are big and wide-ranging questions that would need some serious investigation. I only really have experience of Batman fandom, and you are absolutely correct that the dynamic is reversed in that case. The general public knows Batman from very loose screen adaptations of the original text (comics), whereas with Star Wars, the movies are of course the original, core texts. So, there is a distinction whereby Batman purists are invested in a text that the general, movie audience will be unfamiliar with, whereas Star Wars purists are reading the same texts (the movies) as the general public, but with closer, sometimes obsessive attention. Questions of faithful adaptation, and betrayal of an “original”, do not come into Star Wars fandom (except in the question of whether Lucas has sullied the original trilogy — in that respect, SW does have its purists).
I would speculate that the greater the diffusion of texts, the more distinctions there are within fandom. For instance, there is a range of sub-communities within SW fandom, based on whether the individual favours the original trilogy or the prequels, whether they take the Expanded Universe seriously, whether they pay attention to the games, whether they enjoy the animated spin-offs, and so on.
With a fandom like Firefly/Serenity — the Browncoats — I doubt (I could be wrong) that there is so much complexity.
The longer a popular text circulates for, and the more forms it takes across multiple platforms, over several generations, the more its fan-base will be diverse and riddled with internal conflicts.
I don’t doubt that Trek and Spider-Man have vast and complex fanbases, but I’ve never really dipped into them.
hi Toren — I’m not sure what use I can be to you here, as my knowledge of LOTR fandom is limited. I have recently read Martin Barker and Ernest Mathijs’ anthology of research around global responses to LOTR, but other than that, my engagement with the Tolkien trilogy is simply as a fan-viewer myself, with little knowledge of what other fans are doing with the text.
From this uninformed position, I would suggest that some interesting issues might be:
– as you note, adaptation and authorship, and the question of “purist” fans of the original novels judging the movies as imperfect (or perfect) versions of the literary text
– LOTR is a far more self-contained movie trilogy, whereas SW is complicated by having begun in 1977 and gone through various incarnations (special editions, 2005 DVD edition) which changed the nature of the original text, followed of course by the prequels, which changed the continuity again. The Expanded Universe of SW also exists in an odd relationship with official SW continuity, very unlike the LOTR novels, which are sanctified and “safe”; EU continuity of SW novels can be written out if a movie (a higher-level text) contradicts them, as it did with the backstory of Boba Fett. The LOTR movies are not higher in the hierarchy than the novels, and cannot (of course) officially rewrite the history of Aragorn.
– extended, DVD editions of LOTR — what relationship do these have to the “original” theatre releases? Do they replace them and write them out of continuity, or supplement them? Do some fans treat the extended DVD versions as the official, superior text, and the movie in theatres as an impoverished version?
– location is more central to LOTR fandom — the importance of NZ and the importance of LOTR to NZ tourism. I don’t thnk Tunisia has ever played such a role in SW fandom, or that pilgrimage to the film locations has ever been so important to SW fans.
– is there a sub-community of fans who prefer the Ralph Bakshi version of 1978?
Dustin, I think the shift toward increased spectacle and away from characterisation is due in large part to the fact that Lucas has insisted on progressively tighter control over the films. I think these is a convincing argument that a lot of what made the great Star Wars films great is collaboration between Lucas and other creative individuals (writers, directors) and that the more he makes SW into his own digital sandbox, the more the movies become lifeless, bloodless, soulless creations, like the work of a stunted, spoiled child with a gigantic computer and an army of lackeys. Lucas was never good with people, but he wanted to work with them, and he tried to incorporate a sense of community and sparky, gang interaction into his earlier films (American Graffiti, A New Hope). The prequels show him moving towards a cinema that doesn’t involve any real people at all. Yes, I do think this is related to contemporary convergence strategies whereby movies have synergy with video games, and games (and cartoons) connect the gaps between movies — as in the Matrix franchise. In order to synch up with the supplementary animated and videogame texts, the movies have to look more like videogames and cartoons. So the nature of the spin-offs is a shaping influence (more so now that these supplementary texts are treated as part of the whole, within a cross-platform strategy, rather than as optional extras. The SW comics of the late 70s and early 80s were not within continuity — the games coming out now, I believe, are on the same level of continuity as the movies).
I do see the SW franchise continuing this way. I don’t know how the fandom will go. I imagine it’s quite possible that the average age of the SW fan may pitch lower, but that (as I’ve noted above) there will be multiple types of fan, including the old skool die-hard who distinguishes the original trilogy from anything post-1999.
Thanks everyone for these searching and intelligent questions. They only took me about 5 hours to answer! Well done 🙂 If anyone would like to follow these up with further dialogue, email me — I will be happy to talk more.
Will