Linda Mizejewski - Our Blessed Rebel Queen: Essays on Carrie Fisher and Princess Leia

Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Series

A complete listing of the books in this series can be found online at wsupress.wayne.edu.

General Editor

Barry Keith Grant

Brock University

Edited by Linda Mizejewski and Tanya D. Zuk

Wayne State University Press

Detroit

Copyright 2021 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan, 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America.

ISBN (paperback): 978-0-8143-4686-0

ISBN (hardcover): 978-0-8143-4685-3

ISBN (ebook): 978-0-8143-4687-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021935718

On cover: Our Heavenly Mother, illustration by Lindsay van Ekelenburg (www.lindsayvanek.com). Cover design by Brad Norr.

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References to internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Wayne State University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

This anthology is dedicated to the memory of Carrie Fisher in all her guises: writer, mental health advocate, comedian, feminist activist, Princess Leia, and Space Mom.

It is also dedicated to the fans and community her presence inspired to keep fighting to flip off the world another day.

Linda Mizejewski and Tanya D. Zuk

Jennifer M. Fogel

Philipp Dominik Keidl

Andrew Kemp-Wilcox

Tanya D. Zuk

Linda Mizejewski

Ken Feil

Kristen Anderson Wagner

Cynthia A. Hoffner and Sejung Park

Slade Kinnecott

Lindsay van Ekelenburg

Maghan Jackson

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T he editors are deeply grateful to the people and institutions that supported and enabled this anthology. Were most of all thankful to the essay writers for their brilliance, enthusiasm, and commitment to the extra labor involved in an interdisciplinary project. They responded to our many requests and directions with unfailing good humor, and their astute insights about Carrie Fisher/Princess Leia drive this collection.

We are also much indebted to the thorough and generous external readers who made invaluable suggestions about each of the essays and deserve credit for many improvements in the final stages of the manuscript.

One of the highlights of this project has been our good fortune to work with artist Lindsay van Ekelenburg, whose widely circulated fan-tribute drawing, Blessed Rebel Queen, is the source of our book title and appears in our introduction. Elaborating on the same theme, Van Ekelenburg designed Our Heavenly Queen as our cover illustration. Were deeply grateful for her ability to capture our vision for this anthology.

Were also grateful to the Galactic Fempire and Bun Squad fan groups for their support of this anthology through inspiration, images, and enthusiasm for Star Wars, feminism, and friendship. We especially want to acknowledge Looking for Leia creator Annalise Ophelian, whose work complements that of this collection and who supported this anthology through the use of images and materials.

We thank the staff of the online media commons project In Media Res, which hosted a Carrie Fisher theme week in 2017. Tanyas contribution to that project became the seed of this anthology. That seed of an idea further developed at the annual Society for Media and Cinema Studies conference in 2018, which hosted a Carrie Fisher panel whose participants coalesced into an anthology team over lunch.

At Wayne State University Press, Marie Sweetman embraced our project from the beginning and propelled it forward, offering good advice and careful attention to detail. Were thankful to Marie and her team for their help and guidance on many levels. Were also grateful to be part of the Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media series and for the support of series editor Barry Grant.

Funding from the College of Arts and Sciences of the Ohio State University covered research and artwork costs, and we much appreciate this institutional assistance. We extend our thanks to Professor and Chair Shannon Winnubst and to Lynaya Elliott of the Department of Womens, Gender, and Sexuality Department for their facilitation of this funding and for their excitement about this project. We also thank Maghan Jackson at Ohio State for her excellent work as our research assistant.

Tanya would also like to thank Dr. Lisa Armistead, associate provost for graduate programs at Georgia State University. The support of the university during Tanyas year as a provost fellow has allowed her to take on editing this anthology while working on her dissertation full-time. The freedom to pursue writing and research has been and will always be invaluable.

Linda extends a special thank you to friends and colleagues for their empathy, humor, and moral support throughout this project. Her thanks also goes to her sisters and brothers, who continue the family tradition of unqualified support for whatever projects any of us takes on. And at home, George Bauman made it possible to live and write during the pandemic with sanity and humor.

Finally, Tanya is extraordinarily grateful for her family, friends, and collegiate community in their support of this project and her. Their support and compassion in stressful days is much appreciated. She would like to thank her students, who dealt with delayed grades and her general absentmindedness, especially as deadlines grew near. Of course, at the end of the day, Tanya must thank her wife, Thia Zuk, who always seems to know when to bring the glitter to make the dark days a little brighter, just like Carrie.

Linda Mizejewski and Tanya D. Zuk

I liked being Princess Leia. Or Princess Leias being me. Over time I thought wed melded into one. I dont think you could think of Leia without my lurking in that thought somewhere. And Im not talking masturbation. So Princess Leia are us.

Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist

T he death of Leia Organa in Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) was an emotional farewell not just for the beloved character but also for Carrie Fisher, the star who had embodied her for more than forty years. The double meaning of Leias death was all the more moving because the film was released on December 20, a week before the third anniversary of Fishers death by cardiac arrest on December 27, 2016. Leias peaceful death scenea self-sacrifice that channeled all her strength to the redemption of her errant sonprovided fans of both Leia and Fisher with a touching closure. Although the character was widely known as Princess Leia, she had been promoted in the final