Mika Elovaara - Fan Phenomena: Star Wars

First Published in the UK in 2013 by Intellect Books,

The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK

First Published in the USA in 2013 by Intellect Books,

The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,

Chicago, IL 60637, USA

Copyright 2013 Intellect Ltd

Editor: Mika Elovaara

Series Editor and Design: Gabriel Solomons

Copy Editor: Michael Eckhardt

Inside front cover image: Fangirl photographer/blogger Savanna Kiefer (www.plcohmy.com).

Inside back cover image: Original artwork by Rachelle Porter, created for and posted alongside About Turn.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written consent.

A Catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISSN: 2051-4468

eISSN: 2051-4476

ISBN: 978-1-78320-022-1

ePUB ISBN: 978-1-78320-098-6

ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-097-9

Printed and bound by

Bell & Bain Limited, Glasgow

MIKA ELOVAARA

My journey in the galaxy far, far away has been both a personal and professional one. Setting out to compile a book on Star Wars, one is faced with a positive dilemma: the world is full of potential contributors how to find the right group? In hindsight, though my methods of arriving at the final roster of contributors to this book were disparate, I believe what we have in our hands is a uniform presentation of various topics on a saga we all care about. I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to all the contributors of this book; you have been great to work with and I am grateful for the opportunity to have done so. I would like to thank Intellect for allowing me the opportunity to work on a much beloved topic, and more specifically, James Campbell for his encouragement and advice and our series editor, Gabriel Solomons, for his instruction, guidance, support and leadership throughout the process. I would also like to thank all my students in Star Wars A Complete Saga? over the years. Teaching the class and discussing the saga with you has been an important part on my professional journey with the saga. I would also like to thank my mentors and colleagues who have inspired me to pursue my own path in the maze of academia. Clearly, that path has not been one to the dark side, but one supported by a Force that guides us. On a more personal note, I would not be working on this book without the support of my closest friends and most importantly, my family. My late mother and father took me to the cinema for the first time to see Empire Strikes Back and bought me the AT-AT for Christmas at the age of six thats when it all started; my sister endured our Battles of Yavin, Hoth and Endor looking out and caring for me; and my immediate family, my wife and three children, share my interest in and passion for the saga on various levels, and are my greatest source of inspiration every day. Thank you for your love and support.

Mika Elovaara

And it really doesnt matter: my journey with the phenomenal saga George Lucas created has been spontaneous, both personally and professionally, and writing this introduction, I know it has been such for most people around the world who feel a bond with the saga, whether personally, professionally, or both. By all means, his relationship to the saga must have been rather spontaneous to George Lucas himself; who could have planned or predicted such a long-lasting, global phenomenon? For me, at the moment when I was considering the contents of this book and thinking about contributors, and getting ready to fly to Los Angeles to discuss the prophecy of George Lucas in front of TV cameras, I realized this introduction to Fan Phenomena Star Wars has been in the making for me since 1980. Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980) was the first movie I saw in the theatre, at the age of five; I got the AT-AT for Christmas the same year and spent much of my childhood collecting and playing with the Star Wars action figures. I never cared for any others (sorry, Skeletor and He-Man), all I needed was the Star Wars figures; I played the first Star Wars arcade game until I ran out of allowance, had lightsaber duels with friends and rewatched the Original Trilogy films over and over again. I never grew too old for the sagain 1997 I made a trip to Washington, D.C. to see the twentieth anniversary exhibition in the National Air and Space Museum, and proudly posed next to the display cases with costumes as a twenty-something serious grown up. When I started my career as a teacher, it took me all but three weeks to find the opportunity to incorporate my Star Wars passion into work: I taught a three-lesson unit on the saga at a Finnish high school during the first month of my first full-time teaching job. That unit became a staple in one of the high schools English classes with a cultural studies focus, and I took it to the next level so to speak when I developed Star Wars A Complete Saga? for the Graduate Liberal Studies Program at UNCW in the autumn of 2007. As one might expect, a graduate level class completely on Star Wars was met with both awe and scepticism, but that did not discourage me from going through with the plan. Since then, I have taught the class both on campus and online to men and women between nineteen and 50 years of age, and have consequently become more convinced that Star Wars, if anything in popular culture, warrants its own course for academic study, as it surely also warrants a plethora of literature examining it.

While it is undeniably a mere individual anecdote, I know the path of my Star Wars fandom speaks for a more collective experience as well; the fan phenomenon of Star Wars is, indeed, personal and professional for a lot of people around the world. When one considers the contents of this book, the realization one arrives at is that we are not alone with our personal-becomes-professional anecdotes. Just think about the influence and inspiration of George Lucas and