Star Wars Day is May 4. The author of ‘Star Wars Multiverse’ says these movies are reflections of ourselves.
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Doing anything special for Star Wars Day, other than digging out the old, busted lightsaber in your basement? For old times’ sake?
Carmelo Esterrich, Columbia College professor of humanities and cultural studies, knows what he’s doing that day, May 4. When he’s not teaching or writing, the Downers Grove resident is a fitness instructor at the local park district facility. And on Star Wars Day, “we usually do abdominals to the tune of the John Williams music of ‘The Imperial March.’” He laughs a genial sadist’s laugh. “It’s really hard. It makes them scream. So we’ll be doing that.”
For several years Esterrich, 57, has taught courses on the myth, meaning, political implications and fan fiction generated by “Star Wars.” He thinks, reads, and analyzes the cultural, political, sexual and historical meaning of the pop mythology born out of the “Flash Gordon” remake to which George Lucas couldn’t secure the rights. The rest is pop cultural and merchandising history.
The 2021 book Esterrich wrote, “Star Wars Multiverse” (published by Rutgers University Press) doesn’t deal with filmmaking economics or cinematic critique. Rather, it’s a lively and sharp analysis of how a determinedly innocent throwback-turned-phenomenon started out simple, stripping Lucas’ memories of “Flash Gordon” and “Buck Rogers” for parts. Then, says Esterrich, it grew and became multitudes and multiverses.
“Star Wars,” as he explores in his book, tackles issues of authoritarianism, colonialism, xenophobia, sexuality and gender norms, as well as the politics of language: “which creatures get subtitles, and which do not,” as he says. “I wanted to write a book that talked about the world of ‘Star Wars’ and what it reveals about the world we actually live in. This galaxy is only fictionally far, far away. The way ‘Star Wars’ thinks of war, or slavery, or gender — it’s all connected to how we in the U.S. think about those things.”
Our following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Tell us about your first time. With “Star Wars,” I mean.
A: I was 12. It started with the trailer, I’m sure. I heard Darth Vader breathing, I saw spaceships, and I thought I gotta see this now. I’ve seen the first one over 100 times by now, though I didn’t read any of the “Star Wars” comics, or the novels, until very recently. I didn’t grow up with all of that. The movies came first; the rest came later.
Q: Early in the book, you write about viewing “Star Wars” through different lenses: as a gay man, as a Puerto Rican, and how those perspectives set up your particular viewpoints on the multiverse, as you call it. Can you go into that?
A: Sure. It’s not that I think I’m special because I’m gay or Puerto Rican. But those facts let me see “Star Wars” in a slightly different way than some other people do. My seeing the first film where and when I did necessarily informed the way I thought about it. That’s why there’s a chapter on war, colonialism and slavery themes in “Star Wars.” Those ideas were present to me from the very beginning. In Puerto Rico, we talk about the U.S. as “the American Empire,” so every time I heard the word “Empire” in the movies, I thought of the United States! And I wasn’t the only one. Lucas originally thought of (the “Star Wars” universe) as a rethinking of the Vietnam War. The bad guys were the U.S., and the rebels — the little band that could — were the Vietnamese.
Q: In 2014, Charlie Rose interviewed George Lucas for Chicago Ideas Week. At one point, Lucas is talking about the creation of the “Star Wars” mythology and this notion of religion depicted as The Force. At one point he says he wanted to make it all “easy for everybody to accept.”
A: Wow. I’ve never heard that. OK, I have another book to write now! That’s really interesting. Lucas has always had this line, especially early on, that these movies are for kids, so if adults don’t like them, it doesn’t matter and he doesn’t care. He used to say “Star Wars” was for 11-year-old boys, though he later changed that to “younger people.” He based it on the serials of “Flash Gordon,” with very simple notions of good and evil.
But Lucas created the story and now many, many others have added to that story. It is less and less black and white, and more and more gray. And the younger generations love that. Especially on television, it’s interesting to see how “Star Wars” has evolved to become more complex, starting with the animated shows “Clone Wars” and “Rebels.” Lucas may have started with a simple story, and it pleased a gigantic percentage of the population. But in the last 10 years, there’s been a rethinking of what being a Jedi means, and the stories and characters start twisting and turning and, to me, get a lot more interesting.
Q: Let’s talk about the blowback from some angry, disappointed factions of the “Star Wars” fan base to “The Last Jedi” in 2017. The mere presence there of Kelly Marie Tran and John Boyega, actors of color, plus a female protagonist (Daisy Ridley’s Rey) guiding the storyline: It was apparently too much to ask of some fan subsets who didn’t want their memories of the original messed with. In any way.
A: The reaction to the trilogy begun with “The Force Awakens” and ending with “The Rise of Skywalker” in 2019 had a lot to do with American culture of the time. It’s important keep in mind the political moment when these comments and threats, particularly directed at Tran, were made.
It’s also a generational issue. A lot of the younger generation has embraced that sequel trilogy in ways the older generation has not, because they see themselves in it. With “The Last Jedi,” when it turns almost feminist, the younger generation goes with it at the same time the older generation, some members of it, anyway, are reluctant to have that viewpoint inserted into their memories and fantasies of the original. This is typical of the U.S.: Sometimes there’s a minority opinion that’s so loud, it feels as if the entire base is becoming toxic. But usually you find out it’s not really the majority.
Q: Let’s talk about “Star Wars” and how it reshaped modern Hollywood. The first film was made for $11 million, it which is about $55 million today. It was a medium-high budget picture. The “Star Wars” films now, like all massive franchise drivers, cost many times that amount, and the movies basically have to work, or else. This is one of the many reasons I have massively mixed feelings about the “Star Wars” effect.
A: There’s this notion that Lucas and (Steven) Spielberg created the modern blockbuster. This was at a time when the movies, made by all these younger (so-called New Hollywood) directors, were everywhere. But what seemed radically new, or at least different, to audiences of the ‘70s and early ‘80s is now Hollywood’s modus operandi. I’m a huge opera fan, and it’s remarkable to see cinema, the 20th century art form, turning into the opera of the 21st century. I think my understanding of opera helps me view the future of cinema not as disappearing, but certainly changing.
Q: Seeing “Star Wars” in 1977 felt like an acceleration as well as a break from the science fiction we’d seen lately. The year before, there was the modestly successful, typically downbeat dystopian fantasy “Logan’s Run,” amid all the other stuff teenagers like me were seeing — post-Watergate portraits in disillusionment in nearly every genre, from thrillers to Westerns to comedies. I think I used all those movies to start figuring out the adult world. Then came “Star Wars,” which was like playing an arcade game for two hours.
A: OK, I’ll argue with you there. I saw “Star Wars” many, many times when it came out. But it also introduced me to cinema I knew nothing about. While I was watching “Star Wars” I was also discovering (Ingmar) Bergman. I was discovering (Akira) Kurosawa. I was discovering (Jean-Luc) Godard. “Star Wars” made me a movie addict but I started looking into other things. And it led me to the possibilities of what cinema could do in telling a story.
It’s the same with John Williams, whose “Star Wars” music introduced me to classical symphonic music. Pretty soon, once I got to Chicago, I was subscribing to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. That all started with Williams’ “Imperial March,” the underscoring for some guy dressed in black (laughs). We all have different narratives about how we find a form of art that means something to us.
And “Star Wars” did it for me.
Esterrich reads and signs copies from his book, “Star Wars Multiverse,” noon Sunday May 6 as part of a “Star Wars” weekend of events at the Otherworld Theater, 3914 N. Clark St. His “Star Wars” podcast, “Nick and Melo’s Hyperspace,” can be found on YouTube.
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
Twitter @phillipstribune
