Using the Force: Creativity, Community and Star Wars Fans

by Will Brooker

Henry Jenkins, MIT, author of 'Textual Poachers'
A compelling account of how fans are transforming Star Wars into the basis
for the grassroots production of mythology.

Alan McKee, President, Cultural Studies Assoc of Australia
This is a wonderful book...intelligent and informed...beautifully written
and extremely readable.

Sara Gwenllian Jones, co-editor, Intensities: the Journal of Cult Media
Compelling and beautifully written...the single most important analysis of
the Star Wars phenomenon.

Book Description
'Star Wars is not just a film, or a trilogy, or a trilogy and two prequels. For many people, myself included, it is the single most important cultural text of their lives; it has meshed with their memories of childhood, with
their home-made tributes - from the amateurish childhood comics to the professional product of an adult fan - with their choice of career or education, with their everyday experiences. Even in 1977, Star Wars was a phenomenon. For many people now, it is a culture: a sprawling, detailed mythos which they can pick through with their eyes closed, a group of characters who may have been more important role models than friends and family, and a set of codes - quotes, in-jokes, obscure references - which provide instant common ground for fellow fans meeting for the first time, and bind established communities together.' (From the Introduction)

In this intelligent and entertaining study of fandom at its most intense, Will Brooker examines the Star Wars phenomenon from the audience's perspective, and discovers that the saga exerts a powerful influence over
the social, cultural, and spiritual lives of those drawn into its myth. From a Boba Fett-loving police officer in Indiana to the webmistress of StarWarsChicks; from an eleven-year-old boy in south London to a Baptist
Church in South Carolina; from the director of George Lucas in Love to the custodians of the Jedi Hurtaholics Archive - Brooker unearths a seemingly endless array of fans who use and interpret the saga in a number of creative
ways.

Using the Force explores what it means to be a fan. It examines the role of gender and generation in creating sub-communities within the larger group of Star Wars devotees. It discusses the films and stories created by thousands of fans around the world, and asks whether this apparently unstoppable creativity can be controlled by an organization that has - completely unintentionally - positioned itself in the role of the Empire and turned
loyal fans into Rebels. Ultimately, the book serves as a testament to the extraordinary power of the Star Wars films and the Expanded Universe that surrounds them.

About the Author
Will Brooker is Assistant Professor in Communications at Richmond, the American International University in London. His most recent book, Batman Unmasked, was published to international acclaim in 2000, and he has
published widely on audiences and the interpretation of popular texts. In 1977 he decided he hated Star Wars, but in 1978 he saw the film for the first time and quickly changed his mind.

Excerpt from book involving SWC:

.9. 

Star Wars Chicks

The names roll out importantly, joining other incantations around the table: "Darth Vader...Chewbacca...Han Solo...Luke Skywalker...Death Star..." No story receives more attention from the boys or gives greater pleasure in the telling. Sometimes a girl is drawn in, though her facts may differ from the boys'.
" Princess Leia is Luke's sister," Charlotte notes.
Andrew rejects the idea. "Uh-uh. Princess Leia is the boss of the good guys."

Vivian Gussin Paley, Boys and Girls: Superheroes in the Doll Corner, Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1984), p.22

 Star Wars combines two traditionally male genres - science fiction and war - in its title alone, and in its content combines them with the Western and the Saturday morning "adventure" serial. In the original saga, eight of the nine main characters[1] are male - Artoo and Threepio are referred to as "he" rather than "it" throughout, as is Chewbacca. In The Phantom Menace, the ratio is one primary female character to three men, a boy, a Gungan and an Iridonian Zabrak Sith Lord. The main roles for women in the Star Wars saga are, of course, Princess and Queen. The princess and queen will dress either in elaborate ceremonial robes with matching hairstyles or in tomboy fatigues, except when they get captured and show a little skin: Leia notoriously wears the slave bikini as Jabba's prisoner, and photos from Episode II show Padme wearing a ripped shirt when she is held captive in the arena. Other women will fill the roles of mother - Shmi Skywalker, Rebel leader Mon Mothma - handmaiden - Sabé, Cordé - or floozy - Jabba's dancing girls Oola and Greeta; the Twi'lek twins who service Sebulba in The Phantom Menace.

The spin-off merchandise that extends the Star Wars experience from the cinema to the home is based around action figures and toy spaceships, console games and CD-Roms, encyclopaedias, trading cards and reference books. The range of large Star Wars dolls, as opposed to little plastic figures, never caught on; plush Ewoks and dress-up Queen Amidala models are rare novelties, unrepresentative of the trend. On the face of it, Star Wars would seem to have little to offer a young female fan in particular: even if she found a way into the films, the whole culture surrounding them is traditionally male and she would either have to join in the boys' games of action figure combat or - unless she could find some other girls to share her enthusiasm - create her own solitary fandom. "Well, it's not Titanic," George Lucas is reported as saying. "This is the boy movie."[2]

Nevertheless, women and girls are into Star Wars. Online, female-run communities attract thousands of hits per week. The webmistresses of sites like Star Wars Chicks have loved the saga since they were young and found ways to explore it in make-believe games and fiction during their childhood, despite the pressure on them to ditch Star Wars and conform to more traditional gender roles. This chapter examines the ways in which young female fans managed to negotiate these gender stereotypes to pursue their investment in a "boy's film", and the extent to which that negotiation continued when they grew up, yet retained their loyalty to the saga. Do women fans experience a different process of identification to men, pinning their interest on Leia or Amidala as a role model? Do they imagine themselves in the position of Luke or Qui-Gon, or are these characters merely desirable set-dressing, objects of lust? From the evidence of female-run websites, are women's extended pleasures in the Star Wars films different from those of men - are they more focused on storytelling than technology, for instance - and are female Star Wars communities distinct and different from a more male-oriented online network like TFN?'

"Cute and sexy looken"

One distinct strand of female Star Wars fandom is represented by Kristen Morrisson's site Always Luke.[3] Kirsten's little community is based solely around the adoration of Luke Skywalker; it includes select sounds and images, debates about Luke's relationships with Callista and Mara Jade, fiction with Luke in the central role and even a page of Luke action figures. The guestbook is crammed with girls' names - Rebecca, Taylor, Cassie - all of whom salute Kristen, telling her that her site rocks and Luke rules. "Mark Hamill is totally the best, and Luke Skywalker can rescue me any day!", "Mark is so cute and sexy looken. Wonder if he still looks that way. Bye", "I finally got my own Lukey stand-up, and he's so cute! My birthday was on Tuesday this week, and I wish Mark (Luke) was with me, but that dream didn't come true."[4]

The nearest real-world equivalent of Kristen's site might be a girls' slumber party in a bedroom plastered with Luke Skywalker posters, with the contributors passing notes or whispering from one sleeping bag to another. While it seems remarkable that these young women are drooling over an actor who was born in 1951 - the comment "wonder if he still looks that way," sounds a little mournful - the overall sense is of a traditionally male film saga appropriated for traditionally female purposes. Instead of discussing the internal workings of lightsabers or the call signs of Red Squadron, Kristen's guests debate whether Luke was better suited to Callista, the love-interest from Barbara Hambly's novels Children of the Jedi and Planet of Twilight, or Mara Jade. "I didn't like Mara, because of the way she treated him on Myrrkr"; "Mara does not AT ALL strike me as one to get married or even fall in love."[5] In the "Creative Corner", Kristen and her colleagues expand or improve on the "official" stories of Luke's relationships: every single story in this section, from Tears of a Jedi to The Engagement, is a romance about Luke. "Luke meets the perfect girl: Dilaaana", "Mara and Luke, the perfect couple?", "a story about a girl who only has one important thing to live for: Luke."[6] This is one fiction archive with no need for sub-categories; the whole collection is generically pure and single-minded.

We might have expected from the previous chapters that a female Star Wars community would focus on EU novels, with the extra space they offer for characterisation and relationships rather than relentless space adventure, and that fanfiction would be an important part of the shared activity. What is perhaps surprising is the page for Star Wars toys - not the larger dress-up figures which manufacturers intended for the female market, but the Power of the Force mini-action figures originally released in 1985. These are not dolls or decorative figurines, but crudely-jointed characters designed for shuffling around on dioramas while making laser gun noises. However, they are apparently important fetish objects for Kristen and her friends: the "hall of 3 1/4 inch Lukes" is full of loving descriptions of Luke in his warm Hoth parka, cute black Jedi robes and garish X-Wing bodysuit - "I'd say orange is his color, wouldn't you?"

"Why and what if"

While Kristen's site gives a friendly femme twist to a boys' film saga - drawing out the romance and ignoring the galactic war, pointing out that a Jedi Knight can also be a gorgeous hunk - Victoria Hoke's site is an explicitly feminist project that works along the same principles of shifted perspective, casting a new light on familiar characters. "The best and only goal I could have for the website", Victoria told me, "is to get its readers to look at what they take for granted. If I can compel a reader to wonder 'why' and 'what if', I have achieved my goal."[7] Victoria's site name reveals its purpose: The Campaign for a Female Boba Fett.[8] Her manifesto is worth quoting at some length.

The character of Boba Fett is an ideal candidate to counteract Star Wars' female role rut. Fett is a potent and popular figure in the series, offers no evidence of being either gender within the films, and unlike Leia or Amidala has enough of the dark side to be interesting. In addition, such an interesting and strong female character would attract the viewership of women who otherwise would experience Star Wars only in the company of more enthusiastic boyfriends, brothers and sons. Star Wars' story is appealing and accessible to women; it is only its characters that are not.

The force of female exclusion from Star Wars is reflected in the paltry proportion of its female fans. The casting of a female actor in the role of Boba Fett would demonstrate that women are not a forgotten or negligible demographic, as well as provide evidence that women can serve a cinematic purpose other than romance and reproduction. The fact that a female Fett would win female fans without alienating male fans begs the question why, instead of asking why Fett should be female, audiences aren't asking, "Why not?"[9]'

The purpose of Victoria's campaign, then, is to remodel Fett as a strong female character who would both give a boost to the meagre selection of female role models in the Star Wars saga and, in turn, encourage more women and girls to become fans. The site makes its arguments firstly by responding to reader criticisms, as detailed below, and secondly by providing historical examples of female warriors in drag - Mary Read, Joan of Arc, Hua Mulan - to support the notion that a bounty hunter could keep her gender undetected and perform to the highest male standards. This latter plank of Victoria's argument is supported with reference to other sites; one link to the full poem-story of Hua Mulan at China the Beautiful, another to the National Archive section on Union Army officer Sarah Emma Edmonds.

"I do consider the site a feminist project", Victoria explained to me. "I attempt to stun a reader into questioning his or her convictions. I wish to present a fresh perspective - I'm afraid most of what there is to say about Leia or Amidala has already been said." Her manifesto complains that "'Although Leia and Amidala wield weapons and kick enough ass to keep the plot moving, they prefer planning to acting, require protection and rescue, and serve primarily to continue the Jedi bloodline. Their royal privilege and youth make them difficult to take seriously."[10] Rather than attempt to rehabilitate these existing female characters, Victoria brings a character usually thought of as male - without any conclusive proof either way - over to the other side.

Although she knows she is only defending a hypothetical position, and retains a sense of perspective - the site has won a number of online humor awards - Victoria keeps to her guns in the face of criticism through sharp and imaginative manipulation of the official evidence. Boba Fett flirts with dancing girls in Jabba's palace? She was just showing solidarity with their servile position. Fett's costume has a codpiece? She stole the armor from a Mandalorian warrior, whose outfits were probably designed for men only. The Campaign is a superb example of a speculative interpretation defended to the death: it will be interesting to see how Victoria's arguments survive after Episode II details Boba Fett's childhood as a boy.

"The little girls who wanted to pilot an X-Wing"

There is more than one site devoted to the saga's female characters. Helen Keier's Women of Star Wars,[11] with its slogan "think Star Wars is just about a bunch of fly boys? Think again" - goes some way to countering Victoria Hoke's argument by listing approximately three hundred and fifty female characters from the mythos, from Amidala through Cindel Towani to Aurra Sing and Jaina Solo. To be fair, many of these girls and women are confined to the EU novels, and some of the examples from the original films are extremely minor parts - Torryn Farr was glimpsed for a moment in the Battle of Hoth, Saché is one of the less remarkable handmaidens. The inclusion of the Millennium Falcon is perhaps especially tenuous.

However, the site is important not just for its listings but for its role as a linking hub for a host of other, similar sites and its concerted attempt to help build a community of Star Wars webmistresses. "'These following are all female run web sites," announces the link page. "Check out what The Women of Star Wars can do!" The site's title shifts its reference here from the heroic characters of the saga to the pioneers and architects of the female Star Wars network; there is a sense of pride behind the mentions of Sisters of the Force - "a much needed and very commendable effort to build a community of Webmistresses" - and the "dedicated, talented, female" Jedi Grrls.[12]

Star Wars Chicks - "dedicated to all of the little girls who wanted to pilot an X-Wing when they grew up" - bypasses this transference stage by concentrating directly on the female audience. Tamela Loos, one of the webmistresses behind the site, explained "I wouldn't say that at SWC we are trying to draw the focus onto the female characters - I think our focus remains more with female fans. We are encouraging others to see the fans differently, to see that the SW films are multigenerational and that they cross gender lines as well."[13] The exercise in shifting perspective is in itself very similar to the idea behind the Campaign for a Female Boba Fett, with the same progressive intentions; Tamela adds "I would say that our attempting to make the female SW fans known and recognized could definitely be seen as a political act."[14]

The site itself aims to offer the same variety as TFN, but pitched by women for a female audience. As we might expect, there is a section on EU fiction and separate archives of both genfic and slash. "Traditionally", Tamela offers, "I think women have always been more focused on written word as opposed to men."[15] The "multigenerational" aspect of fandom is shrewdly addressed by dividing the archive into Star Wars Chicks for genfic and SithChicks for over-18s. The same distinction applies to the mailing lists, with SithChicks reserved for "darker", NC-17 discussion. Significantly, only 75% of the discussion, in Tamela's estimation, is about Star Wars; an indication of a broader community whose conversations no longer revolve solely around the films but also deal with relationships, careers and family issues.

Star Wars Chicks' includes both topics that would usually be thought the preserve of male fans - role-playing games, collecting - and almost stereotypically "feminine" areas given a Star Wars twist. The "Recipes" section includes Darth Maul Loaf and Kenobi Cutlets, while the "Fashion" page offers a reading of a Star Wars comic entirely in terms of the characters' outfits.

'I would have to say that my vote for worst dress was this young Twi'lek female who was on the arm of Senator Viejer from Tynna. I was like girrrl!  This is a wedding, not casino night at the Corelian Hyatt. The Senator must be staying there and didn't have himself a date, so picked up one of the showgirls...I've seen more clothes on a Wookiee than she was wearing...whew....[16]'

'The site's most notable feature, however, is its "Fight For the Cure" breast cancer campaign, which had raised over $8000 within its first year through sales of Star Wars Chicks t-shirts. Remarkably, Lucasfilm Licensing gave its permission for the t-shirt design, which features a cartoon woman very much like Leia wielding a pink lightsaber. "I think it tends to build up their image in being more female friendly", Tamela guesses; an interesting example of fan activity being sanctioned by the corporate producers for mutual benefit. The webmistresses claim, perhaps disingenuously, that the logo is simply "a characterization of the female fan"[17], but the familiar white gown and hair buns surely imply that this is a Leia Organa who has finally, within a female fan community, been allowed to graduate to Jedi Knight.

"Fighting...so they can love one another"

'Becky Mackle is twenty-seven and works as a senior library assistant. In her spare time she is the British news correspondent for Star Wars Chicks, and runs the Sith Chicks mailing list. Becky has been a Star Wars fan since 1982, when she first saw A New Hope on video; she started writing Phantom Menace slash in 1999. I met her on November 25, 2000 in a London pub: I recognised her by her Yoda backpack. We talked for three hours, with a tape recorder running.[18] She didn't drink.

Will: Do you think that women enjoy or experience Star Wars differently to men, and if so, how?

Becky: I think it's a case of we enjoy the story, the action, the adventure. There might be aspects we enjoy more than men do, say for example, in Empire Strikes Back, one of my all time favourite scenes where Leia goes "I love you" and Han says, "I know." When I first saw that, I was there wiping my face, and my then partner was like "are you alright?" Some blokes might find that a bit, "eugh, can't we just get to the bit where they go for the escape?" but I thought that it was just so perfect. To me it's a case of... that is what Star Wars is about. it's not just about action and adventure, it's also about emotions as well, it's about fighting for something you believe in. Yes, they're fighting to overthrow evil and everything else, but the reason they're fighting is so they can love one another.

Will: Are there any other moments that you feel women might place an emphasis on? Or which men might enjoy more, and women less?

Becky: Men might enjoy the scenes with the bounty hunters and things like that. There's on the Star Destroyer, when Vader says "no disintegrations" and "as you wish" and all that sort of thing. They might enjoy that more, whereas a woman would most likely choose the scenes, say, where Luke is talking to Leia about Amidala, about their mother. I find those some of the most beautiful scenes in the trilogy. They're very, very quiet, and the emotion and those scenes are going to become more laden with meaning as we go into Episodes II and III because we're going to be finding out more about Amidala, about why the twins were separated, what happened to Amidala...we haven't found out yet, though we assume she's dead. I think the reason that the twins were separated is because Vader wanted to prevent both of them being turned to the dark side, because Sidious would have realised.

Will: You say that, but Palpatine didn't know about Leia...

Becky: I think that's because...I think he only really found out... I think there's a story, Vader's Quest that deals with that. I'm not quite sure how they explain it away, but they do. I think if the young Luke had showed any Force skills, it would be a case of his Aunt and Uncle saying "don't do that" even though they did live in the back of beyond, they would have worried that someone would notice.

'Will: Then again, though, we know that Anakin can see things before they happen, and his mother knows that. We don't know that Luke had done anything out of the ordinary at all...then again, he's good at flying a T-16 isn't he, so maybe he does, he's a good pilot isn't he... right, lets move on.

'I would have liked to excise this last pointless ramble on my part, but I think it illustrates some important points. Although Becky suggests that her reading of the saga, as a woman, might be markedly different from that of a male fan, my engagement with her is very similar to the conversations I had with Tim Meader and his posse in Chapter Two. We might note that the exchange Becky singles out to illustrate her point - "I love you"/"I know" - did indeed prompt a stereotypically "feminine" reaction from Emma Mepstead during the group screening; but in general Becky and I are connecting as fans just as I did with Tim, establishing a common knowledge and then slipping into what almost amounts to a subcultural language. 

'Ten minutes before this exchange, Becky was a stranger, but she and I are immediately able to draw upon a universe of references that would seem arcane to a non-fan: I know who "the twins" are without Becky having to specify Luke and Leia, and don't feel any obligation to explain that a T-16 Skyhopper is a light Tatooine spacecraft, while Becky, despite her theory that women have different preferences, can effortlessly quote Vader's dialogue from Empire Strikes Back. The reference to an EU text, Vader's Quest, to explain gaps in the official narrative is very similar to Tim's falling back on Tales of the Bounty Hunters or Enemy of the Empire to support his arguments. The division between non-fan and fan, I would suggest, is more significant in this kind of exchange than the division between male and female fan.

"People would have thought it strange"

Will: How did Star Wars relate to you as a child? Did you play Star Wars, hang out with boys...

Becky: No, no, I was very much a girly girl when I was younger, didn't have any Star Wars toys or anything like that. It was a case of "this is for boys, I don't want anything to do with that." I enjoyed the movies and everything else, but if I had asked for a Star Wars toy as a child, I very much doubt my parents would have bought me it, as they didn't think it was for girls. But I don't think it made me hang out with boys over girls...

Will: Were the girls you hung around with into it at all?

Becky: No, no, we were very much into Sindy and things, it didn't really come up in conversation at school, it was all Care Bears, girly things. You didn't say you liked Star Wars because people would have thought it strange, and at that age you want to conform, to be like everyone else. But as I grew older, I realise that it was important to be true to yourself.

Tamela Loos and Andrea Alworth, who shared their memories of early Star Wars fandom with me by mail, felt less constrained as little girls. "As a child I played with and collected the action figures and ships same as my male cousin", wrote Tamela. "When we were bored of that, we would use the tractors around the ranch as X-Wings...on rainy days his bunk beds became the Millennium Falcon." In her teens, things began to change:

As you become older it does become unacceptable for you, especially as a female, to indulge in fantasy/adventure. It's seen throughout society that men are allowed to be "boys" all of their lives. People refer to "boys and their toys" and everyone seems to comment that men are just little boys with more expensive toys. People expect them to be involved in role-playing, video games, movies and so on. While women are taught when they are young to mature, to grow up, have a family and be a mother and wife. If, as a woman, you try to explain to people that you like toys and video games and role-playing just as much as any guy, people tend to regard you as if you are some strange, unexplored phenomenon.[19]

For more, be sure to get your copy of "Using the Force: Creativity, Community and Star Wars Fans" at  Amazon.com!!!'