(Episode 508): INCORRECT! Star Wars, Fandoms, and Fanatics

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On today’s episode of INCORRECT, IRMF goes on about how she utterly cannot STAND Star Wars as Megan sits back and enjoys. The force is REALLY with our professors today as they talk about some of the ways that religion as well as religious stereotypes appear in Star Wars itself. And further, they look at some of the ways in which Star Wars fans and fandoms can identify as or even just look like religions in some of their rituals, practices, and devotions. And finally, they talk about the gatekeeping and intense passions that appear as a part of fandoms.

"I have a very bad feeling about this…”

-Luke Skywalker

The 101: Where We Did the Professor Work…

WTF does Star Wars have to do with religion?

The Lesson Plan…Here’s What We Talked About:

We, first off, talked about the killjoy’s takes on Star Wars…
IRMF is…not a fan. There are a lot of plot-holes and there are a lot of weird and racist undertones. It’s frustrating to see a series become so big without being held accountable for it’s ickiness. While Megan agrees, she also reminds us that the things that we love and care about are worth examining, critiquing, and hopefully saving. So, the killjoys work together with their differing viewpoints to provide us with a nuanced critique of THE Star Wars.
Second, we went through some of the problems with Star Wars….
The killjoys go through some examples of orientalism in the series including the Ewoks, some of the clothing, and the simple ideals of conquering that are just so central to this plot. Not to mention the lack of racial diversity that exists in the writing room and the cast, especially in the earlier series’.
Third, we went through the reasons why Star Wars fandoms are interesting and very much revealing of the context of the films themselves…
“So she (Carol Cusack) suggests that religions that come out of things like fandoms and fiction, tell us something important, less about the
folks who are doing them and more about the culture to which they're responding.” Megan Goodwin

Star Wars is a massively culturally important series… But it doesn’t come without it’s problems. Ilyse makes it very clear that Star Wars is imperfect. However, this makes it just an interesting space to examine when it comes to religion. There is religious symbolism in the episodes AND in the fandoms themselves. And Megan is here to remind us that, “Religion is what people do, and people do religion with Star Wars.”

If you think that Star Wars is just some Sci-Fi opera…INCORRECT! There is a lot of religion baked in….

First of all, Joseph Campbell was an anti-semite, and his books were the bases for Star Wars so…that’s important to start off with.
There are a lot of religious orientalisms that appear in the episodes like; the idea of reaching enlightenment, monkly garb, dark vs. light stories,
The idea of canon, and the following of a central text…

Why do fandoms look like religions?

With a fandom like the Star Wars fandom, they have a central text, a canon that they follow and devote themselves to entirely.
There are conversations about the afterlife of texts, and the continuation of text throughout time.
The GATEKEEPING, fandoms are spaces of great amounts of community passion. Aside from the fact that people actually do identify with Jedi religions, fandoms tend to actually look quite a lot like religions in many ways. This in many ways looks similar to the ways in which religions exclude and include certain bodies. Fandoms do work to decide who is doing the right and fullest forms of fanaticism.