{"id":137103,"date":"2015-06-30T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-30T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/danversreads.wordpress.com\/?p=137103"},"modified":"2015-06-30T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-06-30T15:00:00","slug":"staff-review-how-star-wars-conquered-the-universe-the-past-present-and-future-of-a-multibillion-dollar-franchise-chris-taylor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/?p=137103","title":{"rendered":"Staff Review: How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise – Chris Taylor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"how<\/a>Reviewed by Rachel<\/h3>\n

If you\u2019re not a huge fan of either pop culture or history, microhistories can be a tough sell on their own; reading at length about the historical, political, economic, and cultural factors that both contributed to \u2013 and also occurred because of \u2013 a huge film series like Star Wars is really only for mega-nerds who both like Star Wars and want to read 300+ pages on Star Wars. (Like I said, it\u2019s a tough sell.)<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Chris Taylor doesn\u2019t really deliver the \u201chow\u201d of his nonfiction work, H<\/a><\/em>ow Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise<\/em><\/a>, instead focusing more on the \u201cwhat\u201d \u2013 what happened to get Star Wars going and then what happened once it broached mainstream culture. I think that anyone trying to answer the ambiguous \u201cwhy\u201d is facing an uphill battle, but I\u2019m a little disappointed that there isn\u2019t more theoretical discussion on exactly how Star Wars conquered the hearts and minds of billions of people. Taylor gives a few pages connecting the dots between the original trilogies and the Vietnam War, but it stays in one chapter, buried among hundreds of pages of anecdotes and biography. I understand that Taylor wasn\u2019t writing a George Lucas biography \u2013 because, clearly, Star Wars has been wrested from its creator and now breathes on its own \u2013 but a lot of the time, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe felt more like The Life and Times of George Lucas (and also thoughts on his creation, the mega-successful Star Wars) than what it was purported to be. (Taylor almost singularly refers to Lucas as \u201cThe Creator,\u201d imbuing him with the mythical properties he was supposed to bestow on the mythos of the films themselves.)<\/p>\n

While the information contained within How Star Wars Conquered the Universe was interesting \u2013 I mean, it\u2019s Star Wars you guys \u2013 I think Taylor should have either tweaked his thesis (or perhaps even thought of one in the first place???) or else shortened his work substantially. This could have been a fantastic one-, two-, or even three-part think-piece focusing on why \u2013 or dare I say how? \u2013 Star Wars jumped from space fantasy to global phenomenon. What was going on in the mid-1970s that created the perfect absence into which Star Wars fit? In what ways did the film, characters, or plot answer lingering wants that other films of that genre or period didn\u2019t? Why did those specific characters on that specific journey in that specific universe create the perfect vortex? \u201cHow\u201d is just so vague of a question \u2013 and produces so literal of an answer \u2013 that it\u2019s really not suited to the type of analysis Taylor is trying to provide. (Unfortunately.)<\/p>\n

However, because there is really nothing that tries to comprehensively document the journey Star Wars took from far-fetched Flash Gordon homage to pop culture commodity, How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Industry is worth a perusal \u2013 but know what you\u2019re getting into before you start reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Rachel If you\u2019re not a huge fan of either pop culture or history, microhistories can be a tough sell on their own; reading at length about the historical, political, economic, and cultural factors that both contributed to \u2013 and also occurred because of \u2013 a huge film series like Star Wars is really…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":137104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-non-fiction","category-staff-review"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6V6sR-zFl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=137103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=137103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=137103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danverslibrary.org\/readthis\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=137103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}