Menace To Empire

Prologue : worlds empire made -- Introduction : reckoning with history and empire -- Suppressing anarchy and sedition -- Conflating race and revolution -- Fighting John Bull and Uncle Sam -- Radicalizing Hawai'i -- Red and yellow make orange -- Collaboration and revolution -- Conclusion : America is not in the heart.

George Lucas’s first Star Wars trilogy shows the influences of its era; Cold War tension is evident in its theme of rebellion against totalitarianism. Recent entries in the Star Wars saga—The Phantom Menace (1999) and Attack of the Clones (2002)—are much more concerned with evil corporations, terrorists, and the corruption of the political process. Each film is influenced by the times in which it was released, but also by cultural subtexts and by other films that had direct and indirect effects on Lucas as writer, producer, and director. This work focuses on all six Star Wars films. The first topic of this multifaceted examination is how the films use the language of colonialism (“The” Rebellion, “The” Empire) to emphasize the idea of imperialism. Next the author looks at how Asian influences—including religious undertones from Taoism and Buddhism and the works of Kurosawa and other Asian filmmakers—provide a subtext for much of the action. Next the discussion turns to the representation of people of color in the Star Wars universe, and how other ethnicities are represented overall, particularly through the literalization of the word “aliens.” These topics of discussion provide for penetrating conclusions about Lucas’s films and how they represent race, religion, and rebellion.

This book presents a human rights-based assessment of the various modes of state–religion identification and of the various forms of state practice that surround and characterize these different state–religion models. This book makes a case for the recognition of a state duty to remain impartial with respect to religion or belief in all regards so as to comply with people’s fundamental right to be governed, at all times, in a religiously neutral manner.