Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling

Abstract

Introduction: "What Is This Strange World We've Come to?""Excuse me, master Luke, but what is this strange world we've come to?" "Beats me, 3PO.Seems like we've landed on some sort of … comedy-variety show planet."Having just burst through a dressing room wall during the cold open of the February 29, 1980 episode of The Muppet Show, the "stars from Star Wars" maintained their in-character performances throughout this unusual episode, performing a comedic narrative that could-in theory, at least-be considered a legitimate part of the Star Wars canon. 1 Watching this episode almost 40 years later, one is struck, first of all, by the fact that both the Muppets and the Star Wars franchise are now owned by The Disney Company-a realization made all the more uncanny when all the characters join in a climactic rendition of "When You Wish Upon a Star" to close down the show.But the episode also illustrates that the means by which Star Wars reached across media to draw upon audiences' familiarity with the franchise mostly happened in ways that were provisional, selfreflexive, and firmly located within familiar media-industrial practices.Starting as a film that almost single-handedly transformed the American film industry, expanding into a merchandising and branding juggernaut, and resulting in one of the world's most profitable entertainment franchises, Star Wars has, over the past 40 years, redefined the popular media landscape.Its multiple transformations make it not only a vivid case study of media-industrial history, but also constitute a unique, widely shared, and constantly evolving storyworld that has developed across every available media platform.Without exaggerating the novelty or uniqueness of a franchise and storyworld that has been so consistently disparaged for its magpie sensibility, the sheer scale and cultural impact of Star Wars clearly sets it apart from its many precursors as well as from its multiple successors.In part, this is again a question of scale: the first film's blockbuster success in 1977 instantly launched an uncontrolled wave of merchandising and cross-media spin-offs that were incrementally developed into an elaborate storyworld with its own mythology, its own aesthetic, and its own fan culture.The result of this decades-long negotiation between storytelling, participatory fan culture, and shifting media-industrial practices has been Part I "First Steps Into A Larger World": Establishing the Star Wars Storyworld2

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