The Empire Strikes Back is not what you might be expecting from the title of this book, which of course comes from the George Lucas sequel to Star Wars. This book is a new release in the BFI (British Film Institute) Film Classics series published by Bloomsbury. It's the film equivalent of literary criticism.

I expressed an interest in reviewing The Empire Strikes Back because one of my English lecturers at the University of Melbourne discussed Star Wars (1977) as an example of a modern morality play. We were studying early English drama, reading medieval miracle plays, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and Cyril Tourneur before moving on to Shakespeare, Chekhov and Ibsen et al. So we were quite startled at the presence of Star Wars in this company but soon made sense of it as sharing the characteristics of medieval morality plays, i.e. a battle between good and evil in which the good guys win as they are supposed to. His argument was a tad more sophisticated than that but hey, this was back in 1980 and no, I have not kept my lecture notes. But it stuck in my mind and I was interested to see if Harrison's critique of the sequel would amplify the same idea.

The book turned out to be much better than that. Some readers may recall that I reviewed Michael Wood's Film, a Very Short Introduction a while back, but I have to say that Harrison's book makes the VSI look rather old-fashioned. An unabashed fan of Empire, she critiques the film through a variety of lenses including its politics, its historical context, and its representations of race, gender, identity and class. The film has, apparently, been the subject of a great deal of scholarly interest, but Harrison goes further to explore fandom, marketing, divergent US and UK industrial relations and even colonialism.

I discovered from this book that I enjoyed an irreplaceable privilege when I took The Offspring to see it in 1977. (He was only a little boy and had never been to the pictures before, and at the end he stood up and applauded). We saw it in a cinema with a huge screen and surround sound, and this is not an experience that younger generations can have because it's not shown in cinemas any more. They may get to see it in one of those home cinema setups, but are more likely to see it on an ordinary TV. I'm no film aficionado but even I know that the cinema experience contributes to the impact of the film. No one in that cinema will ever forget that opening crawl, that pounding fanfare and then the death star which emerges to take up the entire screen as if it were flying overhead.

But remarkable as it was, by comparison with Empire, Star Wars was quite old-fashioned.

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The Empire Strikes Back by Rebecca Harrison offers, if not a new avenue into the film, an underrepresented perspective on this iconic film.

Many of the points Harrison highlights I have considered before but usually in isolation. In other words, while thinking or discussing other aspects of the film or the franchise one or two of these things might get mentioned and given brief attention before continuing with the original focus. One of the strengths of this book is that these disruptive and/or exclusionary features are brought together into a coherent whole. Her inclusion of production, contemporary reception, and both professional and nonprofessional responses brings many of the nuances of her argument into better contrast.

One thing she mentions is the erasure of marginalized voices through a combination of who wrote the official or professional assessments as well as who was left out. It is the minimizing of any discussion of marginalized or neglected voices that has led to the current impression that Star Wars fandom is almost exclusively white male. One need look no further than any comments about this book that complain that the issues highlighted here, issues that have received far less attention than all of the conservative and common readings, take up too much space. That is exactly the way policing of discourse is done, through "allowing" as little space, if any, to alternative viewpoints and perspectives. And this is usually done while paying insincere lip service to the need of such viewpoints. Those are often referred to as dog whistles. If you notice any such disingenuous comments about this book, ignore them, they speak more to the character of the person making the comment than to the book itself.

I found her argument and presentation convincing and very well supported. Even a couple of small things I thought might have been stretches weren't, I think, so much wrong as just maybe weak. That type of thing was rare here and many readers would likely disagree with my opinion that they were a bit of a stretch.

There are many ways into any text, especially one as layered as this particular film and franchise. Whether this is the lens through which you regularly see Empire or not, the insights are valuable in helping us to broaden our understanding of the film, the franchise, and even society at large.

Highly recommended for those interested in film history and criticism as well as fans of Star Wars. I will give the warning that if you only want the mainstream interpretation regurgitated for your consumption and can't handle other views having the space to present themselves, you may not like this book as much. Open minded film and Star Wars fans, however, will gain new perspectives about this film. Also an appreciation for the internal conflict we all feel when we like something that we also find problematic.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )