How can we shift metaphorical representation in popular media like Star Wars to question hierarchies of power and social constructs? How do my own representations reflect my cultural point of view?
These were NOT the research questions this project began with. The truth is, this data visualisation exercise started after the excitement of having seen Ahsoka Tano and Boba Fett appear in The Mandalorian, which then turned into a strong intention to learn how to code a radial convergence map of their character relationships in d3.js.
But as I sat through data collection phase (i.e. sitting on the couch in front of the TV with a pen and notebook, furiously making notes), I felt that in order to tell a more compelling story, I had to expand further into the other TV series and movies that sat within the same timeline. So for a grand total of 75 hours, I took notes on characters, plot and relationships from The Mandalorian, The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, Clone Wars, and Clone Wars: The Movie.
As I watched each episode, I became less and less attentive to storylines and became more focused on how each character was portrayed: regional accents related to particular types of characters (pirates always spoke with a “criminal’s accent”), females depicted as agile, willowy figures, colours dogmatically reflected their semiotic meaning (red is “bad”, green is “good”). I get it: the use of commonly accepted signs and stereotypes makes the story more relatable and identifiable. And yes, I am the product of this social programming, a child who grew up 80s rural Philippines where we had easy access to a shockingly large amount of American media. But can we as storytellers shift these semiotic precepts and use those same symbols to interrogate our own cultural protocols without falling into the other extreme: the death trap of “woke” characterisation or the vortex of postmodernist “truth”?
Ahsoka Tano
Senator Palpatine/Darth Sidius
Plo Kloon