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As secularization threatens the stability of traditional religions, Star Wars provides a case study of how key functions of religion may transfer to innovative organizations and subcultures that challenge conventional definitions of faith, sacredness, and revival. This Element therefore examines the vast community of fans, especially gamers, who have turned Star Wars into a parareligion, providing them with a sense of the meaning of life and offering psychological compensators for human problems. The research methods include ethnography, participant observation, census of roles played by gaming participants, and recommender system statistics. The Element also shows the genetic connections between Star Wars and its predecessors in science fiction. Investigating the Star Wars fandom phenomenon – which involves hundreds of thousands of people – illustrates how audience cults and client cults evolve. Ultimately, Star Wars remains culturally and economically significant as we approach completion of its first half-century.
Chapter 6 covers the first three months of 1983, which featured several important developments. By the mid-point of his first term, Reagan was facing a political crisis: an economic recession, a nationwide nuclear freeze movement, sagging approval ratings, heavy defeats in the midterm elections, and waning support for his military program. To counter the freeze movement and revive domestic support, Reagan would unveil a dramatic proposal for a space-based missile defense system, to protect the United States from nuclear attack. The Strategic Defense Initiative (or, to its critics, “Star Wars”) emerged as a major development in the story of the end of the Cold War. I explain the origins of SDI, arguing that the proposal stemmed from a domestic political crisis as much as strategic one. The chapter analyzes the Soviet response to SDI and the ramifications for the Cold War, as well as discussing Reagan’s famous “Evil Empire” speech of March 1983.
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