Women of Star Wars

Image © Jeremy Selwyn
Image © Jeremy Selwyn

I’ve been writing a lot about Star Wars lately, and I’m afraid there will be a few more posts on the subject in the weeks to come. What can I say. When you’re working on something—especially something that was once a childhood obsession—it can hard to tear yourself away. This week I’m taking a little break from exhibitions and feminist analyses, though, to reflect on something small and unexpected and great that I discovered while doing research for my article.

There are a lot of interesting women behind Star Wars.

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I don’t just mean the characters on screen or page, though you can take your pick of those as well. Behind the scenes, women have also been a direct and important part of the Star Wars story, whether they worked on the crew of one of the films, for one of Lucasfilm’s many divisions, or in a managerial capacity. Though I already knew how important some of these women were to the universe I know and love, I’ve learnt a lot more about them over the past few months, and have discovered a few more in unexpected places. It’s been fascinating, and I would love to take the research further at some point.

Below are five ‘women of Star Wars’ you might find interesting too, whether you already know of them, or have never heard of them before. Each has impacted the franchise in her own important way, but it’s an eclectic collection. Let me know if there’s someone you think I should have included!

marcia2_thumbMarcia Lucas

While you’ll probably recognise the surname, you may not know just how much of an impact George Lucas’ ex-wife had on the first three Star Wars films. Besides editing them (she won an Oscar in 1978 for her work on A New Hope), she influenced their narratives on other levels as well. Michael Kaminski, the author of The Secret History of Star Wars (2008), wrote an extensive and illuminating article about her life and work. You can read the entire thing online, but here’s an excerpt:

Mark Hamill […] notes in 2005 how her sensibilities influenced the content and structure of [George Lucas’] films:

“You can see a huge difference in the films that he does now and the films that he did when he was married. I know for a fact that Marcia Lucas was responsible for convincing him to keep that little ‘kiss for luck’ before Carrie [Fisher] and I swing across the chasm in the first film: ‘Oh, I don’t like it, people laugh in the previews,’ and she said, ‘George, they’re laughing because it’s so sweet and unexpected’– and her influence was such that if she wanted to keep it, it was in. When the little mouse robot comes up when Harrison and I are delivering Chewbacca to the prison and he roars at it and it screams, sort of, and runs away, George wanted to cut that and Marcia insisted that he keep it.”

photoLucy Wilson

Wilson has held many roles at Lucasfilm. She started out as George Lucas’ assistant, and is said to have typed up the the script for Star Wars. She also worked as finance director in Lucasfilm’s licensing department, as head of publishing, and finally as head of the nonfiction George Lucas Books. In 2010 she retired, though if her Twitter account is any indication it looks as though she’s still keeping very busy.

Most importantly (to me, anyway), she seems to have been largely responsible for the launch and success of the Star Wars Expanded Universe books, which had a long and profitable run. In a post on the Barnes and Noble blog, Andrew Liptak explains how it all went down:

“I was trying to bring quality literature to a licensed fictional universe,” Wilson recalled. She also wanted to do something different from the typical tie-in novel. With the Star Trek novels as their main competition, Wilson knew she needed to differentiate her books. “[Star Trek was] constantly rebooting their program with new storylines. I didn’t want our plan to be like theirs, and one big difference was to make ours have one over-arching internal consistency.” Additional stipulations were that the stories had to take place after Return of the Jedi, none of the characters who were featured in the films could be killed off, and characters already dead could not be resurrected.

ken09-15_aKathleen Kennedy

If you haven’t heard of Kathleen Kennedy yet, it’s certainly only a matter of time. The heir to the Lucas empire following its sale to Disney, Kennedy has worked in Hollywood nearly her entire life, with some of its biggest names. Her production company, Kennedy/Marshall, is second only to Stephen Spielburg in terms of domestic box office receipts.

Since she took over from Lucas there have been a number of in-depth news reports on her career and her plans for the future. And though she hasn’t yet nominated a female director to helm a Star Wars movie, she has pulled together a diverse executive team.

IGN wrote:

Lucas stepped down, Kathy was named President, and now has full control over the future of the lucrative franchise. Considering their close working relationship, one can only assume that Kennedy and Lucas began discussions well before work on Lincoln began, and indeed, that the Disney deal was always a part of these discussions. The Disney/Lucas revelation rollout is still ongoing. But one thing is for certain: George Lucas has complete faith in Kathleen Kennedy.

“I don’t have to give advice to Kathy,” he said, during the most recent of his chat series with the producer. “She knows what to do. I mean, she knows better than I do.

“She has all the qualities to run a company like this. To make it great.”

We’re likely to be hearing a lot about Kennedy in the future.

kiri_hart-bab4846cc9d8Kiri Hart

Hart has been working at Lucasfilm for over 20 years in various roles, but in 2012 she became the Development lead for the company’s new Story Group. Basically, this group keeps track of the existing Star Wars continuity, and makes executive decisions about what kinds of stories will be told in the future. The Daily Dot explains it like this:

From a fandom perspective, the Story Group put itself on the map by torpedoing the Expanded Universe (EU), a vast network of tie-in materials that populated the Star Wars franchise for decades. Along with stories filling in the time between and after the movies, it introduced beloved characters like Grand Admiral Thrawn and Mara Jade Skywalker. Then in April 2014, Lucasfilm decided it was too unwieldy to link with the upcoming slate of movies. The EU was declared uncanonical, making way for a new universe encompassing episodes I-VI, the two animated series, and everything that came after April 2014. Now, everything goes through the Story Group, which provides background material and steers writers away from topics that will be covered in other corners of the franchise.

[…] The Story Group’s influence is everywhere, from the design of star maps in spinoff books to the diverse casting of the new movies—almost certainly stemming from the input of Kathleen Kennedy and Kiri Hart. The question now is how long this ecosystem can thrive. Other studios have hit serious problems trying to balance innovative creators with big-budget franchise properties. On the other hand, no other company has the same level of control as the Lucasfilm Story Group, which benefits from having an executive team full of lifelong Star Wars fans.

 

screen_shot_2015-11-23_at_15-10-28Sigurlina Ingvarsdottir

This video game developer and Senior Producer with EA DICE was responsible for 2015’s Star Wars Battlefront. Ingvarsdottir doesn’t work for Lucasfilm directly, then, but with one of their many licenses. She’s also a self-labelled Star Wars fan. While the game received mixed reviews for its price-to-content ratio, it still shipped over 13 million copies.

When Fortune magazine asked her how other people can get into the business of video games, she replied:

“I encourage people to spend time playing, to spend time prototyping and making games using all of the free engines and software available out there,” she says. “Most people have some understanding that to make games you need to be a programmer or a designer. But there are so many fields today. You can be a lawyer and work in games. You can be an economist and work in games. There are so many roles and so many ways you can be a part of making games.”

Do you know of more interesting ‘women of Star Wars’? Let me know so I can add them to my list!

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