Star Wars, Religie en Beeldvorming

Abstract

In this master’s thesis, the interaction between popular culture, society and creating images is explored. The research focuses mainly on the ninth Star Wars movie – The Last Jedi – the representation of religion it carries out and the influence of this representation of religion on the process of creating images of religion. It will analyse how people think about religion in our modern society and what influence popular culture has on our daily lives. Using multiple theories from religious studies and film studies, it tries to investigate how consumers perceive and appropriate films and what influence this has on their image of religion. With the aid of a focus group consisting of six students and three individual interviews, I have tried to find an answer to this question. The results of the focus group and the interviews reveal that a process of reflection, awareness and appropriation took place during and after the participants talked about The Last Jedi and the representation of religion this film carries out in the focus group. In the process of appropriation, they saw – among other things – current societal issues reflected in The Last Jedi. Their image of religion was not directly influenced by the representation of religion in The Last Jedi, however, the participants became aware of the way religion is represented in other forms of popular culture and they were conscious about the way they thought about religion themselves. Thereby we can conclude that films are a media of communication where the consumer takes an active role in appropriating the film.