Media Fields 2015/ Museum mediations: Life according to Star Wars.

Science fiction as a genre often relies on narratives of self-discovery that aim to explore the meaning of life and humanity not only at the personal level but also as a species. Taking the film franchise as its cue the traveling exhibition Star Wars: Identities (Montreal Science Centre, 2012) relies precisely on those generic conventions, offering visitors an experiential tour of self-discovery mediated through the characters and the props of the films. By moving sequentially between a set of interactive stations that present film objects along with gaming interfaces and screens with didactic videos, the exhibit invites visitors to learn about the biological and social forces that influence subject-formation while consuming yet another iteration of the multimedia franchise. Consequently, expanding the films’ narrative universe into the territory of science, and as such contributing to justify the presence of the franchise in the museum as well as legitimize its cultural value in the face of museum curators as something more than commercial entertainment. Departing from the encounter between museum and Star Wars, this paper aims to interrogate the historical, political, and economic significance of this hybrid form of exhibition to propose that it functions simultaneously as a transmedia marketing tool, a disciplinary apparatus, and a symptom of biopolitical techniques of control. In order to do so I will rely on museum studies' critique of the disciplinary regime that examines the institution as a site of knowledge and citizen formation (Bennett), to move on to discuss the exhibition in light of its use of visual databases and biometrics, which altogether present the organizational principles of the biological life of the exhibit's fictional populations. In any case this paper intends to argue that visitors are subjected to these forms of power, but rather to explore the frictions and pleasures of navigating through such an ideologically charged space. Thus, the premise for writing this paper is to discuss how the museological institution shapes the presentation of the media franchise into this particular form, and ultimately understand: how is life according to Star Wars.