From Star Wars to Harry Potter: the Bildungsroman in a cross-media universe

Abstract

Since the late 1970s, the Bildungsroman of the nineteenth century has evolved into a cross-media phenomenon, characterized by interactions between books, comics, films, TV series, video games and the realm of merchandising. Due to their mythopoietic power, two sagas emerge, that of Star Wars and that of Harry Potter, both attributable to the creative impetus of a specific author (George Lucas and J.K Rowling) but at the same time influenced by historical, social and cultural evolution over the period between the first and the last episode of the narratives. The two sagas can be analyzed according to three keys of reading. First, they represent an allegory of the master-student relationship in a variety of forms. Secondly, in both universes the educational journey of the young protagonists is told, according to the stages of the hero’s journey by Joseph Campbell  (initial distance from one’s environment, initiation and trials to be faced, personal growth and return to one’s home). Finally, a third interpretation is provided by the structuralist approach of Lévi-Strauss, which analyses the myth on the basis of at least three dichotomous dimensions: the tension between good and evil, free will and destiny, nature and technology, that is, physis and techne.