I am super jealous of all the little girls who get to see themselves be the hero of Star Wars : en studie om fandom och sekulär helighet

• Main Author: Altgård, Sara
• Format: Others
• Language: Swedish
• Published: Uppsala universitet, Teologiska institutionen 2016
• Subjects: Star Wars; secular sacred; hermeneutics; popular culture; religion; fandom studies; sekulär helighet; populärkultur
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-296243

Finding something sacred in secular society is a relatively new field of religious studies. This thesis aims to find the secular sacred amongst Star Wars fans on the blogging platform Tumblr, in relation to Kim Knott and her theory of the secular sacred. I collected and studied 100 blog posts about Star Wars, specifically about one of its main characters, Rey. The research questions used were “How do fans of Star Wars and Rey express themselves on Tumblr?”, and “Could it be seen as sacred according to Kim Knott´s theory of secular sacred?” I analyzed the material with a hermeneutic approach, and using Kim Knott’s theory, I categorized the posts in to three categories: sacred, appreciative and sacrilegious. Even though the appreciative category was by far the largest, the results showed that a fifth of all the blog posts could be perceived as having content that could be seen as sacred to its poster. I came to the conclusion that my study supports the theory of sacredness not being exclusive to religious society, but can be found in the secular as well.