Longing for Endor: Little People and the Ideological Colonization of the European Fantasy Genre

"[T]aking the careers of the classic sideshow star German 'Doll Family' and contemporary English dwarf actor Warwick Davis for her examples, [McAra] reveals how dwarf performers were often appropriated or stereotyped by producers of culture in order to heighten representations of the fantastic. Relying on Susan Stewart’s ideas on the nostalgic longing for the miniature [1993], she reads the figure of the dwarf on the Hollywood silver screen as a metaphor for structural inversion and for the American film industry’s reverse colonization of European history and fantasy from the Wizard of Oz [1939] to Star Wars: Return of the Jedi [1983]" - From the editorial by Anna Kérchy and Andrea Zittlau, p.16.