… No, I’m sorry. I just can’t do it. I’m not excited. I don’t care.
Firstly, I don’t care for 3D films. I find most 3D irritating beyond belief – a tawdry gimmick that can forgive filmmakers unimaginative and weak writing. Case in point, James Cameron has famously predicted a magnificent rise in the number of movies that will be shot and screened in 3D but this is like your hairdresser slipping with the scissors and telling you it’s a new look that’s all the rage. The haircut, and Avatar, may be eye-catching, but both are still crap.
Secondly, brace yourself, I have never seen Star Wars. I realise that this is an incredible sin, particularly for someone paid to write about film, and in the eyes of many is tantamount to admitting that I’ve never heard any Bible stories, but there you go, there it is. A gasping fissure in my popular culture membrane, a weak spot ready to be attacked, and today I lay it bare for you, with the hope that together, we can explore just what it means.
I should state that I use the term ‘never’ slightly loosely. I have seen two of the films, once each, at a young age, so my recollections are slight. When I was about 10 years old, my Dad took me to see A New Hope when it was digitally remastered and re-released at the cinema. I don’t think my Dad is a particularly big Star Wars fan but he knew the film was undeniably culturally significant. In his opinion it was something I needed to see. I enjoyed it, and it should be noted that even as a child I was a tough critic. A few years prior my Mum took me to see Disney’s Pocahontas. When asked my opinion I in turn asked her “What’s a word that means you know what is going to happen before it happens?”
“Predictable?”
“Yes. Predictable. Pocahontas was predictable.”
As I said, I enjoyed A New Hope, but at 10 years old I didn’t fully understand the concept of ‘digital remastering’ and I was under the impression the film had actually been remade. When Dad asked me what I thought I told him it was awfully good, but that I didn't understand why there were so many 70’s hairdos in the film, which kind of ruined it for me.
I have also seen The Phantom Menace, but I’m led to believe that doesn’t count. I was 13 and took my younger brother during the school holidays. I don’t remember being particularly impressed, and I do have a vague recollection of eating Pizza Hut afterward, and of being irked by Jar Jar Binks, although this could be an opinion cast in hindsight due to all the other opinions on the subject I have since been acquainted with on various other planes of popular culture.
You see, you don’t have to have seen Star Wars to have seen Star Wars, if you know what I mean. With only a hazy recollection of two of the six films, I can tell you every character, every plot event, every wookie, weapon, and wide eyed Jedi trying to make something of himself in this crazy world. It’s impossible to negotiate today’s popular culture landscape, or the internet for that matter, without bumping into Star Wars in some way, be it spoof, homage, analogy, or just an earnest fan. Star Wars is so culturally significant even the uninitiated like myself receive a detailed understanding. As I previously said, not knowing Star Wars is like not knowing the Bible stories. I don’t really know a whole lot of those either. I was raised an atheist, but I can tell you right now, not having studied Jonah and the whale raises significantly less eyebrows that not having studied Jabba the Hut.
Surrounding myself, as I chose to do, with squares, geeks, and internet fiends, I have received some very strong reactions when I admit my embarrassing flaw. These range from “how could you have possibly avoided it?” to folded arms and slow shake of the head. “We can no longer be friends”.
I haven’t deliberately avoided the films, I even once asked a boyfriend (a big Star Wars fan) if I could watch them with him. He blankly refused telling me that if I we watched them together and I didn’t like them it would absolutely ruin our relationship (dudes. Ammirite ladies?) People are so fucking precious about Star Wars, and it is because, for many of them, the Wars raised them, and this is why I am not rushing out to buy the DVDs now. Seeing the films as an adult who already possesses a complex understanding of the plots and characters I am fully aware that the magic of the films will probably not permeate my imagination.
There’s also a part of me that is proud to have avoided the films.
Last night I saw the closing address of the
Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney, delivered by Christian Lander, author of the blog and book,
Stuff White People Like. One of the points raised in the address was that our associations with various brands have replaced the building blocks of religion, family, and country that used to constitute our communities and our identities. Lander joked that a white fan had gushed to him “Finally! We have a culture!” to which Lander replied “This isn’t a culture, it’s a shopping list.”
For me, not having seen
Star Wars, marks me as an individual amongst my peers and contemporaries. As an elitist wanker, which I totally am, it also implies that I’ve probably spent the time I could have been watching Star Wars, watching
Tony Gatlif films, or something, which I have. Nonchalantly mentioning that I haven’t seen the films is playing one of my strongest cool-kid cards, but this is just as ridiculous and bourgeois as counting being a fan as a valid part of your identity. In a time and place in which Simpsons quotes have replace moral virtue as a validating component of the individual, It would do us all good to remember we are what we do, not what we have seen. We are the actions we take, not the merchandise we buy.