My parents tell me now that what they feared was something called the “Star Wars mindset”—that my young brain might confuse reality with fiction, might substitute Greedo and Admiral Akbar for the real denizens of Mansfield, Louisiana. Though I fervently wished that I would enter the Seven Eleven to find the joint being cased by stormtroopers, there was mostly just the usual crew of locals buying bait, something more along the lines of a synchronized bayou-swimming routine set to the humming of mosquitoes. I’ll admit my mind was kind of blown, though, when I first saw Star Wars‘ Lando Calrissian (who, I later learned, was an actor named Billy Dee Williams) selling Colt 45.
My father was the pastor of the First Baptist Church, a congregation inhabiting an imposing downtown edifice in that town of a few thousand souls. For much of my childhood in Texas and the Deep South, what the preacher’s kid did mattered. A whole lot—if the preacher’s kid had Kiss posters, the other kids could listen to “Detroit Rock City,” too. Even now I’m filled with wonder about how I ended up with an Alice Cooper Slurpee cup.
But in the case of Star Wars, it was different, my folks tell me. Everybody was seeing Star Wars, no matter what I did, preacher’s kid or no. The question was whether I would get to go with my friend Kirk (not James T.). And the central problem was that I might mistake all that Force stuff for proper theology.
Certainly there is something of a New Age vagueness about that Force, but that particular brand of vagueness, as Lucas no doubt realized, was fashionably broad to the extent that most anybody’s theology would plug right in, sans adapter. Everybody kept pretty much mum about the whole Force business in the movie—Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi seemed to be pretty keen on something or other, but it was never clear exactly what. Years later, thanks to Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, we know that Obi-Wan was all tight-lipped because he couldn’t let on that the Force was a bunch of stupid “midichlorians.” The Force wasn’t something you went to church for. It was something you took a blood test for—midichlorians were tiny organisms that Jedi Knights carried a lot of, sort of a superpower disease that allowed for greater communion with the universe or something. What a letdown.
All the same, what my parents didn’t realize was that Star Wars was really, at least when I was but a stripling, all about the awesomeness of its hardware. I wanted some of that Force only insofar as it helped me wield the coolest weapon in the history of the universe, the light saber.
I guess the parents figured I wouldn’t be led too far astray by Star Wars, because Kirk and I finally sallied forth, cleared to dabble in non-standard theology (as a Kierkegaardian, I figured I was fine). There was, I remember, nothing in my short years that could have prepared me for the ultra-super-mega-ultra-coolness that played out across that screen. Here was the world for which I was truly cut out. And did I ever fall prey to the Star Wars mindset. I dreamed Wookies. I drew parodies (the “necktie fighter” comes to mind, along with a Chuck Taylor-wearing “Princess Lay-Up”). I worked on my Death Star detonating technique at the arcade.
This was not mistaking one reality for the other, nor substituting some hare-brained Force for conventional theology. This was research. It seemed clear that the cinematic minds of 1977 had glimpsed the future toward which we were all hurling at light speed. We had better be prepared. I mean, Space 1999 was a mere 22 years away. Those who knew how to fly X-Wings were going to have a clear advantage in the job market, and who would be able to get a mortgage, for heaven’s sake, without mastering the retreat-down-a-hallway blaster technique?
There were competing futures. Battlestar Galactica became my favorite, because it tied in Egypt and spaceships, as sure an approximation of heaven as a boy could get. Theology was all squared away, as far as I could figure. That’s what my Dad did, and he seemed to have it covered. My job would be to pilot the craft that took him to future revival meetings full of strange humanoids. I had to have a handle on all of the competing visions of the future, because who knew whether we’d be flying colonial vipers or A-wings?
I credit science fiction in general and Star Wars in particular for offering a framework that was a jumping-off point for imagining my own future as one of boundless possibility. As I grew older and the vision of a space-going future seemed ever more remote, I had to adjust. Even now, with a dog and a house, I hold out some hope that a visit to the moon could be in the cards before mid-century.
That the movie at the center of my futuristic thoughts is full of ridiculously shallow characters, stuck in a plot that moves at a mind-boggling pace that could bear no relation to any sort of reality, matters not. In 1977, it was enough for my young eyes to be fired with visions of their own. My anger at George Lucas for becoming an oversized Ewok himself and ruining Return of the Jedi and the movies that followed will forever be softened by the enormity of the magic he worked for all of us who were kids then. No one older than us seems able to grasp what Star Wars means to us, just what an archetypal mythological system it is. I get that—even the title is stupid, when you really think about it, so how was anyone to know except kids? No one younger than us finds the stilted pacing and non-CGI effects even mildly impressive.
Star Wars was one of those cultural singularities stuck to one generation, like Beatlemania or zoot suits. Almost all of us fell prey to the Star Wars mindset. It’s probably safe to say that my generation is the Star Wars mindset. Like all science fiction-fuelled thinking, it is born of speculation and possibility. Few of us seem to have mistaken Star Wars for reality, but thanks to George Lucas’ film, we do have a bigger well of mythological stories from which to draw. Our reality came with a sidecar. All of us are—I don’t care how cheesy it sounds—even with insurance payments and church fellowships, members of the Rebel Alliance. In these days of Empire, if there’s anything worth being, it is that.”
