Post a Comment On: Internal Monologue

The frightening truth about we Star Wars fans:
There is a diabolical twist to Star Wars fandom, you see, that defies comprehension, and yet is the life-blood of all Star Wars fans. It is this:

Star Wars fans hate Star Wars. (HT: Grishnash via email) Read the full article. It's quite true. Here's my theory: the real Star Wars is in fact incredibly amazing and cool, but the real Star Wars is a Platonic ideal that exists in a childlike fantasy realm of dreams: it is an idea, a holy grail, an ultimate awesomeness always out of reach. The Star Wars stuff that actually exists is often quite lame. But the existence of the real, uber-cool Star Wars can be inferred from the hideous fragments that Lucas and others have created, just as the existence of a beautiful soaring eagle can be inferred from a disgusting piece of bird poo. We know the beautiful bird is there, we just wish we could see more of the bird and less of the turd.

Indeed this goes a long way to explain why Star Wars fans are so fanatical: they are searching for a glimpse of the true Star Wars amid the highly flawed films and sea of derivative merchandising. If the movies were better, we wouldn't need to put all this energy into talking about them.

Star Wars fandom is like a version of Christianity in which people constantly complain about how lame the Bible is and how God is a really bad author. These Christians spend endless hours criticizing the Bible's inconsistencies, stilted prose, and bad pacing. But these people are still fanatical Christians, and ravenously absorb every scrap of religious text they can get their hands on in hopes of getting a glimpse of the true divinity that they know is at the heart of their religion.