by Gib van Ert
A LONG TIME AGO
Growing up with and out of STAR WARS
GIB VAN ERT
Soi-disant press
Copyright © Gib van Ert, 2012, 2013
All rights reserved.
Trade paper: ISBN-13: 978-0-9881180-0-3
Kindle: ISBN 978-0-9881180-1-0
ePub: ISBN 978-0-9881180-2-7
First published August 2012. This edition January 2013.
“I’m getting too old for this sort of thing.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars (1977)
CONTENTS
[PROLOGUE] Staring at Skywalker
[STAR WARS] Asleep at the drive-in
[EMPIRE] A pig with a stomach ache
[JEDI] Down with the ship
[PREQUELS] Turmoil in the republic
[EPILOGUE] Invent me a story
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted to the following people in getting this book together. Mistakes in grammar, punctuation and judgment remain my own: Gary Collinson; Theo Colombo; Greg Moore; Nash; Christopher Schuld; David Spratley; Michael Van Ert; Cassandra Whalen; Wayne Ziants. Thanks also to my sister April for her support and encouragement, my mother for her unquestioning faith in the brilliance of all my half-baked ideas, and my wife Stephanie for, well, everything.
[PROLOGUE] STARING AT SKYWALKER
I remove a heavy diaper from around my son’s waist. It is the environmentally friendly kind—biodegradable, with a reusable liner and cloth portion, as expensive as it is ineffective. Before our daughter was born my wife and I had strong feelings about the subject. But Beatrice is two and half now, Zachary is ten weeks, and I am well past caring about diapers in landfills. I put on a proper diaper. I will make up the environmental damage elsewhere. I’ll decline plastic cutlery when I buy lunch.
Oblivious of landfills and cutlery, Zachary stares at the picture hanging on the wall above his change table. He has been looking at it for a few weeks now—about as long as he has been physically capable of focusing on anything. Every diaper change, he studies the comicbook colours, the human—or at least humanoid—forms, the joined up lettering that is nothing like handwriting. He does not know what he is seeing, except perhaps that it is what his sister calls Skywalker. Every diaper change, Zach contemplates Skywalker.
He is looking at six Marvel Star Wars comics, arranged three by two on a sky blue matte and framed under glass. I got the idea about ten years ago while watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The man at the art shop offered me museum quality glass but it was more expensive and I had duplicates of these issues. When they faded I would replace them from my collection, or pick up more from the comic book shop. No one seemed to want them anymore anyway.
Not that Star Wars had quit being popular. “Popular” is too mild a word. Star Wars was then and remains now the ubiquitous moneychurning steamrolling blockbuster entertainment phenomenon of modern times. But Marvel Star Wars comics were not that kind of Star Wars. Looking at these comic books, especially the early ones, children who learned about Darth Maul before Darth Vader would not know if they were Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon. They are beyond outmoded; they are antiquarian. And that, in part, is why I framed them and hung the resulting piece prominently on one of the only four walls in my bachelor apartment a decade ago. Also because I thought it was funny. Probably also because it was cool in the “retro” way that was becoming fashionable at the time. But what I liked most about my framed Marvel Star Wars comics was the contrast between them and the Star Wars that had come since. At a time when the “prequels” were playing in theatres to packed houses and critical scorn, this was the Star Wars of my childhood.
That is not as naïve as it sounds. I am not suggesting that there was a time when a movie called Star Wars appeared in cinemas unsullied by ad men and marketing campaigns. I know that Star Wars was never free of exuberant commercialization, principally in the form of rampant product tie-ins; as a boy I literally bathed in them. But in retrospect there are differences. The Star Wars of my childhood, from 1977 to about 1985, had at times an awkwardness, even a clumsiness, about it that is now entirely gone. Like its biggest fans, Star Wars then was young and new.
Star Wars—the movie, the sequels, the toys, the books, the trading cards, the comics, the arcade games, the galaxy of myths and merchandise—dominated my youth. In this I am the same as so many other boys I knew then, and so many men I know today. It is a common reference point for my gender and generation. Yet there was a time before Star Wars, and I was born into it. When I first saw the film, at a long-gone drive-in theatre in Penticton, British Columbia, sitting in the back seat of a station wagon my father borrowed from the car dealership he worked at, as I watched the opening words float across the giant screen unable to read them but thrilled by their movement, as the exhilarating score filled the car through clumsy, tinny speakers hanging off the rolled-down front windows, as all this washed over me for the very first time, I had no idea what was coming. I did not know about lightsabers or stormtroopers or jawas or droids. Nobody did.
Watching my son stare at Skywalker while I change his diaper it occurs to me that for him it will be completely different. Whatever attraction it may hold for him, Star Wars will not come with surprise or wonder or astonishment. It will be a part of his cultural horizon before he even sees the films. It will be like the picture on his bedroom wall—a furnishing. Reflecting on this, I think for a moment that I should take the picture down. But it would not help. Star Wars is everywhere.
*
If you ask its original fans, meaning me and the millions of others around the world who grew up with it, Star Wars has lost its way. I do not know anyone in his or her late 30s or early 40s who feels much attachment to Star Wars as it re-emerged in 1999 with The Phantom Menace. On the contrary, complaining about the detested prequels has become as much a part of the Star Wars experience for my generation today as raving about the original films was when we were ten-year-olds. But whether Star Wars has gone off the rails or not, it remains a runaway train that shows no signs of stopping. If it does keep going, and maybe even if it does not, some account of the phenomenon should be attempted—not just by critics or industry insiders but by those of us who made Star Wars what it is today. Some description of its appeal—initially as a film but quickly thereafter as a pop culture phenomenon—should be offered to the parents, spouses and now the children of this first Star Wars generation.
I am as qualified to give such an account as anyone, although I do not claim to be the world’s biggest Star Wars fan. I cannot recite any of the films from memory, though I do have quite a few of the lines down. I do not have an especially large or valuable collection of Star Wars memorabilia, but there are six boxes of toys and mementos, most worn from use, carefully stored away in my basement. I cannot bring myself to part with them. I have never attended any sort of convention or Star-Wars-themed social event. I did dress up as Luke Skywalker for Halloween in 2003, but that was as much laziness as ardour; it makes a pretty easy costume if you have a lightsaber (I did) and a karate jacket (which I borrowed). If I am qualified to give an account of Star Wars’s youth, it is because I shared it with my own. I offer myself not as an expert but as a participant and eyewitness.
The Star Wars phenomenon cannot be explained entirely by the quality of the films. In saying so I am not disparaging the original trilogy. Star Wars regularly appears on film critic lists, often standing out amongst more intellectual or literary entries. The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi do not always receive the same treatment, but all three films are nonetheless marvellous instances of cinematic
storytelling. But there must be something more to Star Wars. People do not dress up as Citizen Kane characters on Halloween. Children do not ask their parents for Lawrence of Arabia action figures for Christmas. Lego does not sell La Dolce Vita playsets. These comparisons may seem facile but they underscore the extent to which Star Wars has imposed itself upon our culture in a way that other successful or highly regarded films have not. Clearly the massive marketing edifice that grew up in response to the staggering commercial success of Star Wars is part of the explanation for the Star Wars phenomenon. But it can only be part. Dozens of so-called blockbuster movies are released every year, supported by enormous promotional campaigns flooding media outlets, fast food restaurants and toy stores with advertisements and product tie-ins. Yet even those that are considered successful do not come close to penetrating popular culture the way Star Wars has.
So what is it? What is it about Star Wars that left such an imprint on me and my generation, particularly its boys? How did a film become a phenomenon? In the pages that follow I attempt, from time to time, some explanation. But ultimately the only account I can give of Star Wars is a personal one. It starts as a four-year-old. It is inextricably bound up in my particular experiences: my home town, my sister, my grandparents, my best friend, my adolescence and young adulthood. Despite its worldwide notoriety, Star Wars is in many ways a private matter for me.
This book therefore takes the form of a memoir, with personalities and incidents peculiar to my experience. But I am far from being the only person who could tell such a story. Despite the commonplace depiction of Star Wars today as a ‘geek’ or ‘nerd’ interest—what do those words mean anymore in a world where formerly marginal interests like computing and science fiction have gone entirely mainstream?—the original three films swept up, in varying degrees, children of all kinds, all over the world. While the details are my own, an entire generation of Star-Wars-mad children, now entering middle age, lived this story’s broad outlines.
[STAR WARS] ASLEEP AT THE DRIVE-IN
On an unremarkable day in February 1972 the people who would become my mother and father drove a pale blue Volkswagen van north along Washington State Route 9 to the Sumas border crossing and asked to be let in. Neither of them had ever been to Canada. Now they were about to take refuge there, though they did not tell the border guard that. Their immediate cause for flight was the Vietnam War. But for my mother, a Texas beauty queen turned hippy, this was more than political. By running away with my father she was abandoning a life of privilege, prudery and prejudice which seemed natural to her as an 18-year-old Dallas socialite in 1960 but had become oppressive by the early 1970s. Her departure was a bid for liberation. My father’s flight motive was more stark. He had been away without leave from his marine corps base at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina for over a year. He had spent the time travelling around the United States, seeing the sights like any other tourist, without ever being detected by the authorities. But he knew it was only a matter of time. When captured he could expect a court martial, a fate worse than Canada. So shortly after meeting each other at a drug rehabilitation clinic (they tell me they were volunteering there), my parents headed north. They told the man at the checkpoint they were visiting friends. In fact they were about to become asylum-seekers, uncertain when or even if they would ever go home.
Based on this story, I have sometimes told people that I am the child of immigrants, even refugees. While it is effectively true, I mean it as a sort of joke. Refugees and other immigrants are common here, and I do not fit their usual description. I am white, a native English speaker and generally indistinguishable from the bred-in-the-bone Canadian boys I went to school with, boys with names like Gordie McAlpine and Dave Sawchuk. Yet growing up I did sometimes sense a difference between me and them. For any immigrant, Canada is an easy place to surround oneself with reminders of the old country. This is especially true when the old country is the United States of the 1970s, with its movies, magazines and even television stations constantly threatening (unintentionally) to drown out any native popular culture. No doubt this was part of the attraction of Canada for US draft dodgers; it was nearly home. For much of their first ten years or so in Canada, my parents showed little interest in their adopted country. My mother liked Gordon Lightfoot, and was intrigued by how British Canada was, with its Royal Mail boxes (now gone), coats of arms and unfamiliar holidays: Victoria Day, Dominion Day, Remembrance Day, Boxing Day. My father quickly became a fan of the Vancouver Canucks. But, initially at least, that was about as Canadian as my parents got. They watched US newscasts every evening and the Today Show in the mornings, so that what little I knew about public affairs by the time I was school age concerned a foreign country. The result was that I embarrassed myself in class by not knowing the names of Canadian leaders, the capitals of Canadian provinces, or even the names of the provinces themselves. Thanks to my non-immigrant appearance—in those days you could generally tell immigrants from natives by their appearance—my ignorance of these basics made me look stupid when in fact I was just a little foreign.
My parents found Canadian hippy friends sympathetic to US draft dodgers in Vancouver. I was born there in 1973. My sister followed two years later, and shortly after that our family moved to Cranbrook, a small town in eastern British Columbia. We did not stay long, and all I remember of the place is that the doors of our house had hooks on their bottoms that fitted into matching eyelets on the adjoining walls to hold them open. While Cranbrook is but a single, random memory to me, the next town we moved to, in early 1977, was the scene of most of my childhood.
Geographically, Penticton, British Columbia is far from what my parents must have imagined when they escaped to Canada. It sits just north of the northern edge of the Sonoran Desert, a climatic zone reaching all the way to Mexico. As a boy walking in the hills south of town I was more likely to tread in cactus than snow, more likely to startle a rattlesnake than a beaver. Resting at the tip of this arid ecosystem, Penticton is something of an oasis, surrounded by orchards and nestled between two large lakes with sandy beaches. Growing up I assumed every town had a beach or two. Every town I knew did: Penticton, Summerland, Peachland, Oliver, Osoyoos, even Kelowna.
My parents rented half of a duplex on a cul-de-sac called Highland Place, up Carmi Mountain. This was just about the eastern edge of human settlement in Penticton. When I got old enough to explore on my bike, I discovered that there were no more houses three or four blocks east: just bluish-green pine trees against the dry hillside. In summer I spent the hot days catching grasshoppers in tin coffee cans. I would sneak up on one, drop the can over it upside-down, slip a plastic lid underneath to seal it in, poke a few breathing holes in the lid with a nail, listen to it bang around in its tin prison for a while, then release it and go in search of a better prize. In the evenings children emerged from the houses around the cul-de-sac dragging out goalie nets and hockey sticks. We played until it was too dark to see the tennis ball. Winters were what my parents must have expected from Canada. Snow covered everything I could see from our single-pane living room window: the hill, the pine trees, the boxy, plain duplexes huddled around the cul-de-sac, the cars frozen in gravel driveways.
*
On 25 May 1977, shortly after our arrival in Penticton, Star Wars was released upon an unsuspecting world. I have briefly described my first encounter with the film at the local drive-in. At about the point at which the rebels are preparing their assault on the Death Star—perhaps 10 p.m.—I fell asleep. But that is no slight against the movie. I was four years old; it was impossible for me to do otherwise. That I made it as far along as that is a wonder. My early impressions of the film are mostly indistinct. They have blurred over time with reactions to countless subsequent viewings and also with later, clearer recollections of my responses to the two sequels. Besides this, all my earliest childhood memories are shadowy at the edges, and I often cannot say with certainty what is a true recollection and what is reconstructed from later infor
mation.
But I am confident in my memory of the opening sequence of Star Wars. Has another movie ever started so well? First came the fairy tale opening line, written not spoken, as if from a storybook: A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… Then the crash of the orchestra and the yellow Star Wars logo against space blackness. The music was thrillingly confident, unhesitatingly proclaiming to the filmgoer that he was about to see something unlike anything he had seen before. Then the opening text, again spelled out without narration, the words floating away from the viewer and into deep space until indecipherable. I did not know what the words said but the music and visuals carried me along. The total effect was exhilaratingly new yet deeply familiar: I was about to be told a grand story.
Once the yellow words have receded into nothingness and the music has dropped, the camera pans down to reveal a moon, then another, and then the hazy atmosphere of a planet. Against this backdrop a ship races across space chased by bursts of laser fire. Next its pursuer appears at the top of the screen. It looks larger than the ship it chases, then much larger, then larger still. Its underside comes to fill the screen. The thing is a monster. Our sympathy moves firmly to its quarry. The massive spacecraft overtakes its prey and draws it into its belly like a whale swallowing a minnow. Meanwhile, inside the doomed vessel, its crew of soldiers, robots and even (it is said) a princess prepare to be boarded. The soldiers wear simple, even casual uniforms. Their only armour consists of large white helmets, the open fronts of which reveal apprehensive yet determined faces.
The soldiers take their places along a white corridor ending in a sealed door. They must know the door will not hold. They train their weapons on it expectantly. The door breaks, then explodes. Through it pour white, armour-clad troops, each just like the one that came before. The ensuing firefight brings losses to both sides, but the invading force is too numerous. The resistance falls back, then routs.
