I was 9 years old when “Star Wars” was released almost 46 years ago — a nearly perfect example of the Target Audience.
I read the tie-in novelization to vacuum up every detail not sucked in during my repeat viewings; I traded the trading cards (especially the blue-edged first series) with a relentless passion that would put the average Wall Street denizen to shame; I was Luke Skywalker for Halloween. And that’s how a nerd is born.
Now somehow in late middle age, I still engage with the ever-expanding “Star Wars” mythos in a more discreet and classy fashion. My wife and I spent a lovely evening last summer at Tanglewood as the Boston Symphony Orchestra performed the soundtrack to “The Empire Strikes Back” (the pinnacle of the whole deal) with film accompaniment. And while I’ve resisted almost all of the “Star Wars” Disney streaming series, the recent first season of “Andor” was a gripping and tough-minded look at life under the thumb of dictatorship — like Jean-Pierre Melville’s bleak French Resistance thriller “Army of Shadows,” only with robots — that slapped even harder after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
And then last week brought May the Fourth. This year’s annual celebration of what’s unofficially known as “Star Wars Day” — which falls a few weeks ahead of the May 25 anniversary of the release (nerd!) — turned into an orgy of clever-clever memes shilling everything from New York City’s subway system to the presidential campaign of tyro Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, in a clip depicting Donald J. Trump and Ron DeSantis as Jedi mentors passing the torch to the new kid, or something. It was weird. The New York State Police tweeted out an image of a white-armored Imperial stormtrooper snoozing at his desk with the message, “May 4th is a Jedi holiday … Troopers are still at work.” (This was not sound branding: Jedi good, Troopers bad.)
Even to many…
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