Exploiting the Archives Strikes Back: Star Wars Edition

Let’s be honest: Star Wars is nothing more than silly space nonsense for small children. That may sound dismissive, but it’s undeniably true. I don’t like Star Wars, or Star Trek, and make a point of physically bullying anyone I suspect might enjoy either venerable franchise. 

Yet because I work in the field of pop culture media, I end up writing about Star Wars an awful lot. How often? Well, let’s just say that this is the first-ever sequel to an Exploiting the Archives entry, in that I wrote something of an omnibus post earlier collecting links to Star Wars themed articles like the My World of Flops piece I wrote on the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special, the Star Wars Holiday Special-themed episode of I Was There Too , the The Force Awakens episode of The Dana Gould Hour, and, perhaps most excitingly, a Random Roles interview I conducted with Mark Hamill just after news broke of Disney buying Star Wars for billions and Hamill himself had no idea what role, if any, he would play in the upcoming films. 

Turns out old Darth Weinstein was guilty of worse crimes, as was Fanboys producer Kevin Spacey. 

You would imagine that would be the end of my writing about Star Wars, particularly given my intense, undying hatred of George Lucas' movies about the space monsters but it turns out I actually wrote pieces about the wildly disappointing Fanboys and a documentary called The People Vs. George Lucas that time has rendered surprisingly timely and even prescient. 

My The People Vs. George Lucas article for the late, lamented The Dissolve explored the curious, seemingly contradictory phenomenon of Star Wars nerds loving the world George Lucas created in the original trilogy yet viscerally loathing just about everything that came after it. No one is creepily entitled quite a Star Wars lover-hater convinced that they, and they alone, know what’s best for the series, and must share those thoughts and opinions with the world as stridently and obnoxiously as possible. 

Speaking of the weird, complicated relationship between Star Wars and its biggest/worst fans, I wrote about the famously troubled Fanboys and how it mirrored the incredible disappointment felt by Star Wars fans towards the insult that is The Phantom Menace instead of commenting on it. 

Yes, I sure was ahead of the curve in anticipating that people might want to read about Star Wars so now that sexist, racist, bullying Star Wars fans are mounting a serious challenge to us Juggalos for the questionable honor of most hated fanbase why not give my previous work on this subject a gander? Unlike those silly science fiction movies with the crazy space monsters, they’re all really good.  

Honor twenty one years of intermittent excellence in pop culture writing and join a nice community over at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace it’d be