The Star Wars thing

I guess today is the 30th anniversary of the release of Star Wars. I had just turned 6 when it was released, so you would think I would be a perfect target audience, and I was. I like the movie, but it didn't change my life and I didn't see it 88 times in the theater, or however many times kids saw it back then. In fact, I don't know if I saw it more than once in the theater. We were living in Germany in 1977, and it just wasn't that big a deal. I do recall seeing it in Austria during the winter, so it must have been seven or more months after the premiere. The Austrian show was dubbed in German with English subtitles, and I remember thinking how lame it was having to read the stupid screen when the movie was in English originally, after all.

That's the only time I remember seeing it in the theater. I've seen it plenty of times since then, but it still has little impact on me. I enjoyed the first trilogy (The Empire Strikes Back remains my favorite) and loathed the second (to the extent that I still haven't sat through an entire showing of the last one), but it was just a movie. Even today, I still don't get the whole Star Wars culture.

I have often thought about why I'm like this. I may or may not be participating in a trivia contest next week at one of the comic book stores here in town (I was asked and accepted, but haven't heard the details yet). It's a pop culture trivia thing, and I guess people think of me as a big nerd who knows everything there is to know about pop culture. Well, I am a big nerd, but I'm really not hip to as much pop culture people tend to think I am. I'm a surface dweller, without delving into the depths of pop culture, so I don't know where the rebel base is in the first Star Wars movie (Yavin?). I think part of this comes from growing up in Germany. I spent four years there (1975-1979), so all that 1970s crap goes right over my head. I never watched The Six Million Dollar Man. I was never issued Frampton Comes Alive! like every other suburban white kid. When we returned from Germany in May 1979, I had never watched a lot of television, and it took me a while to discover the glory of The Dukes of Hazzard and Real People. I never got into video games (I'm still not) and I didn't buy comics until 1988, when I was 17. It's odd, but it sometimes feels like living in Germany for those few years set me back a decade. I don't think I've even caught up now.

I get, intellectually, that Star Wars is a huge thing to people of my generation. However, the only significance this date has for me is it reminds me how old I'm getting. I used to think that if I could refer to something as happening 20 years ago in my life, I was old. Now I can easily refer to things that happened over 30 years ago and remember at least a little bit about them. Soon it will be 40 years since Star Wars premiered. Man, I'll feel old then!