THE
MINISTRY OF CULTURE
Lesson # 12
HYPE
AND STAR WARS™
NOTEBOOKS
OUT, FOOLS
A frothy hello, my pups. Come
suckle from the teats of intellect; for lo, there is room on my heavy lactating
bosom for all thirsty little snouts. But, wait a while, 'til I splay my
swarthy, canine legs of knowledge and wag my shitty tail of wisdom. Now,
suck me puppies, 'til you learn. Mmmmmm! Nice.
This month, in an ill-considered
break from the norm, I have actually listened to those groovy hep-cats
that dwell in the tawdry, virtual world, known as Shrubberyland, and done
like they goddam told me. This month, by request from GOD himself, I am
going to look at the baffling, twentieth-century phenomenon of STAR WARS™.
Like they need the publicity.
WHAT
ARE STAR WARS™ AND HOW DO THEY OCCUR?
Star Wars ™ was released in the
UK in 1977 when your dear Uncle Summy was a mere 7 year old whippersnapper.
Ahhh, 7 years old and living in the English countryside. I was truly the
English equivalent of Luke Skywalker™ the films gawky, unappealing hero,
except I didn’t have a dead Uncle Owen. Or a landspeeder™.
What I did have was an imagination
and fondness for all things outer space. And yea, I was verily a prime
pie for the malicious, grasping entrepreneurial fingers of weirdy beardy
Lucas™ to ram into repeatedly, and lick the dripping cash from, as he idly
tossed my penniless crust onto the fire.
Yes, I was young and innocent.
I believed UFO’s to dwell in the real world as proven fact, rather than
merely being the confused ramblings of fried-chicken-eating, swinger-party-attending,
psychopaths with empty heads and even more empty lives.
I believed cowboys were proud
well-dressed heroes who protected dowdy-looking, blonde-haired women in
log cabins from blue-eyed, sneaky red Indians and their tomahawks, rather
than know them as Bud-guzzling maniacs, whose existence was integral only
in terms of driving fat cows from Denver to Kansas, and back.
And above all, I believed Star
WARS™ to be the greatest movie ever made. Not because I had seen it, but
because Jeremy Turner told me it was.
Jeremy said that it had everything,
and as if that wasn't enough, it had a Wookie™ as well. Clearly, the lad
Skywalker ™ was a sap, but Han Solo ™, with his natty waistcoat and his
dry laconic smuggler’s quips, he did verily ROCK OUR WORLD. And the special
effects, well, they made the Bionic man look like nothing more than a flabby
mid-thirties b-movie actor.
WAS IT
EVERYWHERE?
YES. It was everywhere. The postman
whistled the Emperor's Theme™ as he pushed letters about Star Wars™ written
with Star Wars™ Lightsaber™ pens on Death Star™ stationery through our
brand new Jawa Droid Factory Delivery Unit™ letterboxes. We ate Tatooine
Cheese Puffs ™ washed down with R2D2™ cola, before wiping the shit off
our arses with Vader-roll ™.
And, boy did we love it. One has
to bear in mind that the most heavily marketed film before then was Jaws,
and I hardly think a shoddy board game and a bollocks novel count as media
saturation. So the moronic be-flared 1977 British public swallowed every
fatuous, sloppy, mouthful of the putrid marketing pus that was squeezed
from this angry boil. And Lucas' ™ crappy little beard turned to gold.
WHAT
IS IT ACTUALLY ABOUT AND WHERE DID THE IDEA COME FROM?
It's sort of a space-western fairytale
type thang. With a dash of pseudo-mystical bollocks in a sauce of stewed
good-vs-evil cliché. With fries. To go.
As for the idea, well, one only
has to glance upon this extract from the diary of the tragic young Lucas™
to get an idea of how this embryonic yarn grew into the money-guzzling
antichrist of a motion picture.
Monday
the 25th of April 1959
Bullied
again today at school. That big guy in the leather jacket, Garth Badger,
took my favourite pencil away. And snapped it up my nose. So I ran away
pissing my knickers like some sort of cringing weasel. Luckily I bumped
into this kindly old man Ben Knoby, who took me to his musty house and
taught me some magic. I was scared at first, but then he let me play with
his sword and told me to close my eyes...
Tuesday
the 26th April
Saw that
girl Layla in Trash-Mart. She is beautiful. But her friends kept laughing
at me because I was talking to the stamp-machine. So I played in parking
lot with my friends, the bins. One day I will show them. One day. ONE DAY…
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LOOK SUMMY,
IT'S ONLY A FILM, DEAL WITH IT
Tchh. Yeah! And the sequels. They
made two more you know. And one of them had furry little shit-heads called
Ewoks™ in it. A more blatant example of the merchandise being planned before
the film hit the can, has yet to be seen. I mean, EWOKS™? EWOKS™?
And now, they've made a prequel.
You hardly need me to tell you this, but already it's the fastest grossing
film in history. Already. After one week. Jesus. ARE WE STUPID? Last year,
Titanic, a film whose ending people get taught at school, this year a prequel
to a twenty year old masturbatory fantasy of a social inadequate. What
will it be next year? Ten Commandments 2: the next Twenty? How much more
of this rancid consumer piss will the populous drink? Is their idiot thirst
unquenchable?
It's not been released here, but
the war against intelligence that has been waged by coke-addled fuckwits
in the media is slowly being won, with dozens of flaccid, fawning, press-releases
masquerading as news items clogging up our papers like blood clots in the
hammered brain that is the public consciousness. To quote the legendary
Smudge, "Tits to it all."
WHAT
HAVE WE LEARNT?
People
will go and watch what they are told. And still buy the t-shirt.
It takes
twenty years for someone to turn from Jedi to fully paid up member of the
empire
The kid
you bullied at school may well grow a beard
Until next time
O
ma corazon
Uncle Summy
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