For people who are unfamiliar with my Star Wars References posts, which ran for a long time on my old blog, the basic idea is that all of Western culture now exists solely because of Star Wars, and is entirely based on that (or at least soon will be.)
I once noticed that as time goes on and things from the past become more from the past, we tend to compress history: while we remember about a million things from the past 10 years, things like Mitt Romney and the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl and um... other things, if you think back 1000 years, you will probably only know 1 thing about that era (and that one thing will probably be wrong.)
As soon as I realized that I realized, too, that the one thing from our era will almost certainly be Star Wars, judging by the fact that this thirty-seven year old movie remains the dominant force in pop culture and is the go-to reference for any easy analogy or crowd-pleasing moment.
As shown by the latest one, a video from The Piano Guys, who for some reason are called that even though they play cellos in the video. The video is called Cello Wars:
and I won't lie, it's pretty cool, but was Cello Wars the only way to enact that song in video form? The bows of a cello make a natural sword, yeah, but sword didn't used to automatically equal lightsaber. Until Star Wars came along, and now, if a kid is playing with something that looks like a sword it almost certainly is accompanied by him going Frrrizziaiawkrow!
(That is how lightsabers sound).
Even my own kids, who are seven, and who therefore were not born when the last Star Wars movie was released, are crazy about Star Wars and play lightsabers. Which is kind of nuts, because the movie was released 30 years before they were born. The equivalent would have been if when I was seven I played Gone With The Wind. And not just me but every kid in the world, happily pretending to not give a damn about Scarlett and building Lego Taras and I know surprisingly little about Gone With The Wind despite having read the book.
Anyway, there's your Star Wars Reference for the day.
PS: Star Wars hasn't totally taken over. I noticed as I wrote this that spellcheck doesn't accept lightsaber as being a real word. If it came down to a battle between the Empire and Google, I'm betting on Google. After all, the Empire couldn't even beat a ragtag bunch of scrappy rebels who hid out on moons.)
PPS: Also, spellcheck doesn't like "spellcheck." Until computers get over their self-loathing, they'll never take over the world, or at least that's what Dr. Phil says.
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10 comments:
Funny that you're wearing a Superman costume there given that he originated in 1938, which goes to show just how long some of these pop culture things can last.
This is my second Piano Guys video. The other one I saw also featured cello playing. What is up with that? Aside from that, I laughed several times during the video.
The Battle of Hastings? What is THAT?!?!?
Oh, SNAP. I've been Dillowayed!
Then again, while Superman has lasted 75 years, Romeo & Juliet has lasted what, 500 or something?
But neither of them is so frequently referenced as Star Wars. A google search of 'superman cello' turns up only this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzBMjAUFO_U
which is interesting in its own way, but not quite the cultural homage the other video is. Plus I think the kid's name is "cello."
Robin:
I'm not 100% sure what "The Battle Of Hastings" is, but it is my go-to battle reference. Apparently I learned about it sometime in the past, but cannot be bothered to store in my brain both the name of the thing and what the thing means.
I have the same problem with my kids.
Let's all start dressing up in Elizabethan clothes and reenact sword fights that end with really lengthy dying scenes! And then drink poison or stab ourselves with a dagger! I can see why that hasn't taken off with 7-year-olds yet.
I hope you've SEEN the video, since I know you have a thing about them. Whatever, I don't take it personal (but did you see the last one I posted? It was awesome!).
And I used to play Gone With the Wind all the time. At least that's what I told my mother everytime she caught me saying damn.
That's a great video. Not that I watched it. I mean, not that I watched it just now. Because I saw it moons and moons ago. My boys tend to be on top of that stuff as soon as it happens, so I've already seen it a bunch.
I'm preparing for the future; that's why I have Star Wars references in House.
The fact that people still know Star Wars tells you all you need to know, really.
Now I have a hankering to go to YouTube and watch Hardware Wars...
PT:
Kids could re-enact Tybalt's swordfight with Benvolio, and replay the famous "I bite my thumb at thee!" scene. Biting your thumb was like flipping someone the bird, in medieval times.
Rusty: I bet you played Ashley, didn't you? He was a goody-goody.
Andrew: Even if you didn't want to, eventually you would incorporate "Star Wars" into House. That's the gravitational pull of Star Wars.
Liz:
What's going to be amazing is that it's going to continue into the next century, I bet. Even close seconds, like Star Trek, haven't come close to being referenced as often.
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