- Post
- #470354
- Topic
- Adventures in Raising the Next Generation of Original Star Wars Fans
- Link
- https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/470354/action/topic#470354
- Time
1. My kids love the OT. They dress-up, they role play. They have a good time being Star Wars fans. Of course, this is partly due to my encouragement. But as the letter to the Wired editor points out (and zombie's response), it's not something you can force on your kids. I don't just mean that you shouldn't, but that you couldn't if you tried. My kids already enjoy Star Wars.
1a. While I understand the argument that there is a generation between my kids and me... And that beyond that, they have their own personal interests and tastes because they are, in fact, separate people... I don't assume that the younger generation, as a rule, will have such a sharp disinterest in Star Wars (or Deep Purple) simply due to the passing of time. From a lot of the young kids I know through my own children, it's not even really that true. I happen to know a lot of Beatles fans who are under 5. And plenty more who are between 5 and 10, and so on. My kids love Weezer, and they love the Beatles. We play a variety of music in the car and at home, and for some reason they know the words to the songs by those bands better than the rest. Well... not better than Glee Soundtrack Vol. 1, but better than the rest of the rest. Certain things are timeless. I think we can agree that the Beatles have proven timeless. Other bands of their era have been forgotten for the reasons that zombie describes... but the timeless ones live on. I think, for the most part, that the OT is also timeless.
2. They're young kids. There's time for the PT later, if they want. (Your father Uncle George wanted you to have this, but your uncle father wouldn't allow it until you were old enough.) It is my personal opinion that the awesomeness that is Star Wars is diluted through association with the PT. Some of you younger kids that liked the PT once, and either still do or grew out of it, have no frame of reference for what I'm talking about since you don't know a Star Wars without that taint. As Boost said over in the "missing out" thread, the biggest changes to Star Wars (and I'm paraphrasing here) aren't the changes to the individual frames and audio waves, but to the context of them. Sure, it's not 1977 anymore, and that's part of it. But I think the inmovie context of the Prequels is far more damaging to the experience than the extramovie context of 30+ years.
3. My oldest son knows the Prequels exist. He could watch them at a friend's house if he chose to. Or frankly anytime at home, unless he directly asked me first. But he trusts me (apparently) for the moment that it's ultimately not in his best interest to sully his imagination with the smut.
4. I know a lot of you don't have your own kids, but think you already know how you would parent my kids. Let me just say that it's a lot different than I thought it would before having the little brats. More wonderful, and more disappointing than I could imagine.
5. RE: The Wired letter. I find the 2004 DVDs almost unwatchable upon two fronts: 1. The changes really bug me and pull me out of the fantasy. 2. There's something, I think, subconciously different as well. Part of what has always made Star Wars so appealing was the verisimilitude. While George thought that packing the frame with floating camera droids and fighting robots and cutesy mice enhanced one's sense of reality, I think that we respond negatively to those things on an emotional level. It wouldn't surprise me that kids would be bored of the new "kiddie friendly" first hour of Star Wars. Put the kids down in front of the 1977 version, or even Adywan's Revisited, and it wouldn't surprise me if they had a totally different reaction.
5. Did twooffour call me a nerd and zombie call me obsessive? Ouch! That really hurts when other obsessive nerds call you that!
