The Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge got me to thinking about Ghyslain "Star Wars Kid" Raza, whose quiet, geeky life became a media hell in 2003 when some school bullies digitized and uploaded to Kazaa an old video of him doing Darth Maul moves with a golf-ball retreiver. Raza's innocent, bumbling enthusiasm – he spins and parries and nearly falls down with glee in take after take – hit a nerve with audiences, and within a week it had already been downloaded over 1 million times. Though Raza later claimed that he felt persecuted by the attention he got, most of his fans enjoyed the video out of a sense of sheepish, joyful emphathy with the teen. Who among us hasn't, on occasion, wielded a broom handle or stick as if it were a lightsaber? And who hasn't taped herself doing something dorky and regrettable on video?
Raza became a kind of culture hero, a nerd whose private fight-dance was celebrated all over the Web and converted into the stuff of legend. Recall the magic below the fold . . .
Geeks quickly rallied to make Raza's fantasy more real, creatinghundreds of mashup versions of the original tape that included specialeffects, music, and clips from The Matrix and several videogames. (You can see one of the early mashups above.) Subculture-loving bloggers like Andy "Waxy"
Baio championed Raza, and raised almost $5,000 in a campaign to buy thekid a 30 GB iPod and some other gadgets for his troubles.
Over the next few years, the "Star Wars Kid" meme moved beyond theconfines of the Web, referenced in several hipster TV shows including Veronica Mars and Arrested Development. It was also the inspiration for a contest on The Colbert Report, in which fans were invited to spruce up a video of Colbert waving a broomstick around.
Unlike other Web memes, such the mashups of Snakes on a Plane or All Your Base Are Belong to Us,
the Star Wars Kid meme had an unfortunate victim: Raza. The FrenchCanadian teen took no pleasure in his oddball fame, and claimed that hesuffered intense psychological trauma at school and in public whenpeople yelled "Star Wars Kid!" at him. In late 2003, his family suedthe families of 4 boys whom they claimed were responsible for releasingthe video on Kazaa. The suit was settled out of court in 2006, to thetune of several hundred thousand bucks. The Viral Factory estimates that the Star Wars Kidvideo has been downloaded over 900 million times to date.
Raza has completely disappeared from the public eye, and this makesme sad in more ways than one. 2006 was the year video memes wentmainstream, from Brookers' TV deal to LonelyGirl15's commercialsuccess. One of the reasons people are drawn to YouTube stars is thatthey exude a tiny whiff of authenticity, as if they were outsiderartists. And yet Brookers – whose dance moves in her Numa Numa mashupwere far more retarded than Raza's saber-waving – got a major TV deal mostlybecause she's a hot babe. LonelyGirl was a marketing ploy from thestart. As usual, the true outsiders like Raza wind up feeling screwed over. Perhaps things would have been different if Raza had had the wherewithal to embrace his fame – if he'd been able to view the mashups as tributes rather than potshots.
The fact is that people weren't drawn to Raza just because he lookeddorky. Those 900 million downloads can't be attributed to something as simple as ridicule. I
think he captured something fundamental to human nature, even ifunconsciously, in his secret video that rocked the internet. With hisawkward moves and adolescent body, he reminded us of what it's like to pretend to be something more magnificent than what we are. He showed us the gallantry and hopefulness that lurks in the heart of every social misfit. "One day," the Star Wars Kid promises, "I will be more than the chubby boy who gets bullied at school. I will fight for great justice my light saber!"
It is the refrain that plays in every young nerd's imagination. Here's to Raza's video, for making us remember that beauty is already inside the geek.
