This article has nothing to do with video games, and for that, please forgive me. i was enrolled in a bona fide University at one point in my life working toward a degree in Cultural Studies before Opportunity knocked and suggest i actually do something with my life instead. Here’s what my ramblings could have looked like if i had stuck with Cultural Studies.

These are two very important pop culture observations: one about how and why Star Wars was ruined, and the other about werewolves and vampires. First up, Star Wars.

“Menace” is Right

At the recommendation of one member of Get Set Games (it doesn’t matter which one – i can’t tell those guys apart cuz i’m white), i watched a seven-part YouTube review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. i hated the movie when it came out, and all of my prejudices came bubbling to the surface when i watched this damning video review. If you can’t afford the 70 minutes (!!), watch the segment on character beginning at 6:41:

To ruin the ending for you, the review concludes that adversity – tight budgets, time constraints, creative differences, etc – help an artist to produce excellent work, while an artist like Lucas working carte blanche with no constraints will produce The Phantom Menace.

My comment is about the nail in the coffin during that flick – the revelation that the Force, an “energy field created by all living things” which “surrounds us, penetrates us and binds the the galaxy together”, is actually owed to certain living things … namely midi-chlorians, which are apparently some sort of bacteria that give people magical powers. The concept of midi-chlorians dashed all hope that the newest Star Wars movies were going to be good, and i turned off my brain for the rest of the movie and crawled back into that special place i inhabited as a young Star Wars enthusiast – you know, back when things didn’t completely suck.

So here’s my outrageous claim: more than any other element in that awful movie, midi-chlorians ruined Star Wars. And midi-chlorians were written into Star Wars lore because present-day audiences don’t go to church.

The Hell You Say

Western audiences, like it or not, hail from the Christian tradition – mainly Protestant and Catholic branches. The Force has more in common with Zen Buddhism than Christianity, but sci-fi audiences of the 70’s and 80’s, being much more recently connected with the church, were more likely to accept a supernatural explanation of certain concepts in the Star Wars mythology. Now that we have stores open for business on Sunday (this was not done when i was a boy), and the majority of moviegoers are Godless heathens (Transformers tops the box office!), we need a suitably scientific justification for the Jedis’ magic powers.

Midi-chlorians are like super-powered white blood cells. They’re even described by the characters in The Phantom Menace as having a “count”. Instead of “the Force is strong in this one,” it’s “this guy has a high midi-chlorian count. i recommend professional development seminars on Dagobah.”

Whether or not spirituality-rejecting, science-loving existentialist modern-day moviegoers would have gone on accepting the original concept of the Force is immaterial. Lucas pro-actively anticipated the need to update his lore. And when he did, my Universe (and the tiny bacteria holding it together) came crashing down.

Werewolves, Vampires, and 1970’s Porno

On to werewolves, which i am not nearly as passionate about, so i mention this only as a triviality. With the New Moon saga heading into lycanthrope territory and Universal dusting off its Wolfman franchise after pocketing some coin with The Mummy, i’ve heard more than one entertainment reporter ask “are werewolves the new vampires???” Just like that. With the same obnoxious emphasis and everything.

i’m here to tell you that no, werewolves are NOT the new vampires, and here’s why: because ladies started shaving their public regions in girly magazines in the 80’s.

Manscape my Meat

We Westerners live in a sanitized society. Our pooping, puking and dying is largely kept out of sight. We don’t kill our own food – we buy clinically-packaged cuts of meat in white styrofoam trays that is as far removed from any semblance of a dead animal as we can muster. i was in my early teens before i realized that meat was dead animal muscle tissue (slow-witted, i know), and once when i was out to dinner, my friend sent his order of chicken wings back because one or two wings still had tufts of feathers on them. It thoroughly repulsed us.

Our sex is sanitized, too. Men aren’t allowed to have hair on the most likely spots on their bodies, and women, following the cue of men’s magazines, shave their pubic triangles down to velcro-like landing strips. And porn stars are even more extreme: every inch shaved, waxed and smoothed so that they resemble living plastic Barbie dolls.

That’s why vampires are so super-sexy. We like our vampires sanitized, like our porn – our bloodsuckers are pale, smooth, and carefully preened. Male vampires’ chests are hairless, because they’re largely portrayed by young men.

Werewolves, conversely, are like a bad 70’s skin mag where the ladies don’t “clean” themselves up. Hair everywhere. It’s revolting. And they’re all animalistic – grunting, panting, howling, and ripping people to shreds. Vampires go in for a clean kill, with two sylized and sanitary rivulets of blood that stream perfectly down a victim’s alabaster neck. Werewolves? Hell – werewolves will tear your head off its shoulders and spill your intestines out your bellybutton. They’re unrefined, boorish, and downright gross.

Werewolves don’t wear heirloom cameo pendants and crushed velvet vests. Their clothes are all ripped and junk. That was fashionable for, like – what? Four months in the 1980’s? Vampires are timeless, while werewolves are all Teen Wolf. The 80’s again, when women still had hairy genitalia.

In Conclusion

So kids, if you’re stuck on the “werewolves vs. vampires in the context of pornograhy” question on your GED test, here’s the right answer:

vampire is to Jenna Jameson as werewolf is to OUI Magazine circa 1971

With brilliant and useful insights like these, it’s a shame i never finished University.

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