REPOST: How To Enjoy Things

"You're focusing on the negative, Anakin. Be mindful of your thoughts."

[Note: I originally wrote this in May 2022, on the eve of Obi-Wan Kenobi being released. It was one of my first posts on Ahch-To Baby, so many of you have never read it. Somehow, it feels like a good time to put this sentiment back out into the world! Thanks for reading!]

Before I embark on writing quite a lot about Star Wars, I think it’s worth addressing what to expect from Ahch-To Baby and its author.

I love Star Wars. I get excited about these movies in a way that can make other people uncomfortable. I watch them too often. I think about them too much. Star Wars makes me happy. At minimum, I’m a fan.

The term fan has taken on an almost fun-house mirror quality over time. Fandom online has become synonymous with it’s opposite. There is a vocal subsection of any fan culture that believes loving something means having very high expectations for that thing. This is a fandom that, is, to be generous, exacting. This fandom responds to change with suspicion. When those tendencies are fed by algorithms that reinforce 'engagement’ (read: outrage) in our current conversational ecosystem, it can create a fan culture that is more about protest that pleasure. (I suspect that a lot of this is about fear of loss, too. I believe Yoda has a little something to say about that.)

You won’t find that here. On May 19th, 1999, I got off the criticism train and never got back on.

The Phantom Menace was released in theaters to a nearly instant cultural outcry. A pall fell over the subject of Star Wars as the “George Lucas ruined my childhood” sentiment kicked into high gear.

I don’t think younger fans can appreciate what it feels like to have a story frozen in amber from the early 1980s until almost the year 2000. That level of expectation caused much of the audience to feel crushed when they actually saw the movie. My brain is wired differently. I had waited 16 years for the movie to come out… and so I felt even more invested in feeling relieved that it existed.

Star Wars had given me so much happiness. Now there was more of it. New characters, new haircuts, new lightsabers, new designs, and something old-fashioned in the newness - a Star Wars specialty. So, I decided to be generous with the thing I loved and the people who made it. I decided to see the good in it, and to invest in the intentions of the filmmakers. I saw that movies 16 times in the theater alone. Because acceptance is the cornerstone of any lasting relationship.

I met my oldest friend when we were six years old. Our first words to each other were “I’m Luke Skywalker!” “I’m Darth Vader!” We lived next door to each other as kids in the New Jersey suburbs.

This friend has gone through many phases in his life. He was into skateboarding, he went through a goth phase, he dressed like Oscar Wilde, he was an illustrator, a brother, a son, a father, a husband. If you met him once when he was fifteen and met him again when he was twenty five? You’d think he’d changed quite a lot.

But if you were lucky enough to know him through all the changes, like I have, you’d see, now, in his forties, living in Santa Monica with his beautiful wife and amazing daughter, he hasn’t changed at all. He’s the same kid with less hair and nicer clothes.

That’s Star Wars to me. It’s gone through phases and I accept it for all of them. It’s the same as it’s always been. It’s given me archetypes and it’s given me lunchboxes. I love it for its flaws and digressions, for its weirdness and its wonderfulness, for the theme song to the Ewok Adventures and the theme to The Mandalorian, to pixels of Geonosis and the sands of Tunisia. I love Star Wars for it’s peculiarities and contradictions, not in spite of them.

There are a few habits of mind I like to cultivate in myself in order to keep myself firmly on the light side of the Force, so to speak, and commit to the radical act of enjoying the things that I like.

First, I assume good faith.

I once watched a documentary about of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit Trilogy. One scene, where Bilbo is navigating Smaug’s treasure hoard, required hours of shooting, hundreds of individually designed coins, some camera ready, some not. Every take they had to reset this heap of fake coins as Martin Freeman kept tripping his way through this massive pile of Styrofoam and plastic. It was tedious work made by people who wanted to get the scene right. For us. For Tolkien fans. For an audience who responded to this same cinematic The Hobbit Trilogy with deep sentiments like “it was very long.”

I try to keep that in mind. The people who make these things, actors, writers, directors, sound engineers, editors, producers, are trying to make something for us. No one is trying to upset the audience. It’s the opposite.

Second, I remind myself that criticism is a profession.

There are professional critics. Most critics I know are constantly battling having their pleasure eroded by the grind. I am not paid to do that kind of work, and no one has offered to pay me to do that kind of work. I do not have to wear myself down, or ruin things for myself, by focusing on flaws. It’s literally one less job I have to do.

Third, I try to avoid contributing to opinion pollution.

Just like too much light makes the night sky invisible and too many cars make it hard to hear birds singing, scads of reflexive, thoughtless comments make real conversation impossible. The reason we all do this is, of course, it’s the business model of the ad-based and data-based businesses that make up the YouTubes or Twitters. If a tweet gets lots of responses, that means it has high engagement and that is, somehow, good. Even if every one of those responses is the same thought repeated over and over by bots or strangers, who can really tell?

One might respond to the very notion of opinion pollution with “I have the right to have my say” or “That’s free speech.”

I think two things about that. One is that, just like the 2nd Amendment did not anticipate the machine gun, the 1st Amendment did not anticipate social media. We are in a world were speech is cheap, anonymous and feels consequence free (it isn’t). That’s a miracle of technology but it comes with collective responsibility we too often shirk.

The second is that just because something is permitted doesn’t mean it’s a contribution. I could, for example, walk up to someone on the street and tell them I think their shoes are ugly. I wouldn’t go to jail for it. But should I?

I think the collective illusion is that one comment or post doesn’t make much difference in the vast landscape of speech, but speaking in the environment we have now is like voting. One vote is statistically insignificant, but together our votes add up to the society in which we live.

I got into a little Facebook discussion (I know, I know) with someone who felt compelled to defend Kelly Marie Tran by saying that he hated her character but likes her as a person. I noted that this was like telling a painter you liked her personally but not her art. I asked him why he felt compelled to even say something like that. His defense was that the purpose of art is public perception. That it is made so that we can all collectively respond to it and discuss it.

I cannot say this loudly enough: that is not why artists make art. That’s not why people tell stories. That is mistaking the purpose of art with the purpose of Facebook.

I’m a playwright. I do not write plays to provide grist for the content mill and give you stuff to talk about at parties. I write them to make an audience feel something and think about something. That’s it, really. If you’re moved by those thoughts and feelings to talk about them, that’s terrific. But if you don’t, then that doesn’t negate the art at all.

Think of it this way: if you are living in a cave in the middle of a mountain range with no access to another living soul, and you read a really good book? You have had a complete experience. The book doesn’t need you to tell anyone else how you felt. The book’s job is done on the last page. So is yours.

This might feel ironic coming from a guy who is about to write reams and reams about Star Wars, but my point is, conversation is not compulsory. It’s opt-in and also, blissfully, opt-out. If you want to hear what I think, I’m so glad you’re here. If you don’t, don’t worry, I am not going to just find any open window and shout out of it.

Finally, I remember what I grew up with.

As I write this, I am 46 years old. Star Wars television was two very odd Ewok Adventures and some weird cartoons. Superheroes on screen were body builders painted green. Heir to the Empire didn’t even come out until 1991, eight years after Return of the Jedi. When Batman came out and he was in a full on rubber suit in 1989 it blew our minds. Folks, the idea of something that looks like The Mandalorian coming out on television? Where it costs me like $10 a month to see it? Is still wild to me. I once heard a complaint that the episodes weren’t a full hour and I thought "Are you crazy? I can’t believe they made one of these!” I never want to get cynical about how lucky I am.

I know not everyone has my experience but it is my experience. So that informs so much of how I approach new Star Wars, old Star Wars, and everything in between.

I know this is quite a lot to say about just basically keeping it positive on Ahch-To Baby, but in this day and age, where mass communication is as common as the cold, I think it’s important to examine how and why we communicate.

Words have power. I’ve found that being intentional with my language and thinking has helped me enjoy things. And really, isn’t that what a fan should hope to do? Enjoy?

I hope to bring that spirit to this corner of the galaxy.

Thanks for indulging me!

Tomorrow, Obi-Wan Kenobi returns! See you then!