Anghus Houvouras on Force Friday…
The minute I heard the words “Force Friday”, I knew we were in trouble. When I say ‘we’, I mean ‘society’.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens is arriving in theaters this holiday season, and unlike the first film you will not have to wait months to get your hands on the toys. They’re already available at a retailer near you, or at least they were for the 10 minutes or so they were available before rabid fans scooped them up off the shelves like canned food in the hours before a hurricane hits.
The whole idea of ‘Force Friday’ is one of those brilliant marketing strategies developed by Mega-Corporations who long ago figured out that fandom is bereft of logic or reason. Make a date, give it a catchy name, and make sure to have plenty of countdown timers going to let fans know exactly how long it will be before they can spend their hard-earned cash on yet another Chewbacca figure.
“But this one comes with SPACE ARMOR” they declare!
I struggled with the idea of ‘Force Friday’ since I first heard the name, which sounded more like an event where Bill Cosby would be asked to be the keynote speaker than a licensing bonanza. I harkened back to 1999 when The Phantom Menace loomed on the horizon and everyone rushed out like ninnies to get their hands on Darth Maul figures leaving racks of Wattos and Princess Amidala dangling. I remember watching seemingly sane people grabbing up figures and playsets with no earthly idea what they were for or how they factored into the story.
“Look, it’s Qui Gon Jinn and a giant fish!” they said, scraping boxes into their cart, unaware that at no point in the movie does Qui Gon actually fight a fish.
I’m not going to waste words on the current state of geek culture and our ridiculous fascination with chachkis. I would have been just fine if Force Friday had come and gone. The lines, the excitement, the crass materialism. All of it seems fairly typical. But then, geek culture started to rear its ugly head. High demand and limited supply meant not everyone could get what they wanted. If you wanted a John Boyega action figure, you were good to go. Apparently they have eight and a half million of those. But if you wanted Captain Phasma or Kylo Ren, you were Sith out of luck. And thanks to the internet, we knew were made aware of this tragedy in real-time.
If you are older than 12 and you’re complaining about not getting Star Wars toys on Force Friday, go ahead and place your balls in a jar. Seriously. If you are genuinely impacted by not being able to get your hand on new Star Wars toys, you have ceded your right to call yourself an adult. I can feel Robert Mitchum spinning in his grave every time a geek douche declares “THERE WAS NO KYLO REN!!!!” Websites like io9 declared: ‘Force Friday was handled terribly’
Yikes. Unless Kinja is breaking some serious child labor laws, I would assume that Germain Lussier is an adult with the ability to prioritize. There’s so many ways that complaining about Star Wars toys (or lack thereof) makes you look like a douche. Where do we begin? First off, you’re a grown person bitching about toys. Second, these are toys made by slave labor in third world countries. You’re whining about a piece of plastic molded by an eight year old who won’t even make enough in a month to purchase that toy at list price.
When people started talking about ‘the geeks taking over’, this was the end result: a generation of whiny pussies crying over toys. A generation of men whose only goal is to revert themselves to a childlike state at any cost. Grown men raging over their inability to get their hands on new Star Wars toys on the first day of release. A crippling sense of personal entitlement which is not only embarrassing, but kind of scary. It’s even worse when you realize they are parents and they are passing along this scary level of entitlement to their children.
“Target didn’t have the Star Wars toys we wanted on day one… LETS GO BITCH ABOUT IT ONLINE”
These poor, wretched souls who will be unable to experience joy until they can wrap their hands around a 12 inch talking Kylo Ren, now forced to scour the wastelands of eBay while their inner child weeps. I’m not going to make fun of you for wanting to buy toys, but I’ll make fun of your for complaining about your scary entitlement.
The only thing scarier is that we have three and a half months until the film actually comes out.
Anghus Houvouras is a North Carolina based writer and filmmaker and the co-host of Across the Pondcast. Follow him on Twitter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng&v=qvTY7eXXIMg
Originally published September 6, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
