"Successful, mature men do not play computer games, attend 'cons,' and get excited about overrated science fiction movies from the 1970s...The extension of adolescence throughout the West is a serious matter. The never-ending obsession with Star Wars is but a symptom of this arrested development."
It's fun sometimes to talk about the Star Wars universe as if it matters, or even, as if it's real. It's fun to talk about how I think Palpatine really was justified in declaring martial law (and as we all know, the Jedi totally were planning on taking over!) and to get your fan-friends faux-wound-up when you say that the Empire would have been fine if it hadn't been for the rebel scum and was better off without those meddling Jedi.
But the thing is, it's a game. It's goofing off.
Once you've started to actually care about it, and you're over, say, 10, it's probably a good sign you've got a maturity problem.
Yesterday, I had the great pleasure of spending a few hours in Rome with one of England's most venerable and sensible grown-ups. He's a medical doctor and a physician, the father of 5 and grandfather of 13. He watched the entire Catastrophe of the 60s, 70s and 80s settle like a poison cloud over the world. He asked me and my also-unmarried friend what happened to put us off. The first thing she said was that it is very, very difficult to meet men who are grown-ups, who are even interested in living like adult men, with jobs and who are keen to take on responsibility for a family.
I added that this was only one half. There are very few people of our generation and below who are able to leave off trying to recreate the childhood they feel they never had. They are looking for fathers and mothers to look after them, to replace the ones they missed having. Which means they are not interested in becoming those parents for someone else.
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Also, Alec Guinness hated Star Wars, but he took the job anyway. Why? Both for the same reason: he was a grownup, and its a characteristic of grown-ups that they take crappy jobs for the money.
Alec Guinness being a grown-up.
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