We Don't Spend Enough Time Talking About the Jedi Living Among Us
There's always a bigger nerd
This is how old I am: I used to go to my girlfriend’s house to use the internet.
We didn’t have it at home. This was the mid-90s and the internet wasn’t yet at the center of all things. This was before Reddit, Google, YouTube. Before any website you’ve probably heard of. The experience of going online at that time was like wandering the streets of an unfamiliar city. Being lost is an adventure in itself.
Surfing the web was 90% randomly discovering websites that catered to your tastes, and then continually returning to them. I wrote URLs down in a notebook. Actual pen and paper.
At the advent of the digital age, everything was still largely asynchronous. Sites were like magazines—you checked in every week or two to see the latest and then went on with your life, which had nothing to do with the internet.
For me, the draw of the early internet—beyond the novelty—was the Star Wars centric user sites. There were dozens of them—dozens!—but it somehow felt like a sum greater than its separate parts. This was years before The Phantom Menace, before even the Special Editions. The pages—everything was a page, nothing a post—delved into obscure bits from the movies or speculated about the future of the saga.
It was thrilling to discover there were other people just as Star Wars obsessed as me.
When I was in college in the late 90s, I befriended a group of people online who also loved Star Wars and D&D, and very much wanted to mix the two together. I ran an ongoing game of Star Wars roleplaying, via this new communication medium called email. The game lasted about 4 years. I learned HTML so I could create a webpage for the game.
That whole experience was one of the nerdiest things I’ve ever done. Depending on where you stand on such things, you’re either nodding in agreement or thinking, that’s nothing—hold my beer. There’s always a Rubicon when it comes to this sort of thing; fandom is a long road with many off-ramps. For some people, even just watching Star Wars is a bridge too far.
I confidently identify as Star Wars Nerd. I’ve bought the toys. Played the games. Worn the clothing. Never been to a Star Wars convention, or any other, largely because the idea of being surrounded by hundreds—thousands?—of people I don’t know gives me the “new kid at school” PTSD sweats. I will swing a lightsaber and do Palpatine’s voice, but you won’t catch me in cosplay or LARPing. Just not my bag. Even so, if Star Wars nerdom was somehow scored, I’d place myself in the 90th percentile.
However, new information has come to light that makes me question everything.
I recently watched American Jedi, a documentary about fans who treat Jedi as their religion, in real life, for real. The film follows three people on a path toward Jedi knighthood—I kid you not—and I’ll be honest.. I was prepared to laugh at these people.
I think that was actually partly why I watched it in the first place. Not to feel better about my own nerd credentials—I’m old enough not to care what anyone thinks of my obsessions—but because the idea of treating Star Wars’s frequently retrofit canon as something sacred was legitimately mind-boggling. (Did this religious movement have a reformation after the Prequels expanded and changed the rules?)
I absolutely see the allure of treating a Jedi’s calm passivity as a guiding principle for one’s life. Who wouldn’t want to have a better handle on their anger? Or an excuse to just walk around in Jedi robes? But as a religious movement? Hmmm. That seems crazy.
And yet. I didn’t actually laugh at these people.
Still, there’s no way to watch American Jedi without thinking, “Wow—these are the nerdiest people I’ve ever seen in my entire life.” I don’t mean that as a value judgement. I just don’t know what else you say about someone who has so fully embraced the fictional and made it real for themselves. It feels intentionally self-delusional. None of them have Jedi powers—wouldn’t that be something—and yet they practice the Jedi faith with a clear-eyed optimism. These are people who just want to better themselves.
There’s no great difference between Jedi adherents and Tony Robbins acolytes. Of the two, I’d rather be a Jedi.