From the Bookshelf: The Star Wars Vault (cheap edition)

[krpalmer]

Yesterday, there was a book fair at work connected with our annual charity campaign. I had a sort of "there probably won't be anything interesting at it and it might be kind of pricy anyway" feeling about it, but I went anyway just to take a look... and there, on one of the racks, I spotted copies of "The Star Wars Vault." I had been interested hearing about the book, but it had always seemed too expensive to me no matter what I would get for the price... and then I happened to get close enough to see the sticker. "Marked down from seventy to thirty-two dollars? Sold!" It was only rather later, as I reassured myself piece by piece that all the inserts were still in a book sold without shrink wrapping, that I realised there was no sign there had ever been CDs in it, no promise of them on the cover. (There was, though, still a quote from one of the "Don't be afraid" radio ads for Star Wars on the back cover...) It seems I bought myself a "cheap edition," maybe one destined to be sold at special travelling book fairs, and perhaps I'm only to be pitied for that... but having once more surrendered a totality of content for a subset of it for less money, I found myself interested anyway in the reproductions tucked and taped and stuck into the book, each helpfully marked "reproduction" in small letters just in case someone decides to try and recoup their investment by selling the book off a piece at a time. The thick pages required to hold all of those inserts may play a role in the book's binding feeling somewhat "rickety" to me, but it's still an impressive package. One thing I did wonder was if the rub-on and iron-on transfers and stickers in the book actually "worked," and another thing I wondered was if anyone would ever dare to try them; I suppose it was reassuring in an odd way to see the sprocket holes weren't actually punched in the replica filmstrip. One of the most oddly intriguing inserts for me was one connected to the radio plays, giving a recipe for a Yoda-inspired stew, with the first ingredient lamb... I immediately thought that I'd always seen Yoda as a vegetarian, and then started wondering if that's somehow "too obvious," if the "unifying Force" can be interpreted to let a Jedi be an omnivore... and then I wondered just what the analogue for lamb is on Dagobah. Other interesting inserts included the survey handed out to the preview audience for Star Wars and a poster concept helping to illustrate how 20th Century Fox was struggling to promote that movie...

Beyond the inserts and the assorted pictures in the book, I did read the text... but had to wonder if it was casually repeating the usual, slightly annoying fan "consensus," playing up The Empire Strikes Back as the unique pinnacle of the Star Wars experience, indulging in some Ewok-chiding, and blandly saying that The Phantom Menace was "the kids' movie." (It did, though, happen to show the quaintly old-fashioned opinion that the "prequel trilogy" showed "steady improvement," instead of just finding a reason to condemn TPM and Attack of the Clones in the same breath...) I also got a slightly odd feeling to see the book's little section on the Expanded Universe talk approvingly of how popular Mara Jade was, no matter that it was only a two-page spread... no doubt it's an artifact of reading all three "Thrawn trilogy" books yet having had it fly right over my youthful head that Mara was of course being presented as someone destined to be with Luke, then getting annoyed with seeing that point being made over and over again online. I suppose I can wonder if the book is specifically pitched straight to those who were children in 1977. On the other hand, the book did source a disparaging quote on a T-shirt I knew about George Lucas himself once having worn on location to a "New Yorker" article from 1997 I remember having read myself, and it was amusing to read about the "George Lucas' Super Live Adventure" from Japan in the early 1990s. (The book also showed an ad from Japan featuring George Lucas himself among various costumed characters in a field, under the enigmatic title "Maclord Movie," which is even more bizarre than a picture of Darth Vader in a "Darth Vadar Lives" T-shirt.) Anyone can smirk at the Holiday Special, but somehow it feels a little more "unique" to know about peculiar attempts at a live stage show...

Comments

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

I have few criticisms of Star Wars Vault and you pretty much named most of them! I sort of wish they'd stayed away from some things and was a bit more careful with the political stuff.

By the way, and this is a nitpick, they did not correctly credit the source of that quote on Lucas's t-shirt. It did appear in the New Yorker in 1997 but it was in turn quoted from a 1977 review of ANH by the late film critic, John Simon.

Overall though, it's a great book.

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

I may have been better able to shrug off the "political" section, even imagining the authors thinking "We've got the old cartoons, we've got the new cartoons, we've got the left-wing magazine covers, we've got the right-wing magazine covers--we've covered all the bases!" However, I suppose my tradeoff for that is being more suspicious and agitated about the seeming "bland reportage of groupthink."

I do recall you giving the original sourcing of that T-shirt quote before. Perhaps I'll be able to read that article again one day...