The first movie I saw in a theater was Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977). I was four years old and my father had learned about the space opera from friends in Glen Echo, Maryland. It was several months after the movie’s opening day and we attended a matinee when our money would be most efficient.
My Dad conducted himself with utmost seriousness. We laid out formal clothing—leather boots, pleated pants, and button-up shirt with wide lapel for him, and a clean t-shirt with corduroy pants and stiff brown shoes for me. We showered and combed our hair, and as we dressed a Star Wars trailer appeared on the TV.
“That’s for us,” my Dad said, both apprehensive and excited.
He was apprehensive because he very much wanted to go to the movies, that quaff of mainstream culture he’d become isolated from as a stay-at-home parent, although I might be terrified and he didn’t want to deal with nightmares or other baggage that could otherwise avoid. But he was equally excited because his friends had impressed upon him the visionary nature of special effects in Star Wars, the space travel and fantasy creatures, the appearance of light sabers. In his circle it was the movie to see, groundbreaking, and the several hours leading up to, “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,” made my Dad into a boy again.
Our journey to the theater was unremarkable. I don’t remember buying tickets or whether there were other people in the auditorium. I do know that my formal clothing felt unnatural and that the bucket seat was too big. Yet the overall sense of sitting in the dark, waiting, was of taking a journey into unknown territory.
Illiterate as I was I couldn’t read the opening scrawl, except to know it was another instance of adult context painting the way for childhood curiosity. There was music, smoke, and laser fire, panic, and the adventure began in earnest when a giant space ship, a Star Destroyer, swallowed up a much smaller vehicle.
Most of what followed from that original screening has been replaced in my memory by the dozens of times I’ve since seen Star Wars, let alone the sequels and spin-offs, and ancillary markets that have helped me experience Star Wars as a keystone of my cultural well-spring. Which is to say I don’t remember many fixed details of that afternoon except I was deathly afraid of Darth Vader (voiced by James Earl Jones and acted by David Prowse).
The journey home was unremarkable. I doubt we talked much about what parts of the movie we would explain to my Mom when she got home from work. I’m sure I didn’t wear a seatbelt and that I sat next to my Dad in the front seat of our 1965 Pontiac GTO. I wish I could report naming a toy after C-3PO (Anthony Daniels), or that I fell in love with Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), or that I aspired to be a pilot.
The truth is that my first movie experience entertained and terrified me, but it also taught me the rules of a secular communion. I was moved from ordinary life, uniformed, and taught a code of behavior. My Dad helped me observe a schedule, discipline my bladder, and remain quiet, all to partake in a social event that required absolute attention.
Star Wars is therefore important to me, the product of an agnostic household, because it allowed for the demonstration of sacred spaces with accompanying rituals performed inside them. In this way much of my childhood was consumed with rehashing scenes from Star Wars and struggling to understand the special effects that made it believable since that much illusion is like making contact with the mysteries of God.
–June 15, 2012
