attacked but left behind in the melee. He placed it carefully in the backseat of the car, where it writhed in the sunlight. Ian and I sobbed. My dad folded his arms and looked at the little thing with a sad frown. We tried to feed it some grass, some water. After a few hours, it seemed revived, and Dad told us to set it loose. We did. Within minutes of its disappearing into the tall grass, we heard its shriek.
A thunderstorm rolled in by dinnertime. No stars. That night, I am told, I sleepwalked. I flew from bedroom door to bedroom door, begging at each one: “Let me out! Let me out!”
R oom. Poems. Gash. Sleepwalking. Stars. Ice.
Dad.
One way in which my personal themes converge with my generation’s is in the primacy of
Star Wars
, which contains the archetypes of home, wounds, stars, ice, and fathers—dark and light. Since having my own children, I’ve thought a lot about
Star Wars
. It came out in 1977, and it is still a huge, huge deal to X. People my age take their
preschoolers
to see it
—three
-year-olds. Why are people my age so attached, in such a primal way, to it? Generation X people, includingme, rarely hesitate when asked to name the defining cultural and developmental turning point of their childhood. Like you have to ask:
Star Wars
, man! It was
huge
. One day, you were a total babe in the woods, a Piagetian changeling. After
Star Wars
, you entered Life. It’s not just that
Star Wars
changed the toy industry, play patterns, the movie and fast-food industries. It was the galvanizing experience of our generation in the way that the anti–Vietnam War movement was for Baby Boomers. But why? Why is it
still
such a huge deal? How did
Star Wars
become a major milestone in our children’s lives, too? *
I’ve come to think that the answer may be something like this: If our parents’ divorces were the wars we endured in private,
Star Wars
was the war that unified us culturally. Prompt a grown Gen-X guy, and it’s rarely long before he launches into a play-by-play recon of action scenes in
Star Wars
as though he were an actual veteran. Gen-X women look to Princess Leia as a Rosie the Riveter icon. But I believe that the narrative themes of
Star Wars
were what so deeply resonated with us. Luke Skywalker may have been conceived of by his creators as a prewar Clark Kent–type farm boy, but to 1970s children, he was one of us: the ultimate latchkey kid. He was on his own a lot; he had to handle a bunch of adult responsibilities so the household could function. Then:
kaboom!
His family was destroyed, charred beyond recognition. The mother and father figures were recast instantly, violently. The Oedipal mother figure was now a smart career woman on a serious mission, with no time for crybabies, who looked hot in a Linda Ronstadt kind of way (with the glistening, wine-colored lip gloss). Han Solo was Mom’s cool boyfriend, with his fast, junky-looking bachelor ride; Darth Vader, the terrifying half-human, half-robot Dad, hell-bent on either getting you on his side or destroying you.
Star Wars
might be the epic custody battle of all time.
In our generation’s own, real-life
Star Wars
, though, the burning down of the Skywalker family farm was the Important Family Announcement. Ask anyone whose parents divorced, and they’ll cite the Important Family Announcement as being one of the most traumatic experiences of their childhoods. The Important Family Announcement was, essentially, the Genesis story for Generation X’s narcissistic wound. It’s like this: The family, pre-divorce, was its own sort of Eden—an imperfect and quotidian one, but an Eden nevertheless in its gestalt of permanence and predictability. And then came the Important Family Announcement. It began with the parents sitting the kids down in the den or family room. The dad, hollowed-out and remote—with the mom nearby, red-eyed and quivering—explained that “your mother and I do not love each other anymore” and “can’t live
A thunderstorm rolled in by dinnertime. No stars. That night, I am told, I sleepwalked. I flew from bedroom door to bedroom door, begging at each one: “Let me out! Let me out!”
R oom. Poems. Gash. Sleepwalking. Stars. Ice.
Dad.
One way in which my personal themes converge with my generation’s is in the primacy of
Star Wars
, which contains the archetypes of home, wounds, stars, ice, and fathers—dark and light. Since having my own children, I’ve thought a lot about
Star Wars
. It came out in 1977, and it is still a huge, huge deal to X. People my age take their
preschoolers
to see it
—three
-year-olds. Why are people my age so attached, in such a primal way, to it? Generation X people, includingme, rarely hesitate when asked to name the defining cultural and developmental turning point of their childhood. Like you have to ask:
Star Wars
, man! It was
huge
. One day, you were a total babe in the woods, a Piagetian changeling. After
Star Wars
, you entered Life. It’s not just that
Star Wars
changed the toy industry, play patterns, the movie and fast-food industries. It was the galvanizing experience of our generation in the way that the anti–Vietnam War movement was for Baby Boomers. But why? Why is it
still
such a huge deal? How did
Star Wars
become a major milestone in our children’s lives, too? *
I’ve come to think that the answer may be something like this: If our parents’ divorces were the wars we endured in private,
Star Wars
was the war that unified us culturally. Prompt a grown Gen-X guy, and it’s rarely long before he launches into a play-by-play recon of action scenes in
Star Wars
as though he were an actual veteran. Gen-X women look to Princess Leia as a Rosie the Riveter icon. But I believe that the narrative themes of
Star Wars
were what so deeply resonated with us. Luke Skywalker may have been conceived of by his creators as a prewar Clark Kent–type farm boy, but to 1970s children, he was one of us: the ultimate latchkey kid. He was on his own a lot; he had to handle a bunch of adult responsibilities so the household could function. Then:
kaboom!
His family was destroyed, charred beyond recognition. The mother and father figures were recast instantly, violently. The Oedipal mother figure was now a smart career woman on a serious mission, with no time for crybabies, who looked hot in a Linda Ronstadt kind of way (with the glistening, wine-colored lip gloss). Han Solo was Mom’s cool boyfriend, with his fast, junky-looking bachelor ride; Darth Vader, the terrifying half-human, half-robot Dad, hell-bent on either getting you on his side or destroying you.
Star Wars
might be the epic custody battle of all time.
In our generation’s own, real-life
Star Wars
, though, the burning down of the Skywalker family farm was the Important Family Announcement. Ask anyone whose parents divorced, and they’ll cite the Important Family Announcement as being one of the most traumatic experiences of their childhoods. The Important Family Announcement was, essentially, the Genesis story for Generation X’s narcissistic wound. It’s like this: The family, pre-divorce, was its own sort of Eden—an imperfect and quotidian one, but an Eden nevertheless in its gestalt of permanence and predictability. And then came the Important Family Announcement. It began with the parents sitting the kids down in the den or family room. The dad, hollowed-out and remote—with the mom nearby, red-eyed and quivering—explained that “your mother and I do not love each other anymore” and “can’t live
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