Yoda and the Slacker Generation

Back in the summer of 1998, I saw the film The Last Days of Disco. Clever and just sentimental enough to be palpable, it starred Kate Beckinsale, Chloe Sevigny and the always underrated Chris Eigeman. Looking back on it now, it seems to have been part of a curious pre-millenial sub-genre of movies set in the late seventies and early eighties (200 Cigarettes also comes to mind but I'm sure there were others as well) that seemed to communicate that these previously derided decades may not have been so bad after all. The nineties' dogged pursuit of substance was noble enough but the corollary of it was a colossal bore of a decade. In 1989, Francis Fukuyama proposed the End of History; ten years later, we witnessed the End of Entertainment.

One of the film's characters - played by either Mackenzie Astin or Robert Sean Leonard - worked for some kind of environmental agency and one night told the group at the disco about the birth of the green movement. It seems that many Baby Boomers were scarred by the scene in Bambi where his mother is shot and this led to a generation of adults with a deep concern for the environment and animal rights. A nice theory.

Almost immediately this scene preyed on my mind and I began to search for some sort of Generation X equivalent. While plenty of people will make a case for E.T. being our generation's Bambi - and they're probably correct - its ability to leave an impression on our young minds was negligible compared to that of Star Wars. And who from that monumental trilogy was better at imparting some wisdom on us than Yoda? Take that Han Solo!

Do or do not, there is no try

(This line seems particularly strange now given how the whole story played out with the prequels. The portrayal of Yoda as arrogant and out of touch - and, pointedly, the fact that he didn't even kill anyone of importance - in Episodes I, II and III shows how the originals were almost as much about his redemption as it was Anakin Skywalker's. It's as if the line were a throwback to an earlier time that hadn't yet taken place. A redeemed Yoda, if anything, should have been encouraging diligence in his charges to avoid them becoming the lazy - and evil - bastards that Anakin became.)

It's since been my theory that my generation has rode with these words, even if it has done so subconsciously. Yoda's scolding of Luke Skywalker may well have been an attempt to motivate his young padawan but to me it was an invitation to slack, to not bother doing anything that ever proved difficult or challenging. Stick with what you're good at don't bother with anything else. Luke's subsequent failure to use the force to lift his ship out of the swamp only gave credence to his master's words: the whiny Jedi shouldn't have bothered trying.

So, if you've been basking a little too much in your own sloth, don't fret; that's the way we're supposed to be. It's not quite as noble as a dead doe inspiring environmentalism is it? But don't blame us: we're the lost generation.