Why I Collect Star Wars
05.27.06By Collin David
Say what you will about filling your life with unique and rare and masterfully executed works of art, dusty first editions of Moby Dick, and that fine china that you bring out when your demanding older sister comes for a visit - give me hunks of mass-produced plastic any day. Especially if they’re in the shape of Momaw Nadon. Or better yet, metal bikini Princess Leia. They may not be worth anything in a tag sale, but that’s the last way that I’ll assign value to anything. I value the cultural and personal resonance of any item before I’ll value how much I could get for it from a greasy guy hanging out in my driveway, breathing all over my LPs and eyeing my cat nervously.
I have a deep appreciation for art and literature, and am a firm believer that underneath a pop culture-dominated world, these are the things that truly keep us advancing as the human race. Our dominant culture is, after all, this same art and literature made accessible to the masses through simplification and mass production and the exhortations of Oprah. The value of ‘art’ and ‘things that are mass produced’ aren’t mutually exclusive, though. I’m sure you’re familiar with Andy Warhol, but it’s worth investigating why he did what he did with the replication of his own artwork. Also, while you’re there, check out why Jackson Pollack splattered things. It’s really very interesting, and also culturally significant.
My mind has almost fully divorced the idea of a ‘figural toy’ from being only a plaything, instead replacing the definition with ‘representation of a pop culture (or subculture) icon’. We live in a society that is largely dominated by pop culture, from American Idol to Batman, so why deny these things? It’s better to accept them, but keep a careful eye on them. That’s why the nascent art movement of pop surrealism has blossomed : to incorporate pop culture into unique artworks and reveal the true value of both elements. The art might not be one hundred years old, but that doesn’t invalidate it as art.
There is art in toys. There’s sculpting, there’s engineering, and there’s coloration, but mostly I’m enamored with the sculpting. Somewhere, someone sculpted that tiny head into that 6” Skywalker, capturing the emotion and energy of the character as best they could. And then they made 10,000 copies of that so that everyone could see.
Not only that, but Star Wars in particular is a cinematic work (cinema being an art form) that redefined the genre of fantasy storytelling on-screen, and it’s important to recognize. Do you need to recognize it by buying action figures of Greedo and Yoda? Absolutely not. Hasbro, most of all, has notoriously overproduced the Star Wars line, revisiting the same figures and using the same sculpts time and time again, further preying upon our collector instincts by re-packaging figures into retro-styled black and white packages, giving us that thrill that we felt when we first saw the figures on store shelves in our youth. Hasbro CREATED the word ‘action figure’. They know how to drive it into the ground. Drive it with a ten-ton hammer in the shape of Chewbacca. I’ll be the last person to be a Star Wars completist, but I still can’t get enough Darth Vaders.
I don’t collect toys to recapture some lost vestige of my youth. For that, I play 8-bit Nintendo games and sometimes watch bootleg DVDs of Parker Lewis Can’t Lose. I never collected toys while I was growing up, and I don’t collect toys now as some way to make up for lost toy time. I went across the street to play with Ninja Turtles if I wanted to make little plastic guys flip around and kick each other in their respective faces, slide down the firepole in the Ghostbusters Firehouse playset, squeeze Superman’s legs together to make his fists flail wildly - and I had a great time doing it. When I was at home, I drew pictures and caught bugs. Now, I draw pictures and catch bugs and collect action figures. They don’t all make it onto shelves, and in fact many are still cruelly trapped in their packaging, waiting for a time when they’ll be set up in a grand display that has no value to anyone but myself. Sure, I could sell a truckload of them if I ever found myself needing a new kidney, but let’s hope that it doesn’t come to that.
Toys represent, and are deeply related to, things that are important to me. Not as ‘toys’, but as representations of greater things. The process of creation, the fact that a small idea can blossom into universally recognized cultural consciousness, and the value of a well-realized character in anything. No, one doesn’t need a little Darth Vader next to you to remind you of the power of the dark side, but you don’t need a crucifix over your bed to truly remind you of the story of Jesus either. It just helps to have something tangible and tactile to represent these things. And I don’t think it cheapens it in any way.
