Ghyslain Raza, known on the internet as the Star Wars Kid, discusses the harassment he endured as a result of the video of him that went viral in the 2000s. Following a 26-year hiatus, a galaxy far, far away returned to the big screen in 1999 with Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. George Lucas went on to make Attack of the Clones (2003) and Revenge of the Sith (2005), cementing Star Wars' ever-evolving place in pop culture's lexicon.
In 2003, 14-year-old Ghyslain Raza was working with a video camera in his high school class and filmed one of the earliest viral videos, which sees him use a golf ball retriever to imitate Darth Maul’s double-sided lightsaber from Episode I. After classmates got ahold of the footage and uploaded it to the Internet, the “Star Wars Kid” was born and changed online pop culture forever. The video was viewed hundreds of millions of times, leading to Raza being joked about via a variety of publications/outlets and parodied on shows like Arrested Development, South Park, and The Colbert Report. Years later, Raza is finally speaking publicly about the harassment he faced and the details of the legal suit against his classmates and the media.
In a recent interview with CTV News, the now 34-year-old Raza discussed being the subject of Mathieu Fournier’s documentary Star Wars Kid: The Rise of Digital Shadow. The film dives into the viral video as well as topics including privacy and the age of social media. As Raza puts it, “there is an element of surrealism in all of this, I used to watch Arrested Development before it became a plot point in the storyline. When you see this come up on screen and it's clearly about you and you didn't know it would happen, it's surreal." He goes on to say:
"I would not have been interested in a documentary strictly focused on what happened to me or take a melodramatic tone. To go beyond the story, to go into reflection, to make something useful out of it, that's what convinced me that it would be a good project to be a part of."
Fournier and Jonathan Trudel initially approached Raza about using the Star Wars Kid’s story to reflect upon how the masses have come to interact with social media to give meaning to their existence, which often leads to harmful images and disorientating narratives. The documentary examines how the Star Wars Kid become the first viral video and the effect that had on Raza and his family, who never consented to the video be uploaded to begin with. It sees Raza speak to teens at his former high school as they talk about being constantly on their phones and/or social media. Suffice to say, the world is run by lightsaber-wielding geeks in 2022.
Following the sequel trilogy, Disney/Lucasfilm continues to expand the Star Wars universe on Disney+ with shows like The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi—which takes place ten years after the prequel trilogy. While Star Wars, superheroes, and geek culture certainly don’t hold the same stigma they did decades ago, the internet is much more chaotic and less empathetic than in 2003. Star Wars Kid: The Rise of Digital Shadow is now streaming on the National Film Board of Canada's website.
Source: CTV News
