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akademiskacademic quarterkvarterVolume 03. Fall 2011 • on the webThe Star Wars Kid and the Bedroom IntruderPanopticon or Subversion?Jørgen Riber Christensenis associate professor of digital aesthetics at AalborgUniversity, cand.mag.et phil.: English, Art History,Film and Media. Interests are media, media production,art, digital aeshetics, British and Americanliterary and cultural theory.The Star Wars KidWith its relatively brief history the Internet already has a historywith its own historical personages. One of these is the herostraticallyfamous Star Wars Kid. A YouTube search of “Star Wars Kid”will bring you to the 1:47 minutes-long video and also to quite alarge number of video responses and remixes based on the originalvideo (YouTube, 1). In the video you can see the Star Wars Kid performingin front of a static camera. He is wielding a golf ball retrieveras if he was Darth Maul, and as if it was a light sabre fromGeorge Lucas’s Star Wars film, The Phantom Menace (1999). Duringthe video his performance develops into a kind of energetic, butungainly dance towards and away from the camera, and wheneverhe gets close to the camera he pauses a moment to stare aggressivelyinto its lens. This sabre wielding dance has its culmination orrather nadir when he stumbles and nearly falls in some yellow clothlying on the floor in the bare video studio behind him. When youare watching this video you probably experience mixed feelings.You may laugh, and then be ashamed that you did so. You may befilled with the unsympathetic feeling of Schadenfreude, and thenyou may feel grateful that it’s not you or one of your kids in thevideo and feel sorry for the Star Wars Kid.Volume03 135