Is this the gayest thing ‘Star Wars’ has ever done?
Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In this week’s column, to celebrate Star Wars day—May the 4th be with you!—we’re looking back at 1978’s campy Star Wars Holiday Special.Star Wars is one of the most culturally influential and ever-present franchises in entertainment history.
Before Marvel superheroes took over every screen of the theater complex, or Games Of Thrones claimed Sunday night appointment television, the space opera created by George Lucas was one of the first pieces of pure genre storytelling that bled into every corner of society.
Subscribe to our newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer.Almost fifty years after the release of the first installment in 1977, the series has spawned three trilogies, an animated show, several spinoff series, and a lore so complicated that it probably deserves its own academic major (if one doesn’t exist already).Star Wars has a place within the queer canon in the same way as other science fiction or fantasy; as a different world (a galaxy far far away, in this case) where outcasts and people that feel like they don’t belong can escape to.
It’s perhaps the main reason this genre attracts so many queer fans, even if the content itself hasn’t always included us in an overt way: You can be anything in a land that doesn’t exist.This week, to celebrate May the Fourth, the worldwide day of celebration of all things Star Wars, we are diving into what is perhaps the most misaligned, misunderstood, and surprisingly most unabashedly queer spawn of its cinematic universe: the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special.This television-only special aired on CBS on November 17, 1978, just over a year after the first movie was released.
