The Size of Schwartz

[setsuled]

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What is the central gag of 1987's Spaceballs? It's Star Wars but everyone's regular schlubs from Canada and New York, mostly Jewish (John Candy was Catholic). The 80s was a time of great Jewish comedies. Nowadays, we still have Larry David and Mrs. Maisel but the time of the Jewish comedy superstar is over. Well, comedies in general tend not to be box office hits now.

A lot of Spaceballs' comedy also comes from literalising. Chewbacca was always based on George Lucas' dog, now John Candy is playing a literal half man, half dog. The Millennium Falcon was like a mobile home, now it's actually a Winnebago. There's more to this comedy than simply unmasking creative concepts; it divests the concepts of the poetry of the fantastic and makes them mundane. It's a joke on the characters because that's the joke played on everyone in real life. No-one's ever going to have the Force. You're more likely to be stuck with Schwartz. But, hey, that's life. The vile gangster is more likely to be a pile of pizza than a giant space slug.

It's a galaxy of puerile motives. Everyone is thinking about sex all the time. The pretty female officer smirks at the camera after seeing President Skroob's exposed genitals. Joan Rivers' version of C3PO's primary mission is to protect the virginity of the princess. That actually brings her a little closer to the mute servant girl in Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress (隠し砦の三悪人), the movie that was a primary influence on Star Wars. The characters that provided the basis for R2D2 and C3PO were much earthier, much more focused on bodily needs than Lucas' version of the low caste, point of view characters. Maybe Andor introducing sex to the Star Wars universe is a precursor to getting something closer to The Hidden Fortress in a way. I'd say it would need at least fifteen years to develop and I'm not sure Star Wars is going to be financially viable for that long.

We've come all this way and it's still hard to talk about sex without making it a joke. But something like Spaceballs can feel like a breath of fresh air. Or at least canned air.

Spaceballs is currently on Amazon Prime in Japan.