Star Wars kid

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Ghyslain Raza (born 1988) became widely known on the Internet in May 2003 as the "Star Wars kid" when a video clip he recorded of himself was leaked online. At the time of his celebrity as an internet phenomenon, he was a high school student in Trois-Rivières, Quebec.

1 Incident
- 1.1 Embarrassment
- 1.2 Lawsuit
2 Cultural references
3 Notes and references
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Incident

On November 4, 2002 Raza made a video of himself swinging a golf ball retriever around as a weapon, imitating the Darth Maul character from Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace wielding a double-bladed lightsaber. The video was filmed at the studio of his high school, and the tape was left forgotten in a basement for a few months. On or around April 19, 2003, the original owner of the videotape discovered Raza's recorded acts and immediately shared it with some friends. Thinking that it would be a funny prank, they encoded it to a WMV file and shared it using the Kazaa peer-to-peer file sharing network under the filename Jackass_starwars_funny.wmv.

Within two weeks, the file was downloaded several million times. An adapted version of the video was created, adding Star Wars music, texts, and lightsaber lights and sounds to Raza's golf ball retriever. According to Waxy.org, this was done by Bryan Dube, an employee from Raven Software [1]. Several gaming, technology and Star Wars-related sites began to host the video, further increasing downloads. Days later a second "Matrix Reloaded" version [2] hit the internet. Soon, people all over the world picked up the original and began making conversions of it, adding music, visual effects, and sounds, combining it with other well-known videos or scenes from films. [3].

As of 27th November 2006 it has been estimated by The Viral Factory that over 900 million internet users have viewed a version of the original video making it the most popular "viral video" on the Internet. [4]

[edit] Embarrassment

Raza reportedly suffered considerable embarrassment, in part because the video showed him to be overweight and not particularly graceful. Additional scorn was directed at his self-generated sound effects. The case raised privacy issues and was extensively reported in mainstream news media worldwide, including The New York Times, CBS News and BBC News. The boy underwent therapy and counseling. Raza became the spokesperson for an anti-bullying campaign in Ontario, but later changed his mind and the program was taken down.

An Internet petition to get Raza a cameo role in Star Wars Episode III received more than 178,000 digital signatures. Although George Lucas sympathized with the young man's plight, the film contains no such cameo and there were never any plans known to do so, nor is it at all clear that Raza himself would have wished it. At the height of the video's popularity, two webloggers (waxy.org and jish.nu) began a fundraiser to buy Raza an Apple iPod. In less than a week, they raised over $3,200 and shipped him a 30GB iPod and a $2,600 gift certificate.

[edit] Lawsuit

In July 2003, his family filed a CA$250,000 lawsuit against the families of four of his schoolmates. Legal proceedings against one family were quickly dropped.^[1] The three remaining defendants were alleged to have taken the video and put it on the Internet without Raza's consent. The family claimed that Raza had suffered harassment and derision from both his schoolmates and the general public because of the video. The lawsuit had been scheduled to begin trial on April 10, 2006; but on April 7, Raza and his parents reached an out-of-court settlement with the defendants.^[2] The settlement's terms were not announced, but were believed to be in the $150,000 range. Previous court proceedings had included discussions about whether the defendants had liability insurance. In 2006 Raza finally came to terms with his classmates and received CA$300,000 in a lawsuit between three of the four classmates. (Associated Sun Press)

[edit] Cultural references

In 2004, on Cartoon Network's animated series The Venture Bros., an episode titled "Tag Sale -- You're It!" features a stout henchman finding a lightsaber-like device at a garage sale and proceeding to try to fight with it, his moves drawn to mimic Raza's in the video.

The 2004 video game Tony Hawk's Underground 2 featured three references to Raza. In the Boston level, an overweight child with glasses can be found inside an apartment; the player can approach him and make him dance around and make whooshing noises as Star Wars-like music plays in the background. He can also be found in the hidden area of the Triangle level in which he can be seen standing atop an operating table fending off alien doctors. As the player progresses through the game, the boy can even be unlocked as a playable character.

In 2004 on the TV show Ed, the character Mark Vanacore makes a video of himself trying out new walks with the school video camera, then forgets the tape in the camera, which is found and released on the Internet, with results very similar to the Star Wars Kid video.

In an episode of Unscrewed, Martin Sargent performed his own rendition of the Star Wars kid and told viewers to take the broom and turn it into a lightsaber. He stated that the Star Wars kid was ungrateful that the Internet made him famous and that he wished he could become famous by simply swinging around a broom.

The 4th episode of the 2004 TV show Dark Oracle ("Paintball Wizard") has a main plotline involving the character Lance getting accidentally videotaped while privately play-acting in his underwear as an axe-wielding barbarian, and subsequently being humiliated in front of the entire school when the tape is discovered and publicly displayed there.

In 2004, the TV network G4 featured Dave Navarro in a spoof of the Star Wars Kid on their annual awards show G-Phoria.

Star Wars Kid parody on Arrested Development

In 2005, a first season episode of Veronica Mars called "M.A.D." involved a girl blackmailed into staying in a relationship in exchange for not releasing an embarrassing video of her. She says she does not want to become a national joke like the "Star Wars Kid."

In 2005, the TV series Arrested Development depicted George Michael Bluth performing lightsaber moves in the middle of a family video. Bluth's video is later seen four more times in the series: once in a high school election video, leading to his reconciling with his ex-girlfriend, a second time at a fundraiser for the family in the episode "Prison Break-In," a third time by the FBI, who mistake it for a terrorist training video in '"Sword of Destiny," and a fourth time when he uses it to tape his dad's girlfriend Rita eating fake fruit in the episode "The Ocean Walker." Bluth wearily suggests they should get a new tape as "they're really not expensive".

In 2005, the Swedish TV-series 100 höjdare (100 Highlights) ranked Raza's video clip as the 60th funniest moment in the world.

In 2005, the San Francisco Giants played a video of the Star Wars Kid on the Jumbotron at AT&T Park, alongside the away team pitcher whenever the catcher and coach came out for a meeting on the pitcher's mound.

In 2005, CNET listed the Star Wars Kid as #8 on its Top 10 Web Fads list.[5]

In 2005, an episode of the TV-series American Dad titled "All About Steve" has main character Stan Smith fighting a crowd of angry geeks at a sci-fi convention. In the midst of the battle, Raza steps out of the crowd and attempts to "attack" Stan, in a sequence mimicking the video. The "fight" ends when Raza loses his balance and falls over. ThatVideoSite.com has a video clip showing this sci-fi convention scene.

In 2005, an episode of the animated series Teen Titans titled "For Real" featured a brief sequence in which a geek-stereotype villain named Control Freak clumsily swings a double-bladed lightsaber. The scene features an innocuous piece of fabric in the background and an identical camera angle to the original Raza video. The stateside production team even sent a copy of the original Star Wars Kid video to the Korean studios where the program is animated.

An episode of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide on Nickelodeon shows Martin Qwerly (played by Tylor Chase) swinging a mop around and acting like the Star Wars Kid. His friends embarrass him with the video at school.

An episode of Xiaolin Showdown shows evil boy genius Jack Spicer making a video of himself mimicking the Star Wars Kid.

In his May 5, 2006 story on topgear.com, motoring journalist Jeremy Clarkson, commenting on "downloadable TV," mentioned that the only thing available would be "that fat kid pretending to be a Jedi knight with a floor mop. And a bit of happy slapping."

On the August 10, 2006 episode of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert is shown jumping around in front of a green screen with a lightsaber. This is done as part of the Better Know A District segment when he visits California's 6th congressional district where Star Wars creator George Lucas and Skywalker Ranch resides. The next week he found online videos of his "battle" that people had edited to include saber glow and blaster shots. Colbert then started a challenge to see who could make the best one, culminating with a second-place entry by in-studio guest Lucas himself. Many people edited Colbert's footage with that of Star Wars kid to depict them fighting each other.^[3]

"Weird Al" Yankovic parodied the Star Wars kid in the music video for his 2006 single White & Nerdy.^[4]

FoxTrot comic on October 10, 2006 references the Star Wars Kid and the Numa Numa Guy

In an episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Mac and Bloo catch Mr. Herriman performing an embarrassing song and dance for Madame Foster with a video camera. Bloo uploads it to the internet and later dedicates an entire website to modified versions of it, and related merchandise.

In June 2006, on an episode of The Daily Show, John Hodgman loosely refers to the Star Wars kid by saying "lonely teens practising with their lightsabers." This video is the video "Net Neutrality Act"

On the March 28, 2007 episode of Countdown with Keith Olbermann the Star Wars kid was one of the eligible contestants in the "Internet Superstar (Not Porn)" contest.

In a 2007 episode of the claymation series Celebrity Deathmatch the character of Nick Diamond is embarrassed after a video of him ,called Nick Diamond Jedi Master, is leaked into the internet. The video showed Nick practicing his Jedi skills the same way as The Star Wars Kid .