Priming

The Star Wars Kid

Another sad victim of priming.

The concept of priming says that media images activate or stimulate related thoughts and behavior.



Priming grips many people everywhere, everyday. It's the media that controls this. What media does is place images and messages into everyday life of people, and the people begin to take those images and messages and pull them into their own lives.

The Star Wars Kid is a viral video that hit the web in 2003. It shows a high school student who filmed himself swinging a metal rod around like a light saber. Another student found it the next day, thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen in his entire life and posted it to the Internet so everyone can enjoy the comedy of priming.

You see, Star Wars helped prime vast generations of kids everywhere. By presenting a world that kids can immerse themselves into and a fantastic set of heroes for those kids to look up to and aspire to be, George Lucas insured that in every neighborhood in the Western World there was at least one kid swinging around a stick or staff pretending to be Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu, or Luke Skywalker. Lord knows that my friends and I made our vary own duct-tape lightsabers and fought on the playgrounds of our local elementary school.

Priming happens with all types of media, from commercials and ads causing a barbie-like image of women becoming the social norm for what is beautiful, to movies like Rambo and Die Hard causing little boys to play war instead of cops and robbers.



See any similarities?