Nerding Day: German Disco Christmas Star Wars

All of Europe saw Star Wars and thought “Yes! Let’s do exactly that, except three minutes long, it’s a musical, and we’re not going to watch Star Wars first!” The French were densely French about the whole thing, the Dutch were weirdly Italian about it, and the Germans put them all to shame with a disco musical Star Wars Christmas special in 1980, easily four more things than any one thing should be. It sounds like I’m criticizing it – no, this fucking rules.

The whole show is attempted murder on an epileptic, a full-on sensory blitz in every direction while all of your favorite Star Wars characters’ cousins embarrass themselves at a wedding. I’m sorry I sound derogatory when I talk about things I love – I’ve been on the internet too long and now affection and disgust are the same thing. But thanks to A German Disco Star Wars Christmas, I now understand that any Star Wars without twerking in it is a lesser Star Wars.

That’s a twink Luke Skywalker – an impressive feat since Luke Skywalker is already a twink Flash Gordon – backing it up on a sexy gender-swapped C3PO. Hold on, I don’t call her “sexy C3P0” to shame her, the costume isn’t over-sexualized or anything – I’m just inserting my personal bias, hopefully later into her personal BIOS.

Darth Vader is one of cinema’s most iconic villains, but I’ve always thought it was a missed opportunity not to have him Funk That Shit.

Look at Chewbacca feeling himself!

That’s my exact walk when I land the dog poop bag in the garbage can with one shot.

I love Chewbacca, Space Bigfoot feels like a character pandering just to me. Although Chewbacca was created five years before I was born, so I guess it’s the other way around. If you gave me this version when I was a kid, this pure confidence Chewie radiating sexual charisma on the dance floor? I have a feeling my sexuality would’ve turned out different. You throw him together with that hot C3PO from earlier? I’d have to start a DeviantArt account.

Hit me up at DidItAllForTheWookie, commissions start at $5 for explicit, $50 for non-explicit.

There’s only one thing missing here. But we can’t ask for it. It’s too much.

There’s a finite supply of good in the world and we mine it with every wish that comes true. When there are shoeless children picking through landfills for salvageable lithium, it would be irresponsible to burn what scarce charity remains for something as selfish as breakdancing Yoda.

Oh fuck, I said it out loud. I’m so sorry, kids. I’ll make a donation to whatever hospital is working on a cure for Battery Feet.

Breakdancing Yoda appears only in a transitory shot, half in shadows, never fully opaque – either they’re trying to use a visual medium to explain this is a dream best left to dreams, or else they know the costume sucks but nobody cuts Breakdancing Yoda.

Speaking of background characters stealing the show, this fucking Stormtrooper.

This is Disco Vader’s big moment, the ultimate dance battle concluding with a hard vogue by the main villain on center stage. And he’s being absolutely dwarfed by an NPC with Merge Ahead arrows doing the Locomotion.

There’s no way anybody involved in this watched more than the trailer for Star Wars before dropping $400 on a movie-accurate wookie, and $3.50 on a Star Goblin costume from Spirit Halloween. The choreographers seem to think Han and Chewie are the main characters, they even get center stage for the final back-to-back freeze that ends the show.

Twink Skywalker over there is barely an afterthought, he doesn’t even get to hold his lightsaber for the big climax. I wrote eight jokes for this space and deleted them all because I’m growing as a person. Han and Chewie also get the ending skit, where Vader comes out to join the cast bow and Han pretends to be terrified-

I know what the choregrapher’s thought process behind this was: “This is cute! Let’s do it!”

But by carrying the kayfabe beyond the performance and into the bow you’re breaking the fourth wall. This changes the fiction. These are no longer dancers coming together to pay homage to Star Wars, but the actual characters from Star Wars putting aside their animosity to honor a shared passion for boogie. Han being explicitly frightened of Vader means no peace was brokered here, the dance is over and they are going right back to murdering each other – even though they all now know the exact shape and feel of their enemy’s gyrating package.

Also I’d like to admit that I was wrong earlier: Chewbacca starts barking at Vader like a poodle in this skit, so nobody involved in this even watched the trailer.

A gorgeous German woman comes out to thank the performers, and she’s immediately smitten with Vader. Another bullet in the chamber for my argument that nobody here knew what Star Wars was. In 1980 Germany, you had to be very careful about your symbology. Star Wars is not oblique, the Empire are Space Nazis and Vader may not be their Hitler, but he’s at least their Rommel.

If anyone involved in this performance had actually seen Star Wars they’d know having their blondest German hussy paw at Vader’s control panel is a direct violation of the Potsdam Agreement.

Whatever. It’s a lone misstep in what was otherwise a beautiful moment that we will all share forever.

If only the article stopped here.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t learn German for this column and YouTube Translate thinks they’re talking about sausages and making motorcycle noises. I found this video with no contextual information and my research told me only that it was around 1980, German, a Christmas special, and magical.

There’s another segment after the big dance number that I can’t be 100% certain is from the same show. But is it crazier to think Germany did two skits in one special, or multiple Disco Star Wars Christmas specials?

This one features a man named Ilja Richter, quick research tells me he was the host of a program named DISCO.

Followup research tells me that he’s extremely punchable.

You don’t need audio to know exactly how that sounds, and that it triggers an attack mode in the human heart. He’s performing a musical comedy sketch, which mostly means mugging over clips from Star Wars. I’m going to assume YouTube is wrong again and that he’s not singing [bird noises] and Auto Translate Not Available, so it’s probably a bunch of shitty Star Wars puns.

Eventually they run out of stock footage and cut away to a fussy little man hanging from a cardboard moon.

He’s restless and unhappy with his legs like a gassy infant, he’s wearing golden pajamas and sings a sulky song like one might hear from an unappreciated gnome in a Christian cartoon about pride. We slowly zoom on our sleepy space prince while Ilja croons softly, as if to say “let’s look in on the lil’ fella without disturbing nappy time.”

There’s no dignity in this, it’s the kind of thing a dinner theater actor would fire their stripmall agent for, it’s- holy shit, there’s no way.

It is. It’s actually Mark Hamill. In 1980. After the release of Empire Strikes Back, the second installment in the Star Wars trilogy. If this was after the first Star Wars, you could understand it. Maybe they didn’t know what they had yet and were willing to debase themselves for promotion. But no, by 1980 Mark Hamill was the lead in the biggest franchise in movie history and had known that for years. Germany somehow got hold of arguably the greatest cultural icon of the last five years, gave him golden toddler pajamas, then asked him to sit on a cardboard moon and act like a spoiled brat who’s mad about pie.

AND HE SAID YES.

Actually, he said-

Haha, do you know what a good sport Mark Hamill is? He’s done any number of self-effacing Star Wars sketches. He played the most pathetic version of himself in a Simpsons episode about a sad dinner theater play that-

Holy shit is this what that Simpsons episode was about??

Mark Hamill is such a good sport he was in a disfiguring accident that almost sidelined his entire career and he cracks jokes about it to this day. For him to grumpily admit – only when specifically called out in a way he couldn’t deny – that this was him and that he hated doing it? It’s like getting Randy Quaid to storm out of the opening ceremonies of a Phoenix boat show – it shouldn’t be possible, this is his home, it’s where he’s comfortable, and he needs that money for traffic court.

The sketch continues to be incomprehensible, partly because I don’t speak German, partly because clarity was a cornerstone of the Nazi movement and Germany was forced to disavow it as a condition of surrender.

A snowspeeder zooms up, which, we’re in outer space guys, that’s not how a snowspeeder works- no, that cannot be my problem with this. Because a beauty queen is riding on the back of that speeder – I have to assume she’s Miss Star Wars – and the pilot pantomimes like he didn’t know she was there. I guess pageant winners skitching through the void is a common nuisance in this universe? I don’t know. I only know two things: In the 1980s a subpar man never missed a chance for a grope, and that’s Ilja Richter in that helmet.

He quickly ducks out to let Mark Hamill take his woman, which I have no comment on.

There aren’t many men who could sell losing a woman to a gold lamé moon infant, but Ilja Richter is definitely one of them.

There’s a musical tone shift, the vibe grows darker. It’s Darth Vader! He’s here to…

Play a few sour notes on a trumpet? We linger on this far too long for it not to be the punchline. Whatever is happening here, it was the point of the sketch. There’s some chain of comedic events that necessitated finding a toddler Mark Hamill on the moon, giving him a beauty queen on a snowspeeder, and then Darth Vader being bad at trumpet.

No! Don’t do the wrap-up head tilt, that can’t be it. You can’t leave this comedy puzzle in my head, I’m as unable to solve it as I am unwilling to let it go. Wait, just wait, let me guess – in Germany “trumpet” is slang for penis and their word for “moon” kind of sounds like their word for sex-theft, so this is some kind of Empire Primae Noctis. It’s because Star Wars is-

Stop parade waving like this is the end! Is it a reference to a folk tale I don’t have the cultural context for where a grumpy moonboy is punished for stealing trumpets by harlots from beyond the stars. Is that why Vader-

Please stop zooming out, please don’t do this. You can’t leave me here, is it just that it’s funny Mark Hamill stole Ilja’s girl? Is it that Darth Vader can’t play a trumpet through that helmet? Fuck! FUUU-

…
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Haught Phart, who’s also called The Boogie Wookie but for unrelated, more tragic reasons.

You can read this article and every other one on the much better in every way 1900HOTDOG.COM.