Can We Chill; Does Every Fandom Need Its Own Holiday?
If you were to burst through the shutters of your apartment window right now and ask a filthy street urchin below what day it is today, he'd respond in his impish cockney accent: "Today, why it's Star Trek Day, of course." Yes, you haven't missed it, today is Star Trek Day, marking the anniversary of the original series. But, um, do we really need another pop-culture-themed holiday? Japan has fewer Kit-Kat flavors; it's frankly getting to be a bit much.
Perhaps most famously, there's Star Wars Day, which has become a legit Lucasfilm-branded event, but only exists thanks to a god awful pun ("May the Fourth Be With You") that seemingly originated in a newspaper headline heralding the election of Margaret Thatcher, AKA "Grand Moff Thatcher." Even more tenuous is Alien Day, which falls on April 26 because of LV-426, the Xenomorph-filled planet from the movies.
Sure, this is all harmless, but we're already bombarded with celebrations of nerd culture on a daily basis. Surely we don't need these individual days to celebrate what we're already all doing. It's like putting a limited edition collector's hat on a limited edition collector's hat.
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And the more lucrative these faux holidays are, the more we're going to get. Just this month, we have not only Star Trek Day, but also Hobbit Day and Batman Day -- that latter you can celebrate by, say, downloading the voice of the Dark Knight for your GPS. Because what better fictional character to take driving advice from than this friggin' guy:
Sure, Star Trek Day has a virtual panel, but we just got a panel at New York Comic Con, and before that, the annual Star Trek cruise. The main point of these celebrations seems to be selling more stuff. For instance, Star Trek Day gives fans the chance to buy a swath of merchandise, including a $250 replica of Captain Picard's sadness flute.
Are we that far off from a future in which every intellectual property is assigned a day? "Sorry, Lincoln, your birthday is now John Wick Day, deal with it." Is that the future we want to live in? In our opinion, the only franchise that should be allowed to do this is Friday the 13th.
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Top Image: CBS Television Distribution
