Good Disguise

In Consumed: The 501st Legion: Can shared fandom for pop-culture iconography convert escapism to engagement?

[Note: Normally I link to the no-registration-required RSS link for the column on the NYT site, but for whatever reason, Consumed was not included in the Times Magazine’s RSS feed this week. So, the entire column follows, or, you can use this Times link, but it does require registration. Sorry. I have no control over that stuff.]

Some people might resent being mocked on national television by Bob Eubanks. But Mark Fordham is philosophical. Fordham, who is 43, is the commanding officer of the 501st Legion, an organization of Star Wars “costume enthusiasts.” Dressed as Darth Vader, he was among the 200 or so members of the club, all in shockingly convincing Star Wars villain outfits, who marched in the televised Tournament of Roses Parade this year, which was the occasion for Eubanks to crack that all of them were “groupies” who “need to get a job.” Of course Fordham found this annoying and wrongheaded, for reasons we’ll get to. On the other hand, he says: “Think about it — what we do doesn’t make sense. It transcends the reasonable.”

Extreme manifestations of fandom frequently transcend the reasonable, at least from the point of view of outsiders. And Star Wars has inspired extreme fandom and consumer behavior from the day of its blockbuster 1977 opening. Still, the 501st Legion is remarkable, and not just because it has 3,385 active members in 43 countries and enforces rigid costume-authenticity standards. The club was founded 10 years ago, after two fans in storm-trooper outfits attended a Star Wars rerelease opening. One of them, Albin Johnson, posted some pictures on his Web site, then started posting pictures other people sent him of their storm-trooper costumes. This led to the formation of a group that could, Johnson has explained, give the hobbyists a “collective identity at the conventions — a family of their own.” Such expressions of quasi community on the basis of shared admiration are common enough, but within a few years, the 501st had added a surprising dimension to its group fandom: costuming for charity.

Part of the motivation, Johnson acknowledges, was simply to come up with more excuses for “trooping,” as members of the 501st call their appearances; there are only so many conventions and movie premieres, after all. But it ended up having the effect of making something that sounds less than reasonable (adults marching around in sci-fi outfits) feel like something worthwhile (adults marching around in sci-fi outfits at a children’s hospital or in a charity walk or at a Toys for Tots event).

All this has probably helped the 501st stay on the right side of Lucasfilm Limited, which has been known to go after those who profit from the iconic status of its storm troopers and other characters without permission — including individuals who have tried to turn their skills at fabricating thermoplastic costumes into a business. The 501st has worked to have a good relationship with the company, and apparently the idea to include them in a Star Wars segment of the Rose Parade came from George Lucas himself.

Fordham made his first Vader costume in the late 1980s and would do appearances at birthday parties and such. Years later, when he connected with the 501st, the collective-identity factor was a plus, but the charitable angle clearly had a big impact on him: from young kids to nostalgic adults, “people love these characters,” he says, and this entertainment-inspired common ground produced not just social fun but also social good. Members of his “garrison” in Utah now appear at scores of charitable events every year; he even persuaded the local Salvation Army to let Star Wars villains fill in for Santa in the familiar bell-ringer-with-a-kettle efforts. So what looks like escapism, he argues, is actually engagement: “We’re almost more of a service club, like the Elks or Rotary or Kiwanis.”

The 501st is, of course, not unique in justifying leisure pastimes via good works — costumers associated with the Klingon Imperial Diplomatic Corps, in fact, do charity appearances, too — and it’s not clear whether Fordham’s argument would impress, say, a social scientist concerned about the decline of civic participation in America. But pride in good works partly fueled many 501st members’ annoyance at Eubanks’s dismissiveness. (Fordham says that Eubanks has apologized to him and others in the club and that most are over it — though he can’t resist noting that “we had several Ph.D.’s in that parade.”) And it has helped Fordham find a new way to bond with his five kids. “I’m teaching them to be service-oriented,” he says, in contrast to so many young people today. That’s important, he says, since after all, “they’re the future of this organization.”

[February 4, 2007, Rob Walker/The New York Times Magazine]