Ghyslain Raza
|
|
Ghyslain Raza (born circa 1988) is a teenager from Trois-Rivières, Quebec (Canada) who, at the age of 15, became known throughout the Internet in late April 2003 and May 2003 as the "Star Wars Kid."
Star_Wars_Kid.jpg
On November 8, 2002 Raza had made a video of himself acting like the Star Wars character Darth Maul, using a golf ball retriever to represent his lightsaber. It was filmed at the studio of his high school (Séminaire St-Joseph). On April 19, 2003, a few of his classmates stumbled upon the tape and uploaded it to the Kazaa peer-to-peer file sharing network as a prank.
The video file spread across the Internet extremely rapidly; within only weeks it had been downloaded millions of times. Within days, artists all over the world began making modifications to the original video, such as adding music, visual effects and sounds, combining it with other well-known videos or scenes from films, etc., for comical effect. Among the many renditions is a Matrix video, with Ghyslain as Neo.
Raza reportedly suffered considerable embarrassment, in part because the video showed him to be somewhat overweight and not particularly athletic or graceful. The case raised important privacy issues and was extensively reported in mainstream news media worldwide, including the New York Times and CBS News and BBC News.
In July 2003, his family filed a CAD $250,000 lawsuit against the families of the schoolmates — Michaël Caron, François Labarre, Jérôme Laflamme, and Jean-Michel Rheault — who allegedly took the video and put it on the Internet without Raza's consent, claiming that Raza had suffered harassment and derision both from his schoolmates and from the general public because of the video. The lawsuit stated that he had dropped out of school and had finished his school year at the Pavillon Arc-en-ciel child psychiatry ward at the Trois-Rivières Regional Hospital Centre, and quoted Internet chat transcripts between the four defendants as demonstrating lack of remorse.
An Internet petition to get Raza a cameo role in Star Wars Episode III received more than 140,000 "signatures." However, although George Lucas sympathized with the young man's plight, the film contains no such cameo and there were never any plans to do so, nor is it at all clear that Raza himself would have wished it.
At the height of the video's popularity, one of the original websites to host the video began a fundraiser to buy Ghyslain an iPod. In less than a week, they raised over $3,200 and shipped him (http://www.waxy.org/archive/2003/07/16/shipping.shtml) a 30GB iPod and a $2,600 gift certificate.
Cultural references
In 2004, an episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends featured a story entitled World Wide Wabbit, which may have been based on this incident. Unlike Ghyslain Raza, the character caught on tape actually benefited from it by creating awareness of the foster home.
In 2004, the video game Tony Hawk's Underground 2 featured three references to Ghyslain Raza. In the Boston level, an overweight kid with glasses can be found inside an apartment; the player can approach him and make him dance around and make wooshing 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. And as the player progresses through the game, the boy can be unlocked as a playable character.
In 2004, the TV-series The Venture Brothers featured a lightsaber attack by Monarch Henchman 21 that is a takeoff on the infamous Star Wars Kid video.
In 2005, the TV-series Arrested Development did a spoof on the Star Wars kid video. The character caught on tape in that instance also benefited from it, as his ex-girlfriend reconciled with him after seeing the video because she had a similar habit.
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 TV-series Veronica Mars featured a reference to the Star Wars kid. In the episode "M.A.D." a character states that she fears a sexually explicit video of herself will be posted online, turning her into an internet joke similar to "that Star Wars kid."
See also
External links
- Star Wars Kid homepage (http://www.jedimaster.net)
- "Price of glory (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/11/1057783344140.html)" - Sydney Morning Herald, July 12, 2003
- "Star Wars video prompts lawsuit (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3095385.stm)" - BBC News article dated Friday, July 25, 2003
- CBS News video report (http://video.cgi.cbs.com/video/video.pl?url=/media/2003/11/18/video584360.rm&sid=201) (from November 18, 2003 — uses RealAudio)
- A petition to LucasFilms to put Ghyslain in Star Wars Episode III (http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?Ghyslain)
- Waxy.org: An early Internet posting about the Star Wars kid (http://www.waxy.org/archive/2003/04/29/star_war.shtml) (April 29, 2003)
- Waxy.org: An effort to buy Ghyslain an Ipod for his trouble (http://www.waxy.org/archive/2003/05/13/finding_.shtml) (May 13, 2003)
- Waxy.org: Ghyslain gets his Ipod (http://www.waxy.org/archive/2003/07/16/shipping.shtml) (July 16, 2003)