Editing 1262: Unquote

{{comic
| number    = 1262
| date      = September 9, 2013
| title     = Unquote
| image     = unquote.png
| titletext = I guess it's a saying from the Old Country.
}}

==Explanation==
In this comic, [[Randall]] poses the future possibility that at some time in the future, even a popular film as ''{{w|Star Wars}}'' will become forgotten by society.

"{{w|May the Force be with you}}" is one of the many famous phrases from the ''Star Wars'' movies. ''Star Wars'' has become popular enough to remain part of today's popular culture more than thirty years since its initial release, and the source and meaning of the quote is commonly recognized. This comic suggests that eventually even the enormously popular Star Wars will fade into obscurity — by which time, ironically, Star Wars-like hovercraft will have been invented.

It is not uncommon for once-popular sayings to lose popularity and come into disuse; particularly when the sayings are sourced from a pop-culture reference such as a book or film. In fact, there are entire [http://www.amazon.ca/Lets-Bring-Back-Collection-Forgotten-Yet-Delightful/dp/1452105308 books] dedicated to such topics. Each generation generally develops its own pop culture-references which frequently become unrecognizable to the next generation. Only a handful of pop-culture quotes tend to survive for decades. For example, the phrase "Sit on it", coined by the creators of "{{w|Happy Days}}" as a TV-friendly but derogatory-sounding comeback for the character Fonzie. The phrase was very popular during the show's 1970s-80s heyday, but today is far less recognizable to those born after that era, and is not commonly referenced today.

The title text suggests that the characters will write off the phrase as a saying from the "Old Country" (the foreign country or place where one's ancestors emigrated from). This is a play on the fact that ubiquitous film and TV quotes have not been around long enough for society to generally forget their origins, and the most common source for unfamiliar sayings in today's world are sayings from other countries where one's ancestors originated. The use of the expression in this comic implies that the speaker has no idea about the origins of the phrase. To him it might be a translation of a foreign expression, or from a long left-behind homeland.

A similar topic was addressed in [[493: Actuarial]], with [[Black Hat]] predicting when the last of the original Star Wars cast would die, and in [[1093: Forget]], predicting when the release of ''The Return of the Jedi'' would be forgotten. Also, [[794: Inside Joke]] is about how much pop culture of centuries past has been forgotten.

The sentiment in this comic is similar to a quote from psychiatrist and author Irvin D Yalom:

<blockquote>“Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That's when I will be truly dead - when I exist in no one's memory. I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people. When that person dies, the whole cluster dies, too, vanishes from the living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead?”</blockquote>

==Transcript==
:[Two figures with spiky hair and backpacks are conversing. One is riding in a hover-car, or similar.]
:Future Hair: Bye!
:Friend: May the Force be with you!
:Future Hair: Huh?
:Friend: It's just something my grandma used to say. No idea what it means.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:I wonder on what date ''Star Wars'' will be quoted for the last time.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Star Wars]]