Normally I would consider Denmark the real world equivalent of Tatooine: If there's a bright centre to the "Star Wars As A Social Phenomenon" galaxy, Denmark is the place f.arthest from it. Of course, I do what I can to change that, but not until recently did we actually seem to get anywhere.

Then last week on the Danish version of Jeopardy they had an entire round of the quiz with category names relating to Star Wars! Categories like "May The Force Be With You", The Empire Strikes Back" and of course "Star Wars".

Of course, in true Jeopardy fashion most of the categoriy names were only word plays and the questions/answers therein didn't relate to Star Wars at all, but still it hit me that this particular phenomenon had never happened before in Denmark: More or less obscure Star Wars references being taken at face value and understood immediately by most of the people watching. (Or at least I suppose that's the case, or else the TV station wouldn't have dared try it.)

Naturally this kind of thing has been an every day occurance in the US for almost three decades now, but over here Star Wars has been considered as just fringy, geeky movies, that only a certain type of people cared or even knew about. So imagine my surprise, when suddenly - and after the Episode III media blitz had blown over (yes, I know the show was taped weeks in advance, but still) - some of it has actually stuck enough in the collective mind to show up as integral, unexplained parts of a nationally broadcast game show.

The next natural step would naturally be for a Star Wars related wuestion to show up as one of the really tricky ones on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?"!

Maybe we don't live in such a back water country anyway...

PS: What seems like a typing error up there ("f.arthest") is actually just a way to work around the moronic auto-censor...