a very special class visitor

Or, show and tell.

Whichever you prefer.

In my senior seminar, we're reading Richard Lanham's The Economics of Attention, and so far I think students are digging it, especially since one of his primary claims is that it's folks with degrees in the humanities who become central because they're by training economists of attention. On Thursday I wanted to illustrate Lanham's point about what he calls "attention traps"--that the meaning of my very special guest "would be supplied by all the interpreters waiting out there to make sense of such artifacts" (50) with a very concrete example. English majors. Trained to interpret, analyze, speculate, argue.

So I brought Darth Tater to class. Even as I was walking down the hall to class, I was aware that I had created an attention trap. You can imagine the looks I got.

I set him on my desk and asked students to write about him. They hesitated, unsure what on earth I was getting at, but they stepped up to the plate, as it were. And here are some of the arguments, speculations, and analyses they came up with simply by attending to Darth Vader in an attention structure known as "college English."

1. Darth Tater represents the ways that some movies turn into cults, or if not cults, then a reason for the establishment of community. People who collect Star Wars paraphernalia are a part of something, have an immediate sense of belonging.
2. Darth Tater represents a nostalgia for beloved childhood relics like Mr. Potato Head. Despite Darth Vader's actual character, Darth Tater makes us happy.
3. This representation of Darth Vader is far more innocent than the actual character, which provides a way into a reinterpretation of Star Wars. (it's all in his eyes)
4. Darth Tater represents an ingenious marketing strategy--which made students wonder about the collaboration between Hasbro and Lucas: who owns Darth Tater?
5. I as professor can ask students to pay attention to anything I want them to, because, and this is I think a direct quote, "you like power."

And then when I was showing them all the details of his potato body, his butt cover fell off and it took me nearly all of class to get it back on. The result was that Darth Tater looked like he was wearing a hospital gown with his poor butt exposed. The rattle of his spare teeth and ears was a bit distracting, I'll say.