When the government of Saudi Arabia issued new history textbooks, they wanted to show King Faisal signing the UN charter. What the editors of the textbook didn’t realize was that Yoda, the green muppet Jedi Master from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, wasn’t actually at the UN with King Faisal when he signed it. So they put a picture of Faisal and Yoda in a textbook, invaded Yemen and called it a day.
Okay, so the photo was photoshopped. Clearly. Yoda wasn’t even alive in 1945, he died long ago in a galaxy far, far away. According to the New York Times, the image was the work of Saudi citizen Abdullah Al Shehri, who wanted to make historic images more fun. He’s not the person who put the photo in the textbook, but he talked to the New York Times about why he created it.
He found a photo of Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president assassinated in 1981, meeting Mickey Mouse during a trip to Disneyland.
“This is what the archive needs,” he recalls thinking. “Something fun, something that makes it less depressing.”
He later came across the photo that should have appeared in the textbook: a black-and-white image of King Faisal, who was a prince and serving as foreign minister at the time, signing the United Nations Charter in San Francisco in 1945.
And he thought of Yoda.Like the king, he said, the Jedi master was known for his intelligence. He was popular among Saudis. And – sealing the deal – he was the same color as the Saudi flag.
Cute story, right? I’ve got some more suggestions for photoshops to make Saudi Arabia seem less depressing. How about you photoshop a woman in the driver’s seat of a car? Or photoshop a picture of peaceful political protestors being recapitated. Oh, I know, photoshop some Yemeni civilians with their organs back inside their bodies after an illegal Saudi airstrike! When you’re done with that, you can use photoshop to whip up some unmutilated vaginas for thousands of Saudi women.