Patrick Barry Brown
So I wanna take a second to talk about Star Wars. Moreso, I want to talk about the Prequels and why I love them. Let’s start from…basically the beginning.
Anakin gets drafted into the Jedi Order – a pseudo-religious organization where a small group of people sit at the top and dictate rules to be passed down from master to padawan. Their core belief is extreme emotional suppression – it’s rooted in avoiding attachments, but ultimately it’s about not letting your feelings get in the way of your duty as a Jedi.
There’s actually this really great line when Qui Gon is making his case to the council to train Anakin – they don’t want him to have two padawans at once, but Qui Gon argues that Obi-Wan is ready for The Trials, which would take him out of his care. He says of Obi-Wan, “he has much to learn of the living force, but he is capable.” What he’s saying is that Obi-Wan is competent but his focus is a bit in-the-clouds – this distinction between the cosmic force and the living force is important. Obi-Wan’s focused on some grand intangible idea of how the universe works, but less capable of connecting with the life around him. Keep in mind, this is the man who will eventually become Anakin’s mentor.
At this point in Anakin’s life, he’s already experienced hatred and sorrow as a slave, joy and love from his mother, and passion through podracing and fixing things. This scares the council – they’re immediately cautious of accepting Anakin for training simply because they prefer to recruit kids before they have a chance to, you know, feel feelings.
So we end up with a situation where some ordinary kid, full of curiosity and wonder, is thrown headfirst into an organization that systemically stifles self expression. Qui Gon dies and Anakin gets stuck with Obi Wan.
In Attack of the Clones, Obi Wan and Padme are kind of portrayed as the angel/devil duo on Anakin’s shoulder. The two Jedi meet Padme in her Coruscant penthouse and they’re tasked with protecting her from assassins. Of course, Anakin’s crushin’ and he’s fumbling over his words, but also getting like, really into it telling Padme how serious he’s taking this job and that they’re going to find anybody who would threaten her and he’s basically expressing how much he wants to protect her and — boom, Obi-Wan scolds him right in front of Padme, literally tells Anakin to “learn his place.”
And then of course, later Anakin tells Padme how he “doesn’t like sand” and yes, it’s awkward, but also genuine at the same time – he wants to connect with her but doesn’t know how – if you second guess everything you’re about to say because everything you’ve already said has been torn apart, there’s not much left to actually say.
So Anakin’s episode II arc is all about him dealing with the conflicting feelings he lives with as both a Jedi and a human being who both loves and needs love. He starts unraveling when his mother dies among the sand people and he goes ballistic. Arguably, there were way better ways to handle that, but the anger itself seems to tie back to this disconnect between his natural emotions and the way he was taught to handle them. Of course, he and Padme have to marry in secret and hide their relationship, and he has to carry the shame of living two lives.
Episode III, Anakin experiences visions of Padme dying. This usually gets rationalized a couple of different ways – either Anakin’s force powers allow him to see the future, or Palpatine is fucking with his mind. I see it another way – this is anxiety. We all have fears, rational or not, that can make us believe the worst is inevitable. Anakin is desperate for help so he goes to Yoda to talk about his shit – and this scene, to me, is one of the most important moments in all of Star Wars.
Yoda asks Anakin if the visions he’s having are because of somebody close to him. Anakin confirms this, and Yoda lectures, “the fear of loss is a path to the dark side.” Let’s put this into context – Yoda is revered not only in the Star Wars universe, but also out here in the real world among the fanbase. He’s positioned as the wise old sage that never says anything wrong, but right now he’s shaming Anakin for harboring a legitimate fear. Yoda goes on, “attachment leads to jealousy, the shadow of greed that is.” Anakin asks what he can do and Yoda’s advice is to, “train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.”
So, Yoda has not only ignored Anakin’s plea for help, he’s shamed him for needing help in the first place – he’s essentially telling Anakin, “these thoughts will turn you into a bad person, stop having them.” Anakin allowed himself to be vulnerable to a mentor and that mentor said, “nobody gives a FUCK about your feelings, bro.” His anxiety never gets dealt with, and he lays into the only coping mechanism he’s ever learned – push it all down.
So all through episode III, Anakin carries with him this gut-wrenching feeling that the woman he loves is going to die. Time is against him and everyone tells him to just trust in The Force. When The Force doesn’t provide answers, Chancellor Palpatine does. He swoops in like a Preacher Man directly addressing Anakin’s problems. “Join me, embrace the dark side… this will save your wife from dying.” Too many years had Anakin waited patiently for the Force to solve his problems, but now he had a solution. Anakin’s turn happens as Palpatine begs and begs to be saved from Mace Windu – he makes himself appear powerless and weak; he extorts Anakin’s empathy and fear, essentially gaslighting him to the Dark Side. Palpatine found an easy target – a scared boy with everything to lose. Anakin makes a choice that kind of makes sense, and by the time Palpatine’s done with him, Anakin’s self esteem is too far gone to protest.
Palpatine’s entire philosophy revolves around fear – he recognizes its potential as a motivator, or, a place from which people can draw energy. His strategy with Anakin is to keep him afraid and force him to live in the darkness – a place which can harbor some false feelings of comfort, by the way. Like think of it this way – if you’re stuck, embracing tranquility or peace may seem like you’re letting your guard down.
Anakin, or now, Vader, goes off into the Galaxy, trapped in darkness and completely devoid of the skills needed to manage his own emotions.
Btw, I think this is as good a time as ever to mention that the force itself is often misunderstood, I think because so many real, everyday people were taught this construct of God as a singular being with a set of rules, something tangible and concrete. And I think people mistake The Force for God. But if you listen to the lore, The Force itself is more of a metaphor for the natural flow and equilibrium inherent in the world. There’s the light side and there’s the dark side, but these are just terms to describe the types of emotions you summon when using power.
The Jedi Order recognizes that dark emotions are self-destructive in the long term, but fail to teach their own how to cope in any other way than “don’t feel them.” It’s kind of like hearing, “resist the devil and he shall flee,” – you know, trust in the will of the force. Have faith like a little yellow mustard seed.
I don’t know – to me these seem like Avoidance tactics, not healthy coping strategies.
The Prequel-era society attempts to explain The Force with midichlorians, which pissed off so many fans because it “demystified” things, but that’s kind of the point too – Coruscant at that time needed to rationalize. The society as a whole could not accept uncertainty and thus worked themselves into this cold empty place that put too much priority on rules and structure over humanity.
Let’s flash forward to Empire Strikes Back when Luke goes to Dagobah. Yoda says, “anger, fear, aggression, the dark side of the force are these. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight.” He’s saying that negative emotions are both easy to access and STRONG. When stuck in a depression it can seem impossible to get out, and to me this is the most human element of the mythology of The Force – people ARE capable of tremendous feats of strength when they’re angry or scared.
In Return of the Jedi, Anakin is broken. There’s that scene on Endor at the shield generator where Vader says, “It is too late for me, you do not know the POWER of the Dark Side.” Again, this isn’t magical “hokey religion” mumbojumbo – this is Anakin, as an adult, admitting to his son that he’s stuck in a way of living he adopted at a very young age. Don’t let the James Earl Jones voice fool you – that line is the ultimate expression of helplessness.
It takes Vader seeing his own son brutally tortured to finally see the light – he throws Palpatine over the railing. Anakin asks Luke to remove the Vader mask, which may be a little on-the-nose, but you know.
Btw, I don’t want to gloss over the fact that Darth Vader was a genocidal maniac. His upbringing was tragically flawed, but he made a choice to embrace darkness and act out. We’re all responsible for what we do – yes, the environment he was raised in gave him no recourse for dealing with things – but nobody’s entitled to be a dick about it.
So that’s why the prequels are so subtly genius – Midichlorians and monotone performances and an overt focus on politics, like as infuriating as these things may be to a general audience, these are devices to drive the point home – Anakin was raised in a culture devoid of emotion out of fear that embracing feelings would lead to a life of sin. The ironic part is that the minute Anakin embraced his true feelings, he became Vader and essentially proved the Jedi right. My take is that if the order hadn’t been so restrictive on attachments and hadn’t trained him to hide everything that made Anakin, well, Anakin, there probably wouldn’t have been much for Palpatine to exploit.
So anyways, I’m ranting, but the point of all this is to say,
🎵🎵🎵 Anakin needs therapy! 🎵🎵🎵
Or maybe everyone does, I don’t know.
bndnm gnr8r 