The Freedom of Choice vs. Obedience to Authority
In which Sarc begins to have a
point but then loses it somewhere along the way.And I’m sure I should put a warning for religious biases on this somewhere. Consider it here.
In the Star Wars movie canon, it
is repeatedly presented to us that all of the choices that Anakin
Skywalker makes under his own impetus are the wrong choices, and we
are told they are wrong because they are not the choices the
prevailing authorities would have him make. We are told through the
narrative that each choice he made was based ultimately on
selfishness and his own desire for personal power, regardless of what
his actual actions portray.His worry for his mother when he
is a child is portrayed as selfish and his fear of losing her is
directly implicated as a path to evil, his attachment to Padme
initially as a replacement mother figure is dismissed as immature
(he’s nine), and he is actively discouraged from relying on or
feeling attachment to the only other figures in his life that could
possibly give him some small sense of stability (Qui-Gon and
Obi-Wan). His subsequent development of romantic/lustful thoughts for
Padme, the only other person that made an impression on him during
the time when he was torn from everything he had known, is portrayed
as something that will surely lead him to downfall. We’re talking
about a young teenager, hormones a-raging, confined to an isolated
religious sect where all romantic and (conceivably) sexual thoughts
or impulses are treated as anathema.His isolation and strict
upbringing in the temple, combined with his natural tendency towards
individualism and a cultivation of personal thoughts and opinions, is
a breeding ground for a fixation on a person like Padme. Someone
outside of his insular Jedi world. Someone who presumably knows what
life is like “out there”, who knows what it means not to
be confined and defined by a Jedi Order who continually tells him he
is not trusted, not valued, and not good enough. Is it any wonder his
fixation turns into an obsession?And now Anakin is faced with
another choice – to pursue what he perceives as his only tie to a
world outside of his cloistered temple life, to “follow his heart”,
or to obediently yield to the will of the Jedi Council and abandon
yet again the one thing that does not tell him to be clinical,
sterile, devoid of attachment and emotion.In the Star Wars movie canon, it
is repeatedly presented to us that all of the choices that Anakin
Skywalker makes under his own impetus are the wrong choices, and we
are told they are wrong because they are not the choices the
prevailing authorities would have him make. [The narrative asserts] that each choice he made was based ultimately on
selfishness and his own desire for personal power, regardless of what
his actual actions portray.
^^^^^^Hitting the nail on the head so hard it hurts.
Even within the confines of the story, readings of Anakin’s character arc that assert his choices ended up being disastrous are incomplete if they don’t recognize that the whole Jedi order’s choices also ended up being disastrous. He was doing the best he could. He was taking responsibility in a way that didn’t involve hiding behind what he’d been told was the right course of action. That’s not even necessarily a matter of individuality – it takes maturity and courage not to just let someone else give you a procedure to follow, when the stakes are astronomically high and whoever has to live with the possibility of being wrong is carrying a phenomenal burden. It takes love. It takes caring more about approaching each situation in a way that makes the most of its uniqueness, and bringing all your powers to bear on it than you do about being judged favorably by others.
Of course an institution doesn’t take kindly to this approach. You’re doing its job. And that’s exactly why the story insists on giving Anakin no credit when he’s right, and ascribing the worst possible motivations to him when he doesn’t come back victorious. With a successful mission in one hand and the person he risked it all to save in the other. Anakin’s whole way of doing things challenges its legitimacy as an authority. Ideologically speaking, Anakin falling to the dark side was the best thing that could have happened to the Jedi order. Because if someone defied its dictates as needed, year in and year out, and never fell, you’d have other Jedi questioning what exactly the Jedi order was supposedly adding to their own ability to figure out how to be a force for good in the galaxy.
This entire essay is outstanding and I’d recommend it to everyone. But I’m going to take some excerpts out and respond below the cut, because there’s just so much here.
Discussion ¬