Psychopathy in the Star Wars Universe | Hacker News Reader

Psychopathy in the Star Wars Universe

enmaku.wordpress.com

25 pointsenmaku19 comments

Either you accept all this complicated subtlety or you go meta and simply ask whether George Lucas is incapable of expressing empathy through his characters, which leads to them all acting like psychopaths regardless of other considerations.

"Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence."

Yeah, the touchstone of a Star Wars essay is: "Is this essay diverting enough to make me forget all about George Lucas?"

This one doesn't quite get there. Indeed, so far I've only seen one essay incorporating the dreaded prequels that did:

http://km-515.livejournal.com/746.html

... though it's not as if I read widely in the genre. I generally prefer to pretend that all Star Wars footage filmed after 1984 was part of a bad dream I had in the mid-1980s. [1]

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[1] I really did have a dream, sometime in the Eighties, where I was watching some sort of Star Wars movie on TV, but couldn't figure out which it was, and in the dream I eventually figured out it was some kind of made-for-TV Movie #4, and then I figured out that I probably hadn't heard of it because it was awful. And I was sad.

I assume this was actually a memory echo of the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special, which I saw at a young age and have since managed to completely suppress except in nightmares.

I think it was more along the lines that Lucas didn't/doesn't understand the eastern philosophies he was trying to emulate, only copying the trappings (wearing robes, taking on apprentices, practicing asceticism). I think he needed a white knight and a premise, and the rest of what we know about Jedis just snowballed from that.

The films are incredibly subtle. Jedi and Sith represent the allegorical extremes of human nature for Lucas, in the same way the Republic and Empire represent idealized democratic and authoritarian societies.

The reason the author sees "psychopathy" as a common trait is that the first three films show ostensibly good characters morphing into bad ones as they embrace violence and deceit as a means to an end (ending a trade dispute, fighting terrorists, etc.). There is complex manipulation of the same symbolic imagery Lucas uses in his original films (water, caves), sometimes to the point of sequences going over-the-top: the transformation of C3PO from protocol to battle droid in a hell sequence marking the end of the second film is a commentary on what is happening to the rest of the characters, who also abandon diplomacy for "aggressive negotiation".

The Jedi are not unambiguously good by the end of film III. They are harbingers of war ("there is no war here unless you have brought it with you") who die marching into battle. Now, the films may not be as emotionally engaging as their predecessors, but they are leagues more subtle than almost anything else you see in cinemas, as evidenced by the fact that Lucas made an anti-war film a blockbuster at a time when American society was broadly supportive of imperialism and military vengeance. As I remember, it wasn't until Anakin explicitly began aping Bush/Jesus in the final film ("you're either with me or against me") that anyone really seemed to notice the political agenda.

This helps explain why I started looking forward to Anakin killing off the Jedi. Well that or the atrocious acting and characterizations. "I sense much fear in him." Really? A 9 year old boy taken from his home to a strange place to meet a bunch of old losers to have judgement passed on him and he is scared. What an insight there Yoda. Ass.

This isn't directly related to the OP, but there's a bit in E3, near the end, where Obiwan says to Anakin "Only the Sith deal in absolutes". Then later on, he says the absolute statement "The Sith are evil", to which Anakin responds "From my perspective, the Jedi are evil." Not only is this terrible writing, it shows the Jedi philosophy as inconsistent.

This line has made me laugh/driven me nuts since the first time I saw the movie — "Only the Sith deal in absolutes" is itself an absolute.

This isn't inconsistent with the purpose of the films. Like the other Jedi, Obi-Wan is a flawed character through the first three films. He doesn't live up to the pacifist and altruistic ideals of the Jedi in many, many ways. Lucas stresses this with a number of cinematic parallels to Luke in Empire.

This is why the ending of III is in sharp contrast to the ending of VI: Obi-Wan goes to kill rather than confront and forgive Anakin as a true Jedi presumably would. Even Yoda makes this mistaken in attacking Palpatine -- although he seems the only character aware of why he failed after the fact.

I'd not noticed this, despite the obscene number of times I've seen the film. Perhaps it IS related to the OP though, I wonder if anyone has done a study on the levels of internal consistency shown by the philosophies of psychopaths and non-psychopaths?

This article is pretty much right.

Want proof? Go play games like SW:KOTOR and play the light side only... you lay waste to everything you see EXCEPT for decisions that cause dark side points.

Sith troopers for the most part do this as a job. They don't subscribe to either side, they just wish to collect a pay check. And you kill them all, you don't even try to negotiate or Jedi handwave them into backing down.

If I remember correctly, though, the sequel to Knights of the Old Republic had a character who went out of her way to point out that both the light and dark sides of the force are self-serving, and that the Jedi and the Sith each honored their codes over people.

It was one of the more interesting takes on the series, I thought.

I haven't played KOTOR2, but I heard it sucked badly.

That said, the character would be right. Both the Jedi and the Sith were... religions, including all the trappings that make religions cause mass murder and other horrible things.

Anakin did bring balance to the force... it caused the destruction of the actual religion that was built up over the past 20 thousand years.

Under Luke's rebuilding of the Jedi Order post-ROTJ, he did not promote emotionless compassion, but instead common sense, which is a super power in its own right.

I mean, after all, he married Mara Jade and had kids, something pre-Anakin would have been a no-no.

Jolee Bindo if memory serves.

Jolee Bindo was the black Jedi from the first KOTOR, and his sub plot makes pretty much no sense.

He rejected the religious ways of the Jedi as a Padawan, he became a smuggler, he got married even though he was a Jedi, he trained her in the force, and then Exar Kun converted her to the dark side, Jolee fought her, won, but couldn't kill her, and then she ran off to kill a bunch of Jedi before she was stopped.

And Jolee's punishment for all of this? They wanted to promote him to being a Jedi Knight. Seriously?

Ah, I stand corrected. I remembered the storyline but not which KotOR it was from. This is why I research my articles instead of writing from fuzzy half-memories ;)

I wonder when they are going to do iPhone port so I can replay it again.

Lucas may have been a terrible director, but he understood the basic mythic themes enough to execute them properly in his films. Anakin brings balance by tearing down a classical system (read the Jedi order) and making way for a romantic system (read Luke, rebels freedom from the empire and the order). Luke and Anakin are both just Odesseus.

What is the deal with people's obsession over the word "psychopath?" I don't understand the point of taking characters whose personality and motivations are very clear to us and trying to apply or not apply this somewhat vague label. What do we learn from the label that we didn't already know?

Put in this perspective, it makes one wonder if a program to actively recruit and train psychopaths to act as impartial policemen with licenses to kill (re: Jedi) would or wouldn't work.

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