Saga The Force and Moral Compass

When did "the Force" become a synonym for moral compass? The "dark side of Force" is evil . . . the "light side of the Force" is good? Is this how most Star Wars fans regard the Force? As an easy label for morality? Something to be compartmentalized? It is odd. The Force was never described in that manner in "A New Hope". Not even by Anakin, who was a Sith lord at the time. In the beginning . . . and even in "The Phantom Menace", the Force was described as some entity that binds all living things (regardless of moral compass, etc.) together.

Yet, the phrase "the Dark Side of the Force" popped up in "The Empire Strikes Back" and neither the movies or the fans have not looked back. It has become so bad that the latest "Star Wars" film, "The Force Awakens", has an elderly character portrayed by Max von Sydow proclaiming that without the Jedi (who are supposed to be symbols of purity, goodness and all of that stuff), the Force is not in balance. Since when is the balance of the Force depended on the presence of the Jedi? Only one character, Qui-Gon Jinn, has never used the "Dark Side of the Force" phrase. I am beginning to wonder if others should have followed his example.

I blame George Lucas.

 

I do not want a straightforward depiction of heroes and villains. I have outgrown that need. And I suspect that once Rian Johnson gets his hands on the saga, he will return to the moral ambiguity that has dominated the saga since "The Empire Strikes Back".

If the Force is described by how some people use it, then I still believe that there should be no terms like "dark side" and "light side". Such phrases make the Force seem like it is divided by moral compass. The user him or herself should be described by how he or she uses the Force, not the Force itself.

 

BEN "Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force" ... "Well, the Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together."

IMHO, it's first and foremost a noteworthy fact that nowhere in the OT is there ever a confirmation or mentioning of "the light side".

When the Force is "created" by all living things, then killing a living thing is counter-productive to the Force or the "will" of the Force itself.

When a "dark side" user uses the Force to kill it's rather perverse. IMHO, "dark side" is a misnomer for the lack of a better word, "Force parasite" might be more fitting.

In general (and in real life) I believe your actions qualify as "dark" when they come at the expense of another being. Since the Jedi are supposed to prevent the abuse of the Force, "bringing balance" looks like another misnomer. I think it would be more like they do not disturb the Force as much as a "dark" user would.

A poster in another message board recently quoted Lucas on the subject. Let's just say the "late" Lucas opted for a "light" and a "dark" side but I'm not aware that the "young" Lucas ever did.

 

There is a mention of the 'good' side in ROTJ.

 

You are still limiting the Force to moral compass.

 

LUKE "Because...there is good in him. I've felt it. He won't turn me over to the Emperor. I can save him. I can turn him back to the good side. I
have to try."

Correct, but how reliable is Luke? Remember, he did the same thing in ESB ("How can I tell the good side from the bad one") to which Yoda only replied - without ever confirming it - "You will know in time [that the Force isn't like that?]"

 

The idea of a dark side of the Force and the light, date back to the second draft of ANH. Lucas introduced these aspects as the Ashla (light) and Bogan (dark). In that draft, Luke Starkiller states that the deaths of many Jedi during the rise of the Emperor and the Sith, resulted in the Ashla growing weaker with each passing Jedi. Before then, a holy man named Skywalker had discovered the Ashla of the Force and a descendant of his named Darklighter had discovered the Bogan of the Force and passed it on others resulting in the birth of the Sith. Just as Skywalker's offspring were the basis for the Jedi. The Ashla had grown so weak that Luke's father needed the Kaibur crystal to reconnect to the Ashla of the Force. The Bogan was so strong that it could bring forth the negative emotions of man, such as fear and doubt and sadness. Crippling those who are not trained to resist it. This happened to Han during the rescue attempt of Luke's brother Deak. Luke has to help Han break free of the Bogan in order to go on.

In the third draft, Lucas wrote that the Ashla was dormant until Luke convinces Ben to help him to deliver the Death Star plans to the Alliance. Vader and two other Sith sense a disturbance in the Force and feel an awakening of the Ashla. By the fourth draft, Lucas renamed the two sides as the Force and the dark side.

Qui-gon doesn't mention it because he is not instructing Anakin about it and Obi-wan has not taken the trials and his training is mostly done. As to what Lor San Tekka said, it is in reference to the fact that for over a thousand generations, it has been the Jedi who have made sure that the dark side has never held sway. They've been the ones who have kept the Sith and the Dathmoirian dark side adepts at bay. This is a call back to what Lucas himself wrote in the second draft of ANH.

Yes, he did. A long time back. Tell that person that they need to read up on "Star Wars".

That's because "Star Wars" has always been a morality tale, as much as it was a children's film. A modern day fairy tale. And with the films, he has made a point that he was telling an old myth in a new way. And that the Force is the end result of his looking at many different religions and distilling the basics into something that was understandable to all people.

 

If there's anything I can wish for in Episode 8, it's that Johnson explores the concept of the Force not being this hard and fast philosophy of just good and evil. It was explored in the Black Fleet Crisis series in the old EU that there was more to using the force than just the light side and the dark side, one could tap into both as needed. Luke's own development and serving the clone Emperor temporarily was a great example of this.

 

I think 'Star Wars" was a tale for both children and adults. I think the franchise had risen above being a series of films for children with the release of "The Empire Strikes Back" and the stories grew even more complex and ambiguous. Until this latest film.

 

That's problematic, because Jedi cannot just use the dark side without consequences.

"The key issue in these movies is for a Jedi not to use anger when he’s fighting. So the final confrontation here is primarily about trying to make Luke become angry, so that when he fights his father he’s fighting in anger, therefore begins to use the dark side of the Force, and therefore sort of succumbs to the dark side of the Force. In The Empire Strikes Back we had them confront each other and fight together. But in this film Luke has become more mature so that now he knows he shouldn’t be fighting him—that is the path to the dark side. So it’s basically a confrontation between two people and one of them doesn’t want to fight, and the other one keeps trying to push him into it. And then in the end when he gives up and they really do fight, what’s happening there is that ultimately Luke is turning to the dark side, and all is going to be lost."

--George Lucas, ROTJ DVD Commentary, 2004

ANH was very much made as a children's film, after the first draft was completed.

Paul Scanlon: And then Fox took it?

George Lucas: Fox took it, and it was close because there wasn't any other place I wanted to take it. I don't know what I would have done, maybe take a job. But the last desperate thing is to "take a job". I really wanted to hold on to my own integrity. So I was going to try to write a very interesting project. Right after Graffiti I was getting this fan mail from kids that said the film changed their life, and something inside me said, do a children's film. And everybody said, "Do a children's film? What are you talking about? You're crazy". You know, I had done Graffiti as a challenge. All I had ever done to that point was crazy, avant-garde, abstract movies. Francis really challenged me on that. "Do something warm," he said, "everyone thinks you're a cold fish; all you do is science fiction". So I said, "Okay, I'll do something warm". I did Graffiti and then I wanted to go back and do this other stuff, I thought I had more of a chance of getting Star Wars off the ground. I had gone around to all the studios with Apocalypse Now for the tenth time and then they said, no, no, no. So I took this other project, this children's film. I thought: we all know what a terrible mess we have made of the world, we all know how wrong we were in Vietnam. We also know, as every movie made in the last ten years points out, how terrible we are, how we have ruined the world and what schmucks we are and how rotten everything is. And I said, what we really need is something more positive. Because Graffiti pointed out, as I said with these letters, that kids forgot what being a teenager was, which is being dumb and chasing girls, doing things – you know, at least I did when I was a kid. Before I became a film major, I was very heavily into social science, I had done a lot of sociology, anthropology, and I was playing in what I call social psychology, which is sort of an offshoot of anthropology/sociology – looking at a culture as a living organism, why it does what it does. Anyway, I became very aware of the fact that the kids were really lost, the sort of heritage we built up since the war had been wiped out in the Sixties and it wasn't groovy to act that way anymore, now you just sort of sat there and got stoned. I wanted to preserve what a certain generation of Americans thought being a teenager was really about – in a strong sense from about 1945 to 1962, that generation, several generations. There was a certain car culture, a certain mating ritual going on, and it was something that I'd lived through and really loved. So by seeing the effect Graffiti had on kids, I realized that kids today of that age rediscovered what it was to be a teenager. They also started going out cruising the main street of town again, and I went back and did various studies of towns, my own town, Modesto, we checked them out. There was no cruising and then, all of a sudden, it all started up again. So when I got done with Graffiti, I said, "Look, you know something else has happened, and I began to stretch it down to younger people, 10- to 12-year-olds, who have lost something even more significant than the teenager. I saw that kids today don't have any fantasy life the way we had – they don't have westerns, they don't have pirate movies, they don't have that stupid serial fantasy life that we used to believe in.

--Rolling Stone interview, 1977.

“Star Wars is total fantasy for today’s kids who don’t have the opportunity to grow up watching Flash Gordon and have to sit through movies of insecurity instead (like Earthquake or Towering Inferno).”

--George Lucas, Sight & Sound interview, 1976.

“I think that Revenge, for better or worse, is going to put the whole thing in perspective. I don’t know whether people are going to like it that much, but the truth of it is, that’s the way the film was originally designed. I think people have perceived [Star Wars] sort of different from the way it really is, and in this one it becomes obvious – which, essentially, is a fairy tale.”

--George Lucas, Starlog interview, July 1981.

MOYERS: Some critics scoff at this whole notion of a deeper layer of meaning to what they call strictly kid stuff. I come down on the side that kid stuff is the stuff dreams are made of.

LUCAS: Yes. It's much harder to write for kids than it is to write for adults. On one level, they will accept--they don't have constraints, and they're not locked into a particular dogma. On the other side, if something doesn't make sense to them, they're much more critical of it.

MOYERS: So when you write, do you see your audience, and is that audience a 13-year-old boy?

LUCAS: I make these films for myself more than I make them for anybody else. I'm lucky that the things that I believe in and the things that I enjoy and the things that entertain me entertain a large population. Sometimes they don't. I've made a bunch of movies that nobody has liked. So that doesn't always hold true. But I don't really make my films for an audience per se. I'm hoping that a 12-year-old boy or girl will enjoy it. But I'm not dumbing it down. I think I'm making it with enough credibility so that anybody can watch it.

MOYERS: It's certainly true that Star Wars was seen by a lot of adults, yours truly included. Even if I hadn't wanted to pay attention, I realized that I had to take it seriously because my kids were taking it seriously. And now my grandkids take it seriously.

LUCAS: Well, it's because I try to make it believable in its own fantastic way. And I am dealing with core issues that were valid 3,000 years ago and are still valid today, even though they're not in fashion.

MOYERS: Why are they out of fashion?

LUCAS: Because the world we live in is more complex. I think that a lot of those moralities have been degraded to the point that they don't exist anymore. But the emotional and psychological part of those issues are still there in most people's minds.

--Time Magazine interview, 1999.

 

Don't forget Vision of the Future, in which Mara claimed that Luke's brush with the dark side had ultimately led to a string of bad decisions. One cannot simply use the dark side with impunity and remain free of corruption; I think the films make this clear.

He uses the phrase "the dark side" in The Clone Wars.

It's not as noteworthy as some people seem to think, for various reasons. One is that "light side" is only nomenclature that came into usage after the OT to refer to something that simply had a different name in the OT. Even without that it would stand to reason that if you have a dark side you also have a "non-dark" side by simple subtraction. And we have Lucas' words on the subject at various points in time; Luke's dialogue is not as easily thrown under the bus when Lucas explicitly agrees with him.

Spoiler

There is also Episode 7 to consider.

 

Just a minute please. I'm well aware of the early concepts and the "Force of users" but later it gets ambiguous and you indicated so yourself:

The Force and the dark side (of the Force)

Except for Luke's "good side" speculation there is never any reference to a bright or light side of the Force in the OT. Coincidence? Did Lucas feel later that he should return to a simpler black & white basic model?

 

It's not speculation; aside from the fact that the fan-revisionist position rewrites Yoda into the lousiest "teacher" ever, Lucas' own words from the OT years confirm that Luke's view is intended to be correct.

It wasn't something that happened "later", it was always that way.

 

No, it just meant that Lucas and Kasdan didn't use the term light side in the films. It was felt that it was easier to say that the Force exists, but there is a consequence to it and that consequence is referred to as the dark side. Calling it the light side or the Ashla made it seem as if there were two different versions of the Force. However, in interviews and commentary, Lucas does refer to the good side.