"You have paid the price for your lack of vision!" -- Eyes and Seeing in the Saga

When Darth Sidious speaks these words, he appears to be talking to Luke -- but he is equally describing Anakin, a man who fell to the Dark Side under Sidious' manipulations, and who literally wears a mask over his eyes, with bionic attachments that make him see in one colour. I think eyes and seeing, looking and perceiving, are central to the saga. Indeed, Qui Gon says to Anakin in Episode I, "your focus determines your reality," and provides us with a philosophical roadmap for the entire saga (it's curious that he uses the word "focus" -- a term that is also used in optics and the biology of vision). There are many other examples/motifs: when Anakin starts Threepio up for the first time, he literally forgets to add his second eye; Maul, Sidious and Vader possess "lizard-like" eyes at various points; Padme's bodyguard, Captain Typho, wears an eyepatch, and hastily declares, "I guess there was no danger at all", right before her ship blows up; the younglings, and later Luke, wear helmets because "[their] eyes can deceive [them]; don't trust them"; Anakin asks Luke to help him remove his helmet so he can "look upon [him] with [his] own eyes" and so on.

I have noticed that the saga seems extremely dense and literate -- filled with a cavalcade of themes, motifs and ideas. Of course, it is possible to see patterns in anything, particularly something as big as Star Wars, but it seems that the saga offers itself easily to these patterns, much more than anything else I can think of. It's interesting to approach things with different perspectives to see what may be learned/gained. What do you think to this one?

 

Hear, hear, good sir. Marvelous idea for a thread. I've just posted a few new motifs (motives?) in the "Visual Storytelling" thread, two of which have to do with the idea of vision. I'll share them here, if you don't mind:

 

"Should have gone to Specsavers!".

 

As Cryogenic may have alluded in his original post, there seems to be a tension in the Saga between literally "seeing" and "feeling". Obi-Wan and Yoda feel the deaths of others across immense distances, without seeing, while the Emperor eventually comes to lack the ability to sense Vader's son so close on Endor, even though it is Luke who supposedly has the "lack of vision" (again a reference to sight). The Emperor throughout the saga seems to comprehend everything but understands nothing. He can plan, see, manipulate, and coerce, but he doesn't understand basic feeling, only his own negative emotion, to fuel his anger and contempt, and how to manipulate those of others.

 

Very well put, PalpatineAntikristos. I agree completly. I think this is also the reason why he gets so mad at Luke when he rejects his offer. In the Emperor's mind, there's no reason why anybody would refuse such power. His only conclusion can be that Luke believes himself more powerful than the Emperor, and that angers him.

Love is just something that he could never understand.

 

Exactly. Good post. I also agree with Cryogenic's post about the Emperor referring to Vader. Palpatine gets his point across but ultimately pays the right price.

 

This is the best thread I've read in a minute.

 

Darth Sidious knows that if Luke doesn't turn he must be destoryed anyway. Vader says this when they first talk about Luke in ESB.

 

Don't forget Han being blinded at the begining of ROTJ.

 

I kind of feel that this is a role reversal of The Jedi and Sith from the PT and OT. In the PT, the Jedi (As Yoda elaborates on in the novelization) have been trained to fight the Sith of a thousand years ago. The Sith have changed the battle and have turned war itself into a weapon. The Jedi failed to adapt and thus could not win. The Jedi sat around inactive and tried to see into the future. The Sith were very active and could see the future clearly because they were engineering it.

In the OT, Luke is basically told to trust the Living Force instead of trusting visions of the future. The Emperor is still engineering events to manipulate the forseeable future. Luke is feeling his way through things. Yoda tells him "Long have I watched this one as he looked to the stars, never his mind on WHERE HE WAS, hmmmm, WHAT HE WAS DOING!" The ideas of the Jedi have changed. Yoda does attempt to see what would happen if Luke went to Bespin, but he doesn't put much stock into it. "Difficult to see. Always in motion the future is." Especially when the enemy is the one setting the future in motion. Luke has been trained to feel. Luke doesn't meditate and foresee that he is going to blast the death star apart, Obi-wan tells him to trust the force, Luke doesn't meditate to attempt to see what will happen if he surrenders to the imperials, he just feels it is the right thing to do. Luke doesn't "Foresee" his father coming back to the light if he throws down his saber, he just does it. Luke clearly didn't make a very good plan to deal with Jabba. He couldn't see how that would turn out, he just got all of his friends together and trusted that the force would present a solution. Luke doesn't consider all possibilities if he jumped after Vader cut his arm off, he felt it was the best thing to do, even if it cost him his life.

Basically, Luke never tries to "Foresee" things as the Emperor and the PT era Jedi do. The Emperor who has been very successful in his fight against the light thinks of this as folly and tells him he will "pay the price for his lack of vision." Still at this moment, Luke is stretching out and feeling. He knows of the conflict within his father, something that Sidious's "eyes" are blind to. In the end Qui-Gon's exchange with Obi-Wan to start the saga are important. "Keep your concentration on the here and now where it belongs" "But Master Yoda told me to be mindful of the future" "But not at the expense of the moment. Be mindful of the living force, my young Padawan." This philosophy wins out over being mindful of the future and setting events in motion to manipulate it. The concept of the Living Force was introduced in the opening moments of Episode I and achieved ultimate victory in the waning moments of Episode VI.

Carnage