An in-depth analysis of Anakin

I thought you'd all like to read this. This is a paper I wrote for my advanced Film Theory & Criticism class at my university. I got a B+ on it. I use some Freud in my paper, so be wary that there's some psychosexual analysis. Mods, if you think this topic belongs in another forum, feel free to move it. I hope you like it.











A Study of Anakin Skywalker: Father and Son, Villain and Victim

As actor Ian McDiarmid, who plays the character of Palpatine, astutely said in a documentary, ?If you had a subtitle for [the Star Wars films], it could be ?Fathers and Sons?.? He couldn?t be more right. My intent is to analyze, with the assistance of Sigmund Freud and Robin Wood, the complicated parent/child dynamics in the Star Wars saga. Since the Luke Skywalker/Darth Vader relationship has been discussed endlessly since the release of the Irvin Kershner-directed Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back in 1980, I will instead focus on the saga?s central character, Anakin Skywalker, and his numerous father-son relationships, particularly those found in the saga?s latest entry, George Lucas?s 2005 film Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

Revenge of the Sith has a burden that few other films have. Not only must it tell its own story, but it must also wrap up one trilogy and bridge the gap to another trilogy. The film has handled its burden well, however, as it has earned a spot within imdb.com?s prestigious list of the top 250 movies of all time. Many viewers praised the film for its strikingly brutal lightsaber duels, its well-executed depiction of Anakin?s fall to the dark side, its connections to the original Star Wars trilogy and its overall darker tone (it is the only film in the Star Wars saga to be rated PG-13 rather than the traditional PG).

For the sake of brevity, I will not summarize the entire Star Wars saga; entire books have been written that do exactly that. Revenge of the Sith is perhaps the most personal of Lucas?s Star Wars films, concerned more with conflicting desires among individuals than it is with conflict on a galactic scale. Revenge of the Sith entails Anakin?s fall from grace?in particular, his absolute rejection of one father figure and his absolute acceptance of another.

Anakin Skywalker?s first chronological appearance occurs in Lucas?s 1999 film Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, where he appears as an innocent, caring, loving nine-year-old boy. The young Anakin is utterly selfless, and as one character in Phantom Menace notes, ?[Anakin] knows nothing of greed. He gives without any thought of reward.? Through the course of the film, Anakin meets Padme Amidala, whom he marries in Lucas?s 2002 film Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Marriage is something that is forbidden by the Jedi Order that Anakin serves, and in Revenge of the Sith Anakin and Padme strive to keep their marriage ? and Padme?s pregnancy ? a secret.

Anakin?s mother Shmi claims in Phantom Menace that he has no father. She reports that she gave birth to him via some form of Immaculate Conception, suggesting that Anakin is a sort of intergalactic Jesus Christ. Yet it is interesting to note that Anakin, who has no father, collects father figures. His two chief ?fathers? are Chancellor Palpatine and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Both men took Anakin on as a surrogate son in Phantom Menace, and even at that point Palpatine worked hard to appear the better of the two fathers. ?We will watch your career with great interest,? Palpatine initially tells the young Anakin with great enthusiasm; meanwhile, Obi-Wan makes an offhand remark referring to Anakin as a ?pathetic life form,? and chooses to take Anakin on as his apprentice mainly just to grant the last wish of Obi-Wan?s own dead master/father figure, Qui-Gon Jinn.

Anakin is torn between Palpatine and Obi-Wan in Revenge of the Sith. He has great respect and admiration for both

 

i hope that whoever marked you picked up that the Immaculate Conception refers to The Virgin Mary being conceived without original sin & NOT Jesus .

Jesus was a virgin birth & Incarnation (both truly God and truly man).

Anakin was just a Virgin birth, he has high midi?s but he is not the force in human form.

Other than that it?s pretty good even though i hate Freud & think he was full of crap.

 

Yeah, I tried not to overemphasize on the religious aspect. I get what you're saying.

I don't like Freud either, actually, but he's the only theorist we've studied that focuses on parent-child relations, so I pretty much had no choice but to use him.

Thanks for reading!

 

Hey Rassick, I think you're really on the right track about star wars. I'm really interested in Vader's "typical male" persona.

I don't know, but doesn't the fear of losing a hand, arm, or leg supercede castration? At the same time, I think you're right about the loss of power, it's a castration in that sense. I'd rather call it a power loss myself.

I guess it was pressure that leads Anakin to change to Vader. It really reminds me of what a child of the 1950s, with WWII messing up a lot of men would see around him. I'll try and look for how Vader's persona is socially constructed.

(And oh yea, I like Freud a lot, although I haven't read much of his work)

 

How can you know such a thing? Why can't he be the Force in human form?

 

Thanks jedi_jacks! As we all know, Anakin's tragic flaw is the fear of loss (i.e., the loss of Shmi and Padme), so it made sense to extend that to the fear of castration. Anakin doesn't literally fear having his "goods" removed (at least, no more than I guess a normal guy would) but with film theory, you really have to go out of your way to search for sexual psychoanalyses. The big one is the sperm and egg reference.

In the end of course, it's Star Wars, and while there is a bevy of deep meanings and symbolism, I don't think there are particularly potent sexual undertones unless you go out of your way to look for them, as I was forced to (unless you consider the incestual implications of the OT when you watch the Saga in order, 1-6).

 

?How can you know such a thing? Why can't he be the Force in human form??
DARTHIRONCLAD

I was thinking about that. But Anakin is the ?chosen one? sent to do a certain task ie kill the Sith. No one ever says that he is the incarnation of the force just that he has high midies( in fact created by the midis) and an unusual birth. I think of him either as a ?hero? like Sampson ( not virgin birth but sent to earth for a specific reason) or like one of the Greco- Roman Demi-Gods.

If he was an incarnation of the force you would then have to start questioning the nature of the force. Jesus was sinless because he was God incarnate ie Father God is sinless there fore his son sent to suffer and die is sinless.

Anakin is hardly sinless so if he was an incarnation of the force that takes you down a different path of thought & that is for another thread I think.

 

Yeah, absolutely. Plus, if Anakin was a living version of the Force, you'd think that the galaxy would, like, implode when he died or something.

 

First of all, Rassick, nice work! It was a good read, and though some of the Freud can be over the top, once you move a little away from his extremes, the connections that he makes between the psyche and the sexual do make sense and help to illuminate some human behaviours and patterns, and child/parent relationships and dynamics are always fascinating to study.

DarthZeppo wrote:
If he was an incarnation of the force you would then have to start questioning the nature of the force. Jesus was sinless because he was God incarnate ie Father God is sinless there fore his son sent to suffer and die is sinless.

Anakin is hardly sinless so if he was an incarnation of the force that takes you down a different path of thought & that is for another thread I think.

Oh hopefully not yet! I do think that this idea of Anakin as an avatar of the Force due to the nature of his begetting, makes for an interesting discussion about the nature of the Force itself. If you start looking at Anakin from a moral point of view, or quasi religious figure viewpoint, then it does make for baggage that's perhaps unwarranted (due to a virgin birth similar to JC). Anakin had no father, was perhaps 'put' in the GFFA for a singular purpose that he eventually fulfilled, BUT, he wasn't sinless, and so what? In the GFFA he didn't have to be, and this brings us to the Force itself. It seems to me, after ROTS, especially and now looking at everything in its proper context, the Force was perhaps not such a benevolent phenomenon/entity after all. When you think about it, it allowed for most of its practitioners to be destroyed at a crucial time in the galaxy's history, and though balance was eventually restored, wow, what a cost!

 

yes, questions like?
what is the force?
what is it's nature?
Does it have a singular consciousness?
Well it has a will doesn?t it?
Does having a will make it a deity but a deity whose power some people can share?
People can access it?s power for evil but does that make the force itself evil? or is a use of the dark side an abuse of the force?

Anakin brings balance because he destroys the Sith? dark side users so was the sith?s abuse of the force what made it unbalanced?

 

That was a well-argued, well-written essay. Thanks for posting it.

You missed a couple of points, however.

1) Qui Gon was equally -- or moreso -- Anakin's surrogate father when he found him and argued his case in TPM. At this point in the saga's epic narrative, Obi Wan was Qui Gon's older "son" and jealous/indifferent "brother" of Anakin. You seem to think, at least in Star Wars, that only one character can have the same father. Not true! Anakin and Obi Wan were both his children -- but the Jedi Council, blinded by dogma, insisted Qui Gon only have a single apprentice (which is an inadevertent Sith policy). Part of the tragedy is that Obi Wan, the jealous/indifferent "brother", is forced to assume a paternal, wisened, "father" role after Qui Gon dies; a role he isn't entirely cut out for. Eventually, in ROTS, the paradigm is revealed as shaky: Obi Wan is a father from Anakin's perspective and a brother to Anakin from his own. But Palpatine knows to play the father card from day one.

2) You forgot a sly little inference in one of Palpatine's lines that you quoted: "I need your help, son". I need your help, SON. This subconsciously reinforced Anakin's perspective of him as his father.

I think the father/son paradigm is what gives the saga its distinctive feel and flavour. This rigid adherence, yet malleable exploration, of a vital theme, one that is extremely tangible and humanistic, seems missing from The Matrix and Lord of the Rings trilogies.

I could have sworn I read somewhere in your essay about Ki Adi Mundi's phallic head. Am I going mad? I wanted to quote it as a criticism -- not of you, but of academia in general, where one is entitled to hide behind words, when all one is really saying is: "that guy's head looks like a penis!" You can literally convey the silliest of notions with the right language.

Many figures in mythology had virgin births -- Jesus, Hercules, Ra, Krishna, Romulus, Zoroaster and more. It was clearly Lucas' intent to evoke no specific one, but in fact, all of them. That's the power of Star Wars. By being so broad, it should call to mind these sorts of questions. Perhaps Anakin literally was the Force incarnate. Afterall, if the Force has a "Light" and a "Dark" side, then surely its representative would embody both extremes and the rich spectrum between, before finally sacrificing himself and possibly unifying them? In Sikh mythology, for example, Guru Nanak emerged and said, "There is no Hindu and there is no Muslim". To him, if not to everyone else, he had found another path. In this case, he didn't necessarily "merge" the two existing faiths in his mind, but it's an interesting quotation all the same. Let's go back to Star Wars. Consider this line by Palpatine: "If one is to understand the great mystery, one must study all its aspects..." He appears to be talking about the Force, but if Anakin is the embodiment of the Force, might he not also be referring, even if he's unaware, to Anakin himself?

 

Cryogenic
You forgot a sly little inference in one of Palpatine's lines that you quoted: "I need your help, son". I need your help, SON. This subconsciously reinforced Anakin's perspective of him as his father.

Oh man, I never realized the heavy meaning behind that line, it totally snuck past me until you mentioned it. Nice find!

 

That's it exactly. The divine conception was around long before Mary.
As Cryogenic stated, what Lucas has done is taken all the ancient and modern stories and created Star Wars. The Jedi and Sith can only tap into this energy that is created by all living things but they don't understand it. They can only use it to throw stuff around, read people's minds, and blasts each other with Force lightning, but other than that they do not understand the will of the Force. Darth Vader only gave the people the Empire that they wanted. Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader is the will of the Force. And what Lucas is saying is that these characters do not know the truth about divinity/will of the Force/gods in the GFFA.

"Anakin, if one is to understand the great mystery one must study all its aspects not just the narrow dogmatic view of the Jedi."---Palpatine

"Not this time, my friend. I followed you on many adventures, but into the great Unknown Mystery I go first, Indy."---Wu Han

"I see Star Wars as taking all the issues that religion represents and trying to distill them down into a more modern and easily accessible construct--that there is a greater mystery out there.

I think there is a God. No question. What that God is or what we know about that God, I'm not sure. The one thing I know about life and about the human race is that we've always tried to construct some kind of context for the unknown. Even the cavemen thought they had it figured out. I would say that cavemen understood on a scale of about 1. Now we've made it up to about 5. The only thing that most people don't realize is the scale goes to 1 million."--George Lucas

I figure the people in the GFFA have made it to about 100,000 on the scale.

 

Have they? I think I'd give them a 6 or a 7. Begrudgingly.

Seriously, however, they actually seem more stunted than we are. Besides the Jedi, the Sith the Gungans and the Ewoks, which actually make up a tiny portion of the entire galaxy, no one seems to give the divine any thought. Han Solo is the embodiment of the galaxy: "I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything."

 

I gave them the 100,000 because some of them are able to influence events in the mortal world even after their mortal bodies died.

Let's not forget the Rebel Alliance in which Han Solo became a part of.
"Then man your ships and may the Force be with you."--General Dodonna
"May the Force be with us."--Admiral Ackbar

It appears that in Star Wars it doesn't matter what you believe or even if you believe. What truly matters is that you look out for one another and that is what Darth Vader makes the people do.

Han Solo is the embodiment of the people's indifference to the suffering of others and then he becomes the exact opposite.

"Mom, you say the biggest problem in this universe is nobody helps each other."

 

Good ideas, everyone.

And though I didn't mention it in the essay, there's some definite confusion over the Obi-Wan/Anakin relationship. Anakin refers to Obi-Wan as his father twice in AOTC ("You're the closest thing I have to a father" in the Outlander Nightclub, and "He's like a father to me!" on Tatooine), yet Obi-Wan famously declares, "You were my brother, Anakin! I loved you!"

It doesn't help that Obi-Wan is only 16 years Anakin's senior, and he took Anakin on as his apprentice at literally the very moment that he ceased to become a Padawan himself. He was forced to "grow up" fast. Obi-Wan was never truly displayed as immature, even as a Padawan in TPM, but he was still young, naive and inexperienced.

 

Sorry, I'm really running out of time, so my post isn't all that elaborate.

The Force "surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together." The Galaxy is far from perfect and since there are a number of beings that can actually "use" (for lack of a better word) the Force, there is a bond between those beings and the Force. It influences them, and in return they influence it.

I again, apologize, I am short on time but I'm sure I can explain further next time.

 

yes i know the force is not like the God of Jewish/Christian based religions.

My point was Jesus incarnation of God = reflects Gods nature.

So if Anakin was the incarnation of the force = reflects nature of force.


Personally I don?t think he?s the incarnation of the force not because he?s imperfect but because Lucas has not said that?yet.
I think of him more as a demi-god like Hercules. Semi-devine but still human enough to do stupid things.

 

Of course, we have to entertain the possibility that Anakin was created by Palpatine or Plagueis, and not by the Force itself.

Yes, Anakin has flaws, but doesn't that sort of make you think of the great Biblical contradiction? That is, man was created in the image of God, yet man is imperfect. I don't see why the same thing couldn't have happened with Anakin and the Force.

 

For a thousand or so generations things were ultimately peaceful, and then the Sith re-appear, the same time Anakin, The Chosen One, is discovered. He is ultimately innocent, along with the Galaxy altogether. As he becomes trained and he endures conflicting emotions about Padme and the Order, the Force is slowly tilting towards the Dark Side. The Sith are becoming more powerful, the Jedi have lost the ability to see the future and etc. Anakin's emotions are somewhat clouded as well. He has no idea where his loyalties lie. As the Sith become more powerful, Anakin is becoming more resistent towards the Order.

 

Very astute!

 

I think that the multiple amputations in STAR WARS function as metaphorical castrations, don't they?
If by castration we are talking about this male loss of power.

I like some of Freud, but hes a bit too much of a misogynist (and waaaay to focused on sex) for me
to take totally seriously. Still, there is a truth to much of what he says; at least in terms of a critique
of modern western society's multiple hang ups and neurosis...

 

Yes -- Freud basically expressed the unspeakable. Even though some of it is far flung and all of it is open to question. Ultimately, I think we should be grateful, if "grateful" is the right word, that he left us with such controversial material to discuss.

 

The galaxy was anything but innocent. Qui-Gon was guided to Tatooine not just to find the chosen one but to find a child born into bondage. Not just Qui-Gon but the entire Jedi Order was guided to a planet consumed by corruption but the Jedi just chose to look the other way.

Anakin is the victim not the galaxy that stood by and did nothing while children were born into bondage.

 

Yes.

Just imagine if we'd met Anakin in space at 18, say, and never learnt his origins. The story would be a dead weight.

I do question your interpretation of the Jedi on Coruscant, though. It's an interesting idea -- but is it really true? Maybe the Jedi arrived on Coruscant when it was fresh and free of corruption. Though the nature of their Temple -- an ivory tower -- suggests a folly that will be their undoing.