a very limited defense of Anakin Skywalker

[elizabeth_hoot]

In my head, this post has always been the natural follow up to my Death Star rant, aka “why Luke was totally justified in blowing up the Death Star and certainly not a mass murderer.” Actually I'm not sure they have anything to do with each other, but anyway.

Comments

[wyncatastrophe]

Hey, "a couple of years" is still years, plural …

It is kind of frustrating. Kakkik and I have come to the conclusion that the only way you can effectively brand Vader a war criminal is to read the opening crawls and then ignore everything that happens in the movies. I'd also like to point out that in ROTS? He takes sides in a civil war, against a coup by a militant group full of his friends, in favor of the Republic's duly elected head of state (not that he stays duly elected for long), and proceeds to kill a lot of Jedi who have been proclaimed enemies of the state. Tragic? Yes. But we know from TCW that not even Padawans are non-combatants; Younglings, like the clone cadets, are brainwashed, living weapons. Palpatine wasn't logically wrong when he said that Vader would have to destroy them all or it would be "civil war without end" - although, yeah, probably the most effective argument he could possibly have made to Anakin, who has just spent three years in the horror of civil war.

I'm ranting now. Oops. Sorry, elizabeth_hoot! Didn't mean to rant in your journal …

[ladyhadhafang]

Can I quote you on that? Seriously, that's unbelievably awesome.

[wyncatastrophe]

Er … sure. Quote me on what?

[ladyhadhafang]

All of your comment, really, but especially the Civil War without end bit. Because really? I think that's definitely one of the best explanations for Anakin's actions I've seen in quite a while. :)

[wyncatastrophe]

That entire scene is overdetermined, by which I mean that Palpatine brings a multitude of factors to bear, any one of which might have been enough to secure Anakin's allegiance: he is Anakin's friend, he is the legitimate (at this point) ruler of the Republic, he has the knowledge to save Padmé, the Jedi are plotting to take control of the Senate, and Anakin has a once-in-a-lifetime chance to stop a civil war right here, right now. I think most viewers of the movie underestimate the importance of that last one; the tendency seems to be to distill all of Anakin's motivations down to "save Padmé, I need her!" And while it's true that he does seem pretty obsessed with her, I think paying close attention to what Anakin says and does throughout the film, and the means Palpatine uses to influence him, reveals that in fact there are a lot of reasons why he would join Palpatine in the end, and not that many why he would join the Jedi, who in the past three years have drafted an army of slaves bred to be canon fodder and willingly deployed them; become generals in a civil war instead of trying to mediate the conflict peacefully (keep in mind that the Separatists did not begin by launching military attacks, but by voting for secession from the Republic; it was the Jedi who fought to keep them there); deserted their own supporters and committed collateral damage when convenient (remember Jabiim?); and supported a regime that they know and admit to be corrupt, not just for those three years, but for the entire time he's known them. Simultaneously they are brainwashing babies taken from their families. So while the final scenes of ROTS are horrific, I think the real tragedy of the Prequel films is that by the time of Anakin's fall, there are no "good guys" left - "heroes on both sides," as the crawl says, but no men of conscience, and that's one of the ways Palpatine appeals to him: "You've been searching for a life greater than that of an ordinary Jedi. A life of significance, of conscience," and that's precisely what he can no longer have with the Jedi. There are no good choices left for him to make, only painful ones.

*bawls*

[ladyhadhafang]

*Hugs*

I know, right? Seriously.

Poor Anakin. :(

[elizabeth_hoot]

I'm not really sure about heroes on both sides - villains on both sides, maybe, and moral ambiguity all around. But I do agree that Anakin is given a ton of reasons for what he does and a situation where any choice he can make will be a bad one. Though at the same time I don't think the not-all-about-Padmé reasons are...emphasized much until he announces the Jedi are evil. I might be misremembering, but I'm not sure he even really talks about his desire for peace until ... ESB? (Gah, still trying to end the war TWENTY YEARS LATER. :\) So we do have to assume a lot. On the upside, he provides a lot of, of space for analysis - there are a lot of things around him that seem like they have to be relevant, even if the connections are never made explicit.

[elizabeth_hoot]

Hmm, I'm not quite sure about the younglings. I don't think they're padawans yet; the children Anakin kills seem very young, and padawans (as far as we see) tend to be teenagers. Sure, we see small children being taught some basic self-defense, but I doubt they regularly carry weapons on them. And I rather doubt that, at least in the SW universe, the brainwashing of a five- or six-year-old is irreversible. (An explanation I have seen is that he thought, or convinced himself he thought, that death would actually be kinder than whatever Palpatine would do to break them. Which may very well be true, without exonerating him.)

It's a bit depressing, if you think about it, that there was civil war without end anyway. Even the implied end of it in ROTJ - the special edition, anyway (one of the changes I really like!) - happened after Anakin's death.

Oh, ranting is fine. I love discussion -- as long as nobody lectures me about nostalgia, it's totally cool. :)