Target: Death Star
Jun. 27th, 2008 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerI've been mulling over a seemingly recurring Star Wars topic for a little while now, and I think I've got my thoughts together enough to make a post about it, for all that I'm slightly worried I'm taking on something too big for me, to result in annoyed responses or just an ambiguous silence... In any case, though, the topic that I've noticed is that every so often, when the discussion turns to "good and evil" and all that, someone will toss out "Yeah, well, Luke blew up the Death Star!", and it seems to me that this is meant to cut the ground out from under him and the "good guys" almost as a whole.
Now, maybe there can be a serious discussion about whether a story resolved by violent means really allows for "good guys" and "bad guys," or whether there's merely one group that will be somewhat less worse to most others once everything is over, and about how people could try harder yet to make stories in which non-violent resistance is noble and exciting... and yet, that discussion would seem to encompass a vastly greater scope than just Star Wars, and perhaps leaves me wondering again if there are those who seem to want Star Wars to be something it's not and complain about it instead of finding something that is what they want, and perhaps even doesn't have to be compared to Star Wars at every moment.
Closing in on specifics, I can wonder if this is rooted in a comment by Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back, "A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defence, never for attack." Even then, though, it seems quite possible to argue that Luke was defending those on Yavin against an impending and final attack. To me, it feels like sinking a battleship, not bombing a city... and you can stuff the Death Star full of unknowing crewmen, but it does begin to seem like a hypothetical case. I can wonder if the Force can be interpreted as defining certain acts as intrinsically evil, or if some acts can be powered by anger focused against the target (and some acts may require that anger), anger that will ultimately leave the perpetrator unable to draw on anything else. Of course, at times I do wonder if it could just be argued that this is an example of how badly the Force is out of balance at this point.
(I suppose I've seen this turn up somewhat outside of Star Wars discussion as well, too. Somebody once tossed it out in direct comparison to the scene in The Matrix where Neo and Trinity stylishly gun their way through a lobby full of police officers. I do have to admit that that scene was the one in all three movies that left me ambiguous and perhaps even disturbed when I first saw it, and yet, to use a gruesome term, it seemed somehow "overkill" to bring in Luke using the Force to destroy the Death Star. I found myself instead contemplating Luke, Han, and Chewie shooting their way into the cell bay to rescue Princess Leia... they may well have been as "protected" by the story itself as any protagonists ever are, and yet they seem somewhat more on the level of the guards than Neo and Trinity were in The Matrix at that point.)
Now, maybe there can be a serious discussion about whether a story resolved by violent means really allows for "good guys" and "bad guys," or whether there's merely one group that will be somewhat less worse to most others once everything is over, and about how people could try harder yet to make stories in which non-violent resistance is noble and exciting... and yet, that discussion would seem to encompass a vastly greater scope than just Star Wars, and perhaps leaves me wondering again if there are those who seem to want Star Wars to be something it's not and complain about it instead of finding something that is what they want, and perhaps even doesn't have to be compared to Star Wars at every moment.
Closing in on specifics, I can wonder if this is rooted in a comment by Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back, "A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defence, never for attack." Even then, though, it seems quite possible to argue that Luke was defending those on Yavin against an impending and final attack. To me, it feels like sinking a battleship, not bombing a city... and you can stuff the Death Star full of unknowing crewmen, but it does begin to seem like a hypothetical case. I can wonder if the Force can be interpreted as defining certain acts as intrinsically evil, or if some acts can be powered by anger focused against the target (and some acts may require that anger), anger that will ultimately leave the perpetrator unable to draw on anything else. Of course, at times I do wonder if it could just be argued that this is an example of how badly the Force is out of balance at this point.
(I suppose I've seen this turn up somewhat outside of Star Wars discussion as well, too. Somebody once tossed it out in direct comparison to the scene in The Matrix where Neo and Trinity stylishly gun their way through a lobby full of police officers. I do have to admit that that scene was the one in all three movies that left me ambiguous and perhaps even disturbed when I first saw it, and yet, to use a gruesome term, it seemed somehow "overkill" to bring in Luke using the Force to destroy the Death Star. I found myself instead contemplating Luke, Han, and Chewie shooting their way into the cell bay to rescue Princess Leia... they may well have been as "protected" by the story itself as any protagonists ever are, and yet they seem somewhat more on the level of the guards than Neo and Trinity were in The Matrix at that point.)