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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: The Tragedy of Darth Vader Darth Vader is surely one of the most recognisable movie villain in film history. So notorious is Darth Vader that he has come to symbolise evil in popular culture. Lord Vader even made it to the third place on the 100 Heroes and Villains of American Film Institute's 100 Years series, not to mention that he is also immortalised as a gargoyle (a sculpture situated at the corner of the roof or building which channels rainwater away) at Washington National Cathedral. This is where state funerals and memorial services are held in America. People like to relate Emperor Palpatine's Galactic Empire in Stars Wars with Hitler's Third Reich. It is not wrong, but it is definitely not the whole truth. Evil is not just out there. Evil exists right here. It is all too easy and comforting to pinpoint and thus demonise other people, country, or organisation as the bad guys and we as the good guys. That is fine if you are a kid and disastrous if you're not. One reason why the world is perpetually in such a mess is because such simplistic thinking is frequently promoted when things go wrong. Right now, as the greatest episode of financial turmoil to date is being staged in the States, you find statements like these in The New York Times: [Administration Is Seeking $700 Billion for Wall Street] Nancy Pelosi of California, said in a statement. “Democrats will work with the administration to ensure that our response to events in the financial markets is swift, but we must insulate Main Street from Wall Street and keep people in their homes.” “We have to make sure that whatever plan our government comes up with works not just for Wall Street, but for Main Street,” Mr. Obama said. [Paulson Argues for Need to Buy Mortgages] Seeking to dispel any impression that the bailout would amount to a rescue of greedy Wall Street executives by Main Street Americans, Mr. Paulson said the program would “cost Americans far less than the alternative.” [In Candidates, 2 Approaches to Wall Street] On the campaign trail on Monday, Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, struck a populist tone. Speaking in Florida, he said that the economy’s underlying fundamentals remained strong but were being threatened “because of the greed by some based in Wall Street and we have got to fix it.” Well, Wall Street and Main Street are joined at the hip. So stop pointing fingers at each other. This is not between "us" and "them," but rather "we" are in this deep shit together. Alright, back to Vader. I would argue that Darth Vader truly does not stand for pure evil. Things are never as clear cut as black and white. Darth Vader is a tragic hero. If I am allowed to put it this way, Darth Vader is more than just fickle of the imagination of George Lucas—he is here—yes, in the real world among us. You should have met some of them before. If you're unlucky, you may find one sitting in your living room flipping the TV channels or reading the newspapers ("Search your feelings, you know it to be true!"). This is what Joseph Campbell has to say about Darth Vader in the The Power of Myth : [Page 177-8] Campbell: The fact that evil is not identified with any specific nation on this evil means that you've got an abstract power, which represents a principle, not a specific historical situation. The story has to do with an operation of principles, not of this nation against that. The monster masks that are put on people in Star Wars represent the real monster force in the modern world. When the mask of Darth Vader is removed, you see an unformed man, one who has not developed as a human individual. What you see is a strange and pitiful sort of undifferentiated face. Moyer: What's the significance of that? Campbell: Darth Vader has not developed his own humanity. He's a robot. He's a bureacrat, living not in terms of himself but in terms of an imposed system. This is the threat to our lives that we all face today. Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes? How do you relate to the system so that you are not compulsively serving it? It doesn't help to try to change it to accord with your system of thought. The momentum of history behind it is too great for anything really significant to evolve from that kind of action. The thing to do is learn to live in your period of history as a human being. That's something else, and it can be done. Moyers: By doing what? Campbell: By holding to your own ideals for yourself and, like Luke Skywalker, rejecting the system's impersonal claims upon you. [Page 181] Moyers: But I can hear someone saying, "Well, that's all well and good for the imagination of a George Lucas or for the scholarship of a Joseph Campbell, but that isn't what happens in my life." Campbell: You bet it is—and if he doesn't recognize it, it may turn him into Darth Vader. If the person insists on a certain program, and doesn't listen to the demands of his own heart, he's going to risk a schizophrenic crackup. Such a person has put himself off center. He has aligned himself with a program for life, and it's not the one the body's interested in at all. The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves or have listened only to their neighbors to learn what they ought to do, how they ought to behave, and what the values are that they should be living for. I hope Campbell's words throw a new perspective on Darth Vader. As I read Campbell's words, I could immediately identify people in my life who fitted his definition of Darth Vader. As I begun to see them in this light, I suddenly felt that they were more pathetic than evil. I also cannot help but link it to this conversation involving Ouspensky's group and Gurdjieff from In Search of the Miraculous. Ouspensky elaborated on his shock that innumerable wooden crutches were already made "for legs which were not yet torn off" and loaded on lorries for dispatch in Petersburg. Such a scene was bound repeat itself in every European cities, which suddenly developed hostility towards one another during World War I. The following is Gurdjieff's reply: "'What do you expect?" said G. "People are machines. Machines have to be blind and unconscious, they cannot be otherwise, and all their actions have to correspond to their nature. Everything happens. No one does anything. 'Progress' and 'civilization,' in the real meaning of these words, can appear only as the result of conscious efforts. They cannot appear as the result of unconscious mechanical actions. And what conscious effort can there be in machines? And if one machine is unconscious, then a hundred machines are unconscious, and so are a thousand machines, or a hundred thousand, or a million. And the unconscious activity of a million machines must necessarily result in destruction and extermination. It is precisely in unconscious involuntary manifestations that all evil lies. You do not yet understand and cannot imagine all the results of this evil. But the time will come when you will understand." Now, you should get a very different insight into the nature of evil. By living in terms of an imposed system, by insisting on a certain path in life, by listening only to others on what they ought to do, to behave and to live for, you stopped listening to your heart and you may turn into Darth Vader. In portraying Darth Vader as half-machine and half-man, George Lucas was actually spot on in conveying that unconscious mechanical actions begets evil. The Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment seemed like perfect demonstrations. By accepting the role of a prison warden (hence becoming subservient to the demands of a prison system), people who are usually okay suddenly transformed into cruel tormenters. Under the pretext of cooperating with the facilitator of the experiment, most people simply threw all sense of personal moral responsibility off their mind and went on to apply life-threatening electric shocks feeling totally justified! Are we merely blind and unconscious machines only capable of unconscious involuntary manifestations completely lacking in volition who will readily turn into agents of evil when the attendant circumstance demands it?
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#1. To: Turtle (#0)
Darth Vader is chump change evil compared to his brother, Chad Vader.
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. |
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