“Millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced”: Absence and silence in the original Star Wars trilogy (Patreon)

This is the first part of an exegetical polyptych on Star Wars movies. The first installment will be available to all backers as a paid post and show up on Eruditorum Press, but future essays will only be available to $2+ backers. Gotta justify those higher tiers somehow.

If there were true justice in the world, anyone who zealously expressed their deeply held and ardent opinions on Star Wars in public would be shot in the fucking head. But alas, we live in a world where capitalism is widely viewed as a sane infrastructure for human society, governments are at best diffident and at worst blithely contemptuous of imminent threats of climate catastrophe, and broken windows are publicly condemned as more ethically and morally abhorrent than generations of police officers killing black people. To say that there isn’t justice in the world would be flatly erroneous as well as revoltingly acquiescent, but we are nonetheless stuck in a civilization where Star Wars discourse happens. Ewan MacGregor would stifle an amused smile, as if he were telling Natalie Portman about the death of a group of people called “younglings.” 

This is by no means a disparagement of Star Wars. I love Star Wars. These silly, weird movies have gotten me through several years of my life and are a huge part of why I’m the woman and critic whose absurd if eloquent missives to popular culture you’re reading today. I’m not here to rebuke these movies (although that will inevitably happen), which are cosmic fractal messes I have an abiding love and admiration for. Rather than bearing any resentment towards these films, I’m loathe to continue the prolonged discourse that’s been spun around them. Perhaps I can provide a corrective hand and propose an alternative way of exploring these movies, which have significantly more to offer as texts than the paeans to Generation X cishet white men’s childhoods they’re often commemorated as. That perspective is certainly a crucial part of Star Wars (arguably, it’s the target audience), but it’s by no means the most fulfilling critically exercise to take with these movies. I’d like to offer a critical vision of Star Wars that explores the subaltern, the unstated, the elements that populate Star Wars quietly underneath the garish laser fire, ubiquitously catchy John Williams scores, and comings-and-goings of Great Heroes (not that such work doesn’t already exist and hasn’t been written by a number of talented critics — just that there should be more of it). If we can get the conversation about Star Wars to a point where the voices of women and minorities outnumber the legions of wounded masculine ego gatekeeping these movies, I will be content. If Star Wars fandom doesn’t resemble the cast of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power by the time the first tsunamis strike coastal cities around the globe, I will delete my entire body of work, move to Nepal, and live as a goat. 

My intention is to explore the role of silence and absence in Star Wars movies. These texts are replete with taciturn characters, conspiratorial secrecy, inexplicable (and often unpremeditated) plot twists that throw the nature of their universe into doubt, intergenerational secrecy and gaslighting, and character motivations and plot beats whose logic is often abstruse at best. If one strips away the Hero’s Journey and Bonanza-in-space trappings, Star Wars becomes a conspiracy thriller for kids. It’s like Game of Thrones if Game of Thrones knew its target audience was children and was fun to watch. Much of the surreptitiousness found in these movies (which are otherwise as ebullient and blunt as the Holdo Maneuver) can be explained by what can reasonably be called “sloppy writing,” but the faults of dysfunctional movies can be more exciting and revealing than their virtues. 

Thusly, I’m mostly focusing on the clearly unintended implications of Star Wars. Authorial intent will come into the picture, certainly — one can’t discuss Star Wars narratology without dealing with its authorial heavy-handedness (especially in The Empire Strikes Back, which we’ll discuss shortly). But largely we’re taking these movies at face value and exploring what they inadvertently reveal about themselves. The weird impliedness of many things in Star Wars makes for as telling a spectacle as a space militarism western with roots in Joseph Campbell and orientalist stereotyping. To do this, I’ll be exploring the story of Star Wars as it unfolded to viewers. There’ll be the odd jump forward to contextualize developments in the earlier films that can best be understood with the additions of later ones, but overall we’re doing a clear-cut path of the original trilogy, the prequels, the sequels, and the Anthology films.

As the ur-text of Star Wars, the original trilogy experiences particularly odd inflections from its follow-ups. Obvious examples include the seeming incompatibility of the original trilogy’s explanation of Luke and Leia’s childhoods with the ending of Revenge of the Sith, the impossibility of reading Jones’ and Prowse’s Darth Vader and Christensen’s Anakin as the same person, and the decades-long gulf in technology and sociopolitical circumstances. None of this is a problem as such — anyone who argued that the Gospel of Matthew and the Acts of the Apostles are seriously harmed by their differing accounts of Judas Iscariot’s death would be rightly dismissed as a fool. But the stories imparted by these first three movies is decidedly (and intriguingly) at odds with what comes later on.

A New Hope is the true aberration of the Star Wars saga, as the foundational text of a massive body of work tends to be. Watching it, one is struck by how rudimentary it is. The popular understanding of the Star Wars universe is not in place — Han Solo is a homicidal antihero who viewers might expect to betray Luke and Obi-Wan, the Jedi and the Sith as we understand them today are largely absent (the Sith’s lack of a single mention in the trilogy in odd, especially given that they’re namedropped in the prologue of the 1976 novelization of A New Hope). The themes of cyclicality found throughout the films are vaguely present (see Obi-Wan as the old guard and the entire Monomyth plot), but for the most part the groundwork isn’t there. Things are missing from characters’ lives: information that crucially affects the plot revealed as soon as Empire makes parts of A New Hope rankle oddly. There’s no evidence that Obi-Wan’s account of Anakin’s death to Luke is anything other than true — Guinness merely seems glad to take on his departed friend’s son as a protégé and is remorseful for the situation he wound up in. 

Stylistically, the most visible aberrations are aesthetic. C-3PO and R2-D2 are functionally the narrators of the first half of A New Hope. The obvious history between the two is clearly a jaded one, as the abusive gay robot lovers are far too eager to part ways, but again, a personality mismatch is the only onscreen evidence for the contentiousness of their relationship. But textually, there’s a more interesting dynamic at play. Observe the actions of R2. Even without the existence of the prequels, the movie is clear on the fact that R2 always knows what’s happening. He’s Leia’s spy who brings classified information to old hermit Obi-Wan, lies about his origins, clandestinely sneaks out of the Lars’ moisture farm, and adamantly keeps his mission a secret. Why he’s paired up with the obsequious C-3PO suggests a potential lack of judgment on Leia’s part, but nonetheless, he’s a powerful figure. He’s the one character who witnesses virtually the entire Star Wars saga and can recall all of it. He is also non-verbal, communicating in “bleep-bloops,” doleful “oooooohs,” and hysterical screams (in other words, he’s among cinema’s best depictions of neurodivergent queer people). Given the films’ weird apathy to the indentured servitude of droids, R2’s silent power is both complexifying and inspiring. 

In a way, R2 is the heart of these movies, setting a consistent trend throughout them: the quiet and surreptitious characters are the ones in control. The answer to the question used by every opening crawl, “how to win a Star War,” is to be as discreet and contemplative as possible. For instance, see Leia’s presence in A New Hope. On a functional level, she’s the archetypal damcess-in-disperil, but look at her actions and one sees a controlled leader of the Rebellion. At the movie’s outset, she’s a straight-up political radical, a popular politician in the Imperial Senate (possibly symbolic but also potentially concrete? The politics of the original trilogy are no clearer than the often-disparaged affairs of state in the prequels) who uses her position to act as a spy for the Rebel Alliance. This is divined from only a few snatches of dialogue (“you weren’t on any mercy mission this time,” “if word of this gets out, it could generate sympathy for the rebellion in the Senate”), but that is clearly the arc of Leia’s career: heroic self-sacrifice and the use of her privilege to combat fascism. Leia subject to some of the movie’s most tormenting moments, including the destruction of Alderaan but also the moment where she gets fucking tortured (offscreen, mercifully — real carnage doesn’t appear in Star Wars. The radio dramatization had no problem depicting Leia’s torture at extremely upsetting length though). Leia’s significance is seemingly forgotten by The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, as Vader bafflingly focuses more intensely on capturing the relatively less politically expedient than doing anything with his capture of Leia, presumably the most popular Rebel figurehead in the galaxy. Given Leia’s lack of maleness, this is perhaps unsurprising, but in A New Hope she’s as influential a figure as the action depicts.

On the other side of the Space Force is Tarkin, the film’s true villain (there was no way a 1977 audience would view Peter Cushing as subordinate to a British guy in a toaster mask). While Vader blunders and storms his way through the movie, Tarkin orchestrates the most effective blows against the rebellion. It’s not Vader who chooses Alderaan as the Death Star’s inaugural target. Tarkin virtually oversees the destruction of the last trappings of the Republic and transitions the Empire into a fascist military dictatorship. If one looks past the Hero’s Journey plot of A New Hope, there’s a movie about the transition of a capitalist military-state into a fascist dictatorship. The battle between the light and dark sides of the Force is incidental to the main plot. Darth Vader’s “sad devotion to that ancient religion” (one of the most interesting moments in the movie) hints at something greater, but Vader is not yet the surreptitious figure he becomes in the following movies.

In The Empire Strikes Back, that has changed. The movie has Vader obsessively seeking out Luke to absurd lengths. Not only do we have his baffling aforementioned failure to observe the significance of capturing Leia, he orchestrates bizarre pitfalls for the Rebellion, kills half of his staff, and machinate entire conflicts to lure Luke into a highly specific combat situation with an offer of temptation, not even sure if Luke will accept it. The plot functions less on logic and more on the semiotic functions of patriarchy. Certainly the movie’s Stated Intentions and Dialogued-About Themes don’t reflect the events that occur onscreen — for all the talk of Luke’s temptation towards the dark side, there’s no moment where Luke shows a clear predilection towards it (the movie could easily fix this by utilizing what it actually depicts onscreen, which is Luke repeatedly getting his ass kicked for the good guys — surely a more logical motivation for Luke to be tempted by the dark side). The semiotic salience of fathers and sons is the movie’s catalyst, superseding rational thinking and Aristotelean plot logic in favor of symbols. 

Yet this incoherence what makes Empire so interesting. It’s the moment where Star Wars becomes about the failures of masculinity and patriarchy. Or rather, in the case of Empire, why the successes of toxic masculinity are damaging. For all that Vader’s begetting of Luke is a unjustified twist (there is no reason to think Obi-Wan lies to Luke about his father in A New Hope), dramatically it makes an odd amount of sense. After his failure to prevent the Death Star’s destruction, Vader has completely reengineered his strategy (let’s say in the wake of Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larocca’s brilliant Darth Vader comics). Throughout Empire he is completely in charge, with even his less intuitive moves cohering into their own logic. He never errs or deviates from his goals, eliminates everyone who thwarts his plans with killer telepathic chokeholds (Padmé and Anakin’s marriage collapsed because Anakin was a miserable failure of a dom), and proves to be the only character with straightforward agency and control over the narrative. 

Take the fascinatingly troubled Palpatine scene, in all its (four? Five? Aren’t there ten million cuts of Star Wars?) incarnations. Vader’s lack of reaction to his own fatherhood is only indicative of other problems. Does he already know about Luke’s identity? Like, shit, how many Skywalkers are running around the galaxy? If not, why is he searching for Luke so frantically? If not, is he lying to Palpatine and pretending to coin a new approach to Luke that he’s had in mind for years? The last one makes the most sense, although again, it is probably not the intended reading of the scene. But it does work — even the mastermind Palpatine isn’t privy to all of Vader’s plans. 

This is crucial to Vader’s approach throughout the movie, and the future of the Jedi and Sith throughout these movies copies his strategy. He’s a contemplative figure: serenely watching the unfolding political space opera and making his moves behind the scene. After operating as a blunt instrument in A New Hope fails him, Vader spends Empire functionally appointing himself the ruler of the galaxy. Bolstering the Empire and defeating the Rebellion are secondary goals to him; they’re merely ways for him to sate the Force. He spends the entire movie listening to what the Force tells him, dismissing external factors and letting his meditative relationship with the Force influence him to make decisions. 

Not dissimilar but with significantly less power are Obi-Wan and Yoda, dramatic foils and antagonistic figures throughout Empire. Yoda is outright malevolent in moments, chastising Luke for being impatient to start his training after Yoda deliberately wastes his time, waggling his finger at his student’s struggle to believe in breaking the laws of physics, and repeatedly telling him to let his friends die for the good of their political cause. He has an ulterior motive, of course — keeping Luke from finding out Vader’s identity makes for a much more expedient killing (who said the Jedi were the keepers of the peace again?). Obi-Wan largely backs him, if not with the same measures of malevolence. Yet an agenda of gaslighting and mendacity by male mentor figures pops up — if anything made the Jedi lose the Clone Wars, it was probably their refusal to be less secretive than the Empire. 

Meanwhile, Return of the Jedi could more aptly be titled Redemption of the Jedi. On his deathbed, Yoda confesses his deception to Luke, admitting that it was as much grounded in a desire to paternalistically protect Luke from the trauma of discovering Vader’s identity. Given Yoda’s previous treatment of Luke, this smacks of bullshit, but sure, let’s accept it. The rest of the movie sees Luke improving on the Jedi by synthesizing Vader’s patience with a desire to help people and defeat the Empire. The Jabba’s palace prologue may be overlong (and if it is, I don’t really care because I absolutely love it), but its length works. A half-hour of buildup shows how Luke has grown more than a new outfit and green lasersword does. Luke has tamed his hastiness and is willing to deal out a series of diplomatic tactics while still preparing for the eventuality of a violent confrontation with Jabba. It’s the deftest characterization of Luke in the trilogy, and paves the way for The Last Jedi’s denouement (Rian Johnson’s screenplay largely comes from listening to the quietly understated intentions and actors of characters in earlier films). It’s still basically a story of a white boy rising to the occasion and living up to his forefathers’ legacy, but the cadences of it are intriguingly thoughtful. 

Meanwhile, Star Wars stops withholding its gayest patriarch, Palpatine. The kindred spirits of Palpatine and Vader hover over their diametric opposition to each other — for them the Empire is secondary to sating the Force. Yet Palpatine takes this a bit further — Vader usually speaks in terms of the Force and equilibrium. Palpatine is more enthusiastic about throwing the dynamics of his inner circle into chaos, presumably beating his meat to the sight of Luke and Vader duking it out. In many ways he’s your creepy father who leers behind the scenes while you flail around trying to live your life, and only emerges to mock you for failing to live up to his expectations. It’s a very alchemical model of patriarchy, and yet the apex of patrilineage in Star Wars — one son gets discarded in favor of another. Palpatine essentially has a dark side fetish — it’s something he relishes exercising authority over. This differs from Vader, for whom the Force is a source of desperately needed equilibrium. Part of why he stays quiet is searing emotional torment which comes out in his murder of Palpatine. The movie treats this as a moment of redemption, but one suspects this is what Vader always wanted. Luke’s nobility and the allure of the light side is perhaps less inspiring to him than the promise of death and freedom from Palpatine’s abuse. This reading is mostly made from inferences, but perhaps Vader seeks to “balance” (hear me out) the light and dark sides because he’s exhausting from suffering so much.

Virtually none of this is intended by these films’ creators, and could fairly be dismissed as revisionist tripe by my readers. Fair enough. But the story Star Wars accidentally tells through its dramatic incoherence and aesthetic excess is its most salient aspect. It’s the culture telling on itself, revealing a pathological fixation on fathers, sons, and the dynamics of power. These movies are artifacts with more to say about the world they were created in than they could ever have imagined. The issues of people not talking to each other create a narrative treatise on the acts of telling and revealing. If Star Wars has value, it’s in this — its flamboyant candor and its messy self-indictments.