Rise of Skywalker, Oedipus, & George Eliot: Saved by Heroes or Collective? (Holiday Post #5)
[Spoiler alert: If you plan to see, "The Rise of Skywalker," there are spoilers in this post.]
Over the holidays (as mentioned in previous posts), with family members we saw Frozen II, re-watched Wonder Woman, and also saw The Rise of Skywalker, supposedly the conclusion in the latest trilogy from the Star Wars franchise.
The Rise of Skywalker had some of the same problems that plagued the last episode of Game of Thrones, perhaps having to accomplish too much in too short a film to please audiences and studio executives sensitive to marketing issues. Many things unfold without adequate explanation, short-changing audiences on back-story and exposition, while delivering plenty of special effects and battle scenes.
Just as Shakespeare's Hamlet is haunted by the Oedipus tale, so is the Star Wars franchise. Whereas prince Hamlet is visited by the morally ambiguous ghost of his father, and later in the graveyard, the much kinder memory of Yorick, the spirits that appear in Star wars are exclusively good, while Kylo Ren is haunted only by his obsession and false assumptions about his grandfather, a false version of Darth Vader who, in his mind, lacks a character arc except for that of his earlier turn to the dark side of the force.
In the Oedipus tale, the father of Oedipus, Laius, king of Thebes, is a morally repugnant character who seeks to preserve his own life and rule by arranging for the death of his infant son, tied to a stake in the wild, pierced through his ankles at his Achilles tendons, supposedly so that he will die exposed to the elements or eaten by wild animals in order to save his father from the moral responsibility of murdering his own son. Lais is more interested in power and self-preservation through focus on the letter of the law than upon the spirit of the law, as shown by the manner of his abandonment of his son to a gruesome death.
The Sphinx that later holds the kingdom of Thebes hostage has a riddle which reveals the cycle of life, with which Lais has tried to resist, his choices out of harmony with the rhythms of the universe. The Sphinx asks, what creature walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening? The answer is man, or humans. Instead of preparing his son to take his place, Laius rejects the natural rhythm of life and wants to remain king, in spite of the prophecy from the oracle at Delphi, which tells him his son will kill him and marry his wife.
Laius could have interpreted the prophecy metaphorically, that loving his son would require of him some death to self, death to his own pride, death of his own ambition to life and reign forever. Sons, if raised well, at best, often marry someone with good qualities that resemble the best traits they find in their mothers. If not raised well, they often are attracted to women with the same character flaws as their flawed mothers, because it makes them feel at home with something familiar. Abused children would usually rather remain with their abusive parents than flee to something unfamiliar, even a good foster home.
Oedipus is saved by a compassionate shepherd who finds him and takes him to where he is adopted by a neighboring king and queen. When Oedipus hears the prophesy of the oracle at Delphi, he runs from his adoptive parents because he does not know he was adopted, and wishes to spare them a violent and shameful fate.
Oedipus encounters his father on the road, not knowing it is his father. His father is still proud and selfish, using a whip to move the stranger off the road and out of his way. Oedipus kills him. This doesn't demonstrate Freud's Oedipal interpretation so much as the fact that karma is finding Laius: Laius is suffering the harsh consequences of his earlier bad choices regarding his son. In fact, Laius deserves to die, and Oedipus should not become a sexually shamed son for the sins of the father, as Julia Kristeva has observed.
The Star Wars franchise offers variations on this theme. Anakin Skywalker turns to the dark side, but instead of being killed by his son, Luke, his son helps to turn him back to the light and to compassion. Darth Vader turns against the Dark Lord Palpatine at the cost of his life.
Dramatic economy requires that if Darth Vader has a character arc that turns him back to the light, it will cost him his life to pay for his many sins, the many deaths he caused while in service to the dark side of the force.
The latest trilogy from the Star Wars franchise (VII, The Force Awakens; VIII, The Last Jedi; and IX, the Rise of Skywalker) explores a new possibility in Kylo Ren.
Whereas the original Oedipal tale shows how a fathers can go bad and suffer the consequences from a son, the tale of Kylo Ren shows that sons can go bad and inflict consequences on relatively good fathers. So Kylo very intentionally kills his father, Han Solo, not unknowingly as a stranger on the road to Thebes as with Oedipus, but to complete his journey to the dark side, as required by Sith Lord Snoke.
We learn in the last installment, The Rise of Skywalker, that Rey is the granddaughter of Dark Lord Palpatine, which supposedly explains her talents with the force in spite of a lack of training. But unlike Luke, who turns his father back to the light, Rey is given a choice that is a no-win scenario: She must either kill her grandfather Palpatine, and in doing so, become like him, the new Dark Lord, or join him, or die.
So now we are back to a new incarnation of the Laius-Oedipus tale, but with a granddaughter instead of a son, and instead of killing the father without knowing it is the father, she ends up killing the grandfather with the help of Kylo Ren, who (like his grandfather, Darth Vader) turns back toward the light in the end to help her.
So the grand-children of Palpatine and Darth Vader (Anakin Skywalker) defeat Palpatine, and Rey considers herself, in the end, adopted by the Skywalker family, claiming the Skywalker name, perhaps both through her mentors Leia and Luke, and through a kind of spiritual marriage to Kylo, son of Leia and Han, and nephew of Luke.
Saved by Heroes, or Collective?
Besides the main hero/heroine pair of Rey and Kylo, and the many other key hero figures in the resistance, in the end, all is saved in part because many members of the resistance and their sympathizers show up, a crowd of small ships, to defeat the large battle-cruisers of the new, dark empire, which are temporarily dead in the water. The good guys only found the remote base where these cruisers were being assembled by way of a special way-finding device, but somehow, the whole neighborhood of the galaxy's good little people find their way to this place and help defeat the bad guys.
This plot element is reminiscent of a number of other films:
At the end of the 1947 Frank Capra film, It's a wonderful Life, after Mary has sent out a call for help, many of George's friends show up to contribute money and save George and the Baily Building and Loan from the scrutiny of the bank examiner, after Mr. Potter stole thousands of dollars from George's uncle, which he had accidentally wrapped in a newspaper and given to Potter instead of depositing it. George and his family are saved by the good karma George has built up over many years of his life. This is the polar opposite of King Laius and his bad karma come home to roost via his son, Oedipus.
The 1966 film, The Russians are Coming, has a similar ending, where the local US island residents and the Russians have made peace, and to save their new Russian friends from destruction by the US military, they form a flotilla to escort the Russian submarine safely back out into the ocean. This particular story is perhaps a bit more morally complex, because the former enemies have become friends, and the danger posed to these enemies-turned-friends comes from the US military, and interesting twist. In the Star Wars franchise, this would be like the rebels realizing that they have friends among the Storm Troopers, and that the Rebel Forces have to be stopped from destroying friends among the Empire forces.
This plot element, where the universe is saved not only by key heroes and heroines but also by a collective, is like the Bernie Sanders campaign's recent fundraising success, reaching 5 million individual donations (a historical first, greater than all previous presidential campaigns), and a total of more than 34 million dollars (also more than the money raised in any US presidential campaign in history) with donations averaging $18.
It also reminds me of the oft-quoted passage from Middlemarch by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans):
“..for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
The actions of individuals, or so-called heroines or heroes, are certainly important, often crucial; but so are those of the many who are often unrecognized.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All six of my holiday posts:
Twelfth Night & Epiphany, Malvolio & the Cecils, and Antonio & Essex (Holiday Post #6)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/01/twelfth-night-epiphany-malvolio-cecils.html
Rise of Skywalker, Oedipus, & George Eliot: Saved by Heroes or Collective? (Holiday Post #5)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/01/rise-of-skywalker-oedipus-george-eliot.html
Frozen II: Dams, Aboriginal Peoples, & Addressing Historical Injustices (Holiday Post #4)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/01/frozen-ii-dams-aboriginal-peoples.html
Wonder Woman, Paul Ricœur, & Refusing the Second Naïveté (Holiday Post #3)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/01/wonder-woman-paul-ricur-refusing-second.html
Much Ado & the "Jade's Trick"— as coitus interruptus? (Holiday Post #2)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/01/much-ado-and-jades-trick-as-coitus.html
Hamlet Had an Uncle: A Comedy of Honor—J.B. Cabell (Holiday Post #1)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/hamlet-had-uncle-comedy-of-honorby.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks for reading!
My current project is a book tentatively titled “Hamlet’s Bible,” about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.
Below is a link to a list of some of my top posts (“greatest hits”), including a description of my book project (last item on the list):
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html
I post every week, so please visit as often as you like and consider subscribing.
Over the holidays (as mentioned in previous posts), with family members we saw Frozen II, re-watched Wonder Woman, and also saw The Rise of Skywalker, supposedly the conclusion in the latest trilogy from the Star Wars franchise.
The Rise of Skywalker had some of the same problems that plagued the last episode of Game of Thrones, perhaps having to accomplish too much in too short a film to please audiences and studio executives sensitive to marketing issues. Many things unfold without adequate explanation, short-changing audiences on back-story and exposition, while delivering plenty of special effects and battle scenes.
Just as Shakespeare's Hamlet is haunted by the Oedipus tale, so is the Star Wars franchise. Whereas prince Hamlet is visited by the morally ambiguous ghost of his father, and later in the graveyard, the much kinder memory of Yorick, the spirits that appear in Star wars are exclusively good, while Kylo Ren is haunted only by his obsession and false assumptions about his grandfather, a false version of Darth Vader who, in his mind, lacks a character arc except for that of his earlier turn to the dark side of the force.
In the Oedipus tale, the father of Oedipus, Laius, king of Thebes, is a morally repugnant character who seeks to preserve his own life and rule by arranging for the death of his infant son, tied to a stake in the wild, pierced through his ankles at his Achilles tendons, supposedly so that he will die exposed to the elements or eaten by wild animals in order to save his father from the moral responsibility of murdering his own son. Lais is more interested in power and self-preservation through focus on the letter of the law than upon the spirit of the law, as shown by the manner of his abandonment of his son to a gruesome death.
The Sphinx that later holds the kingdom of Thebes hostage has a riddle which reveals the cycle of life, with which Lais has tried to resist, his choices out of harmony with the rhythms of the universe. The Sphinx asks, what creature walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening? The answer is man, or humans. Instead of preparing his son to take his place, Laius rejects the natural rhythm of life and wants to remain king, in spite of the prophecy from the oracle at Delphi, which tells him his son will kill him and marry his wife.
Laius could have interpreted the prophecy metaphorically, that loving his son would require of him some death to self, death to his own pride, death of his own ambition to life and reign forever. Sons, if raised well, at best, often marry someone with good qualities that resemble the best traits they find in their mothers. If not raised well, they often are attracted to women with the same character flaws as their flawed mothers, because it makes them feel at home with something familiar. Abused children would usually rather remain with their abusive parents than flee to something unfamiliar, even a good foster home.
Oedipus is saved by a compassionate shepherd who finds him and takes him to where he is adopted by a neighboring king and queen. When Oedipus hears the prophesy of the oracle at Delphi, he runs from his adoptive parents because he does not know he was adopted, and wishes to spare them a violent and shameful fate.
Oedipus encounters his father on the road, not knowing it is his father. His father is still proud and selfish, using a whip to move the stranger off the road and out of his way. Oedipus kills him. This doesn't demonstrate Freud's Oedipal interpretation so much as the fact that karma is finding Laius: Laius is suffering the harsh consequences of his earlier bad choices regarding his son. In fact, Laius deserves to die, and Oedipus should not become a sexually shamed son for the sins of the father, as Julia Kristeva has observed.
The Star Wars franchise offers variations on this theme. Anakin Skywalker turns to the dark side, but instead of being killed by his son, Luke, his son helps to turn him back to the light and to compassion. Darth Vader turns against the Dark Lord Palpatine at the cost of his life.
Dramatic economy requires that if Darth Vader has a character arc that turns him back to the light, it will cost him his life to pay for his many sins, the many deaths he caused while in service to the dark side of the force.
The latest trilogy from the Star Wars franchise (VII, The Force Awakens; VIII, The Last Jedi; and IX, the Rise of Skywalker) explores a new possibility in Kylo Ren.
Whereas the original Oedipal tale shows how a fathers can go bad and suffer the consequences from a son, the tale of Kylo Ren shows that sons can go bad and inflict consequences on relatively good fathers. So Kylo very intentionally kills his father, Han Solo, not unknowingly as a stranger on the road to Thebes as with Oedipus, but to complete his journey to the dark side, as required by Sith Lord Snoke.
We learn in the last installment, The Rise of Skywalker, that Rey is the granddaughter of Dark Lord Palpatine, which supposedly explains her talents with the force in spite of a lack of training. But unlike Luke, who turns his father back to the light, Rey is given a choice that is a no-win scenario: She must either kill her grandfather Palpatine, and in doing so, become like him, the new Dark Lord, or join him, or die.
So now we are back to a new incarnation of the Laius-Oedipus tale, but with a granddaughter instead of a son, and instead of killing the father without knowing it is the father, she ends up killing the grandfather with the help of Kylo Ren, who (like his grandfather, Darth Vader) turns back toward the light in the end to help her.
So the grand-children of Palpatine and Darth Vader (Anakin Skywalker) defeat Palpatine, and Rey considers herself, in the end, adopted by the Skywalker family, claiming the Skywalker name, perhaps both through her mentors Leia and Luke, and through a kind of spiritual marriage to Kylo, son of Leia and Han, and nephew of Luke.
Saved by Heroes, or Collective?
Besides the main hero/heroine pair of Rey and Kylo, and the many other key hero figures in the resistance, in the end, all is saved in part because many members of the resistance and their sympathizers show up, a crowd of small ships, to defeat the large battle-cruisers of the new, dark empire, which are temporarily dead in the water. The good guys only found the remote base where these cruisers were being assembled by way of a special way-finding device, but somehow, the whole neighborhood of the galaxy's good little people find their way to this place and help defeat the bad guys.
This plot element is reminiscent of a number of other films:
At the end of the 1947 Frank Capra film, It's a wonderful Life, after Mary has sent out a call for help, many of George's friends show up to contribute money and save George and the Baily Building and Loan from the scrutiny of the bank examiner, after Mr. Potter stole thousands of dollars from George's uncle, which he had accidentally wrapped in a newspaper and given to Potter instead of depositing it. George and his family are saved by the good karma George has built up over many years of his life. This is the polar opposite of King Laius and his bad karma come home to roost via his son, Oedipus.
The 1966 film, The Russians are Coming, has a similar ending, where the local US island residents and the Russians have made peace, and to save their new Russian friends from destruction by the US military, they form a flotilla to escort the Russian submarine safely back out into the ocean. This particular story is perhaps a bit more morally complex, because the former enemies have become friends, and the danger posed to these enemies-turned-friends comes from the US military, and interesting twist. In the Star Wars franchise, this would be like the rebels realizing that they have friends among the Storm Troopers, and that the Rebel Forces have to be stopped from destroying friends among the Empire forces.
This plot element, where the universe is saved not only by key heroes and heroines but also by a collective, is like the Bernie Sanders campaign's recent fundraising success, reaching 5 million individual donations (a historical first, greater than all previous presidential campaigns), and a total of more than 34 million dollars (also more than the money raised in any US presidential campaign in history) with donations averaging $18.
It also reminds me of the oft-quoted passage from Middlemarch by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans):
“..for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
The actions of individuals, or so-called heroines or heroes, are certainly important, often crucial; but so are those of the many who are often unrecognized.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All six of my holiday posts:
Twelfth Night & Epiphany, Malvolio & the Cecils, and Antonio & Essex (Holiday Post #6)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/01/twelfth-night-epiphany-malvolio-cecils.html
Rise of Skywalker, Oedipus, & George Eliot: Saved by Heroes or Collective? (Holiday Post #5)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/01/rise-of-skywalker-oedipus-george-eliot.html
Frozen II: Dams, Aboriginal Peoples, & Addressing Historical Injustices (Holiday Post #4)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/01/frozen-ii-dams-aboriginal-peoples.html
Wonder Woman, Paul Ricœur, & Refusing the Second Naïveté (Holiday Post #3)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/01/wonder-woman-paul-ricur-refusing-second.html
Much Ado & the "Jade's Trick"— as coitus interruptus? (Holiday Post #2)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/01/much-ado-and-jades-trick-as-coitus.html
Hamlet Had an Uncle: A Comedy of Honor—J.B. Cabell (Holiday Post #1)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/hamlet-had-uncle-comedy-of-honorby.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks for reading!
My current project is a book tentatively titled “Hamlet’s Bible,” about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.
Below is a link to a list of some of my top posts (“greatest hits”), including a description of my book project (last item on the list):
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html
I post every week, so please visit as often as you like and consider subscribing.
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