Anger in the Star Wars Universe: A Trilogy! (of course)

A week ago I was reading my friendly neighborhood blogs when I came across this Betty post.

Aunt Bea had written about the concept of The Universe is Unfair on her last few blog entries, and how if you move too quickly to "life's unfair, suck it up buttercup" you're denying your own emotions and this is unhealthy. You gotta just let yourself feel the anger or sadness of your situation without running straight to Someone Else's Sadder Situation or The Essential Randomness of It All.

 In the comments the discussion went along those lines. Our good friend Judy, Judy, Judy said: "People are so quick to squash any negative energy. It's not going away because you don't want to look at it. It's just going to pop up somewhere else." I agree. Eg. If you feel jealous of someone you can: (a) pretend you don't feel it, and it will go underground and still exist; (b) recognize and feed it; or (c) recognize and deal with it.

Aunt Bea replied: " Love your thoughts about not squashing negative energy. I'm a huge Star Wars fan (original 3, at least) but it always bothered me that anger was considered a bad thing in those movies."

At first I thought, Hm! this is true. Then I thought a moment and decided, hmm wait, no. And thus was born a very long essay on...

Anger

in the

Star Wars Universe

My thesis: On a moral level, Lucas doesn't portray the expression of anger as something that leads to bad consequences; he argues that someone aspiring to a position of immense power must not make decisions in moments of high emotion, such as anger. On a story level, the particular heroic flaw that both Anakin Skywalker and Luke Skywalker must overcome is the fear of losing people they love, and that fear expresses itself in anger; therefore they have to learn to control this anger--express it at appropriate times, so that evil people don't take advantage of them.

I'll mostly confine myself to the original movies, for simplicity. And I will post over a few days because it's long.

PART I

First, how is anger portrayed in the actions of the characters outside of our hero Luke?

We know Luke's uncle is a good man cause he's all short-tempered and crusty;

C3PO and R2's bickering humanizes them;

We know Leia and Han are in love because they make each other lose their cool;

 The audience is made to love Chewbacca most when he's trying to kill people because he's in extreme grief over the possible death of his best friend: When he's throwing people around in the carbon chamber, and when he's choking Lando--Chewie is given complete license by Lucas to show his anger;

 Yoda is the most impatient, crabby old sonovamuppet in the movies. When he reveals who he is to Luke, he gives him a speech of Righteous Anger: "What know you of ready!... You are reckless!" He's always barking at him. "Not different! Only in your mind!" And he gives Luke the most famous shaming in the Universe: "Do or do not. There is no try." 

"I guess that's what you're best at!"

These characters aren't punished for expressing their anger (Luke when Han won't stay and fight for the Rebel cause) or their fear (Chewie's anguished cry when the blast shield is closed on Hoth), or their sadness (when Luke and his father say goodbye), or their pain (when Han is tortured). The original Star Wars movie was only so successful because these characters were allowed to be fully human, including the droids and beasties.

So anger isn't the problem per se. Unleashing wookie whoop-ass on Lando won't Lead You Down the Dark Path and Forever Dominate Your Destiny.

But every story has its hero, and this story is about Luke who has inherited the same problem as his father: They have a deep-seated fear of losing the people they love. I don't know why Anakin's got such a bee in his bonnet, but Luke thinks his mother died when he was young, thinks his father was murdered, then his adopted parents are murdered, then his new father figure mentor is murdered by guy who murdered his father. He is sad. And like his father, that fear is his weakness and can easily be manipulated into extreme anger.

TOMORROW: PART II

More about Luke's fatal flaw and why Yoda's always going on about anger and dark paths