Star Wars – The Last Jedi

The central problem this film tries to solve is also the central problem with the film.  Our Hero, Luke Skywalker, the young, brash and impetuous fighter for all that is right and good, has grown old and bitter and withdrawn from the galaxy.  When Ray, the next generation force gifted woman hungry for training tracks him down and shows up on his doorstep – the final scene in the last film – Luke has no interest in her and no interest in training her in the first scene in this film - and his refusal is hardly believable.  What happened?  Well, the movie explains the steps that led to this point, but the more central question is, what has happened to Luke the character and Mark Hamill the actor?  The answer within the movie is provided by Ray; Luke has closed himself off to the force.  As for Mark Hamill, playing an old curmudgeon seems to no longer allow the force to be with him either.  The flatness of a forceless central character felt to me, as I watched the film, to be a central flaw of the film.  After a few days of letting the film baste, and also having a dream this morning that was, I think, stirred by the film, I am willing to think of this flaw as a way into what may be the central compelling aspect of the film. 

One part of the issue is the question of the force itself.  Like the manifold gadgets that the characters use in each film that are not explained but just part of the background, the force is a religion that is a creation of Lucas and we receive hints about aspects of it, but we are never catechized.  The Jedi are, apparently, the high priests of this religion – and they have been all but driven out of the universe – we are, as the title suggests, down to just one.  And this religion, like the religions of old, allows the practitioner to perform miracles – though Luke pooh-poohs the lifting of rocks as a central aspect of the religion, it certainly comes in handy in other films and in the resolution of this one.  This religion is, like all religions, powerful.  And a little power gives the illusion of great, vast, even infinite power.  And this can be heady stuff.  One would think it would be the stuff of the dark side, and I’m sure it is, but it is also the stuff of the other dark side, if you will, those who stand by, as Luke is doing, and do nothing, because as powerful as the force is, it can't seem to make the world behave the way that we want it to.  Because when a little power doesn’t turn out to be absolute, it can be disillusioning and we can take our ball and go home if we don’t get to be the winner – the one with absolute power and absolute knowledge.

One of the things that drew me to the field of psychology generally was the power that I experienced in the hands of the practitioners who treated me when I was an adolescent.  They were able to intervene helpfully in my personal and in my family life.  When it came time, however, to become a therapist myself – when I went off to graduate school – I was aware of leaving out power as a motivating factor for going into this field.  That is, I think, telling.  We don’t want to acknowledge how important power is to us – and when we deny that (which I was doing publicly – but very aware of privately) we can get into all kinds of problems.

The Jedi are, in the Star Wars movies, fighting against the dark side of the force – the side of the force where the naked desire for power leads to corruption and the creation of an evil empire run by those who are enslaved by the dark side and all that it promises.  This is a very American viewpoint – we view ourselves as liberators – as protectors of what is good in the world.  We are the underdog (even when we were, for a brief while, the sole superpower).  The forces of evil always outweigh the forces of the good.  Or, the force of power is never strong enough.  We always need more.  That is demonstrated in spades by the bad guys – Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader in the early films – Ben Solo/Kylo Ren in the Last Jedi, but also, I think, by Luke Skywalker, the best of the good guys.

No one has more power than Luke Skywalker.  But, and this is a significant and fun moment in The Last Jedi, this does not mean that he is impervious to making errors.  In fact, he is told by Yoda – the true and original font of all things Jedi, that it is an essential part of being a Jedi to make mistakes – and to learn from them.  This lightness of being that Yoda personifies – this sense that we do, in fact, have a great deal of power, but that the universe, despite our power, is bigger and stronger and more complicated than our power can master or than our genius can comprehend – and Yoda's ability to be OK with that – is a very difficult to state to achieve.  It is easier to feel powerless – to feel that others have what we don’t have and to envy that and to try to acquire it.

As an aside, I think that one of the issues in the last US presidential election was that Hillary was running as an outsider – as the first woman candidate.  She wasn’t running as a Senator, a Secretary of State, and a First Lady – as among the most powerful people in the country save the president.  Her denial of her power – her denial of the power that the democratic party has wielded to create a more inclusive country – “No, we haven’t achieved all that we might, but we have, especially in the eyes of others, come a long way, baby” – made her, I think, vulnerable to the fear based position that Trump took – a position that led those with the most power in the country, and many with the least – to feel that they were the disempowered outside group – they saw this despite her not having said it.  Had Hillary’s debate position been something like, “We have made great strides and I am the frontrunner because I speak to the concerns of most of the people – I am not trying to convince the people who would vote for you to vote for me – I am trying to convince those of us who have been in power to assert the importance of wielding that power for the good things that we have done and will continue to do” perhaps there would have been a different outcome.  Who knows?  Of course, I think Obama did say that on her behalf, but, apparently not enough people bought it.

Closer to home, I haven’t written a blog post in over a month.  I have achieved a number of external goals that I have set for blogging – number of posts, number of hits – but I have found some internal goals more elusive – articulating a cohesive vision of what psychoanalysis is and how it helps to open up works of art and the process of living to being more cogent.  I feel good about some posts – less so about others.  It’s also true that I have also been simply swamped by the end of semester grading and holiday planning, but I think there is a part of me that is empathizing with Luke’s experience – if I can’t make it all make sense, maybe I should just take my ball and go home.  I also think that is a stage of life issue.  But I can’t imagine, living it, that it would be much fun to portray it.  It is embarrassing to withdraw from something that you have been deeply invested in.  The hubris that it takes to undertake something big – like becoming a Jedi or a psychoanalyst, and the sense of pride about having achieved it can be overshadowed by how limited the achievement is: not only does the world not bend to your will, but you are bound and determined to NOT have it do that, but to use your power to help others articulate themselves in ways that will empower them and ultimately be for everyone’s good.  As noble as that sounds, it was frustrating when both the reluctant son and the reluctant stepdaughter backed out of a day of skiing during this down time – both for legitimate reasons, but both thwarting my vision of a “family day” that would be good for all us – but is essentially something that I am most heartily invested in.  Almost as frustrating as having Ben Solo, your nephew, appear to be toying with the Dark Side.

So, as I wrote about The Force Awakens, one measure of the power of the universal themes articulated in the films of this series is that they translate into the lived experience of our lives.  We are just ordinary mortals – like Anakin, Luke and then Ray – who are living on the periphery of the universe at the beginning of our lives.  Like them, we discover that we have special talents and abilities.  We hope that they will be recognized and shaped, that we will be mentored to become what we feel ourselves destined to be.  Yoda was concerned about Luke, and this applies to Anakin and now Ray, that he was not taken into training early enough to prevent his becoming vulnerable to the dark side.  Presumably Ben Solo, Han and Leia’s son, was trained early enough, and by Luke.  But – and here it is, I think, ambiguous, Ben’s deep engagement with the dark side, but also Luke’s discomfort with it – Ray demonstrates a curiosity about it – as a place where she can learn more about her own heritage, but I think it is also a place that is filled with a big chunk of all of our heritage and Luke’s disavowal of that – his wish that the world could only be lightness and good, or that all of his pupils would embrace the light side at the least, indicates that he has not accepted the universe on its terms.  I suppose it is hard for me to fault him for that when I have failed to do that my own self.

       

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