The Force and Freedom

Another look at Luke's duel with Vader. The symbolism of Cloud City. Why Luke is repeatedly upside down.

I dive deeper into some aspects of Buddhism reflected in the movie, the Four Noble Truths and the Twelve Nidanas. While Han is attached to others, Leia to the rebel cause, and Lan to himself, each of these objects of attachment tends to carry over to other objects of attachment.

I point out that the different characters have different objects of attachment. Leia is attached to a cause, the Rebellion, to the cost of attachments to self and others. Han is attached to others to the degree that he is willing to risk himself and abandon the cause. Lando is attached to himself, and he is willing to sacrifice others and any cause. Luke shows signs of all attachments, and Vader masterfully manipulates people using the various objects of attachment. Also explained: Why the Empire needs to hire bounty hunters instead of using in-house talent.

Two key psychological levers in Empire Strikes Back are fear and anger. Fear tends to be about things in the future. Anger tends to be about things in the past. Both can be used to manipulate us, as Vader manipulates Luke, and thereby deprive us of freedom. George Lucas and others involved in the filming of Empire Strikes Back incorporated Buddhist elements into the film. According to Buddhism, the source of the problem of fear and anger is attachment. Luke is vulnerable to anger and fear because of his attachments.

I begin with a roundup of the fascinating features of The Empire Strikes Back that I'll be discussing this season: striking parallels between the beginning and end of the film, repeating themes that don't get resolved in the typical way, Luke upside-down four different times, Han and then Luke living the passion narrative. I close by pointing out a puzzling fact about Luke in this film: He hasn't learned the main lesson Obi-wan taught in the last film. He hasn't learned Jedi freedom.

I return to the early scenes of A New Hope to pick up on some early ideas about freedom. C-3PO and R2-D2 are opposite extremes: 3PO totally unfree, R2 remarkably free. The desert settings of Tatooine are the perfect place to set up questions of freedom because it echoes the setting of the Western, a genre preoccupied with freedom. I then summarize the evidence that the film can be seen as an autobiography of George Lucas and connect that with Lucas's preoccupation with freedom. Finally, I briefly explain my approach to film interpretation. For a full transcript, visit https://theforceandfreedom.libsyn.com/transcript-a-portrait-of-the-artist

Obi-wan's adventures aboard the Death Star are in stark contrast to the other heroes'. Where they narrowly escape danger after danger, desperately thinking their way out of jams, Obi-wan wanders through the Death Star unnoticed, fully in control of the situation. Obi-wan doesn't have to overcome fear because he is so good at setting the terms of engagement that no one ever threatens him. Until Vader shows up. Vader is as cunning as Obi-wan, and their duel involves layers of strategic gambits, each aimed at controlling the conflict and its outcome. But Obi-wan has an advantage over Vader, something that gives him a kind of freedom in spite of Vader's strategic brilliance. For a full transcript, visit https://theforceandfreedom.libsyn.com/the-freedom-of-the-jedi

This time I begin by connecting Star Wars's message about fear to events from George Lucas's life. Then I trace the two approaches to fear outlined at the end of last episode. Han illustrates his attitude towards fear by preferring a straight fight aboard the Death Star. Luke and Leia illustrate an alternative approach closer to what Obi-wan recommends. They constantly rethink the terms that are presented to them. For a complete transcript, visit https://theforceandfreedom.libsyn.com/transcript-two-responses-to-fear

The central threat to freedom in A New Hope is fear. When you're afraid of someone, you do what they want, even if you'd rather not. After briefly discussing some of the other interpretations of Star Wars, I show how A New Hope introduces the problem of fear through a series of scenes centered on the Death Star. These scenes tend to contain visual reminders of the Death Star, like the interrogation droid of the remote Luke trains with. I conclude the episode by discussing Han's and Obi-wan's opposed strategies for responding to fear. For a complete transcript, visit https://theforceandfreedom.libsyn.com/transcript-the-problem-of-fear

Star Wars is a story about freedom and threats to freedom. You might not have thought that it has a lot to say about this, since the dialogue never poses any deep questions about it. But the dialogue isn't what's interesting about Star Wars. What's most interesting about Star Wars are the visuals, and the visuals communicate a lot about freedom and threats to it. In this episode, I run through some of what the visuals of the first two minutes of Star Wars: A New Hope (after the opening crawl) communicate. For a complete transcript, visit https://theforceandfreedom.libsyn.com/transcript-visual-storytelling-in-star-wars