Law Why Anakin Skywalker should’ve been removed from the Jedi Order for sexual harassment

USA Today:

In anticipation of the Star Wars: The Last Jedi movie release, like many others, I’ve been rewatching the series. To my horror, while viewing Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones, I realized that Anakin Skywalker (even before overtly becoming evil) was a sexual predator in the workplace!

Skywalker's role in the destruction of the Jedi Order and the establishment of the Galactic Empire is the impetus for the ensuing movies in the franchise. There would be no bad guys in a majority of the films if the Jedi Order had removed a workplace predator from their ranks.

While this may have happened a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, it deserves to be called out now. By allowing a predator in the workplace, and not doing enough to fight sexual harassment, the Jedi Council ultimately engineers its own demise.

Members of the Jedi Council should’ve removed Skywalker from the Jedi Order after his many missteps while protecting Sen. Padmé Amidala. If they had, Chancellor Palpatine would have been unable to leverage Skywalker into destroying the Jedi Order, dismantling democracy and creating the first Galactic Empire.

Strike 1
Skywalker, who is officially assigned to protect Amidala from an assassination plot, begins crossing professional and personal boundaries as soon as he’s alone with her. While Amidala is packing her bags for a long trip with her state-appointed protector, Skywalker starts making inappropriate advances. She flat out tells him, "Don't look at me like that," because "it makes me feel uncomfortable." He simultaneously offers a facetious apology and undermines her own position of authority over him.

Skywalker has already overstepped his boundaries in a professional setting. She calls him out on it, and it should be the end of the story. But he insists on harassing Amidala for the duration of the film, making her feel, at turns, uncomfortable and unsafe.

Strike 2
Even during meals, Skywalker is relentless in his pursuit of Amidala. She attempts to make light conversation about Skywalker's Jedi vows, but he uses this polite discussion as an opportunity to pounce, declaring that he can’t be “with the people I love.” He immediately follows this up by confessing to her that he remembers her in his dreams. Skywalker is telling an elected official, who is obligated to be in his presence, that he has been dreaming about her.

It’s an unhealthy obsession — not anything close to love. And where can Amidala go? Her life is in danger, and she has no choice but to stay with Skywalker, who is at turns her protector and her predator. On top of all of this, Skywalker has supernatural powers — he’s one of the strongest beings in the entire galaxy. Talk about a power dynamic!

Strike 3
Skywalker, who is still a Padawan learner and not yet a Jedi knight, isn’t content with threatening Amidala's sexual agency, but insists on undermining her professional authority as well. On her home planet of Naboo she discusses with the queen where she would like to stay while in hiding. Skywalker takes this moment, in front of an assortment of nobility and elected officials, to throw a tantrum and assert his dominance by telling her that he’s “in charge of security.”

Later, when they’re alone, Skywalker decides to confront her with his feelings. He tells her that since they met (when he was a child), “a day hasn’t gone by when I haven’t thought of you.”

That’s just plain creepy!

Strike 4
Then he places the blame on her — because of course a woman can’t exist professionally without it threatening some self-centered man. He tells her, “You are in my very soul, tormenting me. What can I do?” Um, how about realize this is a you problem and let Amidala live her life?

It’s shocking that the Jedi Council, or at least some of its members, like Masters Yoda and Windu, didn’t know about these flagrant violations of professional and personal boundaries. After all, can’t they use the force?

The Jedi Council's inability to remove a toxic, misogynistic predator from its ranks ultimately brings about its downfall — when Anakin Skywalker joins the dark side and becomes Darth Vader. Maybe if the Jedi were more concerned with gender equality, and less concerned with balancing the force, then they would still be around today.

 

[Captain_Asshole]

 

[frozenrunner]

Luke, did I ever tell you about Bigger Luke? The two of you are nearly identical, except he's ever so slightly larger. Remember when you went into Yoda's Dagobah Force Tree, saw your face inside Darth Vader's broken helmet and thought it meant your greatest fear was becoming Darth Vader? Well, that was the corpse of Bigger Luke you were staring at. You killed him. He was a good friend.

> googles Bigger Luke

There have been many elaborate theories as to why there exists a larger version of Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars films, however most theories fall into two general categories:

• The Canon Luke Hypothesis, sometimes simply The Bigger Luke Hypothesis, in which it is theorized that within the Star Wars universe and canon there does indeed exist a version of Luke Skywalker that is slightly larger than a posited regular Luke Skywalker, or Luke Prime.
• The Hamill Hypothesis, in which it is theorized that there exists an uncredited Mark Hamill look-alike who was used in certain scenes of the original trilogy for undisclosed reasons and whose identity has yet to be determined.

The Canon Luke Hypothesis is the most popular of the two, with the Hamill Hypothesis a close second.

Star Wars fans are even more autistic than Harry Potter fans.

 

[Cato]

There was an equally autistic article about Star Wars in the National Post yesterday:

Star Wars is colonial fantasy: How our future imaginings are limited by our past

https://archive.is/CN0E3

Most “Star Wars” films open with the simple text “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” To many people this is a cute gimmick, but it actually gives the audience an important sense of what is to come because the “Star Wars” franchise is, and has always been, far more interested in our past than in our future.

Despite the “long time ago,” “Star Wars” is set in the future in terms of how we conceive of it. The human society depicted is one that features more advanced technology than we currently have, a technology that reflects our trajectory in transportation, telecommunication, military technology, artificial intelligence and robotics.

All the things they have, it seems, are better than what we have, yet these are all things that our society is clearly inching closer and closer to obtaining.

So what kind of future does “Star Wars” show us? Well, a familiar one, to put it mildly — one that in spite of the spaceships and laser-swords is more reflective than speculative. We are taken away to the far reaches of space, but, once there, we find the Second World War, feudal Japan, 1930s America and even the classical age of heroes from Grecco-Roman culture.

“Star Wars” as colonial fantasy

When George Lucas and his collaborators built their world, they sought to give it a sense of depth and politics (sometimes to the chagrin of the prequel-watchers). “Star Wars” draws on our past to create everything from political structures to the very ecosystems of the planets themselves.

One of the more commonly described oddities of the “Star Wars” universe is the notion of entire planets with one climate. We are introduced to desert planets and ice planets and swamp planets. Of course, any one planet could have a myriad of different climates and ecosystems in the real world. But this peculiar detail reveals the metaphor that “Star Wars” is working with: each planet in “Star Wars” is basically each country in our world.

This metaphor allows the “Star Wars” universe to essentially retell stories from the era of British imperialism. The empire then becomes quite familiar to us, especially on the surface. In “Star Wars”, though, the empire is the enemy and the undisciplined, free-spirited rebels become the heroes — thus aligning “Star Wars” with thematic elements from the American Western even amid the trappings of British imperialist narratives.

A star destroyer, or perhaps even a Death Star, reads a lot like a navy warship and space itself becomes little more than an ocean to travel across in search of new adventures.

We see this metaphor further reflected in the ranks and hierarchies of the Galactic Empire, which is often reminiscent of the British naval hierarchy.

Harkening back to imperialism is obviously problematic, yet still somewhat common for science fiction (SF). The great SF writer, Ursula Le Guin, wrote about this in her famous 1975 essay, “American SF and the Other.”

“From a social point of view most SF has been incredibly regressive and unimaginative. All those Galactic Empires, taken straight from the British Empire of 1880. All those planets — with 80 trillion miles between them! — conceived of as warring nation-states, or as colonies to be exploited, or to be nudged by the benevolent Imperium of Earth towards self-development — the White Man’s Burden all over again. The Rotary Club on Alpha Centauri, that’s the size of it.”

For Le Guin, who was writing just two years before the first “Star Wars” film premiered, this imperial metaphor was problematic and indicative of a tendency in SF to long for the past rather than to aspire toward the future.

A longing for the past

Consider, for example, that “Star Wars” draws on the aerial dogfighting genre in order to create a satisfying yet familiar depiction of our future. If you compare that depiction to our current state of aviation warfare — with unmanned drones and missiles that leave the aircraft long before the enemy fighter is even visible to the pilot — the reality just isn’t as satisfying.

Similarly, the cantina scene is a nod to the watering holes of film noir and, before that, to the den-of-thieves inns so common to fantasy literature.

The Jedi culture is, of course, feudal Japan by way of Akira Kurosawa’s films. The “Star Wars” empire’s aesthetic is that of the Nazi era.

Even the artificial intelligence is somewhat backwards in its conception, with advanced AI automatons who act within a familiar paradigm: the classic “odd couple” dynamic.

The plot is equally attentive to the past. As noted by many scholars, and by George Lucas himself, “Star Wars” is a classic example of a monomyth, the hero’s journey — a basic storytelling structure identified by Joseph Campbell in 1949. The monomyth has some room for interpretation, but also a surprising amount of specificity to it; and “Star Wars” sticks very closely to that structure, thus aligning the journey of Luke Skywalker with that of classical heroes such as Hercules, Theseus and Odysseus.

“Star Wars” is great fantasy, not science fiction

All of this leads to a simple question: If “Star Wars” is so compelled by our past, what does it say about us that, even in our most dynamic futurescape, we feel the need to seek out the familiar? The best answer to this might entail a sort of perceptual paradigm shift that begins with a controversial realization: “Star Wars” isn’t science fiction.

Beginning with Mary Shelley and Jules Verne, SF was a genre that defined itself by exploring, in fiction, the consequences of our society’s technological development. “Star Wars”, however, isn’t engaged with that exploration. In fact, by most any widely accepted definition of SF, “Star Wars” doesn’t count, and that’s OK.

Instead of comparing it to the works of H.G. Wells or Isaac Asimov or Kim Stanley Robinson, we can compare “Star Wars” to the works of George MacDonald and J.R.R. Tolkien and Neil Gaiman, and there we find a much more favourable lens by which to understand and appreciate what the “Star Wars” universe accomplishes. This isn’t SF — it’s fantasy in outer space, and, more than that, it’s really good fantasy.

What makes “Star Wars” great isn’t a vision of our future, but the imaginative satisfaction that “Star Wars” creates in drawing from our past. There’s no prophecy here, just a tacit acceptance that thinking about the future is disorienting and frightening, and a little familiarity can be a whole lot of fun.

Perhaps more than that, “Star Wars” can be seen to provide our society with a sort of regression therapy, by allowing us to work through our past within the safe space of a detached future. With fresh eyes, we see the evil of imperialism, the power of the righteous individual, and the range and scope of the transcendent force that binds us all as human beings.

With the release of a brand new “Star Wars” film, it is compelling to reflect upon just how much our love for the “Star Wars” universe says about who we are in this universe.

Wrapped in the visual trappings of a future society, “Star Wars” is a nostalgic hodgepodge of the most dynamic and captivating concepts from our past — real and fictional. The art of creating that, the delicate balance it requires (one that so many other films have tried and failed to achieve) is, like the best “Star Wars” films themselves, a wonder to behold.

 

[Schwachkopf]

Spoiler

Didn't he die tho? Why is the writer complaining about the character if he's already dead?

 

[Sparky Lurker]

Did we had SJW articles attacking the twilight saga on the past though ?

 

[AnOminous]

Seems pretty accurate to me. Anakin was always a Nice Guy and incel and damn near and incel even at his best.

This could have been done well, but because George Lucas's autism, he came across as a self-pitying emo pussy instead of a tormented villain.

Even post-evil Darth Vader, a pure villain, was more sympathetic than that pussy, who couldn't carry a whole movie because you just couldn't really manage to be sympathetic with such a weak, whiny asshole.

Also, how is the article in the OP even angry about this? It's just pointing it out.

 

[The Fool]

How many levels of feminism do you have to be on to watch a film where the main character commits genocide and come away thinking his biggest offense was being an awkward sexually frustrated teen.

You're not thinking progressively enough. It's not murder if they disagree with your opinion.

 

[ZehnBoat]

Did we had SJW articles attacking the twilight saga on the past though ?

flirting is okay if the guy is handsome and or rich

 

[sbm1990]

Feminism is one hellavu drug.

 

[ASoulMan]

Wut

 

[Nien Nunb]

I like how Anakin's the bad guy, even though they eventually get together.

The real monster here is Padme, for child grooming. She's known him since he was eight.

 

[The Great Chandler]

Anakin was a giant autist, but so was Padme, so they kind of deserved each other.

The article actually isn't wrong that he was extremely creepy and inappropriate towards her, but that's kind of trivial in comparison to this classic exchange:

Anakin: "I killed them. I killed them all. They're dead, every single one of them. And not just the men, but the women and the children, too. They're like animals, and I slaughtered them like animals. I hate them!"
Padme: "To be angry is to be human."

Guy went on a genocidal rant and admitted to murdering children, and Padme basically shrugged and validated it by claiming it's normal.

Hitler's conversation with Eva.

 

[sbm1990]

What Sadam did in the Gulf War was potatoes compared to what Anakin Skywalker has done!

 

[escapegoat]

I think we all know that he should have been ousted for being a moody whiner.

 

[Caesare]

They're just sand people.
Even when you're in another galaxy and time, kebab is for removal.

"They're easily startled, but they'll soon be back and in greater numbers."

Sounds like somebody we know.

 

[ZehnBoat]

Wut

this is the real important issues
not real women suffering, but fictional men being dicks

 

[Marvin]

Luke, did I ever tell you about Yoda? Well he is a small green alien that was the jedi master of order.

I read this as "jedi master of color" and I laughed.

 

[vertexwindi]

I read this as "jedi master of color" and I laughed.

Matter as much as any other life green lives do.

 

[Robotron]

The CIS did nothing wrong.

 

[Implacable Birch]

Anakin became a Jedi & broke the code by having sex with Padme, the vile fempire womyn succubus who tainted his force-essence and made him turn against his master.

Star Wars is telling epic that shows us that having sex with women will ultimately destroy you and everything you love and fragment your essence into vile progeny who are fated to turn against your legacy. God Bless George Lucas, brilliant MGTOW philosopher and artist.