The whole movie is peak American bullshit. The christian symbolism with death as the ultimate sacrifice & the notion that you have to die for your bad actions and shouldn't be allowed to live redeemed. We don't kill people in my country, not even murderers because that's not how a civilised society works. No wonder the dudebro nation cheered for TROS. American military and nationalism really did their fair share in brainwashing the general public. So glad to see you are not one of them.
I’ve lived in multiple countries. Spent my formative years in the midst of an actual civil war. And did my graduate research in New Orleans…where trauma has led to inordinate amounts of incarceration, particularly in young African American men. There is more incarceration in that area than anywhere else in the world. And the biggest piece of wisdom I’ve gained from all of this exposure is that most people who do bad things aren’t bad PEOPLE. They just don’t know how to cope with their pain and empower themselves in healthy ways.
My social work mentor would call the actually “bad” people “dark entities.” They are few and far between. Those are the people that need to be locked away and not rehabilitated because there is no rehabilitating that black hole.
Anon I have to jump out there and say that there’s nothing authentically “Christian” about Ben’s death in TROS. Like yes, sacrificing oneself to save another is a holy act, but the way the story was framed, it wasn’t NECESSARY for Ben’s redemption. He had ALREADY been redeemed by then, because we saw him turn from the dark and choose the light, repenting of his evil and actively choosing to be loving and self-giving. According to actual Christian doctrine, no further penance was necessary, and certainly not at the cost of his life. You’re right though that this is a popular American philosophy, or what a blogger I know calls “American Christianist.” It emphasizes punishment over forgiveness and rehabilitation, as manifested in the legal and corrections system (as @millennium-eagle said). It’s really sick and damaging, and I can’t believe Star Wars validated that perspective.
Yes. my adoptive parents are amazing Christians who are very much so focused on rehabilitation of the broken. They exist. Real Christians do exist.
It’s just this puritan bullshit that has permeated this country. As well as ignorance.
This is an excellent point. I’ve seen posts saying that Ben wasn’t fully redeemed because he died before he could atone for his crimes as Kylo Ren, but that’s not how redemption works! I’m pagan and I know this. Ben Solo was fully and utterly redeemed the moment he chose to throw away Kylo’s saber. More pusnishment was not necessary, death was not necessary. Even had he lived, a life of atonement wasn’t necessary for redemption, though I’m sure Ben would have chosen it.
This is a great conversation.
#if anything ben’s death makes him a christ-like figure#and i say this completely unironically and saw the signs years ago#he dies to GIVE OTHER PEOPLE LIFE AND HOPE#(yes rey specifically but rey is apparently the chosen future of the skywalker legacy)#he was already the goodest good guy when he ran to Exegol with a blaster in his hand#he sacrifices himself to let a new era in the galaxy begin; one where rey carries the torch of hope#redemption in a christian sense is NOT about death#there are plenty of saints who were utter trash assholes before *seeing the light* and giving themselves to god#the only time where redemption = death is with jesus WHO IS NOT THE ONE WHO NEEDS REDEMPTION ANYWAY#he offers himself to pay the price for humanity’s sins (via him-e)
^^ And even then, Jesus was resurrected a couple days later. And that’s treated as a bigger deal than even his our-redemption-by-proxy death–which is, obviously, a very big deal. But someone dying is normal. Someone coming back from the dead is not, that’s the miracle. Especially when, in Christian doctrine and many other spiritual faiths, redemption isn’t ultimately about the redeemed’s death–either literal or metaphorical–it’s about their rebirth. [And TRoS actually got this bit right with Ben’s redemption scene (how on purpose that was is up to questioning, but it was basically there).] Hence Good Friday being observed as a holy day, but it’s Easter Sunday that’s the second biggest annual Christian holiday after Christmas. Christ’s death is absolutely seminal, but 1) it’s not his end, and 2) it’s his birth and rebirth that us Christians celebrate to the fullest (songs, big dinners, decorations, special church services, candy, appropriating seasonal pagan traditions…🤷🏾). Because, unlike what most mainstream redemption narratives have been implying for decades, redemption equals life.
So Western media’s widespread adherence to “redemption equals death” is not a Christian thing. It’s barely even a Puritan thing. It’s an “American monomyth”/”you can never re-assimilate”/”redemption is only solidified/validated in death” thing, and/or a copy-pasting ROTJ but without the proper context and meaning, thing.
But anyway, yes, the ST canon (both movies and extended) totally made Ben a Christ-like martyr, sacrificial lamb figure (which tracks with him being descended from the OG space Messiah), almost as much as a Prodigal Son…but then something went terribly wrong with TRoS and the proper outcomes of both those narratives was bungled to shit.
That’s amazing discution! In my denomination we have saints both men and women who gave their lives to save another person, sometimes from family, sometimes a stranger. They are examples of Christ-like love and they are remembered also thru people they save. We believe that they live with God and are happy. But the true is that not only death but most importantly life of them was enough reason to call them saints. AKA sacrificing death is not necessary to become Saint and even to be redeemed! You should change your heart to return too light and Ben did this on the Death Star II, as his grandfather.
Ben’s death broke my heart not because he did what he did (yes, very Christ/Aslan, Saint Maksymilian Kolbe style which I respect @allgirlsareprincesses 💖) because I can understand his choice. What I can’t understand is that many people after seeing the space one still think that he wasn’t redeemed, he need to die, and even then he still wasn’t… they still see him as Kylo and after TRoS as Ren even. They forgave Darth Vader and call him Anakin all along but can’t understand Ben.
Maybe it’s some noble ‘medieval’ concept of honourable death or something (I’m not an expert in it, but my male friends understand and accept Ben’s death in first second they saw it and even were like ‘yeah a noble death’ and ‘they should kill more characters’; my girl-friends othervise) instead of ‘Christian’???
I’m waitin’ peacefully for Ben to be back :) But will they have enough strenght to do that?
As a medievalist (prof of medieval lit) I’m going to jump in and add that the noble death here really does seem to be more of a product of the American monomyth as @fluffycakesistainted pointed out, at least as far as I understand that concept (from the What the Force podcast on it, basically). Medieval literature in Western Europe is pretty big on survival and forgiveness. Noble deaths DEFINITELY exist, but they’re typically presented as futile or deeply tragic (see Arthurian saga, or Chanson de Roland, Tristan and Isolde, or Marie de France’s lais). A lot of medieval narratives even in the Arthurian saga are all about dilation, exploring stories BEFORE the tragic fall of the kingdom and ending before that happened. There were even rewritings of classic myths, like the excellent Sir Orfeo, which reworks Orpheus and Eurydice to have a happy ending! The big twist at the end of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is that our protagonist doesn’t get a “noble” death and has to live with his prior adventures and moral failings, and he had to admit to them to the larger court! I don’t know Norse sagas as well—there I think you have a lot more in terms of heroic deaths!—but from what I do know, again, a tragedy is presented as exactly that, a tragedy, not as if everyone should be thrilled this sacrificial/noble death of a protagonist/deuteragonist occurred. So yeah, pre-Reformation western Christian literature sees the space one and raises a collective eyebrow. (Again not saying there aren’t exceptions! Just that generally speaking that’s NOT the theme.) Classical Greek and Roman literature as well, and Hebrew and Christian scriptures, don’t treat main characters this way. Do Odysseus’ sailors get killed off ignominiously, often without deserving it but sometimes as result of their own actions? Yes, and it’s always treated as tragic, and exists within a larger positive narrative.
I’m not nearly as well versed in literature and myth in other traditions c.500-1500 CE, but from what I do know and have studied (mostly Islamic, Persian, some Iberian peninsula lit, Chinese poetry and short narrative, Japanese texts, fairytales and folklore from around the world), again, I’m seeing a fair number of similar themes and ideas. So yeah. Blaming TROS on the American monomyth definitely makes sense to me, because its ending and message is pretty incongruous with a lot of other stories we’ve collectively inherited.
@lovinghyacinths mostly I just want to thank you for bringing my two favorite stories ever into this discussion, Sir Orfeo and Gawain and the Green Knight both are e v e r y t h I n g to me and talking about them never fails to conjure me up from wherever I may be lol. But also, yes to the whole thing. Medieval literature doesn’t quite buy in to the noble death. Peak noble death I can think of is American Westerns like Shane, with the lonely gunslinger riding off shot into the sunset, most probably to die. Samurai stuff has a presupposition that noble death (in combat/as sacrifice) is to be desired, which, at least in what I’ve seen, it also takes time to refute (think Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress). Medieval literature is similar in that it acknowledges that death met fighting for something good is noble and beautiful, but it is also sad, and heedlessly meeting death as the answer to your problems or solution to your mistakes is not good. Orfeo is not allowed to die when he initially fails to protect his wife. Gawain is not allowed to die even though he goads the Green Knight on to it, because it seems the “noble” solution. They both live in humility to rectify their mistakes.
The one area of medieval lit that I do say there is a “noble death” trope is probably in the Saint’s lives pertaining to martyrs. But each of these ends not with death, but the Saint being carried up to be received in triumph—a triumph over death. You could, I think, draw some parallels (as others in this thread have done) with the Saint’s lives and Ben Solo. The difficulty there is we are not given any of the “triumph” part of triumph over death; and his death also comes with the meta-context of “well he couldn’t have lived after all he’s done, Death was the only possible ‘happy’ solution for him”, and that’s what is bad and absolutely not Christian or medieval. The whole point of Christianity is death is a problem to which Christ was the solution, granting humanity forgiveness for our mistakes so we could live for eternity, so we could overcome death like He did.
So, as my specialty is saints lives (I’m not kidding), I’ll point out that the big difference is that Christian medieval saints—and indeed martyrs both Catholic AND Protestant through the 17th century!—don’t die for their sins. They die BECAUSE they’re Christian, and true, and they won’t renounce their faith despite persecution. So in terms of a noble death it’s quite different. And the whole point is that death isn’t an end! The saints continue to interact with those on earth. They’re more powerful than ever before and happier.
Basically, Obi-Wan Kenobi in ANH is the closest thing we have to a martyr saint…and crap now I want to write a whole piece on Jedi and medieval saints’ cults!
But absolutely, bottom line, Ben’s death feels weird because it just doesn’t fit any established narrative pattern that makes sense if you’re familiar with older Western European narratives. (And apparently a lot of other traditions as well but I’m just speaking from what I know well.)
*applause* @allgirlsareprincesses I thank you for jumping in to explain what Christians actually believe about sacrificial death. This whole conversation is both a pleasure and helpful for research.
I’ve been writing about the Christian themes of the Star Wars sequel trilogy for the past year and a half, hoping to write enough for a book; before TROS I published some pieces on why Ben Solo is the prodigal son and an analogue of saints like Augustine of Hippo. I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around how they turned him into a Christ-figure and why it doesn’t feel right. I’m in a Christian theatre group and we have a show about St. Perpetua, St. Felicity, and their companions, so I’ve thought and read a lot about martyrdom, what it means and how it works. (Incidentally I think Luke’s death on Crait, with its blood and womb imagery, is much like a martyr’s death and rebirth.) It’s so important for stories to make it clear that although there are things worth dying for, death is not something to desire and seek out.
Possibly another reason why Ben’s death differs from that of a saint’s is that although there is a sort of Communion of Saints through the Force (Rey prays “be with me” and the past Jedi speak to her and help her), Ben is not part of that communion. When Luke and Leia appear as Force ghosts, Ben is noticeably absent, suggesting he did not reach that galaxy’s equivalent of heaven or some kind of peace or transcendence after death.
@jackiestarsister I did a Ben as Prodigal Son piece too, it’s linked at the end of my reply above.
Yes, yes, yes. But what about the Buddhist/Taoist foundations the Jedi was built on? Are those abandoned entirely? Or is Ben’s death just the beginning of his rebirth?
To me the entire ST ended up as glorification of the myth of redemptive violence.
1) We have Kylo who we identify with. But we are supposed to identify with him only to the extend that we vicariously experience breaking society’s rules (the New Republic and Luke’s academy) and doing harm to our betters (kills Han). That is short lived as the closer we get to TRoS, the more we see Kylo Ren portrayed as ruthless, obsessive, and power hungry (SW: allegiance comic, SW Resistance finale, etc.). These are flows in his character that will ultimately lead to his downfall. Although he manages to redeem himself in his own eyes, he dies and there is no indication that the galaxy thinks of him any differently than as a would be dictator.
2) We are supposed to sympathize mostly with the heroes of the story because of their innate good characteristics: Luke, Leia, Rey, Finn, etc. We therefore gloss over or fully embrace their more questionable and downright oppressive actions. The Resistance and Leia are focused on fighting against the FO, but are not expected to solve problems like the starving orphans on Jakku or the many instances of slavery. Finn can be portrayed as heroic while he murders fellow stormtroopers. Luke’s actions to rebuild a flawed Jedi order so it can administer what’s right and wrong are admirable. We’re not supposed to think his powers could be put to much better use if he actually helped people in need. The Jedi are reaffirmed to be the ultimate good in the galaxy despite using clones as indentured warriors, separating infants from their caregivers, suppressing emotional development, and choosing politics/political influence over people’s well being.
3) The main message of the ST is that good prevails and evil suffers. We are basically supposed to feel a sort of catharsis, joy, and empowerment from the Resistance victory. We identify with the good guys after all and they have prevailed. The bad guys are reduced to a faceless, formless mass that deserves what they got and then some. No introspection is given for all the loss of life, trauma, or the simple fact the antagonists in these movies are brainwashed child soldiers.
4) The defeat of the FO fleet and Palpatine is spectacular and is quickly followed by a group hug in the idyllic setting of the Resistance jungle base. Our heroes have returned to paradise. We as spectators enjoy their happiness but also embrace the suffering of others (the FO troopers) as a good thing. We might understand that violence is not inherently good, but these movies ask us to accept it as a necessary and sufficient part of our struggles for a better future.
It’s disheartening, disgusting, and complete nonsense.
