Frozen in Emotional Carbonite

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. 

^^ 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. 

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’???

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!

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.

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.

Hiraeth, Chapter 13

“You.  Did you know about this?  About … Vader?”

Luke inhales and Ben grabs the saber from off of his knee and throws it.  It crashes into the further wall of the garden.

“Talk to me!”

Luke sighs; his eyes travel upward to his nephew’s face of twisting features.  "I knew.  I wanted to tell you.  Long ago.  But your mother begged.“

Ben rises to his full height, fists clenched at his sides, seething.  It is a premonition, a foretaste, of that bloodless battle on Crait, when Kylo Ren stood humiliated before allies and enemies, and cried out his rage and hurt at the man who should have loved him.  Rey can only hang back, because this is nothing to do with her.  It is between them.

Ben lets out an animal scream, and it devolves into a sob.  "All these years, all this time, I wondered.  I thought something was wrong with me.  Why my mother looked at me with fear, when she thought I wouldn’t notice.  Why my father was uncomfortable around me whenever I tapped into the Force.  Why you kept me on such a short leash, and refused to answer my questions.  You lie.  You all lie.”

“It was not a lie, Ben,” and his voice is so calm it makes Rey want to scream too.  "We elected to disclose things to you only as you needed to know them.  We did this to protect you.“

Ben swears.  "You’re not interested in protecting me.  You’re trying to contain me.”

i'm pretty sure i'm not the only one who thought of this 🖤

I fixed it.

1) NO. So don’t do it. 

Truth is, I’ve realized that a character being Jedi feels less like a selling point and more like a hurdle I’m going to have to get over in order to love them. I didn’t feel that way when I saw the OT as a kid, but the Prequels really gave me a distaste for the hypocrisy and even downright cruelty of the Jedi Order. And I don’t find the Dark Side or the Sith appealing either, so there’s nothing in the Jedi vs. Sith conflict that speaks to me.

* * *

First, the character destined for a redemption arc must knowingly and deliberately have done something wicked. This may sound like a silly place to start, because you’d think that’s a given, but since I’ve seen people claim that Finn had a “redemption arc” in The Force Awakens, I guess it’s not as obvious as it might seem. But Finn was a brainwashed child soldier who had no idea he was on the wrong side until he was dropped into his very first real battle and given a reprehensible order – which he refused to carry out. Then he promptly defected to the good guys. So Finn never did anything that required him to go through a redemption arc, because he’d never done anything he knew for certain was bad. Whereas in the same scene of TFA, we see Kylo Ren order the execution of the disarmed Tuanul villagers – but he also lets Finn off the hook for not following that order, which shows that a) Kylo is capable of mercy and b) he doesn’t always choose to exercise it. He knows killing unarmed opponents is morally wrong, to the extent that he doesn’t even punish Finn for resisting. But he gave the order anyway. That’s a character who needs redemption… but it’s also the first clue that he might be capable of receiving it. Because the second ingredient in a true redemption arc is that the character undergoing it must have a sensitive conscience.

It’s one thing to be aware that you’re behaving badly by other people’s moral standards, but quite another to feel genuine discomfort about it. Kylo Ren’s prayer to Vader’s helmet in TFA, “Forgive me, Grandfather, I feel it again. The pull to the light,” shows that he is ashamed of not being able to commit evil deeds with impunity. Deep down he feels he should be doing something other than he’s doing, and it fills him with turmoil. Later we see the same uncertainty and anguish in him when Han confronts him on the catwalk, and he confesses that he thinks it’s “too late” for him to come home. Even his attempt to sear and silence his conscience by murdering Han fails miserably, because as Snoke says in TLJ, “The deed split your spirit to the bone.” Instead of cementing Kylo’s commitment to evil, killing Han only tore him apart. But it’s a classic facet of redemption arcs for the character to double down on their villainy in an effort to deny the increasing weight of guilt that they feel. 

And this doubling-down phase may involve doing some genuinely, even excessively awful things. For Saul of Tarsus, it involved hunting down Christians and chasing them from city to city, trying to get them arrested and killed. For Zuko in Avatar: The Last Airbender, it included coldly rejecting the love of his Uncle Iroh, betraying the city of Ba Sing Se, and selling himself back to the Fire Nation for a cheap facsimile of honor. Meanwhile Kylo Ren not only killed his own father, he took over Snoke’s place as Supreme Leader and tried to wipe out the Resistance. But it’s all evidence of the same problem: kicking against the goads of an increasingly guilty conscience. And this can go on for quite some time before the villain’s resistance finally shatters and they face up to being wrong.

Interestingly enough, this last point is where a lot of so-called redemption arcs fail. There are lots of attractive, charismatic villains in books, TV and movies who do terrible things and maybe even show a few signs of being aware that they’re terrible, but in the end, the story wimps out by romanticizing them and handwaving their crimes as not being their fault – or even not actually being crimes at all. They give the villain a tragic backstory that makes the audience feel sorry for him, they hint that the villain was just misunderstood or acting on the wrong information, and then they bring in a much uglier and nastier bad guy who shows no signs of conscience and makes the villain look like an angel by contrast. The villain joins the side of the good guys, and ta-da! Redemption!

But it’s not, because the villain hasn’t been sickened by the ugliness of his own behaviour, and he hasn’t gone through the agony of repentance – that is, coming to sincerely loathe and regret his past evil behaviour and wanting to turn away from it. His crimes have been handwaved away by the narrative, and the good guys have charitably agreed to forget about them. That’s whitewashing, not redemption.

A true redemption arc, however, will feature a pivotal moment where we see the villain break down. He stops trying to justify himself, he admits his wrongdoing without making excuses for it, he despises himself and repents in (metaphorical) sackcloth and ashes, and then he chooses to behave differently from that point on, even if it means losing. None of this coy “has he changed or hasn’t he” nonsense. That’s not to say the character instantly becomes good with no errors of judgment or bad habits to overcome (that would be dull, not to mention unrealistic), but from that point, he has undergone a transformation from villain into fledgling hero.

At that point, we should see our redeemed character demonstrate his sincerity by trying to make amends. A lot of stories skip this part, but that’s a shame, because it’s way more dramatically interesting if the reformed villain has to face the people he’s wronged and address the consequences of his past actions. It may not be as blatant (or as glib) as “Here I am. I’m so sorry I stole from you. Here’s all the money back, plus interest.” But we should certainly see evidence that the character is attempting to help people, even at considerable risk or cost to himself, instead of using and discarding them at his convenience.

And then, ideally, we should see the redeemed character receiving some kind of reward for making the right choice. That doesn’t mean he necessarily gets everything he’s ever wanted, or even that he gets to live. It might be as simple as seeing the face of one person he cares about, and knowing they’ve forgiven him, before he dies.

* * * 

All that being said, it is possible to run a character through all these steps in a sketchy, hasty, or slipshod way that still makes the redemption arc feel unsatisfying and not really earned. It takes time and patience to write a villain redemption that makes sense in the context of the character’s whole story, and doesn’t feel like it was slapped on at the last minute. Furthermore, every reader or viewer has a different preference for how much of each step in the redemption process they personally want to see, which can make it difficult to write a redemption arc that satisfies everybody – or even the majority – rather than just the people who were already sympathetic to the villain in the first place.