Listen to the Author's Whispers

I may have mentioned this quote somewhere else on this blog, but it begs another mention...

"It's not what an author says, but what he/she whispers that is important." - Logan Pearsall Smith

Man, I love that quote.  It basically articulates why I like, and get so much out of any favorite book, poem, film, song, film, etc.  It's the English major deep within me that keeps coming back and finding new things in all my favorite texts.

Story time alert!

Perhaps the most fun I ever had in putting together video to teach was putting together my "The Tragedy of Anakin Skywalker" video "essay."  I started using Anakin as an example of a tragic hero about a year or two before ROTS.  All the pieces were in place to document Anakin's tragic hero journey.  We had the beginning, part of the middle and the finale.  Yet, we had to speculate what happened at the most crucial part of that journey.  What happens when Anakin "dies" and is reborn as Darth Vader?  I knew there would be a payoff in Episode III, but I had no clue how deep and wide it would go...

I had connections to greek tragedy, Shakespeare, and in my option, some pretty purposeful storytelling.

Did the much maligned George Lucas achieve a master stroke of storytelling?  Did he really put that much thought into what was on the big screen or, like most Star Wars fans, I was digging way deeper than was ever intended.

But it's do darn easy to do...

I patiently waited for ROTS to be released on DVD so I could put the final pieces into that video essay.  However, there was so much to choose from the original cut was 2+ hours!!! I didn't want to chew up multiple class periods watching this examples, but ....

The first thing you notice when you watch all 6 films, and focus on just Anakin and anyone/anything that interacts with him, you see the hyper-focus on hitting the "beats" of a tragic hero.  You see the conflicting advice between mentors, the emphasis on choices, the "more machine than man" Vader rhetoric and on and on...

The next thing that stuck me is the sway Palpatine has over Anakin.  Pay attention to what Anakin says in AOTC and you see it's less about Anakin's "poor dialogue" and "whiny complaints", and more about Palpatine's brainwashing.  Anakin, literally, parrots things Palpatine has told him.  "Someday I will be the most powerful jedi ever" and "Obi-Wan is holding me back" isn't Anakin's wishful thinking and pitiful teen, it's specific Palpatine statements and advice. It becomes evident, as early as AOTC, that Anakin is the robo-man he would become starts long before he's ever in The Suit. To paraphrase a Chuck D comment, "you wind up robots and robots will do what they do."

Anakin is so far under Palpatine's sway, that aside from the few times he tries to break free (see Padme and Luke), he seems completely dependent on Palpatine's advice, assistance and power.  A dark side symbiotic relationship (thanks, Qui Gon!) if there ever was one.  Thus, when Darth Vader says, "you don't know the power of the dark side" over and over between ESB and ROTJ it takes on a whole new meaning...