Dark Side (Star Wars) - Figurative Meanings of "The Dark Side"

Figurative Meanings of "The Dark Side"

The first three Star Wars films, from 1977, have also been interpreted as Vietnam protest movies, with the United States of America being subtly portrayed as 'the Empire'. Niall Ferguson writes in Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (2004, page 102):

"In Star Wars, George Lucas perfectly captures America's yearning not to be expressed as the dark side of imperialism. It is not without significance that as his cinematic epic unfolds backwards a generation later, the arch-villain Darth Vader is revealed to have been an all American Jedi Knight in his youth."

Thus, the 'Dark Side of the force' represents, for anti-Vietnam activists like Lucas, the American Empire's moral slide from engaging in noble projects in its preliminary years as the sole world superpower, such as the Marshall Plan (as represented by Anakin Skywalker's original childishness and kindness), to becoming an occupying force engaging in acts of imperialist aggression, which is how many regarded the continuation of Vietnam (as represented by Darth Vader's indiscriminate violence and lust for greater power and territory).

Similarly, Anakin Skywaker's moral decent from 'chosen one' to villain - that is his choosing to follow the path of the dark side - can be seen as metaphoric of how large great powers can abandon their initially benign motives in favor of a politics and lifestyle based upon sentimental self-aggrandizing, selfishness, and aggression.

Lucas told CNN: "In terms of evil, one of the original concepts was how does a democracy turn itself into a dictatorship."

When Anakin Skywalker tells Yoda: " of pain ... suffering ... death" not speaking of himself, but someone he knows, this is representative of America's desires, or indeed of any country's desire, to intervene and attack a perceived enemy before they become capable of assault. Yoda tells him to be "careful when sensing the future" and that such thoughts are a "path to the dark side"; and acts taken in this vein are really "the shadow of greed" and not compassionate. Thus, this particular "path to the Dark Side" can be seen as Lucas's opposition to preventive wars, as expressed in the Bush Doctrine.

The Dark Side is representative of how masses of people, and how the individual in society, can surrender their moral compass and sense of decency in favor of cruel and inhumane actions. Lucas has said, "On the personal level it was how does a good person turn into a bad person and part of the observation of that is that most bad people think they are good people, they are doing it for the right reasons".

The temptations of the dark side, and the seemingly effortless ways Anakin Skywalker often adopts them, can be seen as representative of how an advanced nation based upon laws can slide into a dictatorship, as Germany did in the 1930s. In Christopher Browning's book Ordinary Men, he argues that members of the Nazi party were not uniquely evil, but were typical members of the working and lower middle classes. Yet, they engaged in acts of extreme violence and murder against innocent members of the Jewish and other communities. This whim, a surrendering to the worst extremes of human nature, is conveyed when Anakin kills the young Jedi Knights, the most obscene act of violence, in Episode 3.

Michael Burleigh wrote in his book The Third Reich: A New History that the rise of Nazism was a consequence of "masses of ordinary people abdicate their critical faculties in favor of a politics based on faith, hope, hatred and collective self-regard for their own race and nation", with the consequence being "an almost total, moral collapse of an advanced industrial society in the heart of Europe, many of whose citizens had abandoned the burden of thinking for themselves." Lucas shows this as the large numbers of people aboard the Death Star mindlessly follow Darth Vader's orders, and how Vader himself unthinkingly follows his 'master' Darth Sidious.

Lucas suggests, like Burleigh, that "paths to the dark side", or barbarism, are subtle and not clear-cut, that the distinction between good and evil is not a distinction between 'us' and 'them'; but rather a battle within ourselves, reflecting the frailty of human nature and our own competing (and equally compelling) internal impulses towards kindness on the one hand, and cruelty on the other.