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When in Doubt Move a Pawn: Psychomachia and Friendship and the Construction of National Mythology in Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith Anthony
Metivier York
University Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Although by now we’re all familiar with the “darkside of the force,” this presentation illuminates the relationship between good and evil in Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith by drawing on two literary precedents, beginning with the Psychomachia by Prudentius, written around 400 A.D. Working with this poem elucidates the basic structure of the battle between the spirit and the flesh as a narrative device, while also providing a startling example of extraordinarily violent “special effects,” the war of darkness against the light. From there, I draw upon a more modern example, namely Othello, again parsing out the unique narrative structure of psychomachia, while also discussing the added feature of the “friendship” between Othello, and Iago, the self-proclaimed devil who claims “I am not what I am.” This problem of friendship and of the coercion made possible by proximity features prominently in Revenge of the Sith. As with Othello, the darkening of the protagonist’s spirit occurs in quick stages, aided by seeds of darkness implanted in the mind. This paper directly poses this question to young Annikin Skywalker, who I argue is a daemonic stand-in for George W. Bush. (“You’re either with me, or against me,” Annikin claims at one point!) In a film filled with imagery inspired by 9/11 and other scenes of immense destruction and a hellish underworld, the themes of friendship with the darkside and the resultant blindness and falling away from the Jedis, always characterized by homeostasis and light, comment directly on the state of America in world politics at the time of release (2005). By describing the use of the narrative model of the pychomachia and the friendship models of Aristotle and Derrida, this paper suggests that Star Wars III functions as instant mythology, explaining to its audiences through analogous means why real and imagined people we hold as leaders or heroes appear to us as pawns and act like irrational demons.
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