ExTenebris

Lots of mid-curver responses along the lines of "But ZOMG he killed a bunch of kids 😲" Yes, slaughtering children is evil. Duh. But that's not the point and there are several easy reasons why this is such a brutally mid curve take. 1) Anakin is a tragic hero because his desires are all so deeply good and rightly ordered. He wants nothing more than to rescue his mother from slavery. He is competent and quick to learn. He struggles to follow the Jedi while they repeatedly treat him with disdain and derision as they pathologize his human and rational concerns. Yet he still tries to honor and stay true to them due to his loyalty, and arguably, his love for Obi-Wan and Padme. Even as he does so, the Council repeatedly denies him what is good and right on the basis of ✨bad vibes errrm✨ (sounds familiar, ever heard of Toxic Masculinity™️?) This is the experience of the vast majority of men today. That's why Anakin resonates. 98% of jobs have gone to women under an administration that men stepped up to vote for. We get overlooked for promotions so another person of color can make a LinkedIn post celebrating her promotion. We watch our own get stabbed to death in the streets of Britain by foreign brown people and are told there's nothing we can do about it. We are the ones who will get sent to the front lines and die for the country in a war. But when we dare to speak out against feminism, mass immigration, LGBTQ, or even god forbid, a woman strangling her children to death, we are full of hate. Anakin is a tragic hero who teaches us a profound moral caution: pathologize a young man's rightly ordered desires for his family, his country, and his future, and you reap what you sow. "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil." 2) To that point, Lucas had to make Anakin evil for the plot because up until he slaughters the younglings, he has done nothing truly evil. Sure, he's broken a few rules (like marrying his girlfriend in secret--so evil) and been a bit hotheaded; but until that point, anyone reasonable in the audience would look at Anakin and say, "I get it--yeah the Jedi really did kinda screw you over and Palpatine was the only one who actually showed care and was willing to listen." I would argue, if Anakin doesn't kill the younglings, you can't find any fault in his story arc at all other than being angry and letting rage consume him, but at that point, you can understand it because those he trusted most betrayed him. So, for the purposes of the plot, Lucas has to show Anakin giving in to the Dark side fully so he can become the big bad Darth Vader, the villain of the sequels. Miss me with the self righteous "BuT He KiLleD KiDs ZOMG." You're pitching me a mid-curve ball right into the spot where I am going to smack it out of the park and leave you with your Jedi Brainwashed Head bowed and your glove covering you in face in shame. That's the moment that Anakin snapped because those he trusted most had so deeply and utterly betrayed him after a long series of abuses. When men are pathologized in the way Anakin was, while simultaneously being expected to protect and sustain the same order that pathologizes us, we inevitably become violent. In the world today, that violence is mostly directed inward as evidenced by the male suicide rate. Anakin is the tragic hero for men in our time. We see ourselves spiritually in his struggle.