There’s a recurring theme in fantasy and science-fiction: there is something sacred about death. Blurring the line between life and death, usurping and dethroning death, will lead to Bad Things. The hallmark of evil is the defying of death. I once read someone describe Darth Vader as a walking coma patient, and what happens when he turns back to the light? He accepts the ‘natural’ death he’s been denying for so long.
You underestimate the power of homeopathy… and overestimate the value of scientific evidence. I am truly evil.
It’s odd, really. Defying death is an obsession for our culture. Not just CAT scans and laser keyhole surgery, but even down to central heating and surgically sterile food. All to make sure we can live safe, comfortable, long lives. We cling to life with the rabid obsession of Gollum and his precious.
I’m not sure what the word is for my worldview, but I despise the notion of ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’. There are fundamental laws which describe how the universe works. These laws apply to every single thing in the universe. Everything, from bunny rabbits living in a woodland paradise, to smog-filled cities of broken-backed worker-slaves, obeys the same rules. The process of childbirth and genetic engineering, the movements of the tides and nuclear bombs, a mother’s love and genocide. All the same rules. If something is possible, it is natural. If something is not possible, it’s entirely academic because it’s never going to happen. And if it does happen? Then our understanding of the universe is clearly wrong and we need to change it.
Natural as fook! Of course, I’m not saying it’s not incredibly creepy…
So why should death, and the ‘cheating’ of death, be a hallmark of evil? Cheating death is possible, so it’s natural. The universe doesn’t give a shit. Karma is not going to appear from no where to deliver Terrible Consequences if you’re a walking coma patient, or if you make sure you take your vitamins every day. Poke death in the eyes–sell your soul, splice your DNA, drink the alien goo. It’s all natural.
Of course, when you accept that nuclear bombs are as natural as bunny rabbits, you’ve got to accept a few other things. Like Plant Earth really doesn’t give a crap about us. We can cover the whole planet in thick clouds of smog, boil ourselves in our skins and turn Earth into a second Venus. Mother Earth will be all like, ‘meh, it took you thousands of years to find the slight bruise the K-T ‘extinction event’ left on me’. But the human race… well, we may be given a few last moments for regret. Whether defying death will help to produce the kind of environment and society we want to live in is another matter.
I guess I’m just sick of the ‘defying death must lead to Terrible Consequences’ trope. It’s overplayed, and it’s just plain wrong. And considering the obsession we have with defying death ourselves, it’s incredibly hypocritical. Let’s have a little truth in our fiction, eh?
Picture of Vader from this Cracked article. Creepy mouse-ear shot from here.
I am not really sure whether Star Wars intentionally depicts defying death as evil. I consider the notion more a tool of Sidious’ deception to manipulate Anakin. If Anakin would have been susceptible to other fears than losing loved ones, Sidious would have used that against him.
I don’t even think that much thought originally went into Vader’s suit in the first place. It is much more likely the result of some concept art George Lucas found particularly fitting for the style of the character. I Own most of the concept art books from the movies (but there are stored at a different place atm, so I can’t look up the specific case of Vader), there are many things that are in the movies only because some artist had drawn one of their own ideas and Lucas liked it, so I would not interprete too much into it.
I think the thing to remember with Star Wars is that Lucas didn’t really know what he was doing until after he did it. Most of the things in the films are there, I think, mostly because he liked how they looked/worked at the time. In his original plans, after all, Ben was telling the truth when he said that Vader killed Anakin. It was only later that Lucas decided that Anakin *became* Vader. And, well, there’s that Luke/Leia kiss…
Regardless of what Lucas meant, I think the reading is still valid. When creating narratives, people unconsciously bring their own opinions, prejudices, beliefs and all their other baggage to it. Just because they don’t *mean* to say something, doesn’t mean they’re not saying it. The other thing is that readers/viewers bring their own baggage to the narrative, too. A story is a dialogue between the teller and listener, and the listener will see parts of themselves reflected in the story.
Either way, reading more into a narrative than the author’s conscious intent is pretty much what my English Lit degree was all about!
“Either way, reading more into a narrative than the author’s conscious intent is pretty much what my English Lit degree was all about!”
Yeah, I remember that, back then in school it was always like that, but I tend to forget it, because I always resented it, mostly because we were forced to interprete stuff into a story that we ourselves did not see there at all. But the teacher said so thus we had to draw his conclusion as well. Sigh.
A trope that I am much more tired of than “defying death makes you evil”, which is also related to your post, is the overabundance of “robots are dangerous/evil”. I find this particular irritating because it resembles racism very, very much – “different from us, therefore bad” and “us vs them”. Am I the only one who feels like that?
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P.S.: Something is wrong with the input fields in the comment form (also applies to the “name” etc fields). When scrolling the cursor with the arrow keys left or right, very often it requires pressing the key several times for the cursor to actually move by one character. The effect seems to be consistently reproducible on Firefox (version 18.0.2 as of this writing), yet the number of key strokes required appears to vary randomly between one and three, and even trying to scroll the same step repeatedly produces different results each time.
Scrolling lines up and down, seems unaffected, while jumping words with ctrl+arrow keys suffers from the same issue. It is definitely not my keyboard, everywhere else it works just fine.
I think that English Lit is like every other subject: until you get to around degree level, you’re only allowed to parrot back what the teacher tells you. What the teachers should be doing is introducing you to the tools you’ll need to make your own observations and conclusions, teaching you how the tools are used and what can be done with them. Unfortunately, a lot of the time it feels like strangling creativity and independent thought so you can be rail-roaded down The Right Path and to hell with anything new or original you might have in your head. That kind of rail-roading is what put me off taking my interest in science to a place where I could discover things for myself. Personally, I don’t blame the teachers but a system designed to turn out obedient little corporate drones who don’t ask awkward questions.
Okay, I blame my teachers, but that’s a different story
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Thanks for letting me know about the problem with input box. Has it been doing it for a while, or is it a new thing?
No idea when it started, just realized it when commenting on this post.
Thanks for letting me know. I shall bend my vast technical expertise to a solution… by which I mean I’ll keep typing search strings into Google until something I can understand shows up in the results…