ZF Index

Editor:
David Edwards

Contributors:
Peter Gillin
Mat Page
Juliette White
Sarah Lawrence
Xavier Smith
Richard Blunt
Dale Klover
Paul Gilkerson
Phil Hallard
Matthew Graham

Why is it that no matter how careful you are, at least one toenail clipping manages to hide itself in the carpet ready to leap out on your unsuspecting bare feet? Dale Klover reveals all...

Castration and Orgasm in the Starwars Trilogy

by Professor Dale Klover

That George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy has a sexual subtext, and therefore by definition a necessarily Freudian one, since all possible feelings about sex have been described by Freud at great length somewhere, may appear a somewhat strange notion to certain sectors of the cinemagoing population. Traditionalists, for example, who subscribe to the "family entertainment" idea of cinema without ever once asking themselves where families come from or what the most popular means of entertainment after a trip to the cinema is generally considered to be, may find the suggestion of anything so unwholesome to be in bad taste, as may those psychologists (remarkably few, as one of my students who shares a kitchen with a psychology freshman assures me) who have recklessly broken with the theories of Freud and followed the more fashionable fantasies of such upstarts as Jung or Adler. Furthermore, to the tiny proportion of cinemagoers whose education has been so tragically incomplete as not to have involved so much as a lengthy reading of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, such a view of Lucas' trilogy may seem perverse, even obsessive. But to such people I presumably have little of interest to say; certainly they have nothing of interest to say to me.

To the serious critic, by which of course I mean the Freudian critic, the matter can be in no doubt. The most cursory list of things that go in and out of other things during the course of the three films, from R2-D2 being inserted into Luke Skywalker's X-Wing in The Empire Strikes Back, through the giant phallic worm which resides in the asteroid in the same film, to the huge and terrifying orifice of the Sarlacc into which the protagonists must avoid being forced by the vile Jabba in Return of the Jedi, manifests the true subject-matter of the trilogy with perfect clarity. It is doubtful indeed if there is any object, character or event in the Star Wars trilogy which cannot be somehow connected with sex, if the viewer adopts a sufficiently ingenious interpretation.

The most blatant phallic symbolism of the text is quite clearly to be found, however, in Lucas' invention of the lightsaber; the "weapon of a Jedi" that extends or retracts at the owner's whim. The homo-erotic significance of the swordfight in cinema will be sufficiently well-known to most of my readers to require no explanation here (and to the rest I can only recommend my lengthy study of Zorro, The Wierdo in the Black Leather and the Mask). Suffice it to point out that when Luke's sword hand is cut off by Darth Vader during the climax to The Empire Strikes Back, this reprisal of the infant castration complex supplies all the confirmation one needs of Vader's claim to be Luke's father, and the critic cannot fail to predict Vader's own symbolic castration at Skywalker's own hands (one of them now, of course, mechanical) in the third part of the story.

That Skywalker (and therefore, by a very short process of extension, his creator Lucas, who even shares a variant of his name) suffers from an Oedipus complex will be sufficiently obvious to most viewers that no argument to the contrary will be offered; the primal terror felt by the young Lucas at the size of his father's genitals is, after all, expressed fully in the extreme hugeness of the worm which menaces the Millenium Falcon in the second film. I mean, it really is massive. No wonder the poor kid grew up with problems. But be that as it may, Skywalker's killing of Vader demonstrates incontestably his hatred and envy of his quite extraordinarily well-endowed parent. The complementary aspect of the Oedipus Complex, Lucas/Luke's sexual attraction to his mother, is more subtle, but the theme of incest is present throughout the films, made overt when Leia, to whom Luke is strongly attracted (there is even a moment when they kiss, in a manner which makes it quite clear to the viewer that tongues are involved), transpires to be his own twin sister. Admittedly, she is not in fact his mother, but the conversation which takes place in the Ewok Village where Luke/Lucas tells her that "I have no memory of my mother", is a classic scene of denial. The infant Lucas' attraction to his parent is, he learns as he grows up, unacceptable to society at large, and he therefore expunges all memory of the feelings from his conscious mind. What more convincing evidence could we have of George Lucas's youthful desire to go to bed with his mother, than the fact that one of his characters completely denies remembering any such thing?

From this simple premise, one will find that many otherwise inexplicable aspects of the films' plots - for instance, the vast and terrifying Sarlacc, which obviously represents the adult Lucas' fear of sex, brought on by his continued unconscious devotion to his mother; or the sinister Ewoks, their teddy-bear shape showing that they are repressed memories of Lucas' infancy, but their extreme viciousness (they are able to destroy what the Emperor describes as "one of my best legions") and lack of comprehension identifying them as a manifestation of the irrational power of the childish id - fall neatly into place.

The sequence that forms the climax of the series, with the killing of Vader by his son Skywalker, in which at the same time the Rebel pilots fly physically into the Death Star and cause the most enormous explosion (which, as Freud showed, is always and without exception symbolic of orgasm), shows the excision of the Oedipus Complex by the fantasy process of killing one's father and then saucing, excuse me, having intercourse with one's mother, the result being the most satisfying climax imaginable. If this represents Lucas' own experience, he is to be rather tentatively congratulated, but it is more likely a fantasy consummation of the recovery he knows to be necessary but is too terrified to carry out. Indeed, such a fantasy playing-out would appear to have been his motive for making these films in the first place. I would recommend extensive therapy, which he should, after all, have no problem affording.

[Professor Dale Klover is the author of many authoritative works, including Chimneys and Umbrellas in Mary Poppins and Pinnocchio's Nose: Phallic Symbolism and Paedophilia in Disney. He is currently Head of Media Studies at the University of Pretension, California.]

Maintained by David Edwards : david@mulch.demon.co.uk on behalf of DougSoc : dougsoc@sable.ox.ac.uk