OPINION:
A long-bubbling satirical debate on “Star Wars” protagonist Anakin Skywalker spilled into social media at the beginning of the week.
His journey to becoming Darth Vader is now being used as a serious cultural avatar for young male Gen Zers, or Zoomers. Elon Musk shot one such meme into the stratosphere by posting a mock-up of alternate-timeline Anakin, Anakin’s wife, Padme, and their twins, Luke and Leia. Obviously, that was not how the story went.
The lighthearted memes were then hijacked by more serious people, who celebrated Darth Vader’s brutal tactics while forgetting the redemption that ultimately came from rejecting them.
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The prequels end with Darth Vader nearly Force-choking Padme to death. She forfeits her will to live after being “spiritually crushed” by Anakin’s choice of the dark side of the Force, per George Lucas in J.W. Rinzler’s 2005 book, “The Making of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith,” maintaining that she died from “a spiritually broken heart.”
Two things are happening here. The first: It is the latest example of the tired inverse-hero trope, in which genuinely evil characters are retconned as simply misunderstood. “Maleficent,” “Wicked,” “Cruella,” “Joker” — the Joaquin Phoenix version — et al. are retrofitted to hero status, made equal to those fighting for good. Repentance is a footnote.
It is a lazy way of telling a story, suggesting that nothing is ever purely evil, only misunderstood by a cruel world gone mad. It justifies a villain’s willful choices by presenting the false choice of no choice.
The second thing happening is that many young men online hold up Anakin as the latest avatar of their generation. They see themselves as prey for a corrupt republic that has betrayed them with unaffordable housing, unaffordable college and women who bought into the MeToo movement and spurn romance.
Many young men are past wanting revenge. It is a reckoning they are after.
Yet just as Anakin Skywalker was groomed by malicious old Emperor Palpatine — who cared nothing for Anakin’s trauma or struggles, only for how the boy could be used to Palpatine’s own advantage — so too are young men today being primed, and for the same purpose.
A political class would love to turn their rage into a commodity and their hurt into momentum — not to improve the men’s futures, which is the promise of every tyrant, but to advance their own political fortunes. Today’s young men are falling for the real-life tricks of meatspace Palpatines.
The Jedi Council’s own corruption and senseless stoicism do not make Anakin Skywalker’s transgressions righteous. Weak-willed Anakin selfishly chose himself over walking away, even choosing ambition over Padme in the prequels. Evil does a remarkable job at masquerading as strength.
Ultimately, Darth Vader was redeemed, but redemption is not heroism. The thief on the cross was welcomed into heaven, but he was not made a moral exemplar.
The redemption of Vader back into Anakin does not erase the destruction of Alderaan on his watch. It does not eliminate Leia’s torture or the massacre of younglings — the young pre-Jedi students.
We rejoice at the return of the Prodigal Son; we do not celebrate the time he spent away. Power and domination are not virtue.
This is exactly the message being woven into this memetic culture, amplifying the cultural preference for power over virtue. Virtue is not weakness.
Here is the reality: Every iteration of youth has it hard. I am on the very tail end of Gen X. My generation, the “Latchkey Kids,” witnessed the total collapse of the nuclear family and the explosion of cynicism. We mostly raised ourselves, we patented cynicism, and we were utterly forgotten by everyone. We are still the forgotten generation left off of every list because boomers are cranky, millennials are whiny, and Zoomers are loudly authoritative. No one has any idea what is happening with Generation Alpha.
If Zoomers need champions from Star Wars, this franchise has heroes galore. Qui-Gon Jinn frees Anakin from slavery on Tatooine; he advocates for Anakin and defies the Jedi Council to train him. Obi-Wan Kenobi sacrifices himself for Luke, who refuses to kill his father, resists temptation, offers mercy to his enemies and is willing to die rather than fight in hatred.
This is the better representation of the sacrificial love that we are taught in the Bible. The Luke then, not the frumpy, hateful hermit Luke on the puffin island from Disney’s travesty.
Vader’s redemption into Anakin also mirrors the Bible’s grace — that even someone as woefully evil as Darth Vader can be redeemed and find peace. Still, it would not have happened without the love and mercy demonstrated by the heroes in the story.
In the end, a redeemed Anakin appeared as a Force ghost in “Return of the Jedi,” joining the celebration on Endor as Luke, Leia and Han celebrated their victory with the Ewoks. Before giving his life to defend his son, Anakin had rejected that which made him Vader.
That, not his brutality as a Sith, is what makes him compelling. He rejected the hatred that had embittered him. It is the same hatred that society is preaching to Zoomers today: hatred, not redemption.
Anakin Skywalker came back from a place Luke Skywalker saw but never chose to go.
Which way, Western man?
• Dana Loesch is the host of the No. 1 nationally syndicated weekday talk program, “The Dana Show,” a bestselling author and a Second Amendment advocate. She lives in Dallas.
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