IMAGE

Tsum-Tsum T-shirt, by Disney
WALLPAPER

Untitled
by Grant Gould (for StarWars.com)

FAN ART
by master--burglar
by master--burglar
FAN FICTION
Rush
by Love and Rock Music. (TCW) The first half of "Destroy Malevolence," as Anakin and Padmé make their way towards each other.

P/A SITE
The Anakin and Padmé Gallery

CALENDAR
Desktop Calendar // March/April 2015

 


ESSAYS & DISCUSSION

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The Prequel Feminism - Part 2

by Paul F. McDonald
Published on Suite101.com July 2, 2002

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Attack of the Clones really does begin with a bang, and in so doing introduces a whole new realm of trials and ordeals that Padmé Amidala must go through in this stage of her hero's journey.

Now a senator, Padmé returns to Coruscant to vote down the Military Creation Act that has been designed to alleviate fears revolving around a Separatist movement. She rightly sees it as the beginning of a civil war, as well as laying the foundation of the monster military-industrial-complex the Empire will eventually become. Yet the moment her Nubian starship lands in the galactic capital, it is blown to pieces and one of her decoys is killed.

This immediately brings to light the fact that she can no longer be split in two, expecially when she is striving to prevent the Republic from doing the same thing. In the first scene, she also takes off her pilot's mask and goes over to her fallen comrades. Unmasking is pivotal to Star Wars, and Padmé's daughter Leia will do it in Return of the Jedi. It is this act that allows both of them to love. Each initially define themselves solely in terms of careers and politics, and as such, have entire portions of their consciousnesses covered and left unexplored.

One of the first scenes she is in visually explores this, as Padmé is depicted as the quintessential sleeping beauty, resting in a Coruscant apartment while being guarded by Jedi. It is during this scene that a second attempt is made on her life by a bounty hunter named Zam Wesell, who again brings up the theme of "maya," being a shape-shifting clawdite symbolic of the illusions being woven by Chancellor Palpatine. The two centipedal kouhuns Wesell sends to kill Padmé almost succeed, and they also serve as mythic allusions to the two serpents sent to kill baby Hercules in his sleep. Padmé is woken up and saved by Anakin Skywalker, who deftly slices the kouhuns in half as he - appropriately enough - jumps on her bed.

Anakin met Padmé ten years earlier, and she has been in his dreams ever since. When he is assigned to be her Jedi protector, the young knight travels with her to Naboo. Once they decide to stay at a hidden retreat in the Lake Country, the two are forced to deal with their feelings for one another. As they take strolls by the lakes, go on picnics, and talk politics, they get to know each other all over again. After they share a bittersweet kiss, the two decide in an uncomfortable fireside chat that they can never be together, as she is a Senator, and he is a Padawan learner.

Padmé is so beautiful and Anakin idolizes her so much she could have easily been reduced to little more than an object. It has long been argued by some feminists that that is precisely what the "traditional male gaze" does to women, particularly as they are portrayed in Hollywood. Yet more recently some have countered that women enjoy the gaze, and that in it lies a real source of empowerment. This is directly addressed in this romance, as Padmé covers the security cameras in her room, negating Anakin's view of her when she chooses. The love story does nothing to detract from her role as a strong woman, and while she may not be well-versed in the ways of the heart, she is clearly the one in control. It is she who makes the final decision during the fireside scene, and it is one Anakin respects. He even tells her, "I will do anything you ask."

Later in the film, Padmé goes with Anakin to Tatooine to rescue his mother, and then once more she takes matters in her own hands. Hearing Obi-Wan Kenobi has been captured by the Separatists, she decides to go to Geonosis to rescue him. When she and Anakin arrive on the arid planet, they discover all the galactic corporations have banded together and are creating more droid armies to overwhelm the Republic. As the two make their way through the droid factories, they confront all the traditional modes of male experience and attempts to conquer nature. Everything is regimented, mechanized, and commercialized, and Padmé eventually discovers that the Trade Federation is behind the plot to assassinate her.

When seen in the greater context of the saga, the meaning of all this becomes clearer. In A New Hope, the Imperial dream is more or less established. It is to be found in the scene when the Death Star is being discussed among the Empire's elite - basically a bunch of old white men sitting around a table, carving the galaxy up for themselves. Many have noted the lack of women and children in the original trilogy when the Empire is in power, and it now seems deliberate. Cold, sterile technology has reduced the biological galaxy to a wasteland, and as clones and droids take on more of a dominate role, life is no longer being born, but manufactured. It is not implausible to speculate that the end goal of the Empire is to completely eradicate the natural process of procreation itself. Therefore women would have to be subjugated, their essence as vessels of life a constant threat to the Imperial regime.

The symbolism is already there with Padmé, and the scene where she is manuevering between giant machines in the droid factory is a perfect representation of it. When she is trapped on a conveyor belt, this is about what Imperial thinking wants as a whole - to reduce biological beings to automatons on an assembly line. Of course, this also serves to show that Padmé is a capable action hero, and as she runs the gauntlet, the machines are almost certainly metaphoric of the "clashing rocks" classical heroes must go through in Greek mythology. She does quite well in the massive arena battle too, and the fact that she picks her own lock before she is to be executed is the most prominent example of her status as a truly liberated woman.

The film ends with her marrying Anakin, with the droids C-3PO and R2-D2 standing in as witnesses. Some have questioned why she did not keep her pledge of love from him before they went out into the arena, particularly after his confession to her regarding his slaughter of the Tusken Raiders who killed his mother. The answer gets to what all this is about, for it brings us back to those traditional feminine virtues that are often lost, particularly in the feminism of today. Contrary to its origins, it seems to be strictly mimetic in quality now, concerned only with the world of economics and achievement.

It is very fitting that the young Anakin in The Phantom Menace innocently asks if Padmé is an "angel." It seems she does play the role of saving angel for him after his confession, a role her son Luke Skywalker will assume in Return of the Jedi. The reason Padmé is still able to love Anakin is because of compassion, a very important theme in the saga, though often difficult to understand. Anakin defines it as "unconditional love," and that is exactly what he himself receives.

Martin Luther, the driving force behind the Protestant Reformation, once had some interesting advice - "sin bravely." It might sound strange, but the reasoning behind it was that the more one sinned, the more humanity tapped into God's inexhaustible and ever-expanding grace. This is the real crux of the matter when it comes to Anakin. In the end, Padmé's love for him can only be compared to the bodhisattva who is depicted as having an ambrosia of compassion that drips all the way from his fingertips to the depths of the underworld, or that moment when Dante realizes in "The Divine Comedy" that the very fires of hell are really misunderstood aspects of God's love.

This notion of grace is likewise evocative of feminity. As Alan Watts notes in his remarkable theology classic, "Behold the Spirit," introducing the Virgin Mary into the Christian pantheon gave it an openness or receptivity that it was lacking in its strictly patriarchal form. To the holy mother, even the most depraved sinner could pour out his heart with the assurance that all his misdeeds would be forgiven. This is the role Padmé plays, and her very name evokes it.

Padmé is actually Sanskrit for "lotus," which is symbolic in the East of grace, among many other things. Amidala is likewise a reference to the Amida Buddha, which is also known as the Buddha of Compassionate Light. The sect honoring Amida is in Japan, and what is quite interesting is that when Jesuit missionaries traveled there, they were amazed that the Lutheran belief in salvation not by works but by grace was already in place. In both cases, deserving forgiveness had no bearing on whether one would receive it.

This is the kind of indiscriminatory, inclusive love that is important to Star Wars, and it finds fine form in Padmé Amidala.


 
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