I personally think genuine guilt could be healthy, but the way Kylo Ren does it feels wallowing, even masturbatory. Making other people’s lives about his goddamned feelings that will do no one any good at all since he won’t act on them.
To clarify I don’t think Finn was actually proud or arrogant, rather I mean racist and cultural distortions could lead people to perceive him as such. “Uppity,” to draw on a word that has been used in ugly and violent ways against Black people.
Exactly. I’ve heard Kylo Ren described as weak, but the truth is the opposite. He is incredibly strong and has to put incredible effort into his atrocities overcoming the moral values instilled in him by good and loving parents. He believes so absolutely in his righteousness, his entitlement, that he’s willing to tear himself apart to do what he believes in. That’s absolutely terrifying and not something we’ve really seen in a SW villain.
The woobification in TLJ aside I can’t think of a more chilling villain in Star Wars ever than Kylo Ren, because he’s a straight up fanatic.
Can you think of a more terrifying line than, “I know what I have to do, but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it”? Think about what he’s saying, that he knows he has to kill his father and he specifically have to kill him because he loves him. His pain is that he doesn’t know if he has the strength to disregard his love of Han to go through with killing him.
That is the test that Snoke means when he says, “Even you, master of the Knights of Ren, have ever faced such a test”. The test is if Kylo is convinced enough, dedicated enough, fanatical enough, to kill a person he loves for his own convictions. If he’s willing to destroy not just a person he loves, but himself, for his convictions. And not in a fit of rage as Vader tried to, but with cold premeditation.
And Kylo passes in rather flying colors I’d say. A character progression that continues in TLJ where we see once again that there’s really nothing Kylo isn’t willing to do, no one he isn’t willing to sacrifice, nothing and no one whom he’s not willing to see destroyed or order destroyed, for his convictions. No matter what.
Trashfire though TLJ is it still underlined this. He killed Han, he was willing to see Leia killed and ordered her killed at the end of the movie. And whatever positive emotions he may or may not have harbored for Rey did at the end of the day not matter at all, the moment it became clear that she did not believe at he did he tried his damnedest to destroy her too. Because his ability to feel empathy, compassion even love, does not matter to him, it’s a weakness. A weakness he has overcome.
So if IX decides to treat Kylo as the villain he was set up to be and it looks like it will, then we should be looking at possibly the scariest Star Wars villain to date and someone who is also terrifyingly appropriate for our time.
Along with the more visible reasons, one possible motivation for the insistence that Kylo Ren is the hero of the saga may be a Christian attitude
toward morality and evil. In areas where Christianity is wielded as a tool of cultural dominance, the Christian teaching of redemption and forgiveness has frequently been twisted into cheap grace–the idea that you can be forgiven for anything if you’re sorry enough, and what’s more, you don’t have to be held accountable or change in any meaningful way.
Another factor may be the
contrast between the Christian and Jewish concepts of evil that @jewishcomeradebot talked
about: Evil tends to be an otherworldly, demonic thing in Christianity but is an
all too human phenomenon in Judaism, and Ren’s character in TFA is an example of the latter (link, current link to full post).
Take these together and, for
large portions of a Christian/Christianized audience, someone who
actually feels sorry or conflicted can’t be truly evil because they are too
human and still redeemable. Since Kylo Ren is obviously human and feels conflict about his actions he is just a “sorry” away from a get out of jail free card and the hero slot. It doesn’t hurt that he’s an able-bodied white cis man, either.
In contrast, Finn in TFA is a terrible Christian hero, at least if we look through the lens of cheap grace and Christianity as cultural dominance. He isn’t shown feeling enough conflict for acts
like killing and lying. He isn’t torn up about his fundamentally
shameful and sinful nature like a good Christian redemptive hero
should be. When he does speak to Rey about the shame he unfairly felt from his
abuse it’s in the past tense, though of course the kind of treatment he has suffered will reverberate for a while yet.
As I discussed in a meta arguing Finn stands for the Balance in the Force (link), Finn does not beat himself up even for his more morally complex acts, either. He fights and kills Stormtroopers
in self-defense and the defense of others, but makes no soliloquies about
how he is a monster destined to kill. He makes things right after
lying to Rey by coming clean to her in a confession that obviously cost
him a great deal, and his conscience is clear. He doesn’t even pretend to be sorry
about misleading the Resistance so he can get to Rey, but he makes up for it by handing them a huge victory. He’s an actually
upright if complicated man who acts on his own moral code, and
he doesn’t feel the need for redemption or salvation.
Finn’s uncompromising dignity, his utter rightness with himself, may be
one of the few unforgivable sins in the kind of Christian framework I described.
Mass murder and genocide can be forgiven if you’re sorry enough, but
failing to suffer from your own sinful nature and not needing a lord and
savior? That’s a bridge too far in some people’s eyes. A
man like that is too free and independent, and cannot be controlled by shame or threats. The
antipathy for this kind of independence can interact in toxic ways with
racism and antiblackness as well, because Finn in Earth terms happens to
be from a group that society says are lesser and should be fundamentally ashamed of themselves.
Of course there is a great deal of racism at play in the fact that large sections of fandom see a mass murderer and patricide as the anointed hero of the galaxy, while at the same time dismissing a conscientious and brave hero as either a violent monster or a minor character of no importance. In addition, however, there may be a cultural divide in that Kylo Ren comes in a more familiar mold to many members of the audience–that of the (white) redemptive hero who can get away with literally anything, for whom grace is so cheap as to be free. Finn in TFA, on the other hand, is something altogether different and, in the eyes of many, worse: Someone who is at peace with himself where he has no business being. Perhaps it is no surprise, though no less sad, that the sequel felt the need to violently punish and mock Finn for the “sin” of his pride.
I mean some of them say even the events of the movie did not happen in a literal sense, it’s all metaphor and fairy tale so it doesn’t count (but Finn grabbing Rey’s hand is still literal sexual harassment for Reasons). You know it’s pretty bad when you have to say your woobie’s actions literally did not happen in-world in order to keep stanning him.
This is a piece I’ve been working on for my next video about the different way Finn and Kylo’s wounds are treated in TLJ. This is meant to be an alternative first scene for Finn, solemnly waking up during the first battle, only to find that his new allies are dying and there isn’t anything he can do. (Moth)
@ Moth: Do you mean “This is meant to be an alternative first scene for Poe Finn, solemnly waking up during the first battle?”
The implication in the new episode is that the kids they were
chasing were both aliens and clearly poc-coded (dark brown skin, very
curly hair; just had yellow eyes and maybe pinkish bits of hair as well)
and the first order destroyed their whole planet/people. It’s bridging
the gap between the sloppy metaphor for racism in anti-alien bigotry and
actual racism, in my opinion. I very much think Kylo (and theFO) is
being reestablished as a figure of white male entitlement.
That’s an interesting direction to go! I mean it’s where the ST is pretty clearly headed, from the fact that none of the main heroes is a white dude (fandom’s extended denial notwithstanding). It would be interesting to see where else SWR is taking this connection. I’m not necessarily optimistic, given the hash they made of the Zeb/Lasat storyline in the other SWR, but the intent is there.
It’s post-2016 elections all over again and I feel horrible for people who realized that not only their country but their own family members don’t believe them/care about them.
Yeah, TLJ had poor visuals in general. I took one look at TLJ and felt sorry for Adam. He’s not to my taste, but TFA presented him so much better.
Not with separate pronouns, no. I think 咱们 and 我们 in Mandarin Chinese do something like that distinction, although it’s not identical to the one you say. From what I understand 咱们 includes the person being spoken to while 我们 might not. My Chinese is really rusty, though.
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