and if i said palpatine is right when he whispers in padmé's ear that the senate is ineffective, people would get upset with me. if i said palpatine was right that the jedi were hypocrites, people would get upset with me. why is that? i have some ideas based on patterns i've observed, my experiences with religious abuse, my major in english literature, and my minor in digital cinema and media. sit down! (genuine excitement, not condescension. also buckle up this is long.)
villains are evil because of the things they do, not the words they say. words have no moralistic value. it's about what they are being used to accomplish. in this case, what palpatine is doing with his words is taking advantage of the trust padmé and anakin have placed in him to make them feel more vulnerable so that they turn to him for help. once they're desperate, he can exploit their power to gain more of his own, to achieve his goal of being a literal tyrant. but what he tells them is that they're doing good, that they will save people. in padmé's case, calling for a vote of no confidence in the chancellor will disrupt the ineffective bureaucratic process that has no interest in acting with urgency to save her people. in anakin's, killing the jedi will make him strong enough in the dark side that he can save padmé. it will also protect the republic and the senate. with the sith in control, "we shall have peace," which anakin believes because palpatine has convinced him that the jedi wanted the war to last so they could maintain their power and undermine diplomacy.
manipulation like this works because there's trust, and abuse often works because the victim is already in a vulnerable state. implying that everything palpatine says is wrong because he's evil is a shield to avoid the uncomfortable truth that anyone can be manipulated and that sometimes, abusers are the first people to hold space for and offer answers about their victim's neglected pain. that isn't evil because validation is wrong or the pain isn't real but because it's all a tactic to get more access to their victim so they can do more abuse. it is enabled by a culture that neglects the most vulnerable and expects them to overcome impossible odds singlehandedly and without complaint. it's also important to remember that most of the audience came into revenge of the sith knowing that palpatine was darth sideous and that anakin would become darth vader. anakin doesn't know that, but people treat him like he should have because they have the benefit of watching his story instead of living it, a manufactured "objectivity."
one of the reasons i believe people are drawn to villains more than heroes is because so much of our puritanical culture is effortlessly putting forth the idea that everything is about morality all the time. you need to be a righteous, obedient, productive member of society in order to have worth. heroes, especially in popular media dominated by whiteness and colonialism, usually end up fighting to preserve as much of the status quo as possible, even when the artists are critiquing that status quo. the function villains serve is to create conflict that threatens the inner and/or outer world of the protagonist(s). what villains end up providing us as the audience is a moment of respite where we can acknowledge our own shadows without fear of punishment. i do not believe this happens on purpose most of the time. everything in a story is a reflection of an artist's inner world, which is shaped by the same things you and i experience. our subconsciouses are speaking to each other through story.
villains say the things we're discouraged from thinking and saying with their whole chests. that's often framed as a temptation to be overcome through individual willpower, and that concept in and of itself is deeply entrenched in christofascism. i believe that the "temptation" we experience is our humanity screaming at us that this puritanical utilitarian status quo is not working. something in our world needs to change, whether that's internally with our minds and bodies, externally with our realities and structures, or both. i believe that some people are emotionally drawn to villains because villains point out problems and create the need for change, and in our society, the problems are continuously swept under the rug or covered with band-aids. systemic change is desperately needed. i think that finding a villain unexplainably attractive or appealing is a deep, intuitive expression of yearning for the change they're inviting.
before i continue, i feel the need to address the possibility of people getting defensive. if you're thinking "i would never even think about doing xyz! that's unforgivable!" that response is indicative of the exact cultural trauma i'm talking about. there's a lot of ground between "goodness" and the literal worst thing you can think of. even if i were saying blatantly that you specifically are thinking about doing the worst things imaginable, i'm a stranger on the internet with no power over you. i implied that people, of which you are one, think about saying, and sometimes doing, evil things. why does that scare you? from the bottom of my heart, i am genuinely asking.
i'll go first. i'm afraid of the christian god sending me to hell forever. i'm afraid of being locked in a psych ward without access to the things that help. i'm afraid of being coerced into taking medication i don't want because the only way people can tolerate being around me is if i'm "well-adjusted." i'm afraid that my parents were right and the problem really is me, and i just need to try harder to find the one right avenue of self-help that will work this time because if i don't, i'm a bad person, and if i'm a bad person, i'll end up in hell or isolation. despite how confident i might sound and how verbose all of this is, despite the fact that it's been years since i prayed, years since i spoke to my family, years since i accepted i'm queer, i'm still afraid every day. i'm afraid you're right to be defensive, that i'm manipulating you. i'm secretly palpatine. indefensibly evil, helplessly irredeemable, unable to accept that i'm really that awful. and i don't know what to do with that other than come back to "my homophobic parents were wrong. the Black people who taught me about systemic injustice were right. this country is the bad place. i'm not the problem. what am i seeing that reminds me of how i grew up?" even then, maybe i'm wrong. i don't have the answers. this is what i have, and i'm not even sure what it is exactly.
i have no interest in shaming or victim blaming people. that would be counterproductive to my goal of inviting people to reflect. shame is a human emotion devoid of moral value, but it often shuts people down because this is the culture we live in. so if you feel attacked, it's important to ask yourself why and to remember that, at the end of the day, i am one person of billions, and we will never meet. you're safe from me. the somatic feeling that i'm a danger to you came from somewhere. if you don't know where, you deserve to find out.
your thoughts are just thoughts, devoid of morality. it's your actions that create a broader image of who you are. but the baggage we bring in from our christofascist culture says "if i think it, i will do it. if i do it, i am evil. if i'm evil, i will be punished and ostracized until i can 'act right.'" these beliefs are indoctrinated into us, and we, including the artists behind the content, often carry them forward unintentionally. it's also vital to note that Black and Indigenous people have been especially targeted by these moralistic colonial frameworks. so much of the status quo is upheld by the prison industrial complex and ongoing genocide. if you're white and this resonates, i'm not giving you permission to thirst over someone who is unapologetically problematic, especially in stories about marginalized communities that you are not a part of.
another thing about growing up in this world is that we are often taught to conflate evil with being anti-social, that humans are naturally social creatures, so any behavior that hurts someone else is bad and needs to be addressed. however, this does not take into context that capitalism and imperialism strip us of any real opportunity to form decolonized identities. i would argue that we grow up in a society that encourages individualism for the greater good of a collective. don't burden people with your humanity. sacrifice so you can do good for your community. but those get taken to the extreme because we live in an abusive environment in that the people in power over us threaten us with poverty and are actively ignoring the things we say we want for ourselves. that's not even getting into youth liberation and the fact that, for many of us, our first experience with community is being trapped in an authoritarian nuclear family.
the mental leap we start to make when these patterns repeat themselves over and over is that villains are evil because they're individualist, and individualism must be stopped because it threatens the community. but what if your culture is using collectivism to shame you out of your humanity? to keep you from forming an identity that your parents and teachers and pastors don't approve of? one of the most natural outcomes of our society is narcissism. i'm not saying neurodivergent people are a superior class who will save us. i'm saying narcissism can be a trauma response to an environment that demands you have no sense of self. trauma necessitates change in the external world and autonomous healing for the individual who was victimized. regardless of its origins, labeling any form of neurodivergence, even sociopathy and psychopathy, as inherently evil is incredibly dangerous. that is using language to dehumanize entire groups of people. that is eugenics. that is evil and wrong. objectively.
"anakin is selfish." breaking away from a jedi order that attempts to strip him of any sense of self they don't approve of means that healing for him will involve being deliberately selfish, even narcissistic. "but that's hurting his community!" i mean i'm with you in that he committed genocide, but i'm not talking about that. i'm talking about before that, that he just wanted his wife to live. how is anakin growing old with his wife and children hurting his community? i think what's underneath that accusation is a discomfort with him no longer dedicating his life to fulfilling a prophecy that god (george lucas) told you he has to fulfill. he can't be good if he's disobeying god's will. goodness in our society has become conflated with a willingness to be a sacrificial lamb, and in so many ways, across so many different pieces of content, this is reflected in a galaxy far far away that was ultimately created by people from our society. also, raising children who are loved and supported does a lot for a community. it's incredibly social actually. he would be doing good without being coerced or guilted into it.
the jedi were right about some stuff. so was palpatine. i still hate them both. i'm still glad palpatine canonically died forever in return of the jedi and that no one tried to bring him back to kiss the ass of the worst parts of an entitled fanbase. but me admitting rightness is not the same as condoning what both sides used that rightness to do. being right and being good are not synonymous, but stories will have you believe that sometimes. our society will have you believe that too, that what's "objective" is what's good, that what's good is what's legal, that the fact that the heroes tried their best means the people who can't forgive them are dangerous unreasonable extremists, that the people this society demonizes deserve it, that they're selfish, as if that's a sin rather than a human characteristic. but i also won't lie and tell you that selfishness and greed never have downsides or costs. i'm not interested in giving you a new rule to follow. the truth is that these matters often come down to a case by case basis, something there won't be an algorithm or rulebook for.
that's why it's so important that you develop your own definitions of good and evil rather than clinging to someone else's. that's another byproduct of our society: our parents dehumanized us while telling us they loved us and that there was no other choice. of course we're drawn to the unhinged villain who wears that label proudly. that villain is honest. we can expect evil from them. they're predictable and consistent. even in their chaos, we can count on them to be chaotic and own that they're a menace to society. that's actually kind of healing in a society where children are forced to rely on parents who say "i'm a good person trying my best," creating a complete rift in our ability to trust our own moral compass when they hurt us and refuse to acknowledge it. because they hold the power and we are forced to rely on them, that pattern tells us that we must be the problem, and our society reinforces that.
our parents benefited from us parenting ourselves out of desperation because it gave them more energy to try and get their own parents' attention and validation. in fact, the better you do at dehumanizing yourself with a smile on your face, the better they look. and if you stopped, if you broke away, if you pursued your own interests, what would they call you if not selfish? your family was held together by a sacrifice you were coerced into making, and if you don't like it, you're the problem. "you expect me to be perfect." no, i expect you to do all of the work because that's the job, and i didn't get a choice to be part of this relationship. you didn't think through what having a kid actually means in the context of this world. you just wanted the shiny parts, to prove something to yourself and your parents, using me to do that, but now i'm here, in all my inconvenient humanity. i expect you to figure it out without taking it out on me, the person with no systemic power who's relying on you in the way that was always part of the deal.
that's partially why people think the jedi are good. the jedi have the power, which they must have earned by being good, and they said that they're good, so they must be. all the evidence that they're not is something our world has trained you to view as necessary for the greater good (of who?), unavoidable, someone else's fault, or something you're overthinking. the jedi were evil, and palpatine was better able to manipulate anakin because they were dishonest about their own darkness. they blamed him as an individual for an inability and unwillingness to completely erase his identity. if the jedi had treated anakin well, there wouldn't have been as much confusion for palpatine to exploit. he wouldn't have been so isolated. darth vader's existence is the jedi's fault before it's palpatine's and palpatine's fault before it's anakin's. it's indicative of george lucas' moral philosophy that, ultimately, all you need to do to end fascism is kill the one really evil guy. none of the problems that existed before his rise to power matter, even though countless people suffered every day unnecessarily, creating vulnerability for him to exploit.
there is a lot to be learned in how villains are written and which characters end up being the villains in the first place. what behaviors are being demonized? what philosophies are being disproved? who gets a redemption arc and who doesn't? what does that redemption look like? does it benefit the community they negatively impacted? what color is that character's skin? do they have a disability? are they coded as queer? do they behave in ways that challenge stereotypes about sex and gender? does the author conflate those qualities with being evil? how does the author define badness and goodness? do you agree? is this a movie intended for kids funded by an extremely wealthy corporation? what is the author bringing into this moment? what are you bringing into this moment? get curious, and, as much as you can, remember that shaming your individual behavior without taking your world into context is exactly what people who like it this way want you to do.
they like being told that this works, that they're the heroes and you're the problem. but when they're challenged? when a woman of color says blatantly and without shame that she wants to put her fist through this whole lousy beautiful town, look what they do. when people write stories where the villains look like them and the good guys are women and Black people, look what they do. very few people are evil. most of us are human beings. that means we can do good, and we can do evil, but at the core, we have inherent worth that we do not have to earn. we deserve to trust our goodness and to take accountability without self-flagellation. the system we are living in is designed to use us to do evil, so our definitions of good and evil cannot be defined by it.
we can hold the truths that 1) palpatine pointed out real problems that desperately needed to be addressed and should not have been put on one individual to overcome, 2) he was still objectively evil and demonstrated absolutely no remorse, so it's good that he's dead, and 3) agreeing with some of the things he said does not make me as evil as him, nor does it justify you throwing me under the bus as one of the "too far gone" people because that's how desperately you need to prove you're a "reasonable," "objective" person. you're afraid just like i am, but i choose to give you an explanation for that fear so you can be free of it, and you choose to scapegoat me.
and you know what? it really fucking sucks. i'm really fucking tired, but it's still better than it was when i was like you. i remember being like that, how scared i was all the time, even more than i am now. people like you are why it's not enough to kill one shitty guy. you're propping him up because you don't know who you are unless people treat you like you're right. objectivity, being well-adjusted, whatever you want to call it, that's your shield to keep yourself from being treated like me, like a villain. writing me off as an individual problem allows you to prioritize your comfort and avoid change. how incredibly like the jedi you are, hiding in your swamp of shame and still blaming me because you can't face the truth of systemic, institutional violence and the role everyday people play in it. you're not brave enough to face the monster you created. send the kids to do it. you'll die alone, finally appearing in the form you always embodied. "you are a ghost of your own life, made to haunt the world even before the day of your death." your detachment and objectivity is weakness. it's cowardice. it's colonization wearing the mask of enlightenment.
villains provide us an insight into our failures and shortcomings. writing them off as an individual problem who needs to conform or be killed is a huge mistake that dooms history to repeat. i'm tired of stories about how fascism rises where the hope i'm allowed is that, one day, everything will go back to basically what it was before. give me the stories where we face our mistakes head-on, ask the communities most impacted what they want, and do our best to accomplish that. give me the stories where we build something new and sustainable without relying on sacrificial lambs and scapegoats.
