How long do you think this “Kylo wasn’t actually redeemed” discourse is going to last? Do you think it would have been any different if TRoS had been written better or executed Bendemption better?
Until the end of time. The problem isn’t in the story; it’s in the culture.
If there is anything I’ve learned in the four years I’ve spent thinking a lot about redemption, and atonement, and forgiveness, and what it means to be redeemed in fiction and theologically in real life, I think it’s that this obsession with policing redemption and/or wholly rejecting it as a possibility beyond some random event horizon (except, of course, for the “good” victims who don’t actually need redemption, like Finn) is reflective of something very sick in the culture.
I very rarely say that “if you like x you’re like y in real life”, but I do think your interpretation of what fiction means to you and what value judgements you attach to what you think an author is saying are indicative of real life values. People who hate redemption as a concept, or who police it to mean “you stole a banana from Safeway”, really are saying something about their real-life relationship to the concept of redemption. They don’t hide that their commentary is meant to be prescriptive for real life values they think SW is “promoting” (having basic compassion for others, gasp). And 99.9% of the time, these people in real life are bitter, unforgiving, and cold, if not outright harassers.
You’re not going to reach the people who think Ben wasn’t redeemed through logic or argumentation or fighting because you are fighting against people who, simply put, are philosophically opposed to what you believe. It isn’t about the text because the text is obvious, and everyone who wants to see it –like the film critics– have. Hell, there is even a literal line saying, “Kylo Ren is dead,” which is way more textually explicit than Anakin ever got.
The arguments for redemption that I tend to see are not based at all on the logic of SW and how SW itself deals with and defines redemption, but are based on people’s beliefs in real-world ethics. This is where we get Space Geneva Conventions, and firing squads, and “if you kill a single person then you’re evil” (a thing I saw today on twitter, kid you not). People are engaging in this story not mythically or metaphorically, but literally, as if it were an allegory for real life– and on top of that, their opinions on the real world are…well, frankly also disturbing (as though in the real world restorative justice isn’t a thing and retributive justice is all there is).
Because the fact of the matter is, that since 1983, SW has based its redemption framework on the notion that one good deed is enough, because ethics is about the state of your soul. The Force, which also represents and dictates morality in the GFFA, is life and Feeling. It’s quite literally your emotions which fuel the Force. Your emotions to cause harm and to hate put you on the path of the dark side, and your emotions to stop causing harm and to love put you on the path of the light. It’s entirely about the state of your soul, which is why single acts are enough to indicate redemption– they’re symbolic of the redemption, not the currency of it.
It’s not really about Anakin killing Palpatine or Ben giving his life for Rey’s which “redeems” them, because the lives they’ve taken cannot be replaced in this way anyway. Redemption isn’t transactional; it’s transformational. Your attitude towards the higher power (the Force) is what either aligns you with it (redemption) or not. This has all been super textual and super obvious since Anakin was redeemed. It was only recently, of course, that people started goalpost moving and saying that Well, Actually Anakin wasn’t redeemed either– of course because they started seeing the writing on the wall about Ben’s redemption. These are people who already see what they want to see, and no amount of good writing is going to change it.
I’m Christian, and so redemption is a huge part of my real-life ethical landscape. It’s a concept that is inherent to the religion and to the actual, real beliefs of millions of people across thousands of years of time. This is an argument people have been having for literally millenia. In a way this ugly response to redemption by so many people doesn’t surprise me because I’ve seen it happen way before Star Wars entered the cultural sphere again and became the medium through which people were discussing this concept. The “antis”, as it were, predate Ben. He only inherited them for a little while, until some other poor character picks them up.
romaincrisis
titsay
yousharknotpass
turnnoffyourmind
prguitarman
kaledo-art
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