The Jedi & Toxic Masculinity

Anakin Skywalker
from Revenge of the Sith
(GIF unknown origin) 

I just read a fascinating article on The Mary Sue by Kaila Hale-Stern about Pop Culture Detective's video "The Case Against the Jedi."

(As all the links above should indicate, this post's content constitutes little -- very, very little -- of my own original thought or language.)

I have always wrestled with the central focus on detachment propounded by Buddhist and other philosophies, so it comes as no surprise to me that this article/video appeals to me.

I don't know whether it is because I am a woman, or an Aquarius, or just too stubborn and willful for my own good, but I have always found my passions to be too valuable to sacrifice to an ideal of pure peace from reason.

Thus, the article/video's assertion that

“Luke doesn’t take the Jedi orthodoxy surrounding emotional detachment to heart,” Pop Culture Detective notes. “Luke Skywalker is at his very best when he doesn’t follow the path of the Jedi.” It’s Luke’s caring heart and his trust in the innate emotional bond of family that turns the entire tide of the original Star Wars trilogy. And it’s the former Anakin Skywalker’s lingering, unsuppressed emotion for his child that allows that to happen.

really, really appeals to the passionate subversive rebel heart at the core of my being.

Luke Skywalker from Return of the Jedi
(GIF unknown origin)

Even as I used Joseph Campbell's heroic paradigm to organize how I taught literature to teenagers, I struggled with the notion that women function primarily as symbolic components of the male hero's journey rather than having agency of their own.

However, perhaps I was wrong. Yes, women are often depicted in myth/story as part of the prize the hero gets to return home to if he successfully dies to himself and all his former attachments and transcends to an idyllic agape love for all life. (At which point, one imagines, the hero would have no particular desire to return home or to her.)

However, he must return home, according to Campbell, to complete the heroic cycle, and his re-union with this "goddess" represents his transcendence, but his "love" at that point isn't passionate, romantic love anymore; it's agape love. He is to feel no more love or compassion for her than he would feel for any life form: e.g. the way of the Jedi.

Pop Culture Detective's video: "The Case Against the Jedi"

But is this a form of toxic masculinity? Women with no societal agency are left behind while men must venture out in order to learn to relinquish their own sense of agency -- agency the world has ascribed to them by their very "maleness" (an agency of the toxic masculinity variety). It is almost as if women already possess a wisdom men have to acquire through the journey.

The hero must purge the idea of asserting himself upon the world, of imposing his personal values and will onto others (toxic masculinity). Perhaps Luke's time with Yoda and the Jedi has taught him not to "defeat" his enemies by imposing his own value of unconditional love onto them, but instead by loving them unconditionally.

After all, Luke is showing compassion not only to his father at the end of the movie, but to the Hitler of his time: to the very face of evil who has slaughtered children and destroyed planets. Such love is beyond most of us mere mortals without a little help from faith and our friends.