George Lucas and Martin Heidegger are both notorious for inventing words. The German philosopher would change nouns into verbs and rearrange syllables in an effort to avoid the cultural baggage of traditional language, and the creator of Star Wars did much the same thing when he invented "the Force."
Lucas has said that he wanted to create something that had a religious reality but was nondenominational. He struggled with how much to describe and how much to keep vague.
After four films, the Force is still largely an enigma, and that may be one of his most important achievements.
Intimations of immortality
Where
Trekkies spend endless hours pouring over technical blueprints of the Enterprise, Star Wars fans mull the philosophical and spiritual complexities of the Force. Scholars and even theologians have tried to come to terms with it.
 |
 |
 |  | More Stories |
| |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
|  | Related Links |
| |
|
| |
 |
They haven’t had much help from the movies. Each new installment hinted at something new about the mystical energy field, expanding it rather than defining it.
In the original trilogy, we learned that the Force "binds the galaxy together." It has a light side, which centers on compassion, and a dark side, which centers on anger.
Both sides have adherents who attempt to manipulate the Force’s energies to their own advantage. The entire galaxy becomes a
cosmic balancing act, with the Jedi and Sith tilting the scales one way or the other.
In The Phantom Menace, the Force is endowed with a will, and carries on a symbiotic relationship with tiny creatures in all living cells called
midichlorians. It is likewise broken down farther into two distinct parts, the Living Force, born out of the present and kinship with living things, and the Unifying Force, focusing on the future and destiny.
These scattered facts carry more than their share of interpretations.
Belief in things unseen
The one underlying belief common to all cultures is the idea of a spiritual power. Lucas and his Force have played on this, launching debates and inspiring a scholarly game of
pointing out religious allusions in the various episodes.
The light and dark sides of the Force have roots in the polarities of Zoroastrianism. The Judeo-Christian tradition contributes the Chosen One's virgin birth and Jedi
saints wandering in the desert.
The paradoxes of Yoda's speech could be taken straight out of the
Tao Te Ching, and the Force yearning for balance out of the Chinese yin and yang. The goals of some schools of Buddhism are reached by trusting one's feelings and letting go of the conscious self.
Reviewing The Phantom Menace, Bill Moyers linked the discovery of Anakin to the search for the Dalai Lama. Roger Ebert identified Qui-Gon Jinn as a John the Baptist figure.
The Torah, the Bible, and the Koran, three sets of scriptures that have never gotten along, all have found common ground in the Force at one time or another. Is it possible that the most inclusive and humanitarian of all theologies comes from a science fiction movie?
Is George Lucas a
filmmaker or a flannel-shirted prophet in scuffed Nikes?
Focus and reality
Lucas once said about the Force, "The more detail I went into, the more it detracted from the concept I was trying to put forward." The divine essence at the core of the Star Wars myth has purposefully been left vague.
Is the Force transcendence or immanence? Is it personal or impersonal? Conscious or unconscious? Pantheistic or monotheistic? Genetic or learned?
No one really knows. As it stands now, the Force could fit any definition. It could be all those things, or none of them.
It never pretends to let you solve its puzzle, and therein lies its genius.
It avoids certainties, posing only questions. This becomes important when we realize that certainties inevitably lead to spiritual hair-splitting, witch-hunts and inquisitions.
Lucas has stated many times that he did not set out to invent a religion, and that he doesn’t have all the answers. In an age of televangelist dogma and
bumper sticker beliefs, that may be why the Force is so appealing.
What does the Force look like to you? None of that one-hand-inside-Yoda-clapping stuff.
I want to know what you think.
advertisement
