Choosing Sides

Like a lot of other kids growing up in the 80s, I was pretty sensitive. This presented a whole other set of challenges beyond the day-to-day of blending in. Mostly because the first rule about being a sensitive kid was we do not talk about being a sensitive kid. Not only that, but the bar was set pretty low. If you cried from getting a noogie or wiping out on your bike, you were “soft” and picked last for dodgeball. It’s no wonder that toy manufacturers jumped at the chance to make G.I Joe and Transformer figurines–toughening up this group of lazy, TV-watching latchkey kids one meaty action hero at a time. 

Empire Strikes Back was released in 1980. My older brother and I fell hard and fast for the first movie, Star Wars. By the time Empire hit theatres the Star Wars juggernaut was in overdrive. We had as much merchandise as our parents could afford to get us: action figures, lunch boxes, stickers, and plenty of those drinking glasses from Burger King. One of my most prized possessions was an Empire Strikes Back read-along book-and-tape.  

It was a thin, square paperback that consisted of film stills for illustrations and a watered down story version of the movie. What really amped up the cool factor for me at least was that they took dialogue and sound effects straight from the movie. It was Leia’s voice scolding Han when they narrowly escaped from being eaten by the disgusting space slug that they’d mistaken for a planet. The Pew! Pew! Pew! of Storm Trooper fire and baritone keen of Chewie’s wail never sounded so thrilling as it did stuffed into my ears, which I practically had pressed against the speaker of the TAPE RECORDER (Yes, the suffering was very real. I will not be taking further questions at this time) when I listened to this book-on-tape over and over and over. 

Image via Ebay. This is going for about $12.50. HowDAREyou, Ebay! You cannot put a price on my personal nightmares and childhood dysfunction!

There was one part in the first half of the book (cassette SIDE A for those of a certain age), though, that gave me a little trouble. In one scene the vile Darth Vader is communing with the even more vile Emperor about flipping Luke Skywalker to the dark side. The image shows Vader sitting on his black galactic toilet throne in his glassy chamber aboard the ominous Star Destroyer. The vacuum pump air hose breathing for Vader makes its creepy, hollow rattling sounds and the iconic voice of James Earl Jones deliver’s Vader’s line:

He will join us….or die.

DING! (turn page)

Nope. No. Sorry, none for me, thanks. 

Between the image and the line, I was freaked out. Vader has no qualms about killing off this kid just because he refused to join his stupid club. Gen X-ers knew our way around the Bully System and Vader was not only the worst kind of jerk bully, but given the fact that he had no actual face and could crush your windpipe with his thoughts, he was legitimately terrifying. 

The first time I listened through and it came to that section I just knew I didn’t like it. Truthfully it made me feel afraid, but I had already reached my weekly quota of noogie-tears and so allowed myself the concession that “it made me feel weird in a bad kind of way.” After a few more listens I went with “nervous in a bad, weird way.” Finally I privately admitted to myself that I was scared of Darth Vader, a character from a movie that is not real (as far as we know!) talking to me from inside a book. I’m not going to unpack any of that here–YOU’RE NOT MY THERAPIST! 

Anyway, once I knew what was coming I would listen to the first line: “We will find Skywalker, my lord.” And then I would turn the volume knob all the way down so that I wouldn’t have to hear that horrible, chilling, frightening, nightmares-for-days threat from the most hated villain in the galaxy. Problem. Solved. 

If only, right? (remarking for a few million very panicked Americans).

I didn’t love Empire Strikes Back when it came out. Some factors to consider in that assessment: 1. I was probably six when I saw it. We had a shoebox-sized movie theatre that took, like, forEVERRRRRRR, to get the newest releases. Maybe you were screening Godard at that age, but I was dribbling cereal on myself watching the Smurfs. My media tastes were still forming, okay? 2. The only thing I had to go on was the movie that came before it–Star Wars: A New Hope, which absolutely bopped! There was something about the alchemy of those actors playing those particular characters that made Lucas’ dopey space western work. I left Star Wars wishing Luke, Han, and Leia were my new best friends for real and that Santa might somehow leave a lightsaber in my stocking (still. waiting). 3. At the time I thought Empire Strikes Back was just sadsadsad and I didn’t get it and also: such a drag! 

To my young perspective everything is a mess in this one. The gang is not all together. In fact, everyone splits to go off on their own, which I did not like at all. REWRITE! I would have yelled had anyone asked me. I was too immature to appreciate the nuances of Han and Leia’s sexually fraught bickering as anything other than two Cranky McCrankersteins stuck with each other and making every situation they found themselves in ten times worse. Though I did not come from a family of divorce, plenty other kids my age did. Han and Leia had a lot of “mom and dad are going to make you pick which one you want to live with” energy that was very unnerving.

Luke runs off to a dingy, dreary, mucky, murky swamp that looks like the inside of a shower drain. He’s there to find and train with the elite Jedi master, Yoda. When Yoda appeared with those doe-eyes and cute bat years sounding a lot like Grover with a severe case of laryngitis, I perked up. But it turns out that Yoda is another kind of grumpus. He’s your surly, difficult grandfather who wants no part of whatever this is and just wants to fall asleep in front of his favorite John Wayne movie in peace and dignity with a glass of Alka-Seltzer fizzing soothingly nearby. Everyone in this film is miserable. Even the movie's aesthetics announce its unhappiness. Most of the settings are painted bleak–white, metal, gray, black, brown, or hazy, foggy, cold, sludgy, dingy. Cloud City is the brief exception that provides visual respite (and at least hot showers for Han and Leia) until it doesn’t, being marred by treachery and violence.  

By the end of the film, Lucas has shattered everything and left it all in pieces. We find out the stunning revelation that the no-good-very-bad Darth Vader is Luke’s real father. A guy who’s dating profile would read: Enjoys ruling the galaxy; practicing the dark side of the Force; and severing limbs (but that’s mostly a family thing). Betrayed by his good friend, Lando Calrissian, Han Solo winds up frozen in carbonite, which is just like what does that even mean? Is he alive? Is he dead? His bricked up ass gets loaded on a ship by the lethal bounty hunter, Boba Fett, and ferried to parts unknown. Leia is out one possible boyfriend, has a rebellion on pause (maybe), and is stuck nursing her pal Luke back to health with his shiny new robot hand and steaming hot pile of daddy issues. Cue the John Williams Star Wars theme outro. Please dispose of your empty popcorn containers before leaving the theatre. 

This is what we had. Again, it was 1980. There were no Reddit forums within which to complain and hypothesize. And there was no clear indication of what might be next or even when. Answers came THREE YEARS LATER, which measured in pre-Internet integers is about HALF A CENTURY. Feel sorry for us, Gen Non-Xers, you of the instant gratification, immediate download, same-day delivery demographic. We will take your pity. We are not proud. So I played with my Princess Leia and Han Solo action figures outfitted in snow gear from the Battle of Hoth. I turned my Empire Strikes Back Burger King glass so the image of Vader was facing away from me (seriously, NOT unpacking this), and I relived the depressing, upsetting events of that movie in my little read-along book-and-tape night after night (healthy!). And I hoped, in that simplistic way that kids do, that everyone would be okay. 

Of course it wasn’t until I was much older that I not only appreciated Empire Strikes Back, but realized it is the best movie in the entire franchise. It’s certainly the most sophisticated in the complicated ideas it explores. Empire is enshrined in gloom because it is fundamentally about darkness in all its permutations. It’s not only that this is the part of the traditional story structure when things are very difficult for our heroes, when setbacks and losses pile up, when people are tested, pushed to or beyond their limits. It’s more than that. It’s a kind of rumination on the shades of darkness inside ourselves–conflict, ambivalence; the tension around duty or responsibility; the desire to protect ourselves from pain that often only causes more of it. Darth Vader is just a manifestation of our fragility, which is also the gift of being human. The film constantly reminds us that we all possess the capacity to align with destruction and fear or with creation and hope. And we all have to walk the path of those outcomes.