Child is father to the man. ™ & © Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved.

Traditionally, the father holds a privileged position in western society. We view the father as an icon of power. Like Darth Vader, the father represents strength. He does not reveal weakness. However, when Luke removes Vader’s mask we see that underneath the black armor and his booming voice of masculine power is a weak and broken old man. The armor was all that was keeping him alive.

My stepfather wore a uniform. He was a cop. He maintained order and punished anyone who tried to transgress it. To assert his authority and protect his position he went on a constant attack. Sometimes it was physical, other times it was verbal and emotional. In my world, the police were the dark side and my stepfather, Darth Vader. It was as though he was in a constant race to keep me down so that he could protect his empire of masculinity. However, this process of bolstering his identity by destroying my own eventually backfired. As I grew older and more belligerent, I began to seek cracks in his armor. I discovered that he was not the man he pretended to be. He was not abiding by the moralities he imposed on me.

Like Darth Vader/Anakin, my father wasn’t a man of strength, but weakness. He was little more than a mother’s boy whose father had died when he a young teen living in England. He fled to Canada to escape his overbearing mother. Soon after, he became a policeman. He allowed the job and all its polarized views to create and define him. In a sense, the police department seduced him by promising power, privilege, and identity. He wouldn’t be some common shoe salesman (as he was for a few years); he would now be a protector and guardian of all that was good.

After he joined the force, he found himself an instant family in my mother and me. Right from the beginning I identified with Luke because it was clear that he had to face the dark father (Darth Vader is Dutch for dark father). I longed to see him slice Vader’s head off.

Return of the Jedi opened in 1983. I was 16. While Luke was overcoming the dark side and saving his father, my hatred for my stepfather was growing stronger. Yet, I also had a new hope. If this man wasn’t my father, my real one was out there somewhere. He was surely a great man and he would love, guide and protect me from all bad things. He would save me.

I was wrong.

My son helped me.

The reason I wanted to show him the Star Wars films was to perhaps show him that fathers and sons are more complicated than the myths and stereotypes tell us. A father is not a god. He is just a man, still a son. Maybe I wanted him to know that his own father had made mistakes, that I didn’t even know how to be a father, that life, as Luke Skywalker learns, is a constant process of self-discovery. In this way, Star Wars helped me interrupt the power flow between fathers and sons. As a friend said to me while we were discussing this piece, “By accepting weakness and a more fluid identity, the father is no longer the father but a new form, a new identity with new struggles and adjustments.”

It’s strange. As I write this I realize that just a few months before Jarvis and I watched the films, we visited my stepfather in California. We had just reconnected after an estrangement of over 10 years. He was remarried and seemed happy. But the reunion did not go well. Too much damage had been done. I didn’t trust him and constantly felt that he was out to humiliate and undermine me.

Despite all I’ve written, today I remain haunted by my cold, strange, violent and dark parents. I write and write and write and nothing seems to make it all that much better. Unlike Luke, I haven’t confronted my Darth Vader. I remain scared. That weakness makes me frustrated and angry. It’s a cycle that I find hard to escape. I don’t have contact with them today. I banished them for the sake of my sanity. Still, deep down, I feel that until I confront them, the pain will always be. Maybe I need to, metaphorically speaking, slice my father’s hand off so that he might experience the same pain and humiliation he once inflicted on me.

Perhaps that’s too easy a solution. This isn’t about either/or. All that I am now was not born solely from my stepfather and mother, but from friends, a wife and a son.

Meantime, Jarvis and I eagerly await the opening of Revenge of the Sith. We’ve been watching ads and trailers. We play with blasters and light sabers and action figures. We know what’s going to happen in Revenge of the Sith. We know that the dark side will swallow Anakin. It doesn’t matter. Star Wars was, like most things when I was a kid, a lonely experience. It was a journey I went on by myself. But right now, Jarvis and I are living this together, not as father and son, but as friends. Just as it should be.

I asked Jarvis what he liked best about Star Wars.

“The battles,” he replied.

Ain’t that the truth.

(Thanks to BD and DE for their Jedi-like advice)

Chris Robinson is little more than a man. In his spare time he cares for the elderly. www.animationpimp.com.