I do think that you (and the Jedi) downplay the emotional effects of growing up enslaved in a society based on chattel slavery. While Watto may not have been physically abusive (other than demanding that Anakin risk his life podracing, overriding his mother's wishes) and may have been a "decent" slave owner, that doesn't mean you should trust a 9-year-old's self-report to outsiders he's trying to impress, some of whom didn't even previously know that slavery existed, and none of whom seem able and willing to DO anything about it.
You're right, obviously. My point was more about the movie's narrative than the actual consequences of slavery on a young mind though. While I do think TPM probably underplayed the emotional damage of slavery, I stand by my assessment that the film itself isn't presenting Anakin as that almost non-functioning and timid, but rather as brash and confidant (and yes, those traits are defense mechanisms as well)
Obviously growing up deprived of your freedom does terrible things to a child's development, but the fandom often makes it look like Anakin was just an absolutely feral child on the verge of being non-functioning, crippled by anxieties, and terrified at the thought of calling more people "Master," when that's really not how he was characterized in TPM *at all.*
What I meant by all of that wasn't that Anakin wasn't affected by slavery, but that he was affected in subtle ways that did not manifest as full-blown trauma as early as nine. Rather the effects were like cracks in a house's foundation, small enough to be unnoticed and that grow and grow until the house collapses. Again, not disputing the consequences of slavery, just that - for example - the movie never implied that Anakin had a problem with calling people "Master" (when he never called Watto that) and thus that the Jedi expecting him to use that word wasn't emotional abuse as I've seen claimed.
True, he is outwardly functional. At first. From what is seen in TPM (heavily fueled by adrenaline). I do think there is leeway in interpretation of what happens after the celebration after the battle of Naboo, because here is a child from a society built on slavery, now trying to navigate a completely new culture, with none of his support system from his old life.
Did the Jedi get him appropriate therapy? Who knows? They may have tried, but their in-house therapists most likely have little to no experience with children who have been enslaved in any significant way (other younglings may have been trafficked, like Ahsoka, but a five-year-old and a nine-year-old are going to be very different in terms of how much they process of their situation) and outside therapists wouldn't have experience with Jedi. (This is one of my favorite parts of Hindsight Is Not Perfect: they have a Jedi therapist and an outside therapist working together on Anakin. And then Anakin tells them "so I'm actually a time-traveling ex-Sith...") So, maybe calling people "Master" was a problem for Anakin, maybe it wasn't; it WAS the responsibility of the Jedi to find out whether or not it was, and it doesn't seem like they tried too hard to do that. And maybe Qui-Gon didn't make it sufficiently clear to the Jedi before he died, what exactly Anakin's situation had been before. I don't think the Jedi purposefully emotionally abused him, definitely, but I think there was a bunch of misunderstanding on all sides, because hey, take one lonely traumatized-to-whatever-extent nine-year-old, one grieving barely-adult-within-his-society guardian, throw in some culture shock, and add a creepy meddling Sith preying on the kid, it's a recipe for disaster.
And maybe Anakin *couldn't* read Basic when he got to the Temple, I find that perfectly plausible. I find it entirely believable that his initiate and padawan peers would shun or pick on him, because have you seen what children are like to anyone who's different?? I could see him having a breakdown after weeks or months of Jedi life because that's a thing that happens when people are dumped into a new culture. And maybe fanfic authors are writing their own childhood traumas into their fanfic; that's a thing people do. But I don't think any of this is necessarily contradicted by the source material.
I think that we fanfic writers, as (mostly) reasonably affluent westerners, may be prone to swinging wildly from underplaying the effects of slavery on a character to clumsily overplaying them. And that's actually okay. Because we as a society (particularly in the US) are coming from a culture of "slavery wasn't THAT bad" and, tbh, while baby-wokes may be annoying, I am 100% in favor of baby-wokes working stuff out in their brains through fanfic. It seems less appropriative and exploitative than some avenues they (we) could choose, and maybe if people can learn some empathy for real people from writing or reading about Darth Vader's Generational Slavery Trauma, the world can get just that little bit better.
Disclaimer: I am not a professional scholar of any kind of minority studies or history. My scholarly background is in sociolinguistics and historical linguistics, which is adjacent to these issues but not focused on them.
Comment on “Fixed” — A Star Wars tale
salanaland Mon 07 Dec 2020 03:37PM UTC
Comment Actions
Be_Right_Back Mon 07 Dec 2020 10:34PM UTC
Comment Actions
salanaland Wed 09 Dec 2020 03:27PM UTC
Last Edited Wed 09 Dec 2020 03:44PM UTC
Comment Actions