Western Self-Identity In Edward Said's Star Wars

The binary thought process and power dynamic invoked by Western history is very similar to the same thought process and power struggle the Jedi face with the "Others" in their universe. In the fictional universe of Star Wars, the Jedi are the guardians of the Star Wars universe, and the only beings powered by the mystical energy of the Force. The Force gives their lightsabers energy and gives them a constant source of "power", much like a wizard uses magic. The Jedi, the most powerful beings in the universe, function like the West in their position of power, they can distort laws and ways of living and thinking. In Edward Said’s Orientalism, he argues that the Orient is culturally and ideologically born through the process of Western self-identity,

The West uses its superiority, creating a bubble, filtering facets of the unknown to its own liking, further altering the unfamiliar, creating the separation of the Occident and the Orient, which instills a fear to truly understand unfamiliar. “…[T]he hegemony of European ideals about the Orient, themselves reiterating European superiority over Oriental backwardness usually overriding the possibility that a more independent, or more skeptical, thinker might have had different views on the matter” (Said 15). The West in many ways was born from the East, it provided the foundation for the development of Western civilization and was a main source for the expansion of the West’s languages. The West did not believe that the East was synonymous with itself, whether it was because of skin color, language barrier, cultural differences, political disparities, or social discrepancies, the West exploited these differences and characterized them as “evil”. With this new ideology, the West emerged itself in a one-sided struggle for power with the East, and the struggle was powered by the boundaries set in place for the fear of a potential loss of self-identity. This was how the binary thought process was born, and it gave the West justification for the false labeling of the East, and with

Much like how the West created an inaccurate depiction of the East, the Jedi constructs an “other”, which in the Star Wars universe, is the Sith. The disparity between the Jedi and the Sith is in the way they access the Force; the Jedi practice passivity, while on the other hand, the Sith have no boundaries set on they can channel the Force. This gives the Sith the potential to become more powerful than a practiced Jedi who follows the strict boundaries set in place by the Jedi Order. This fear of a loss of control, fuels the Jedi’s need to establish a binary thought process much like the relationship between the Occident and the Orient. Establishing this thought process makes it easier for the Jedi to enforce their crooked view of the Sith, instead of allowing free will and attempting to govern through a looser set of guidelines. In the third film of the Star Wars saga, young Jedi by the name of Anakin Skywalker ascended the ranks of the Jedi Order; he was powerful, but was overly confident and rebellious in following the laws in place by the Jedi. Since he was young, the Jedi feared the power he held at such a young age, and since he did not fit the typical Jedi mold, he was rejected from progressing through the Jedi ranks even further. This left Anakin distraught and vulnerable, leading to his temptation to the dark side. Using