Baker, Brian (2023) Skywalker : Bad Fathers and Good Sons. In: Detoxing Masculinity in Anglophone Literature and Culture : in Search of Good Men. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, pp. 197-213. ISBN 9783031221439
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Luke Skywalker, the embodiment of good masculinity in the Star Wars universe, cannot but understand the ‘detoxing’ of masculinity as the detoxing of the Jedi ethos and its institutions. The central triangular conflict of the original trilogy is between Luke, Darth Vader, and Obi-wan Kenobi, three Jedi in a patrilinear conflict, but Luke resolves Jedi masculinity at the end of Return of the Jedi through ‘saving’ his father. In the final trilogy, further issues with Jedi masculinity are problematically resolved in the figure of Rey, and revising masculinity away from action heroics and toward giving. Rey, in becoming Skywalker, is the Star Wars films’ final multiply gendered embodiment of the ‘good man’.