Dark Lanterns: Masks, Myths, and Star Wars

As The Force Awakens nears, with all its promise and possibility of awesomeness, I’m continuing my ongoing celebration of Star Wars. I’d like to explore the concept of “the mask” as manifest in the first installment of the Star Wars saga (A New Hope, 1977). I’m treading familiar ground here, I suppose, though maybe I’ll find some new geography beneath my musing feet. Let’s begin with the most obvious and iconic example of a mask in the film: Darth Vader. Vader’s mask is obviously meant to be intimidating, and is famously modeled after Japanese samurai helmets.

Later we will learn that Vader is “more machine than man” and that this “mask” actually sustains his life. In A New Hope, though, Vader is a kind of hieroglyphic, a mystery that is difficult to unravel. In some ways the mask marks him as a solider – for it is the military stormtroopers and TIE pilots that share such a hidden identity. The officers of the Empire are not masked – cruel, of course, but ordinary enough in appearance. Yet Vader moves among these military officials as a sign and symbol of things ancient and mystical – the Jedi and the Dark Side. His mask puts him in the world of mythology, the deeper realm anchoring the film’s dreamlike power.

Yet, if we keep an open definition of the concept, there are other masks in Star Wars. What of C-3PO? Of course he is a robot, not a human with a mask, but in some sense this droid is nothing but a mask. Working in the realm of etiquette and protocol, he is the false face that serves as any face, the symbol-talker.

He is almost the opposite of the trickster archetype, a placid blank face of subordination, the every-face of universal translation. In some ways, he is the inversion of Vader – a golden face set against the dark one, a being of technology who masquerades as human and therefore becomes human. Vader, in some ways, is a human masquerading as a robot who thereby becomes a robot – a slave to the Emperor, programmed into a network of fear and hatred from which he cannot escape.

Then there are the stormtroopers. Their casual chatter in Star Wars proves that they are human, but their armor clearly marks them as a blank entity – beings not supposed to show emotion, or mercy. The fact that they are effectively wearing masks – not just protective helmets – is reinforced when Luke arrives to rescue Leia. She jokes about him being “short for a stormtrooper.” He responds with “Oh, the uniform.” A uniform is a mask for the body, concerned less about protection than with making a statement of power or authority.

By contrast, Chewbacca has no uniform – not even clothes! Though the actor Peter Mayhew wore a mask, Chewie is perhaps the least masked character in the movie – and it’s easy to underestimate how essential he is to the mythic power of the film.

Essentially naked, powerful yet Other, Chewbacca is the alien that is a friend, a strength that is married to gentleness. His seemingly incomprehensible roar contains a hidden language – linking the animal to the fundamentally human. Chewbacca is the natural being, the one who cannot wear a mask, the pure creature living in the truth of his furry animalistic body – the stubborn ape-like ancestor beneath all human dignity.

Even the Death Star might be a kind of mask. Its apparently blank and planet-like shape contains a secret bureaucracy and a terrible technology. “That’s no moon,” says Obi-Wan, seeing behind the façade of its spherical shape. It is a Cyclops mask, the single “eye” invoking the narrow, singular vision of authoritarian thinking – like Sauron’s flaming eye in The Lord of the Rings. Just before the Death Star explodes we catch a quick glimpse of Grand Moff Tarkin. Perhaps this is so that we can savor the defeat of this villain. Yet maybe the Death Star is Tarkin’s vast and terrible mask, the technological incarnation of his ambition, a giant spook to frighten the galaxy into submission. The solemn-faced Tarkin could be any of countless historical human militarists or dictators, eager not just to murder, but to terrify with their masks of power.

When Luke destroys the Death Star, the Empire itself is unmasked. All that remains is for Darth Vader to step forward as the final mask of the enemy. The agonized humanity that lurks behind that mask will only be revealed, however, in the films that follow.

And in the Star Wars that lies ahead? Why, of course, there is another mask. There had to be one.