Lance Belluomini
HAN: What's going on … buddy? LANDO: You're being put into carbon freeze. FETT: What if he doesn't survive? He's worth a lot to me.
(While Han and Leia gaze into one another's eyes in the foreground.…)VADER: The Empire will compensate you if he dies. Put him in!
The carbon-freezing chamber scene from The Empire Strikes Back never fails to send chills down my back. It's the most powerful, dramatic, romantic, and emotional scene in the entire Star Wars saga.1 We feel emotionally stirred when we witness the intense romantic moments between Han and Leia. We can't help but feel the sadness and anguish that Leia and Chewie are going through when Han is lowered into the pit, and we feel sorry for Chewie with each wild howl he lets out. We're fearful of what will happen to Han. We're angry at Vader for using Han as a test subject. And we're anxious when Fett takes off in Slave I with Han's carbonite-encased body. Why? Because we care about Han and worry about his fate.
But our strong emotional reactions to these scenes raise intriguing philosophical questions: why should we care about what happens to Han, Leia, or anyone in the Star Wars universe when we know they don't exist? Isn't there something irrational about having an emotional response to fictional characters? Philosophers call this the paradox of fiction.
Let's lay out this paradox as it relates to the Star Wars films in three claims:
Claim 1 seems true for many of us who, when we watch Star Wars, experience genuine and rational emotional responses to Han and Leia during the carbon-freezing scene. We're joyful when they share a passionate kiss and Leia says, “I love you,” while Han famously responds, “I know.” We're sad when they're separated from one another and Han is lowered into the pit. Claim 2 challenges this, because it says that in order to have these genuine and rational emotional responses to Han and Leia, the responses must be properly supported by our beliefs about what should provoke such responses. But our emotional responses to Han and Leia aren't properly aligned with what we actually believe. Claim 3 states the belief we have concerning the fictional universe of Star Wars: Han and Leia are purely fictional characters. Interestingly, each of the three claims seems correct when viewed separately, but the claims conflict when viewed together. Hence the paradox.
Three main theories attempt to solve the paradox of fiction: the illusion theory, the thought theory, and the pretend theory. Because all three claims can't be jointly true, each theory rejects or changes one of the three claims. Let's consider each to see if any of them can plausibly explain our emotional reactions to Star Wars and bring order to the galaxy we cherish!
The English poet and philosopher, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), said that our proper engagement with fiction involves a “willing suspension of disbelief,”2 and we seem to do precisely this when we watch Star Wars. Just as Luke feels something real when he blocks the bolts from the seeker remote with his blast shield down, we too seem to feel something real when we watch Obi-Wan teaching Luke about the Force. While engrossed in the films, we believe in the characters, the ships, and the situations depicted. The illusion theory claims that the fictional work creates in us the illusion that the characters and situations depicted actually exist. Those who support this view don't see a problem with our emotional responses to Star Wars.3 Illusion theorists attempt to solve the paradox of fiction by denying claim 3 and replacing it with the claim that a special type of belief about the existence of characters and events arises in the course of our engagement with fiction.
This theory is appealing. When we watch the lightsaber duel between Vader and Obi-Wan in A New Hope, we feel they are real people, and when we hear them speak, we sense that they've known one another for a lifetime. Who can forget Vader's taunting remarks: “I've been waiting for you Obi-Wan. We meet again at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner, now I am the master.” Moments later, Vader adds: “You should not have come back!” We're absorbed and emotionally engaged – we experience fear, wonder, and sadness when Obi-Wan is struck down. We tend to talk about these characters as if they're real people who have a real history with one another, and we wonder what really happened between them “before the dark times, before the Empire.”4
There is a tension here: while many fans like to talk as if the characters and events in Star Wars are real, none of us actually believe that Luke's heroic journey is real. We don't really believe that Darth Vader exists, or that he really has twin children named Leia and Luke who were separated at birth. We don't really believe the Millennium Falcon is a real ship that can make the jump to hyperspace, no matter how much we wish it were true. Philosopher Gregory Currie underscores this point in his dismissal of the illusion theory: “Hardly anyone ever literally believes the content of a fiction when he knows it to be a fiction; if it happens at moments of forgetfulness or intense realism in the story (which I doubt), such moments are too brief to underwrite our sustained responses to fictional events and characters.”5
The other problem with the illusion theory is that we don't fully act as if we think the characters and events depicted are really before our eyes. If we believed in the real existence of these fictions, then these beliefs would be manifested in our behavior. When Luke confronts Vader on Bespin, Vader welcomes him: “The Force is with you, young Skywalker. But you are not a Jedi yet.” This scene chills many of us to the bone. But while we may feel scared, we don't feel threatened by Vader, nor do we believe we're in danger. If we believed Vader was real, even temporarily, we'd likely run from our house in fear of Vader showing up with his 501st Legion of stormtroopers. But we don't. Instead, we watch The Empire Strikes Back over and over despite being scared by Vader. Our lack of action precludes the explanation that we're under the illusion that Vader is real. Given that the illusion theory can't successfully deny claim 3, it can't solve the paradox of fiction.
According to the thought theory, our emotional responses to fictional characters and events are caused by our thoughts, replacing claim 2 with an amended claim: in order to have genuine and rational emotional responses to the characters and events in Star Wars, we don't need to believe they exist; we just need to form mental representations of them.6 When we take in the image of Vader using the Force to choke Captain Needa for having lost track of the Millennium Falcon, it isn't these images that cause the emotional responses. Instead, our emotional responses are triggered by our thoughts, which mirror or represent the fictions.
One observation that the thought theory makes is that we often have emotional reactions to imaginary situations: imagine standing on a precipice where you then entertain the thought of falling over the edge.7 There's no real danger because there's no one around to push you over, and you certainly don't intend to jump. But if you vividly imagine falling over the edge of the steep cliff and hitting the ground, you can genuinely scare yourself. You're not scared by a belief that you're actually in danger. Instead, you're scared by the content of your thought – the mental image of something bad happening. This, according to the thought theory, is what happens when we're engaged in fiction. Think of when the wampa approaches Luke right as the lightsaber jumps into his hand. He ignites it, frees himself, and cuts off the attacking wampa's arm. This immediately triggers emotional responses within us. We feel a range of emotions such as anxiety, fear, and surprise. Just as the mere thought of falling over the edge of a dangerous cliff scares us, the mere thought of the wampa moving in to attack Luke scares us. We don't need to believe that the wampa or Luke exist in order to have genuine and rational emotional responses.
But isn't there a more direct connection between the behavior of the fictional characters and our emotions? When we hear Han's screams of agony in the torture room on Cloud City and we witness his torture, there's no time to reflect and form any conscious thoughts or mental representations – while this may work in a book or at the edge of a precipice, there's no time to do this in a movie. Thought theorists disagree. They would argue that no reflection is needed. The visual and auditory stimuli we take in can certainly cause an immediate mental representation that can then trigger emotional responses in us.
However, in order to produce emotional responses in us, the mental representation of Han must be something that's connected in the right way to our affections. For instance, thinking about C-3PO calculating the odds of surviving an attack on an Imperial Star Destroyer evokes nothing in me. I need to be able to relate to the fictional situation and individuals in order to produce an emotional reaction. Han needs to represent either myself or someone I care about. The “falling over the cliff” example illustrates this point. You get scared when you recognize that it is you who's falling. Notice that Han's torture scene is different than the “falling” example. You can't imagine yourself in the situation Han is in because Han isn't you and Han doesn't represent you. And you can't imagine anyone you know in his situation. To actually feel bad for Han, you must construct a situation where you can relate to him. And the only way would be to say you think that he is real or resembles someone you know. But this isn't plausible. We can therefore draw a parallel between the “falling” example and Han's torture case: in both situations, we hold a background belief that the person in the situation (the one falling, the one being tortured) is real. We represent Han in the same way that we conceive of someone we witness being tortured on the news: as a real person. So the thought theory assumes that the things we have thoughts about are real. But thought theorists aren't illusion theorists: they don't think we're under the illusion that fictional characters and scenarios are real.
To further undermine the thought theory, consider the pity we feel for Han when we watch him being tortured, and how Vader strikes fear into us. We instantly have real emotional responses as the rack tilts forward onto the torture device and Vader activates the mechanism. But our emotional responses don't seem to be caused by any immediate “thoughts” or “mental representations” of Han being tortured by Vader because the thoughts don't correspond to any existing objects. Hence, those thoughts don't seem to be the real objects of our emotions. Our experience also doesn't feel like a fear of an immediate thought. It doesn't feel like we pity a thought. Rather, we experience fear and pity directly because Vader is torturing Han. We don't have pity for our thought of Han. Instead, we pity Han himself. The thought theory struggles with providing a satisfying answer as to what we fear and whom we pity. Ultimately, the thought theory can't adequately explain why we have emotional reactions to fiction.
The pretend theory attempts to dissolve the paradox of fiction by describing the emotions we have as audiences of fiction as different from the real-world emotions we experience. This involves a denial of claim 1. The pretend theory says that the emotions we experience while watching Star Wars are not genuine emotions. Rather, they're quasi-emotions.
Consider the feeling of awe we experience during the “Binary Sunset” scene in which Luke stands on the desert ridge outside his homestead, framed by the setting twin suns of Tatooine with the moving Force theme music. We feel for Luke as he momentarily looks down in sadness and frustration – his hopes of joining the Imperial Academy on hold for “a whole 'nother year.” But Luke finds the inner strength to look back up, and we relate to his hope for a better future.
The philosopher Kendall Walton says that when we watch a fictional scene such as this, we not only pretend that what we're seeing is happening, we also pretend to have certain feelings. He draws an analogy with children playing “make-believe,” pretending to be all kinds of things: pilots, astronauts, even characters from their favorite sci-fi movies:
Children do not peer into worlds apart, nor do they merely engage in a clinical intellectual exercise, entertaining thoughts about cops and robbers, or whatever. The children are in the thick of things; they participate in the worlds of their games. We appreciators also participate in games of make-believe, using works as props. Participation involves imagining about ourselves as well as about the characters and situations of the fiction – but not just imagining that such and such is true of ourselves. We imagine doing things, experiencing things, feeling in certain ways.8
My 4-year-old son likes to pretend he's Darth Maul. He enjoys putting on performances when we're entertaining guests, twirling his double-bladed retractable lightsaber toy around, to “Duel of the Fates.” My son is participating in a game of make-believe, and the lightsaber is the prop he uses to play this game. Similarly, we completely immerse ourselves in the characters and events depicted in Star Wars. But while my son's plastic lightsaber is a physical prop in his game, the films themselves are props for our imaginings.
The pretend theory says that when we feel scared while Vader interrogates and chokes Captain Antilles in A New Hope, we're just imagining that we're terrified of Vader. Our apparent fear is only a “quasi-fear,” which is less intense than the real emotion. Since we're interacting with Vader in make-believe, we pretend to fear him. We imagine having emotions as opposed to actually experiencing real emotions. Put differently, we simulate situations and emotional states – particularly the kind we wouldn't want to endure in our daily lives.
What can we say for the pretend theory? Are we prepared to commit to the idea that the emotions we experience while watching Star Wars aren't real but rather quasi-emotions? Well, let's take Obi-Wan's advice in A New Hope: “Trust your feelings.”
First, we do seem to be in touch with our emotions much of the time. We're unable to control the positive emotions we feel when Yoda lifts Luke's X-wing out of the Dagobah swamp. We feel triumph, joy, surprise, and amazement. When Luke attempts to lift his X-wing but gives up in defeat, we feel sad as we witness his despair and dejection. Yoda's lesson on the power and nature of the Force also adds to our emotional engagement. His speech is full of optimism. The music also moves us: the scene starts with a somber version of the Force theme and ends with the triumphant version of Yoda's theme. We're left with a triumphant feeling that certainly feels like real-world triumph.
Walton would point out, though, that we lack the ability to tell the difference between “quasi-triumph” and real triumph, adding that there's a behavioral difference between real emotion and quasi-emotion. If I experience quasi-triumph when Yoda lifts Luke's X-wing from the swamp, it stays with me only a short time and doesn't cause me to act; but real triumph would stay with me longer and motivate me to act, perhaps letting out a roar and raising my arms. We must admit, though, that a real-world emotional reaction doesn't always motivate behavior. We often feel real triumph and joy without expressing it outwardly. Experiencing real-world triumphant feelings can also come in varying intensities. So, the triumph a viewer feels when Yoda lifts the X-wing is likely to be less intense than the triumph she felt when Apollo 11 landed on the moon in 1969, but maybe more intense than the feeling of solving a jigsaw puzzle.
The analogy to games of make-believe raises another objection to Walton's pretend theory. If we're merely pretending to be scared and angry at Vader for torturing Han, then we should be able to control when we pretend and when we don't, since pretending is a voluntary activity. But it doesn't make sense to say we can stop pretending to be emotionally moved when Vader tortures Han: the feelings we experience happen involuntarily. We have no choice but to fear the dianoga that lives in the Death Star trash compactor, and to delight when Han swoops in to Luke's aid and gives him a clear shot at the Death Star's exhaust port.
There's a clear difference between watching a fictional film and playing children's games of make-believe. When my son pretends his lightsaber is real, he does this by choice, for he could've pretended it's a pirate sword, imagining he's Captain Hook. He has freedom in his pretend-play and can decide to use his prop in a variety of ways. And because he can, he has a degree of control over his emotional responses to the use of props. We, on the other hand, don't have this degree of freedom to pretend when we watch Star Wars. As onlookers, we experience involuntary emotional states in response to the images and sounds. We don't pretend to have the emotions we do.9 So it's not looking like the pretend theory can solve the paradox.
Fictional worlds like the Star Wars galaxy allow us to experience a range of positive and negative emotions.10 Similarly, when we dream, we experience an imagined world that elicits all kinds of emotional reactions. A fictional film is therefore like a dream – the only difference being that our mind both creates and experiences a dream, whereas a fictional film is a manufactured experience created for us. While we dream, our experience in the dream is real. The emotions we experience in dreams are certainly as real as the emotions we experience when awake.11 The same is true of fiction. Whether we watch the climactic lightsaber duel in The Empire Strikes Back in which Vader suddenly attacks Luke from hiding or whether we have a dream about it, we can still experience real fear and surprise in the same intensity.
So where does this leave us with the paradox of fiction and emotions in relation to Star Wars? Let's review the competing three claims that result in the paradox:
None of the three theories we've considered can solve the apparent puzzle.12 We don't fear any real threat of Vader and his stormtroopers invading our homes, and we certainly don't act in ways that suggest we believe in Vader's existence, so the illusion theory must be wrong in saying that we temporarily but mistakenly think characters like Vader really exist and might be dangerous. We're frightened of Vader himself on the screen, and not at the mental representations we form of Vader, so the thought theory can't resolve the paradox. And if our fear of Han being lowered into the carbon-freezing pit feels like real fear, given that we're involuntarily moved by what happens to Han, the pretend theory can't help us. Considering the shortcomings of these theories, where do we stand with the paradox of fiction? Perhaps we need to focus on an important word in the first claim about emotions: that they are “rational.” Are the emotional responses we have to Star Wars rational?
To this last question, Colin Radford (1939–2001) replies, “No.” While we experience genuine and unavoidable emotions in response to fiction, Radford doesn't think they're rational.13 Our emotional reactions must be “reasonable responses” to our cognitive state to be rational. But with any work of fiction, our emotional reactions to the fictional characters don't meet the “reasonable response” condition. When we see Han lowered into the carbon-freezing pit, the pity we feel for him is not a reasonable response, given that we're just imagining that Han is in an unfortunate situation. Neither Han, since he's not real, nor Harrison Ford, in portraying Han, is in any real danger.
The same is true for all the emotions we experience while watching Star Wars. When we witness Emperor Palpatine electrocuting Luke, there's no denying we're fearful of Palpatine and feel compassion for Luke. While Radford would agree that our feelings are real and unavoidable, he'd add that these emotional reactions are not reasonable responses to fictional scenarios. But couldn't we argue that our fearful reactions to Palpatine are not unreasonable by pointing out that he's a truly terrifying and evil figure? We have good reason to fear him when Vader says to Moff Jerjerrod, “The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am,” or says to Luke, “The Emperor will show you the true nature of the Force. He is your master now.” Radford would reply that even though we're moved by the images of Palpatine, and by the fictional things we hear Vader say about him, our reactions aren't made rational because of those things, for we don't believe we're in any danger given our correct belief that Palpatine doesn't exist.
Nevertheless, there's no doubt we're moved by the images we see and the sounds we hear in well-made films – which is part of the reason why Star Wars continues to be a major part of our popular culture. We care about the fictional characters and events taking place in this fairy tale world. We feel pity for Luke when he returns to his homestead only to find the charred remains of his aunt and uncle. We instantly feel tense and uneasy when C-3PO gets shot on Cloud City. We're left in a state of wonder when Luke takes off from Dagobah and Yoda says, “No. There is another.”14 We feel relief and satisfaction when Vader throws Palpatine down the reactor shaft. And we derive pleasure from the positive and negative emotions we experience.
But our reactions to Star Wars highlight an important puzzle: why do we have the same emotional responses to things that are real that we have toward things that are not? Radford's view of emotions provoked by fiction as irrational provides us with a persuasive and plausible way to solve the paradox of fiction, defend the truth of central claims like 2 and 3, while denying the “rational” component of claim 1. This suggests we should accept our mysterious ability to be moved by fiction and recognize this is part of our nature.15 While it may seem counterintuitive to say our genuine emotional reactions to Star Wars are irrational, accepting that it's part of our nature to react irrationally to characters like Han and Leia will enable us to take that “first step into a larger world.”16