Cognitive Struggle Experienced, Simultaneously, By The “The Force Awakens” Audience And The Film’s

Cognitive Struggle Experienced, Simultaneously, by the “The Force Awakens” Audience and the Film’s Villain

A Sith Scholar work-in-progress (Draft of the first section of my current academic research)

I'm addicted to and obsessed with Kylo Ren. There is this conflict amongst the Star Wars audience about this character, a conflict that parallels the conflict he feels between the light and the dark side (Writers usually have intent behind every aspect, every word (or at least they should) in everything they put on a page, and I think they are cognizant of this conflict, implicit in it). Ren/Ben is the son of one of my favorite couples, and I can't remove him from my head, and I find myself trying to understand his point of view, empathize with him attempting to research the cognitive and emotional processing he may have experienced when hearing the stories about Vader. I have to admit there is the lust factor, too. I had never seen this actor before The Force Awakens, and my attraction to him increases my desire to take Kylo Ren's side in this whole matter, and I'm finding those reasons to take his side, which frightens and fascinates me.

I wrote that expanded response on Facebook to this question: “Who is your favorite Star Wars villain?” Darth Vader and Princess Leia were my favorite character of Star Wars: A New Hope. Boba Fett tied Leia and Vader as my favorite characters after Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. So two of my favorite characters, not just of the villains, but of the entire cast of characters, represented the dark side.

When I saw The Force Awakens (TFA), I felt how my love for Star Wars consumed many of my moments – wake or asleep – that I have no control over its powerful pull. Han Solo’s death really impacted me. I became fascinated by the strong emotions in that scene, why fictional characters could be such a part of my psyche that when one was killed and the other was being lost to a life of dark choices, that I grieved intensely. That level of grief surprised me, and I felt ashamed for having such strong emotion for a fictional character. But that got me thinking how is it even possible to feel such a real reaction from fictional characters? How does a text achieve that?

My intent is to examine the cognitive connection to emotion in TFA, particularly those felt by Kylo Ren and about Kylo Ren by the other characters and the audience.   “Links between cognition and emotion have been acknowledged within neuroscience and psychology (e.g.,Damasio,1994).This paves the way for psychological and philosophical theories of emotions and affect in cinema (Grodal,1997; Plantinga & Smith,1999; Tan,1996; Vorderer et al.,1996), providing a complement to psychoanalytical and sexual approaches to emotion” (Persson 38). Because neuroscience “acknowledged” these “links between cognition and emotion,” there needs to be an examination of the TFA using “psychological and philosophical theories of emotions and affect in cinema.”

Degree of Innate Sadism in a Human Being   

In The Force Awakens, the neurology of a terrible act is manifested in Kylo Ren’s face after he kills Han Solo. We see the endorphins released as a result of an act of patricide.

It takes a moment for Ren to process the action, which is described by  Holland:

“perceptions going to and from the amygdala immediately arouse feelings of fear. The amygdala has two kinds of output. One process creates a rapid response. It projects directly to the hypothalamus…and then on to the brainstem and spinal cord to move the body.” The “second…process is more cognitive. The signal has gone more slowly from the amygdala to the frontal lobe which evaluate the stimulus and reaction” (91).

In The Force Awakens, the audience sees it took Ren a moment to process what he had just done to his father. He had admitted during that scene that he is conflicted, so he did feel love for his father, and the loss of his father could cause pain. There is a moment of disbelief in his face, then he gasps, perhaps with grief, some pain, and then his pupils dilate; his eyes widen as if a drug has just been injected into his body, calming him, then making him relieved, anticipating euphoria. The reward center of his brain is activated.

In “Cruelty’s Rewards: The gratifications of perpetrators and spectators” it explains, “It is incomprehensible that the infliction of pain on the self is both pleasurable and also sexually arousing. This unlikely conjunction has long puzzled moral philosophers and psychologists.

This is Ren. Finally choosing a side may have brought Ren comfort to a life where he felt a lot of pain, abandonment, resentment. He may have felt a moment of pleasure, but there is debate whether he feels the relief this resolution was to bring. Then my reaction was, despite him just murdering a beloved character and sending from me a cry of grief, in the theatre, I still found him arousing, but, initially kept those pangs of lust to myself. I took pleasure in him, before, during and after this horrific act, and, although evidence says humans do that, it doesn’t mean that humans aren’t ashamed of feeling that way. Ren serves to show us a side of humanity that we may not like but is biologically a fact. Humanity’s sadism is innate.

Yet, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Becerra et al. (2001) report that a pain stimulus (a probe heated to 468C applied to the skin) activated the brain’s reward circuitry, following a pathway similar to that of the pleasure response: protein from the cfos gene shows “that many neurons in the amygdala that are aroused by aggressive encounters are also aroused by sexual activity” (Panksepp 1998, p. 199): the underlying motivation may be the seeking of safety (“Cruelty’s Rewards”)

Kylo Ren reveals the biology of being sadistic.  However, the film does not keep us as mere observer of a sadistic person. The audience becomes implicated. Lisa Zunshine explains that in films, when a character is in pain that the camera turns away, that people turn away when another person is experiencing a strong emotion.  People don’t want to look at a character’s face when they are feeling a strong emotion. Zunshine describes:

The same effect is achieved when other characters refuse to watch an individual who is experiencing strong emotions and the camera moves away from him or her at a crucial moment. The assumption behind this strategy is that sometimes people’s faces expose their feelings to such a degree that they become painful to watch, unless a person who watches has a sadistic streak. It is transparency by omission: we can’t see the actual face, but our imagination magnifies its emotional nakedness. (93)

The camera focuses on Kylo Ren and his father’s (Han Solo’s) face during his act of patricide.  The audience is forced to have a sadistic streak because the filmmakers show us the face of a character in pain and the scene of Ren crying then killing his father. The audience is the characters in the film that did not turn away--the Stormtroopers, Finn, Rey, and Chewbacca--and the theatre audience. It is not too painful for them to watch. If Zunshine concludes that only a sadistic person would watch, then all of these witnesses are sadistic in not turning away from the strong emotions being shown on Han Solo’s and Kylo Ren’s faces. The humanoids and wookiee have a certain degree of innate sadism. Kylo Ren’s actions make us question if our sadism any worse than Kylo Ren’s patricide?

Kylo Ren takes pleasure in the pain of killing his own father just as the audience takes pleasure in the pain and these strong emotions because they do not turn away. It shows us a side of humanity that is sadistic, biologically. Human beings have a degree of innate sadism. Do we feel it as a flaw and does that reality then cause us pain? And if pain stimulates the reward center of our brain, do we experience a smidgen of euphoria, perhaps a small delight in this dark side of ourselves that we’ve found?

Our strong emotional response to the murder of Han Solo is the result of the feelings we bring with us to our viewing of TFA. Kylo Ren is the son of our favorite scoundrel and we get to “see” some of Han in him in scenes where he has humorous lines [need to include link to video of this]. And some of us felt pangs of shock amongst sympathy when he finds out that the droid he’s seeking is with his father; his voices cracks when he eeks out “He means nothing to me.” and he asks for Snokes help “By the grace of your training, I will not be seduced.” He is at the end of this scene alone, small on the screen in this dark room. His parents sent him away, Snoke questions his ability to resist the light and he is alone –it’s hard for me not to feel sympathy for him. Holland explains that we care for those in a fictional text because in “Creating or responding to literature, we bring such emotional markings and memories to bear, and, like direct emotional stimulation, they operate outside of conscious intellection, Darwin’s ‘reason’” (92). The emotions we bring to Kylo Ren are that he is the child of our favorite couple. He is the son of Han Solo, our favorite scoundrel, smuggler turned hero, lover of our favorite princess, who we also love and hope for, and we bring those emotional markings to our acquaintance to his son. We want their son to be good, for them, for us so that we don’t have to deal with the pain the fall of their son would bring us. 

I find it difficult to accept Kylo Ren as lost to the dark side, someone to label as evil. I am desperate to “solve” why he chose the dark side, that there were forces within his biology that made him susceptible to the dark side. I am even willing to question that which we label as evil, to look at the intentions of people who commit terrible acts to find something that will relieve him from some of the blame. As an audience member, it is hard for me to accept that the son of Han and Leia is responsible, to blame for what has happened to him.

But as a text, that pain of that tragedy brings us pleasure. I am compelled to watch TFA repeatedly. Does the audience take pleasure in the pain of the Skywalker family saga? “We enjoy ugly or threatening things in art because we are seeking---and finding. Both the act of seeking and the act of removing the threat and incorporating painful things into our normal mental functioning yield pleasure (Holland 247). We watch emotionally wrenching films because it affects the reward center of our brains.  

“Evolutional psychology provides, I think, an explanation. Dead bodies, “low” animals, rotting food—these all represent potential threats to our survival and reproduction. Our brain insists that we pay attention to them because we may need to do something about them. To trigger those actions, we look at the ugly and painful more intensely than we look at blander sights” (Holland 248).

We are so compelled to watch this emotionally wrenching scene of Kylo Ren killing Han Solo not despite the emotional pain it causes because we need to experience that emotional pain - it sharpens our senses. Witnessing pain is biologically beneficial.

Kylo Ren tries hard to seem like an unsympathetic character. When he murders Lor San Tekka and the villagers at the beginning of the film, interrogates Poe Dameron, threatens Hux, he is a cold, menacing figure. However, when he learns that the droid has escaped the squadron’s attempts to capture it, a bit of his father’s sarcasm comes out. The lieutenant reports to him that the droid “escaped on a stolen freighter.” Kylo Ren replies, “The droid stole a freighter?” It is a similar sarcastic reaction of disbelief comparable to Han Solo’s sarcastic reactions. We begin to see another dimension of this villain.

And soon after when he finds out that the droid was helped by the Finn, the Stormtrooper who freed Poe, he ignites his lightsaber and violently smashes the equipment in front of him.  Another dimension revealed through this emotional outburst. We find humor in his tantrum because it is such unstable, childish behavior. These tantrums resulted in a laugh from the audience, and seems to be a pattern of behavior that those who work for the First Order have come to expect (when the Stormtroopers turn around when they see Kylo throwing a tantrum after Rey escapes). Humorous as these tantrums were, it demonstrates his disregard and willingness to destroy anything to express his emotions.  He is dangerous because having a temper, albeit mostly something he can control, may also be caused by chemical imbalance over which he may have no control “These findings suggest that greater acute and chronic pain responsiveness associated with trait anger-out may be due in part to impaired ability to elicit endogenous opioid analgesia.” (Breuhl  224) That is a frightening person to be around. Does he have tantrums also because of acute psychological pain? His dimensions are growing.

But when we learn that his father is Han Solo, we can no longer see him as a two dimensional villain. He is the son of our beloved scoundrel. We get our first pangs of sympathy. This is created by the aforementioned scene of him alone in the large room where he communicates with Snoke. When Snoke tells him that his father, Han Solo, has the droid the First Order has been pursing, he replies that Han “means nothing to me.”  His voice almost cracks as he can barely get himself to utter these words. Sympathy builds.

Snoke doubts him, “Not even you, Master of the Knights of Ren has ever faced such a test.”

“By the grace of your training, I will not be seduced.” Kylo Ren replies.

“We shall see. We shall see.” Snoke says as his hologram fades away. When the master Kylo Ren is trying so hard to impress doesn’t think he has the strength to face this test of hunting down his father, he feels alone. The only being he feels he can get approval from is doubting him. It could be approval he had failed to get from his father and now seeks it from Snoke. And he is alone. So he stands in that room, the one stream of light a spotlight on him. The camera is watching him from across the room to his right.

The height of the room is 10 times taller than he. The entrance and back wall of the room cannot be seen within the limits of the screen. His figure is dwarfed by the room and its dark cavernous emptiness. He stands in a room for a moment after Snoke disappears in silence. The expression of our reaction might be to dislike him more for knowing he chose the dark side, but then we feel pity because we feel he is misguided. And we want the son of Han and Leia back.

Now we have developed sympathy for a character who has made us aware of our innate sadism.  We are reminded of the pleasure he derives from the pain of others, reminding us of our same innate sadism. He enjoys causing Rey’s transparency and enjoying the spectacle of it. He finds pleasure in the power to expose her deepest feelings against her will. Zunshine suggested “if you are a writer and you want your character to remain sympathetic, you don’t put her in a situation in which she begins to enjoy the spectacle of someone else’s transparency, thus coming across as sadistic. (97) Ren enjoys the spectacle of Rey’s transparency as he reads her mind.  It’s a transparency he imposes upon her, a result of a violation. We begin to feel sympathy wane because of his sadistic cause and enjoyment of her transparency. The reward centers of his brain must be activated because he knows that if he gets the map it will increase his odds of survival – in the sense that he seems so dependent on approval for life to mean something and in the sense that if Snoke doesn’t feel Ren’s strong enough, he could destroy Ren.

We feel sympathy for Rey as she is made vulnerable. However, Rey reciprocates and through his violation of her, she is able to violate him and see his deepest fear and enjoy the spectacle of his transparency. She risks becoming unsympathetic by taking advantage of his transparency, definitely having the reward center of her brain activated because her violation of his mind is helping her survive. Both are finding involuntary pleasure violating each other in order to survive their respective threats. In addition, the audience is privy to their moments of transparency and find it pleasing in that it’s activating our reward center so much that we are fixated on it and cannot turn away.  

© Sheila Wright and Squire of the Knights of Ren, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sheila Wright and Squire of the Knights of Ren with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.