Star Wars is not known for its ambiguity, complexity, or three dimensional characters. It's a mystical humanist tale of good and bad, light and dark, etc.
The bad guys - whether the rather on-the-nose fascist Empire or the cliché corporatist warmongering Droid Trade Federation - have always been composed of cold, faceless, inhuman copies: Clones, droids, faceless number-for-name identical troops, etc. This is even true for the leaders who are supposed to be unique from the horde! Sure, Vader gets a humanist redemption arc, but the Emporor is essentially faceless, almost formless.
To this effect, Mark Fisher, responding to the rhetorical question of whether Star Wars 'sold out' by allowing itself to be bought by Disney, framed the film as a shallow, reactionary pastiche that brought nothing new and rehashed the old, while Rick and Morty recently poked fun at how the heroes in Star Wars seem to be able to kill mass amounts of people with little to no feelings, nor any real thought for the consequences of innocents caught in the crossfire.
Because Star Wars is like the antiquated scientific discussion of the Universe and Entropy - if given enough time, Star Wars will prove these critiques right again (and again, and again...) - Star Wars recently fell into this trap again.
In Season 2 of the Mandalorian an Imperial pilot takes the moral high ground against a to-be Rebel Alliance / New Republic hero whose innocent family was killed years ago by the Empire.
"I was on the Death Star...do you know how many millions were killed on those bases as the galaxy cheered?" the pilot seethes, trying to contain his rage. He continues to provoke, she shoots him in the face. The viewer is supposed to be excited, identified with the hero. [1]*
While watching the scene - before going on to see its conclusion of course - I thought 'odd, it is unlike Star Wars to humanize its enemies, and unlike them to incorporate moral ambiguity (except for that very shoddy attempt in Star Wars: The Last Jedi about arms dealers selling to the Resistance the First Order..).' Then he gets shot in the head and it all makes sense again. I realize it's a humanization that is only there to emphasize his ultimate inhumanity; only there to forever result in a satisfying kill for the hero.
This is what I call token humanization.
We're all familiar with tokenism in media - when something is injected into a book, show, or film out of obligation to moral pressure, or perhaps to clinch a certain audience and boost views, etc. The key aspect of tokenism is that something progressive is featured in an insincere manner. This does not mean that the presentation isn't sincere - no, for Tokenism to work it has to fool you into believing in its utmost sincerity - but rather it means that the motives behind the presentation are insincere.
On the one hand, this moment of token humanizing the despicable bad guy is a symptom of our postmodern culture and its obsession with psychologism. Everyone needs a backstory, and Disney - the real evil Empire that gobbles up everything it can reach and spits out pastiche after cash-cow pastiche - knows that in 2020 there is some sort of obligation to humanize the bad guy. Or perhaps they realize there is simply a market for it! Disney doesn't believe it, nor is it consistent with Star Wars, but here it is! As quickly as it comes (an attempt to respond to the pressure, the obligation of painting a three dimensional character and a complex world) it vanishes in the barrel-smoke of a blaster pistol (the return to the narrative consistency of the Star Wars world and its corporate masters, Disney).
On the other hand, this token humanization is perhaps indicative of the tumultuous times; indicative of the inability for one side of the conflict to conceptualize the other. Even if it is evil, is it not possible to understand the evilness without encouraging it? Without agreeing with it? The Talmud Scholar Saul Liberman is known to have said 'Nonsense is nonsense, but the history of nonsense - that's scholarship!' Could the same not be said for evil - 'Evil is evil, but the history of evil - that's revolutionary!' Probably not, but there's a thought that is difficult to articulate here that is worth pondering...
Regardless, in the end token humanization of the baddies may be even worse than dehumanization of the baddies! What could be more cruel and sadistic than assigning depth and agency to the play thing before taking it away again. Like mad scientists making a frog conscious of itself seconds before its to be dissected by a 5th grade science class. Or, one may recall Foucault's discussion of torture and punishment, and how theologically inspired torturers in the early centuries of civilization fantasized about killing someone and bringing them back to life to kill them again as punishment! Is this not one description of Hell? Leave it to Disney to bring Hell to Earth through through a children's show (TV Demonism anyone?)!
At the end of the day, we're better off with Space Spaghetti Westerns with one dimensional baddies; stupid movies that know their place! Star Wars is not known for its ambiguity, complexity, or three dimensional characters. It's a mystical humanist tale of good and bad, light and dark, etc. And that's OK.
[1]*
See Slavoj Zizek's 1999 article '‘You May!’Slavoj Žižek writes about the Post-Modern Superego'
"It’s as though a neo-Nazi skinhead, pressed to give reasons for his behavior, started to talk like a social worker, sociologist or social psychologist, citing diminished social mobility, rising insecurity, the disintegration of paternal authority, the lack of maternal love in his early childhood.
‘Post-Modern racism’, the surprising characteristic of which is its insensitivity to reflection – a neo-Nazi skinhead who beats up black people knows what he’s doing, but does it anyway."
