I’ve always had a problem with Darth Vader™ sheets, a specific concern that does not include the tapestries, house slippers or “comfy throw blankets” depicting the character, as it is not the simple combination of legendary cinema maniac with home textiles that disturbs me. It’s the children’s bedsheets depicting Darth Vader in a classic menacing stance, or sometimes as many as four or five action poses.
I suppose I also must include the matching comforters and pillowcases.
It’s not the creation of these sheets that gets me as much as the fact that a child asked for them and a parent bought them, put them on the child’s bed, and continually washes them and puts them back on the bed time and again.
Because Darth Vader is a murderer, of lots of people, whose eventual decision to stop murdering people drove him to murder just one more really bad person, which, while spontaneously heroic, in no way mathematically made up for all of his past murders, but as he only had about three more minutes left to live there was understandably not much time for meaningful penance.
Even if you aren’t familiar with all the Star Wars™ movies and TV shows and books and whatnot it is clear that this elder Skywalker is The Bad Guy. Driven by grief and passion? Sure, but definitely a villain in these stories, beginning his career of indiscriminate slaughter through the assassination of men, women, and children (quite a lot of children, actually).
Every Halloween we pass any number of little Darth Vaders, their five year old frames awkwardly carrying both a full bag of candy and a red lightsaber nearly as tall as they are. The little scamps. But that’s Halloween, our annual stand against fear and dangerous levels of blood sugar, when we’re all supposed to be something scary for the night.
These sheets are different. That’s every night. That’s coming home from grade school and eating dinner and looking at a little something on tv and then getting drowsy and putting on your PJs and yawning a bit after brushing your teeth and then drifting off to sleep after sliding into a bed with a serial killer on it. In action poses.
I spoke to a few parents about this during a PTA function at my daughter’s grade school. A couple of their children did indeed have these sheets.
In most cases they were familiar with the character, albeit somewhat tangentially, but in all cases they told me their child was obsessed enough to have had at least one Vader themed birthday party, various pieces of Vader-based clothing, and in some cases even the Darth Vader Christmas stocking on their holiday mantle.
“It’s about power.” one parent told me. “Children go through life being told what to do, they don’t get to make a lot of choices, they dream of just being able to do whatever they want, and that’s what Darth Vader does. Everyone’s afraid of him, and in some cases that’s what kids think adults are, powerful people that have to be negotiated with but ultimately hold all the cards in every situation.”
She looked distractedly at her paper cup of punch for a moment, as if this next part was going to be a bit more painfully confessional.
“The good guys don’t seem to be all that powerful, I guess. They mostly fight the bad guy, and they barely win most of the time, it makes him look even stronger.”
“I get that,” I said, “but aren’t there Han Solo sheets?”
“I did ask him about those.” another parent said, “There was one set with all the spaceships, like the big round one, and there was another with lightsabers, but he wouldn’t budge. He’s on his third different Darth Vader set - he’s had them since he was four years old.”
“Wow.” I actually said out loud, then covered badly by adding, “I mean, he’s kind of a killer, which is why it’s weird, sort of?”
“I don’t think they understand that part.” the third parent said.
The second parent agreed. “I didn’t want to get into all that, really… he was just too young. To be honest I thought he would grow out of it before now.”
Where DO you go after Darth Vader sheets? Black ones? We had those once, they were kind of cool, but don’t seem nearly nefarious enough.
Bright red! That’s the ticket. Also good for little Dexter fans.
To be fair, there are Disney™ villain bed sets with the cartoon faces of all the evil queens and their catch phrases, but they represent a pretty low body count, even as a team. From the world of Harry Potter™ one can purchase a vast assortment of bedroom options from the Slytherin collection – if gold, green and gigantic poisonous snakes fit into your child’s personal aesthetic.
But Darth Vader merchandise outsells all others from its franchise; the original lightsaber is expected to fetch over three million dollars at auction, whereas his competitor’s blade (used by Alec Guiness’s Obi-Wan Kenobi) only sold for $130,000. Even to adults, the character emulates the power to balance any surrounding chaos with an indiscriminate lashing out of raw power.
I, ever the scholar, looked up the words power and strength just to make perfectly sure that I really understood what they meant;
- “Strength” represents inner tenacity and ability, equating most directly to defense (standing strong);
- “Power” is the ability to create external effect, to attack, to influence others.
More directly:
strength is the ability to take it,
but power is the ability to dish it out.
As previously discussed, I myself am not much of a disher-outer. I was taught that you couldn’t really ever “get someone back” for something, that wasn’t the physics of time, everything’s moving forward. Also, there was something about “what people send out, they get back”, so all that kind of takes care of itself.
I don’t know who would be on the sheets representing that philosophy, but they probably wouldn’t have cool action poses.
So goodnight little Sithlings; slumber well with your elementary school fantasies of conquest and domination. Let us all hope those dreams soothe your hearts sufficiently to eventually move on to kinder linens.
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