The Prequel Feminism
© Paul F. McDonald
Like her daughter, Amidala is a strong leader, one very sure of herself, and also possessing an uncommon beauty. However, the galaxy she grows up in is quite different, one not yet ravaged by civil war and brutalized by a tyrannical government. Her story begins in a much more civilized age.
When she is introduced in The Phantom Menace, Amidala is only fourteen years old, yet she is the elected queen of the planet Naboo. Like Amidala herself, the world she rules appears young and beautiful and always fresh with morning dew, a world rich and fertile and bursting with potential. Dressed in colorful gowns and regal ornaments, the queen wears the traditional make-up of all those who came before her, and early on develops a prominent political aura.
Naboo society has many of the qualities that one might traditionally associate with a matriarchy. Its people are gentle and refined. The culture itself is creative and inspirational, and one can barely tell where the architecture ends and the natural world begins. It is a culture of beautiful gardens and flowing fountains, all based on a green planet that always looks as if it is in full bloom. Presiding over it is a young queen who very much appears to be something like a fertility goddess incarnate.
Amidala's first real challenge comes when a Sith lord named Darth Sidious orchestrates a seemingly inconsequential invasion of Naboo by the greedy Trade Federation. She is usurped and essentially exiled from her home by the Neimodians and their droid armies, both of which could serve as prominent symbols of an aggressive, patriarchal take-over. This really begins her journey into womanhood, as she travels with two Jedi knights to Coruscant to plead with the Senate for aid.
Thrown out of her planetary Eden to wander the dark reaches of space, Amidala undergoes a kind of psychological transformation. Part of the time, she is Queen Amidala, and the other part, she is disguised as a handmaiden named Padme. Her psyche has undergone a kind of split, torn as she is between being a girl and a woman, a leader and a follower.
This could be interpreted in terms of William Butler Yeats' ideas in his work, "A Vision." In it, he describes two masks. The first is the "primary mask," and is the one society imparts. The second is the "antithetical mask," and is the one the individual chooses for their self in adolescence. Certainly such ideas are present with the young queen, the white make-up evocative of the former, and the more naturalistic look she adopts as the handmaiden reflecting the latter. It is up to her to reconcile these two elements in herself.
