Let me preface this by saying, as an adult, I'm a fan of "Star Wars: The Clone Wars". Continuity-mashing aside, it's a decent show, but seems confused as to whether its intended audience is kids or kids-at-heart.

But it struck me yesterday, as I took my 3-year-old daughter to Wal-Mart where the newest shipment of Clone Wars goodies arrived in the "boys' toys" aisle, that SWTCW is a marketing Goliath! I mean, yeah, duh, it's Star Wars and things have always been this way, but once I pulled myself out of the excitement of running to and fro looking at all the new toys, it suddenly hit me that TCW was everywhere. Coloring books, sticker books, learn-to-read books, suckers, helmets, lightsabers, action figures, vehicles, back packs, lunchboxes, T-shirts...an infinite parade of Clone Troopers with the valiant Anakin Skywalker at the lead....

Yet...isn't it all a lie?

I imagine the droves of young children, sitting cross-legged on the floor, their eyes glued to the TV, as their heroes do battle with droid troops. And I think, do they know that those clones will go on to shoot their comrades in the back, butchering them as was commanded by an unjust and corrupted government? Do they know that Anakin--the champion of children with his derring-dos--will in fact murder small children only a couple short years later--or strangle his pregnant wife? Our kids are dressing up as murderers (in the case of Anakin) and soldiers guilty of war crimes who will go on to do much worse under the service of the Empire.

Now, I realize that as kids WE dressed up as Darth Vader and stormtroopers, but was that different? We knew they were bad guys from the start and with the exception of some, we never really wanted to be "evil". But we did want to be Luke Skywalker--we might have taken a vacation imagining we were the scourge of the galaxy, but at the end of the day, there was something about Luke that we wanted to emulate in our real lives. To stand up against injustice and tyranny and bring hope to our friends. Does this new generation of kids whose only exposure to Star Wars is TCW want to emulate Anakin? Or the bravery and sacrifice of the clone troopers? Aren't those valid aspirations since, in TCW, they ARE heroic and fight for what is right? But, what are we subconsciously teaching our children when we pull the rug out from under them and show them "the rest of the story"? When they discover that their heroes are fallen--not just that they're "human" and "make mistakes", but that THEY become the villains; genocidal madmen.

I'm not saying we boycott TCW by any stretch of the imagination (unless you feel so compelled, I suppose), but I do think we should proceed with caution. Even with my daughter, when we see Anakin doing something valiant, we try to prepare her that he will make some bad choices and become Darth Vader one day (she's seen most of Ep 4, so she knows all about Darth Vader). We have tried to use Anakin as a cautionary tale--which I believe is ultimately what Lucas was trying to communicate. But is the cartoon set up to teach that our choices can lead to terrible consequences or is just more focused on fantastic explosions and space battles?

Clearly, since we've only seen 20-some odd episodes, it's too soon to tell.

We live in a world of moral ambiguity and situational ethics and neverending Grey...yet, are we doing our children an injustice by denying them that clear cut good-and-evil, black-and-white, right-and-wrong mentality? We might like to throw up our "this is right for me!" mantras whenever we run across someone who doesn't agree with us or may actually think that we are *gasp* wrong about something, but I think that, at our core as people, we want to believe that there is a Right and a Wrong, a Good and an Evil. Isn't that what drew us to Star Wars as children in the first place? However difficult it may be in real life to determine who's a good guy and who's bad (though, it might be easier if we all carried around lightsabers with colors that corresponded to our alignment, methinks), I think that in fiction--children's fiction especially--we should be able to offer the dream of heroes who do what is right against impossible odds, no matter what. Isn't it that dream that we still carry around with us, even into adulthood, and try to live by?

I'm not talking about the heroes being infallible: Our heroes should not be perfect, because that's an impossible goal. We all mistakes and I think it's important our children know that. But can't our heroes at least hold to their ideals and strive to be true and fair? Should our heroes really be so flawed and jaded as to deny our children any hope that such a nobility is out of reach?

- Hedec Ga