"Cozy," Jar Jar says when he enters the Skywalker hovel. He's right. The "hovel" shared by Anakin and his mother is at least as spacious as the apartment my four-person family (and a dog and three cats) shared for six months last year. Anakin has his own room and plenty of tools and gadgets. There is enough space for three unexpected guests and their droid. They even have a bowl of fruit to set out on the table. How lucky can two slaves of a two-bit junk shop dealer get?

Compare the hovel to the Lars farm: Beru's kitchen is a claustrophobic hole cut out of the rock and the dining area looks like a card table set up outside. The biggest room we see on the Lars farm is the garage. Shmi's kitchen isn't large either, but it's in a large room, so it isn't as claustrophobic-feeling, and her table seats five quite comfortably. How does a slave hovel come off looking roomier than the farm of a family prosperous enough to hire multiple farm hands? It probably isn't, in reality, but that's what we see, and that's what Lucas wanted us to see. The slave hovel is supposed to look cosier and roomier than the farm.

Anakin and Shmi also have privacy. There are, apparently, no regular sweeps of the slaves' quarters to determine whether the slaves have scrounged or stolen anything valuable their masters could sell or use. Anakin might be building Threepio with permission from Watto (though I don't think so), but the pod is definitely a secret--and it's been poorly hidden in the communal back yard for years. With a master as tight as Watto, I would expect him to send someone around regularly to check for that sort of thing, especially since he knows Anakin is incredibly good at fixing things. Watto doesn't seem like the trusting type either. But in this case, he must be.

He's pretty gentle, too, and so are all the masters of Annie's friends: neither Annie nor his mother and friends have any visible signs of abuse or neglect. No bruises. No bad teeth. Their clothes are all clean, in good condition, and fit reasonably well. They all have decent haircuts. Not salon-quality, but they aren't hack jobs either. One girl's master was even considerate enough to take her to the orthodontist and get her fitted up with braces. A lot of parents aren't even that kind to their children, and these kids are slaves. Furtheremore, they're slaves on Tatooine, so we can probably assume safely that their masters aren't exactly the galaxy's top income-earners. Even with Anakin's mechanical genius, Watto still owns one of the smaller shops. Those other kids probably don't earn their masters as much, and the other masters probably gamble too. How do they have so much money to spend on their slaves?

Even the slaves have money. Anakin can just go up and buy three pallies for his new friends. No weekly rations card or anything like that. If he were the slave of a very rich and indulgent master, or a very skilled adult slave whose master delegated a lot of authority to him, I could see him getting a small allowance, but he's a little kid and his master's a junk shop owner on a miserable rock.

Finally, despite Anakin's tales of the exploding slave transmitters, we never see any fallout from their existence. No one blows up. No one mentions having a friend or family member blown up. No one gets an infection from a badly installed transmitter.

Why is everything so ridiculously cozy? It is possible, of course, that George just screwed up. But I don't like that answer, even though sometimes it is the only one left, so I tried to justify the unbelievable coziness of Star Wars slavery.

Maybe being a Mos Espa junk dealer (and whatever the other kids' masters are) is a lot more lucrative than we would expect and it isn't actually a hardship to buy a slave years of orthodontia. Or maybe braces are super-cheap and easy in the Star Wars galaxy. Maybe the masters, despite being cranky and immoral enough to actually own slaves, are at least smart enough to realize that smacking your slave across the face when you're angry is bad resource management. And have the self-control to refrain from losing their tempers in a physical way. Unlike a lot of parents who consider themselves loving and decent people. Maybe they think of their slaves sort of the way we think of thoroughbred racehorses and really want to take good care of them. Maybe most of them are just nice guys. Maybe Anakin got lucky enough to live in the only cozy slave neighborhood in town.

All those explanations sort of work, but they don't quite satisfy me. I had more luck, though, when I tried to think of the reason why Lucas wanted Anakin's slavery to be so cozy.

You could make a pretty good case that Anakin is a slave his entire life. First he is Gardulla's, then Watto's slave. As a slave, he has no choice where he lives, where he goes, or what his occupation will be--his master chooses for him. He has no real possessions of his own--everything belongs to his master. He must obey his master's commands. Then he joins the Jedi. As a Jedi, he has no choice where he lives, where he goes, or what his occupation will be--his master and the Council choose for him. He has no real possessions of his own--everything belongs to the Order or the Republic. He must obey his master's commands, and those of the council and the Code. Finally, he joins Palpatine. He still has no choice where he lives, where he goes, or what his occupation will be--Palpatine chooses for him. He has no real possessions of his own--everything ultimately belongs to the Emperor. He must obey his master's commands. And whereas he was born into his first slavery and probably didn't know what he was getting into with his second, he knelt at Palpatine's feet and promised to obey him in his third slavery. He signed up for that one. He likes and trusts Palpatine before he agrees to become his slave. He also looks up to him. Palpatine knows things he doesn't about the Force, Palpatine can teach him, Palpatine can help him save Padme--Palpatine knows best, is what it boils down too.

Anakin's first experience of slavery was loving, peaceful, and safe. He had a cozy home and a wonderful mother, his master was decent he had enough privacy and freedom to build a pod. He knew that bullies like Sebulba wouldn't dare harm him because his master protected him--they would have to pay. His second experience of slavery was pretty good too. Obiwan eventually became like a brother to him despite their initial friction. Materially, he was better off, even if he didn't actually own anything. He was in more danger as a Jedi, but he was also having more fun--flying more, having more adventures, seeing more planets. And he could leave the Jedi any time he chose and determine his own life, so it wasn't really slavery; he was only bound to his masters as long as he chose to be.

Despite his frustration at being ordered around and his desire to be free, Anakin has a lot of positive associations with slavery. Deep down, part of him is comfortable being a slave. It's what he knows. It's what makes him feel safe. Anakin has limited experience with making his own choices and taking the responsibility for the results, and letting a master take that responsibility from him is something he secretly desires. This desire is in constant conflict with his desire to be free, and eventually overrides it (with some help from fear, anger, and hate).

If Anakin's experiences of slavery had been horrible, he would not have had this conflict. He might have desired slavery the way he desired freedom in the actual films, as something he had never really experienced but thought sounded good, but that would not have been as evident--or as powerful--for us viewers. Anakin's slavery had to be cozy.

(And the farm had to be less cozy because a) we'd spend too much movie time crying that it got toasted if it were and b) Luke had to be tougher than Anakin and understand that freedom isn't easy.)

At least a little, anyway. I think Lucas could have slavery grimmer without sacrificing the cozy-slavery conflict for Anakin. The hovel could have been small enough to be crowded with Qui Gon, Padme, Jar Jar, and Artoo there. What if they only had one room for cooking, sleeping, and living? It could have been a very cozy room, after all. Shmi would have made sure of that. And instead of bringing up the transmitters over dinner, he could have mentioned it as the reason he couldn't cross certain streets or something--"It's out of my transmitter's range and I don't want to get blown up." (How big is the transmitter's range, anyway? The whole city plus some? Or can Watto change the settings for special events like races?) This would have allowed the viewers to feel more gut-level sympathy for Anakin instead of just intellectual over his enslavement while still letting us see how he could miss being a slave, or at least be comfortable with it.

But that's a much more minor gripe than if Lucas really had screwed up and just made Anakin's slavery cozy by accident. I can live with a minor gripe.