Member-only story
Darth Maul, Queer Icon
On seeing your honest true self in a Sith Lord
I still have a Darth Maul blanket from 1999. It’s warm, in good condition, stark in its red and black colors. Nostalgia can pervert the past. But it can also bring the present into focus in unexpected ways. Darth Maul paraphernalia lined the shelves of my childhood bedroom — books, soap, watches, toys, dolls. I was entranced by that iconography, by his fury, by what his presence implied about power and masculinity. I was drawn to his darkness when I was six.
Six is an impressionable age. For other Star Wars fans — for other boys — Darth Maul was threatening in a cool way (double-bladed lightsaber, man!) For me, he suggested something more dangerous and more intimate, like a kind of complicit nod or glance in the back of a bar. The awareness of it all was alienating, frightening, intoxicating.
He still towers in my mind. His billowing cloak. Those demonic horns. The implied perfection of his body casually evident through his layered midnight-colored tunic. What was it about seeing Darth Maul wielding his weapon that was so electrifying? That could speak to a part of myself that was not yet even fully actualized?
Darth Maul is, of course, the villain of Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace. He was a Sith Lord, the sworn enemies of the Jedi. I still remember his entrance to the final lightsaber battle of the film: cocky, confident, coquettish. His coolness is the only consensus about that much-maligned film. In essence, he unsheaths his weapon, his stance left foot forward, his posture impeccable, balancing on his back right. His lightsaber hilt, festooned with buttons as scarlet as his face tattoos, is unusually long. His starting position is taunt and perry, parallel, one blade out, glowing fiercely, a blazing crimson tide.
And then the second blade emits from the opposite end. A close-up on his face, a dive into the swirling inferno of his eyes, a growl, and he launches into an attack.
