White armor, closed helmets, dark viewing windows that do not allow you to see inside. Only sometimes different colors, different designs or small “decorations”. Stormtroopers and clone troopers are powerful soldiers and important tools in the galactic wars of the Star Wars world. But they are also anonymous. Who is under the armor is not visible from the outside. Certain features of the armor allow at most conclusions that it is a commander or a special unit.
The Stormtroopers are a blatant example of individuality suppression in the Star Wars universe. When we talked about that, Theresa remarked that surely this also applied to the clone troopers, who are, after all, clones in addition to having the same armor, and thus the same DNA. An accurate comment, but I think there is a difference between the stormtroopers and the clone warriors that I will outline below.
The main difference between stormtroopers and clone troopers, in a sense, is the direction of movement in terms of identity and individuality. While the clone warriors evolve from an identity-less life as a clone to individuality, the stormtroopers shed that individuality.
Clone troopers have the same DNA. They have the same facial features, the same voice, and the same body. They are hard to tell apart even without their armor. They undergo uniform training, which differentiates a little according to their later areas of deployment, but does not make the individual clones stand out from the mass of their siblings. This only happens in the field. Facing death and under the guidance of the Jedi, the clone troopers begin to develop an identity of their own. To some degree, they take on the personalities of the Jedi to whom they are subordinate, in some cases building a certain bond with them and giving each other nicknames. Unlike the plain numbers that actually identify them, these call names testify to individuality and also an identity of their own. According to Jedipedia, over 80 clone troopers are known by name, such as Cody, Rex, Gree, Blackout, Edge, Matchstick, Slick, Tag.
No clone uses a number, not anymore.
Fives in Conspiracy (The Clone Wars S06E02)
With the stormtroopers, at least after the original clone troopers have been replaced in their ranks, it’s the other way around. They have their own identity and are individual beings. They shed both when they enter the service of the Empire and attend one of the Imperial academies to be trained as an elite soldier. They give up their name and with it most of their identity and are henceforth addressed only by a number. Only on very rare occasions do you see a stormtrooper without their helmet hiding their face. These rare moments show that they are individual beings after all. But by and large, this identity is suppressed and denied, as a perfect sign of the imperial order in the galaxy. This order does not allow for dissenters. It standardizes everything to suppress conflict and keep the peace.
Identity and individuality are important themes in the world of Star Wars. That the Empire represents the evil side is in large part because freedom and individuality are suppressed. The stormtroopers are the perfect symbol of this absolute integration into the system, which represents a clockwork mechanism that is supposed to guarantee security and peace, but turns the individual into a tiny and uniform cog that can be replaced at will without endangering the greater whole. The clone warriors, however, stand for the opposite. They stand for a liberation, a hope for a new order that does not suppress freedom but promotes it and still offers security and peace. But this possibility is not seen by the Emperor, the great string-puller, because for him freedom means anarchy and violence and only uniformity can bring true order and peace.