From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Sun Mar 10 2002 - 03:01:02 MST
Richard Steven Hack:
>Look at Star Wars - the whole current trilogy replicates the concept
>on the big screen - somebody starts out okay, but after the world
>gets through with them - they end up Darth Vader - only to save the
>day at the end (of the first trilogy, when Vader defeats the Emperor
>to save his son). And I am convinced that it is Doom that served as
>Lucas' model for Vader somewhere in his subconscious...
I don't know what was in Lucas' subconscious mind when he wrote
_Star Wars_, but consciously Lucas was strongly influenced by mythic
symbols. (Also, Joseph Campbell was George Lucas' good friend)
Amara
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(from _The Power of Myth_ by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers, 1988)
Campbell: The fact that the evil power is not identified with any
specific nation on this earth means that you've got an abstract
power, which represents a principle, not a specific historical
situation. The story has to do with an operation of principles, not
of this nation against that. The monster masks that are put on
people in Star Wars represent the real monster force in the modern
world. When the mask of Darth Vader is removed, you see an unformed
man, one who has not developed as a human individual. What you see
is a strange and pitiful sort of undifferentiated face.
Moyers: What's the significance of that?
Campbell: Darth Vader has not developed his own humanity. He's a
robot. He's a bureaucrat, living not in terms of himself, but in
terms of an imposed system. This is the threat to our lives that we
all face today. Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you
your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system
ot the attainment of human purposes? How do you relate to the
system so that you are not compulsively serving it? It doesn't help
to try to change it to accord with your system of thought. The
momentum of history behind it is too great for anything really
significant to evolve from that kind of actions. The thing
to do is to live as a human being. That's something else
and it can be done.
Moyers: By doing what?
Campbell: By holding to your own ideals for yourself and, like Luke
Skywalker, rejecting the system's impersonal claims upon you.
Well you see, the movie communicates. It is in a language that talks
to young people, that's what counts. It asks, Are you going to be a
person of heart and humanity -- because that's where the life is,
from the heart -- or are you going to do whatever seems to be
required of you by what might be called "intentional power"? When
Ben Kenobi says, "May the Force be with you," he's speaking of the
power and energy of life, not of programmed political intentions.
Moyers: I was intrigued by the definition of the Force. Ben Kenobi
says, "The Force is an energy field created by all living things.
It surrounds us, it penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together."
And I've read in _The Hero with a Thousand Faces_ similar
descriptions of the world navel.
Campbell: Yes, of course, the Force moves from within. But the force
of the Empire is based on an intention to overcome and master. Star
Wars is not a simple morality play, it has to do with the powers
of life as they are either fulfilled or broken and suppressed through
the action of man.
Moyers: The first time I saw Star Wars I thought, "This is a very old
story in a very new costume." The story of the young man called to
adventure, the hero going out facing the trials and ordeals, and
coming back after his victory with a boon for the community --
Campbell: Certainly Lucas was using standard mythological figures.
The old man as the advisor made me think of a Japanese sword master.
I've known some of those people, and Ben Kenobi has a bit of their
character.
Moyers: My favorite scene was when they were in the garbage
compactor and the walls were closing in,and I thought, "That's like
the belly of the whale that swaallowed Jonah."
Campbell: That's where they were, down in the belly of the whale.
Moyers: What's the mythological signifance of the belly?
Campbell: The belly is the dark place where digestion takes place
and new energy is created. The story of Jonah in the whale is an
example of a mythic theme that is practically universal, of the hero
going into a fish's belly and ultimately coming out again,
transformed.
Moyers: Why must the hero do that?
Campbell: It's the descent into the dark. Psychologically, the whale
represents the power of life locked in the unconscious.
Metaphorically, water is the unconscious, which has overwhelmed the
conscious personality and must be disempowered, overcome and
controlled.
In the first stage of this kind of adventure, the hero leaves the
realm of the familiar, over which he has some measure of control,
and comes to a threshold, let us say the edge of a lake or sea,
where a monster of the abyss comes to meet him. There then two
possibilities. In a story of the Jonah type, the hero is swallowed
and taken into the abyss to be later resurrected -- a variant of the
death-and-resurrections theme. The conscious personality here has
come in touch with a charge of unconscious energy which it is unable
to handle and must now suffer all the trials and revelations of a
terrifying night-sea journey, while learning how to come to terms
with this power of the dark and emerge, at last, to a new way of
life.
The other possibility is that the hero, on encountering the power of
the dark, may overcome and kill it, as did Siegfried and St. George
when they killed the dragon. But as Siegfried learned, he must then
taste the dragon blood, in order to take to himself something of
that dragon power. When Siegfried has killed the dragon and tasted
the blood, he hears the song of nature. He has transcended his
humanity and reassociated himself with the powers of nature, which
are the powers of our life, and from which our minds remove us.
You see, consciousness thinks it's running the shop. But it's a
secondary organ of a total human being, and it must not put itself
in control. It must submit and serve the humanity of the body. When
it does put itself in control, you get a man like Darth Vader in
Star Wars, the man who goes over to the consciously intentional
side.
Moyers: The dark figure.
Campbell: Yes, that's the figure that, in Goethe's Faust, is
represented by Mephistopheles.
Moyers: But I can hear someone saying, "Well, that's all well and
good for the imagination of a George Lucas or for the scholarship of
a Joseph Campbell, but that isn't what happens in my life."
Campbell: You bet it is -- and if he doesn't recognize it, it may
turn him into Darth Vader. If the person insists on a certain
program, and doesn't listen to the demands of his own heart, he's
going to risk a crackup. Such a person has put himself off center.
He has aligned himself with a program for life, and it's not the
one the body's interested in at all. The world is full of people who
have stopped listening to themselves or have listened only to their
neighbors to learn what they ought to do, how thdy ought to behave,
and what the values are that they should be living for.
[...]
I would say, a more *inward* cause. "Higher" is just up there, and
there is no "up there." We know that. That old man up there has been
blown away. You've got to find Force inside you. This is why
Oriental gurus are so convincing to young people today. They say,
"It is in you. Go and find it."
[...]
Myths inspire the realization of the possibility of your perfection,
the fullness of your strength, and the bringing of solar light into
the world. Slaying monsters is slaying the dark things. Myths grab
you somewhere down inside. As a boy, you go at it one way, as I did
reading my Indian stories. Later on, myths tell you more, and more,
and still more. I think that anyone who has ever dealt seriously
with religious or mythic ideas will tell you that we learn them as a
child on one level, but then many different levels are revealed.
Myths are infinite in their revelation.
Moyers: How do I slay that dragon in me? What's the journey each of
us has to make, what you call "the soul's high adventure"?
Campbell: My general formula for my students is "Follow your bliss."
Find where it is, and don't be afraid to follow it.
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-- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." --Anais Nin
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