Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 12:47:55 -0800 (PST)
Subject: AUT: Star Wars and Archetypes



--- commie00 <commie00-AT-yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> star wars!?!
> 
> i don't know about this... as weird as it may sound
> to some here, nearly all
> of the radicals and revolutionaries i am close to
> (and who grew up post-star
> wars) were first radicalized by star wars.

No, I dont think that is weird and, anyway, no one can
doubt Star Wars as a source of inspiration for you and
other people, if that was your "reading" (or in this
case "viewing") of it.

I also dont doubt that George Lucas sees himself as a
Left Democrat.

That said, I am going to go off on a tangent here and
bring up an aspect of the movie that might very well
go unnoticed.  Lucas has admitted his debt to the
jungian mythologist, Joseph Campbell, in particular
Campbell's "Hero With a Thousdand Faces",which he
claims inspired "Star Wars".  In fact we can identify
several jungian archetypes in the movie, Darth Vader
(shadow), Princess Lea (the anima), etc.  Now the
reactionary aspect of all of this is that it sees
human life asort of as an epiphemomenon of these
cosmic, transcendental forces inherent in our psyche
and by extension in the world.  A life is just an
instance of the perennial dance of these archetypes.  

This view of the world diminishes to some extent the
realm of human freedom.  As part and partial of
that,it also can lead to a sort of passive acceptance
towards what is wrong in the world: since evil in the
world is a result of humanity's failure to integrate
its dark side, the best thing we could do to make the
world a better place would be to put ourselves in
jungian therapy.  That's how the thinking goes, only
it would be interesting to ask a Jungian what the
chances would be of everyone doing that, since such a
thing falls outside of financial possibilities of 99
percent of humanity. Anyway, this response to life is
sort of a modern reworking of the Book of Job.

Anyway, I think it is important to bring up this
aspect of Star Wars which appeared on the scene about
the time the "New Age" scene was starting to spawn. 
The New Age crowd is very aware of this aspect of the
movie.  Anyway, this touting of transcendentalism is
what I find most reactionary in the movie.

Thomas

===="The tradition of all the dead generations
 weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living"

-Karl Marx

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