I won't be at the premier
17/12/15 05:22
Thirty years after defeating the Galactic Empire, Han Solo and his allies face a new threat from the evil Kylo Ren and his army of Stormtroopers. That’s the story line of the new Star Wars movie that will have its US premier tomorrow. Well, it isn’t actually the premier. It is the first time that the general public will be able to get a look at the movie. There was a showing in Los Angeles on Monday, then director JJ Abrams and cast members Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisheer, Mark Hamill, Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver and Lupita Wyong’o flew from Los Angeles for a gala premier event in Leicester Square in London on Wednesday night. A procession of stromtroopers, led by Darth Vader, marched down the red carpet before the stars arrived.
The Star Wars franchise has been a part of the culture of the world, especially the English-speaking portion of the world for four decades now. Creator George Lucas has, in many different interviews, discussed how the story of Star Wars movies is essentially the Hero’s Journey, based on the extensive research of Joseph Campbell. Campbell’s world-famous classic study, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” lays out the basic morphology of a human struggle with a prevailing hero that is at the core of so many stories told by so many generations of humans. Campbell’s claim is that the structural elements of the hero’s journey are consistent throughout the world, in many different languages and cultures because it is rooted in human psychology. Expanding on the ideas of Freud and Jung, Campbell explores the meaning and structure of myth. In a sense, he claims, we all live a hero’s journey and we find meaning in our lives based on the principles of this journey.
He explores tales of physical action as well as moral decisions and actions that play around the central theme of how humans discover within themselves the power to live beyond themselves - to sacrifice for the good of others and in the sacrifice discover the true meaning of life.
I am not a big fan of movies and television. We don’t watch much of either. I don’t think I have been to a movie theatre in the last couple of years and about the only time I watch movies is when we are with our children. I know that movies are powerful communications tools and incredible artistic expressions. I also know that the process of creating a movie is so expensive that it makes the media of expression unaccessible to the majority of the world’s people. To put it simply, there is so much meaningful artistic expression in the world that a lifetime is too short to take it all in. Having only one lifetime, I’m likely to choose a book or a visit to a gallery over a movie. I don’t mean to be judgmental in my approach. I am not opposed to movies and television shows. I don’t mind that others make a big deal about them. I simply make other choices about how I use my time.
Having said that, I have watched all six of the previously-released Star Wars movies in theaters. Since I don’t watch many movies it is possible that these movies have made a deeper impact on my life than many others. I used to listen to the music from the movies many times as I drove from place to place or worked in my garage.
I’m not eager to be among the first to see the new movie. I suppose that I will go see it some time, especially if I have an opportunity to do so with a family member or close friends. You won’t, however, find me waiting in lines. Despite the conscious efforts of George Lucas and the scholarly studies of Joseph Campbell, I don’t think that all hero journey stories are the same. Campbell writes, “Whether the hero be ridiculous or sublime, Greek or barbarian, gentile or Jew, his journey varies little in essential plan. Popular tales represent the heroic action as physical; the higher religions show the deed to be moral; nevertheless, there will be found astonishingly little variation in the morphology of the adventure, the character roles involved, the victories gained.”
Campbell’s ideas explain why there are several religious leaders who see the new movie as an opportunity to teach Christian values to youth. Take the youth to the movie and discuss it. Most of them are projecting fundamentalist concepts on the movie that probably were not intended by its creators. Many of them are trying to make their notions appear to be popular in the rush of a rapidly changing culture. Members of the Rapid City Young Life group is heading out in a bus to watch the movie in Denver on the Imax screen. I’m sure that the organizers of the trip are justifying the thousands of dollars and the taking of youth away from their families during the Christmas Break as the promotion of Christian values. And perhaps some youth will be inspired by the trip.
From my point of view, however, I am mystified by the promotion of stories of physical violence and killing as ways of accomplishing good in the world. In my mind the real heroes of the human adventure are those who answered violence with nonviolence, war with peace, hatred with love. If the warrior is the classic of the hero’s journey as Campbell claims, then there is another journey. The journeys of Mahatma Ghandi, of Martin Luther King, Jr., of Nelson Mandella and Desmond Tutu intrigue me more than the stories of those who succeed in war.
I don’t expect to ever have the audience or the impact of those who make the movies and are the topic of headlines around the world. I don’t aspire to their level of fame or fortune. I am, rather, a disciple of a different kind of hero: a baby born in humble surroundings who never took up a weapon and never fought a battle; a man who listened to those with deep need and offered healing; a man of great personal power who humbly submitted to the civil authorities even when they threatened to kill him, a human who embodies God’s love not only to those who met him in his lifetime, but to those of us born millennia later; a man who suffered and died and showed us that death is not the end.
It is, I am convinced, a story that will continue to be told long after the furor of the movies has died down and the writings of Campbell have been forgotten. And it is a story that continues to change the lives of all who hear it.
When I hear or tell that story it is not the same as all of the other stories.
The Star Wars franchise has been a part of the culture of the world, especially the English-speaking portion of the world for four decades now. Creator George Lucas has, in many different interviews, discussed how the story of Star Wars movies is essentially the Hero’s Journey, based on the extensive research of Joseph Campbell. Campbell’s world-famous classic study, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” lays out the basic morphology of a human struggle with a prevailing hero that is at the core of so many stories told by so many generations of humans. Campbell’s claim is that the structural elements of the hero’s journey are consistent throughout the world, in many different languages and cultures because it is rooted in human psychology. Expanding on the ideas of Freud and Jung, Campbell explores the meaning and structure of myth. In a sense, he claims, we all live a hero’s journey and we find meaning in our lives based on the principles of this journey.
He explores tales of physical action as well as moral decisions and actions that play around the central theme of how humans discover within themselves the power to live beyond themselves - to sacrifice for the good of others and in the sacrifice discover the true meaning of life.
I am not a big fan of movies and television. We don’t watch much of either. I don’t think I have been to a movie theatre in the last couple of years and about the only time I watch movies is when we are with our children. I know that movies are powerful communications tools and incredible artistic expressions. I also know that the process of creating a movie is so expensive that it makes the media of expression unaccessible to the majority of the world’s people. To put it simply, there is so much meaningful artistic expression in the world that a lifetime is too short to take it all in. Having only one lifetime, I’m likely to choose a book or a visit to a gallery over a movie. I don’t mean to be judgmental in my approach. I am not opposed to movies and television shows. I don’t mind that others make a big deal about them. I simply make other choices about how I use my time.
Having said that, I have watched all six of the previously-released Star Wars movies in theaters. Since I don’t watch many movies it is possible that these movies have made a deeper impact on my life than many others. I used to listen to the music from the movies many times as I drove from place to place or worked in my garage.
I’m not eager to be among the first to see the new movie. I suppose that I will go see it some time, especially if I have an opportunity to do so with a family member or close friends. You won’t, however, find me waiting in lines. Despite the conscious efforts of George Lucas and the scholarly studies of Joseph Campbell, I don’t think that all hero journey stories are the same. Campbell writes, “Whether the hero be ridiculous or sublime, Greek or barbarian, gentile or Jew, his journey varies little in essential plan. Popular tales represent the heroic action as physical; the higher religions show the deed to be moral; nevertheless, there will be found astonishingly little variation in the morphology of the adventure, the character roles involved, the victories gained.”
Campbell’s ideas explain why there are several religious leaders who see the new movie as an opportunity to teach Christian values to youth. Take the youth to the movie and discuss it. Most of them are projecting fundamentalist concepts on the movie that probably were not intended by its creators. Many of them are trying to make their notions appear to be popular in the rush of a rapidly changing culture. Members of the Rapid City Young Life group is heading out in a bus to watch the movie in Denver on the Imax screen. I’m sure that the organizers of the trip are justifying the thousands of dollars and the taking of youth away from their families during the Christmas Break as the promotion of Christian values. And perhaps some youth will be inspired by the trip.
From my point of view, however, I am mystified by the promotion of stories of physical violence and killing as ways of accomplishing good in the world. In my mind the real heroes of the human adventure are those who answered violence with nonviolence, war with peace, hatred with love. If the warrior is the classic of the hero’s journey as Campbell claims, then there is another journey. The journeys of Mahatma Ghandi, of Martin Luther King, Jr., of Nelson Mandella and Desmond Tutu intrigue me more than the stories of those who succeed in war.
I don’t expect to ever have the audience or the impact of those who make the movies and are the topic of headlines around the world. I don’t aspire to their level of fame or fortune. I am, rather, a disciple of a different kind of hero: a baby born in humble surroundings who never took up a weapon and never fought a battle; a man who listened to those with deep need and offered healing; a man of great personal power who humbly submitted to the civil authorities even when they threatened to kill him, a human who embodies God’s love not only to those who met him in his lifetime, but to those of us born millennia later; a man who suffered and died and showed us that death is not the end.
It is, I am convinced, a story that will continue to be told long after the furor of the movies has died down and the writings of Campbell have been forgotten. And it is a story that continues to change the lives of all who hear it.
When I hear or tell that story it is not the same as all of the other stories.