ST Jung, Bly and all that jazz - literary/psychological influences on the ST

Pablo's comments make think "jedi grey" will not become canon.

 

"By the resolving of grey, through refined Jedi sight"

What does that sentence mean?

Reworded with the definitions of resolving and refined.
By the (straightening out or fixing) of grey, through (removal of impurities) Jedi sight.

 

This line reminds me a lot of the old Lucas quote ( 1983 ) about the planned theme of a sequel trilogy:

"The third [trilogy will] deal with moral and philosophical problems. In Star Wars, there is a very clear line drawn between good and evil. Eventually you have to face the fact that good and evil aren't that clear-cut and the real issue is trying to understand the difference. The sequel is about Jedi knighthood, justice, confrontation, and passing on what you have learned."

 

I was told this is the thread where I can talk about bob fosse

 

It certainly is.

 

My take is based on the scientific applied definition of resolution, taking something blurry and then resolving it. With better resolution telescopes can see greater detail or see multiple things close together where before there appeared to be one. Grey is the blurring of black and white together. With greater wisdom/refined sight one can know which is the light path and which one is the dark.

 

I think Star Wars is somewhat frustrating for Jungians. At least it is for me. Years ago I read a fair amount about Jungian theory and practice, and participated in a form of Jungian PA.

A central Jungian belief is that "there's gold in the shadow". The shadow, or the dark part of the personality, doesn't contain just those parts that we consider negative, or even evil. The shadow is the place where anything that isn't valued by the ego tends to go. This can often mean there are (objectively) positive aspects of the personality embedded in the shadow -- they are just repressed potential. The Jungian process of individuation is all about digging that gold out, and integrating the shadow into the personality. The negative/evil parts have to be acknowledged and lived out in some way (often thru art or some other creative/symbolic expression) and the ego has to establish a new relationship to the positive parts -- and they have to be lived out, too.

OTOH, a central theme of Star Wars is the duality of light & dark, symbolized by the Jedi & Sith. In Star Wars, the light and the dark are always in conflict. To a Jungian, Star Wars metaphysics seems pretty neurotic.

Star Wars sometimes seems to flirt with this integration (Bendu, the talk of "gray" Jedi, the Mortis arc in TCW, to some degree), but it never really quite gets there. That's not to say there aren't plenty of mythological concepts and symbols, which Jungians love and are plenty ripe for analysis, but overall I think the saga as it stands right now is pretty muddled. I think it's actually a better symbolic expression of Lucas' own father complex than it is anything else at this point. Seriously.

Maybe Episode VIII will begin to swing that around. I hope so.

 

Yes, I agree with that Xinau, and my hope is that moving beyond the strict binary could give us something a little different that feels both consistent with what's come before but also a progression. Also, interesting about the father complex comment. If GL's ideas are still in there, and George is Luke, maybe Rey is an orphan he takes under his wing (I know people get overly literal about the word adopted) the way Lucas adopted his kids.

 

This a very interesting question, and I would even say that, for me at least, deconstructing this false dichotomy is actually an important ethical move for the Story Group. It's something I'll be evaluating them on.

One thing we have to consider is that these people in the SG have been educated in contemporary theory from the last 30--40 years. This means they are likely to understand Derrida and poststructuralism's deconstruction of rigid binary oppositions. Most contemporary artists understand that oppositions are arbitrarily set up by whoever is in power, and there's nothing necessary, much less metaphysical, about them at all. In fact, the physical world is more complex than this, following a non-hierarchical, Deluzian logic, also known as rhizomatic logic.

Get ready for this. A rhizome is

What does this mean? The horizontal movement of the roots defies a vertical, hierarchical organization.

For Deleuze this suggests an alternative model to binary thought. It is what he

So since contemporary artistic and intellectual thought is thoroughly Deleuzian and Derridean, I'm hoping that they don't bow to the pressure of the general public and ignore what they likely understand and agree with -- that life is not as simple as black and white, and moreover that that sort of thought is actually dangerous and unethical -- and that they create a more ethically complex and just universe in SW, a franchise that influences the way millions of people think.

That's what good storytelling should do beyond entertaining people. It should help them to perceive the world more robustly.

EDIT:

Interesting that Deleuze actually distinguishes the rhizome as a model of thought and reality from tree-based models, which he views as binary:

 

I don't think we need to worry about a strict term like "grey Jedi" becoming canon. The point is it seems increasingly likely that reconciling the light and the dark, as opposed to the binary repression / rejection/ destruction of both, is going to play a key part in the ST. If anything, the Bendu would be the new canon philosophy that already espouses that. Maybe we will see that at one point the order were the Jedi Bendu (obviously George's original term), and some kind of further schism occurred around the rise of the Sith.

 

"Ah, now don't misunderstand me," said the Captain, "we're just one of the ships in the Ark Fleet. We're the 'B' Ark you see. Sorry, could I just ask you to run a bit more hot water for me?"

 

There's an interview with Freddie Prinze Jr. on YouTube with a podcaster where he hints a little bit about what lessons the Bendu has in store for the Rebels characters. Paraphrasing, it's something like, "There's no light side and dark side to the Force. The Force is The Force. It is light or dark because of what you bring to it."

That made me think maybe we're getting somewhere.

Link to the FP Jr. interview:



The stuff about Bendu, etc. is in the first 2 or 3 minutes.

 

Going back to the plants / trees / forests / nature symbolism, mythologically, trees symbolise knowledge, and Jung suggested that the tree represented the collective unconcious, the well from which knowledge of the self could be drawn.


"In the Neolithic and Bronze ages the world tree was one where the symbolism was interpreted as a nexus, the world axis, where pairs of opposites come together (Campbell 105). In this interpretation the tree was a universal whole: male and female, dark and light, knowledge and mystery, etc."

http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/a/archetypal_symbolism_of_trees_the.html


Jung:

" It is the tree that nourishes all the stars and planets; and it is the tree out of which come the first parents, the primordial parents of humanity, and in which the last couple, also representing the whole of humanity, are buried.

That of course means that consciousness comes from the tree and dissolves into the tree again-the consciousness of human life.

And that surely points to the collective unconscious and to a collectivum. "

"No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell."


In ESB, the 'cave of evil' sits beneath a huge gnarl tree, described by the soundtrack as 'The Magic Tree'. Upon entering the cave, Luke is faced with his first confrontation with his dark side, and the truth of his origins.

If the tree in ESB symbolises knowledge, what is the cave? I think it symbolises the 'Descent into the Shadow', Jung's process of self discovery. The cave is actually a man made structure, perhaps a temple of some sort, so it's placement is seems deliberate, and a place of darkness beneath a Force tree could have been part of a Jedi process of knowing the dark side within themselves, in some earlier time. It's not something that the Jedi of the PT era do, though.

There was a similar idea in one of the unaired TCW scripts, wherein it was revealed that a Sith shrine had sat buried beneath the Jedi temple on Coruscant for 1000's of years. The Jedi had remained completely oblivious to this ( or had forgotten ) and so, over time, the dark side within the shrine had spread upwards into the Jedi temple.

I'd be interested to find out if there's a similar structure beneath the tree on Ahch-To.

 

So many great posts, guys!

Xinau

The italic reminds me of Luke and Yoda exchange in ESB:

"What's in there?"
"Only what you take with you."

Assuming that there's a cave of or our precious giant tree serves as the trial on Ahch-to, it would be interesting to see what Rey and Kylo bring to it because they are a light one and a dark one. But we saw that Luke, decidedly a light side guy, acted rather dark in the Dark Side Cave. So perhaps the Bendu gets unexpected results from those 2 characters.

 

Wasn't there a hatch cut into the Tree in those set pics? I'm not saying that's how they get into the tree. I'm wondering if that was access for crew of some sort because on the other side of it, the set does go down under the tree a bit.

 

Satipo Great catch! There's something on the right. Stairs lead to it.

Plus, the tree is so huge you just know they'll go inside for some Jungian goodness.

 

Do the stairs even go beyond it, or are they leading to the tree?

Actually, this is a very weird thought and probably won't play out at all - but we know Yoda is in 8 somehow. That looks exactly like the kind of hut he would live in. Can you imagine if this was the first temple Yoda studied at, and that's how Luke knew where to go?

 

Ah, yeah, good point. I think there did appear to be a hatch of some sort? As you say, this might be to provide access for filming below the tree.

 

it seems that the stairs don't go beyond the tree, at least on this set. So assuming they lead to the tree, the hatch for crew could be the official entrance for our characters as well. Cause when you look at the first, bigger image, you can see the outline of the opening. So it looks to me that's an actual design that won't be covered in post production. There's supposed to be an opening that leads inside and likely into some big chamber under the tree/in the roots of the tree.

Also, agreed it's a perfect place to meet Yoda again. Rumors of a puppet kind of go against Force Ghost which would be CGI. But perhaps this is the place where the dead appear like when they were alive which leads to many possibilities for many uncredited cameos if you know what I mean. Especially if it's a place of a Jungian trial.

 

If you've read the Art of TFA book, you'll have seen a series of three concept paintings of Luke transforming into some shadowy creature. I can't post these on my phone, but here are the links.

http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/8bb42375047ce496fe19bc7a092dae9d-650-80.jpg

https://41.media.tumblr.com/ba76c50c228e5932d46dab692b00d7e6/tumblr_o23t0eMPDe1v3jt3zo3_1280.jpg

https://40.media.tumblr.com/28a0e719bbd515853418ff0420115223/tumblr_o23t0eMPDe1v3jt3zo2_1280.jpg

So what's going on here? Well, I think this could have been a visual exploration of Luke's shadow, much as we saw in the cave on Dagobah. Jung said that the struggle with the shadow continued throughout a persons life, and the shadow in middle age ( or old age ), took on a different aspect to that seen in youth.

If we think of Luke as now occupying the Yoda / Obi-Wan role, Jung's 'Wise Old Man', that archetype has a shadow, embodying it's negative aspects.

Where the Wise Old Man is a wise, fatherly, benevolent guiding figure, the Senex, it's shadow archetype is severe, authoritarian, dogmatic.

It strikes me that as patriarch of the Jedi, it's this Senex persona that Luke must resist becoming, but I also believe that Snoke represents this dark aspect of the Wise Old Man. As such, Snoke, not Vader, represents Luke's shadow now.

"The wise old man (also called senex, sage or sophos) is an archetype as described by Carl Jung, as well as a classic literary figure, and may be seen as a stock character. The wise old man can be a profound philosopher distinguished for wisdom and sound judgment."

"This type of character is typically represented as a kind and wise, older father-type figure who uses personal knowledge of people and the world to help tell stories and offer guidance that, in a mystical way, may impress upon his audience a sense of who they are and who they might become, thereby acting as a mentor. He may occasionally appear as an absent-minded professor, appearing absent-minded due to a predilection for contemplative pursuits."

"The wise old man is often seen to be in some way "foreign", that is, from a different culture, nation, or occasionally, even a different time, from those he advises. In extreme cases, he may be a liminal being, such as Merlin, who was only half human."

"In medieval chivalric romance and modern fantasy literature, he is often presented as a wizard. He can also or instead be featured as a hermit. This character type often explained to the knights or heroes—particularly those searching for the Holy Grail—the significance of their encounters."

"In storytelling, the character of the wise old man is commonly killed or in some other way removed for a time, in order to allow the hero to develop on his/her own."


"In Jungian analytical psychology, senex is the specific term used in association with this archetype. In Ancient Rome, the title of Senex (Latin for old man) was only awarded to elderly men with families who had good standing in their village. Examples of the senex archetype in a positive form include the wise old man or wizard. The senex may also appear in a negative form as a devouring father (e.g. Uranus, Cronus) or a doddering fool."

"The senex is an archetype that shadows the good father that I consciously aspire to be when I try to help people. Senex is the Latin word for “old man” and the root word for “senator,” and it takes on the quality of everything that has stood the test of time and now resists change. (The mythological image is the Roman god Saturn, with his sickle, who has become less an archetypal image of the harvest and taken on a more deadly aspect as the archenemy of the processes of youth, growth and development.) Thinking is senex when it is dogmatic and no longer heedful of the need in life for fresh starts and new developments. Then one insists with a client on the tried and true, and argues against any move to change the status quo. This is not the way I parent, but it is the way I sometimes stultify."

http://www.jungpoland.org/pl/zbior-tekstow/john-beebe-arms-and-their-shadow.html

"The "parent" splits off a "critical" version of itself interpreting situations through the auxiliary function in the opposite orientation. Beebe matched this to Jung's "witch" and "senex" (old man) archetypes (for females and males, respectively). Its good side is that it can provide profound wisdom. (A more accurate female archetype might be "The Crone", which carries the intended "formerly respected, now negated" sense like the Senex, but without the "magical" connotation of the "Witch", which is not really what the archetype is about)."

"In fact, in classic Jungian theory, the Senex was the shadow of the Puer, rather than the Good Parent."

http://www.erictb.info/archetypes.html

"In the positive realm, senex is the wise old man, often presented in the guise of a wizard or magician. Examples include Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda from Star Wars and Gandalf from Lord of the Rings. Constructive qualities of senex are wisdom, discipline, dedication, responsibility, courage and reason. Thus, we also see the positive senex as holy man, shaman, benevolent ruler or judge."

"In the negative form, senex is the devouring father or the floundering fool. The dark and underdeveloped side of senex is shown by feelings of sterility, bitterness, brutality, coldness and heartlessness. Examples are the tyrant, ogre, hermit, outcast and any power-hungry position."

"Jung advised, “We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.”

"This shift involves a surrendering of ego-driven externally based youthful ideology in service of truth and authenticity in how we choose to live our life. Ideally, it is during mid-life where one turns inward for answers. We begin to reclaim parts of our self that were once sacrificed to these past beliefs, creating increased hope, energy and creativity."

http://www.corecounselling.ca/individuation-2/mid-life-beyond-senex-crone/

 

I don't get it--are you suggesting the crew would go inside the tree to actually film in an underground cavern or something? Because that wouldn't be done on location.

 

I think that Satipo meant that the ground at the other side of the tree was at a lower level. So I'm not sure, but there could be access for filming someone descending into the tree?

 

That's very much how it struck me, too. I personally like that view of the Force a lot. It reminds me of that great Gandhi line about how the only devils are the ones that live in human hearts.

Kind of on that same subject...

I've been thinking a little about the different ways the Force seems to be understood by different characters in the GFFA (e.g., Chirrut says something like "All is as the Force wills it"). They don't seem (to me) to paint a consistent picture and I wonder if this is maybe intentional. People in the Caribbean islands practice a different form of Christianity than the Russian Orthodox, for example.

Maybe the sect to which Chirrut belongs perceives the Force as something more like a deity, acting intentionally or willfully. Personally, that isn't a metaphysics that resonates with me, but maybe in the GFFA there are "Force-worshippers" who see it that way.

 

I know it's maybe not popular, but I kind of wish they had done more with a fallen Luke. It would've humanized the character and maybe given him a second redemption arc to travel in the ST, much as you've spelled out. It looks like they kinda chickened out, though -- we'll see. Personally, I thought the initial rumors about the missing Luke having gone into seclusion, fallen to the dark side, perhaps gone mad, were really, REALLY cool.

My only hope is that the Ep. VIII script, and the saga generally, unfolds in a way that's worthy of your depth of thought & analysis!