Discussion Joseph Campbell, The Monomyth and the ST

In that actual chapter of the book, it's really got nothing to do with male/female at all.

It's about recognizing both "good" and "bad" in the creator, realizing the creator is also a destroyer, but loving it anyways because you're one of the few who understand it. The unworthy person who tried to approach this being (called the "goddess" in the book) would instead be consumed or worse. Think of the Nazis when they found the Ark of the Covenant, or the Soviet lady played by Cate Blanchett when she found the aliens and asked for knowledge. Only the worthy is capable of encountering the "goddess" and coming out intact, but will still be forever changed.

In the OT, Vader was essentially this figure. Luke was able to recognize Vader had both good and bad, realized he's a creator and a destroyer of the galaxy as it is, but loved Vader anyways because he was one of the few in the position of understanding him (when he stopped striking Vader, looked at his hand, and threw away his lightsaber). All who encountered Vader before were unworthy of doing this, of being in the position to understand and love him. And then Vader fulfilled his role, and destroyed the Emperor he helped create, while saving Luke and allowing the re-creation of the Jedi, again forever transforming the galaxy.

 

Even though the Hero's Journey was drawn upon for A New Hope, Campbell's theories are not an end-all be-all formula for how Star Wars is going to play out. Monomythology is more of an extremely vague roadmap to which stories are compared after the fact. And Star Wars is a work of art, meaning implicitly that not even its creators will truly know what it will look like until it is finished. The Hero's Journey/Monomyth tends to be overrated, while George Lucas' pre-vision of Star Wars is frequently overestimated.

See my signature. What it's really trying to say is that creating a myth is harder than it looks, can't be all things to all people, and will evolve drastically over the course of creation. All myths probably have these things in common more than Campbell's theories!

 

Don't you mean underestimated?

Anyways, creating a fictional universe and being influenced by the Hero's Journey are very much two different things. The former is process of creating a story's setting, as well as the inner mechanics of society and reality in that setting. This also can include creating the back-stories and personality traits of the story's characters. The Hero's Journey is one of several common plot structures and the meanings behind key events in such stories.

The plot of Star Wars, or at least the Skywalker Saga, is very much influenced by Campbell and the Hero's Journey. This is by no means a slight against George Lucas, nor does it take anything away from the incredible universe he envisioned that this particular journey is set in. Aside from what Tolkien did with his creation of Middle-Earth (which is simply inhuman in specific details compared to any other storyteller I've ever come across), Lucas' creation of the Star Wars mythos is one of the most vast and detailed settings in a fictional story out there.

 

By extension, I think it would be a brilliant move to see the Big Bad recognize and capitalize on the new hero's feelings towards their inherited legacy in their initial confrontation(s). Darth Vader's revelation to Luke of his true status as his father, alongside his comments about Obi-Wan and how Luke was not yet a Jedi, were similar in this regard by turning Luke's idols and goals against him in their first true confrontation with one another in The Empire Strikes Back.

 

I meant overestimated because many of the central elements of the saga were created the by the seat of his pants - for example Vader wasn't even supposed to be Luke's father until the making of Empire Strikes Back, and Star Wars wasn't 'Anakin Skywalker's saga' until the prequels defined it as such.

The term mythopoeia refers to the independent invention of myth, IE, creating a non-extant fictional setting and its rules. Tolkien and CS Lewis were really the first to do it in Rings and Narnia, but now it's everywhere, especially Star Wars. Mythopoeia is what links world-building and monomyth theory together almost inextricably, because if a creator is inventing a new world, it is inevitably a metaphor for this world, making the invented world a myth by definition, and thus subject to mythology. The world-building is secondary to and frequently dependent upon the primary narrative, which in A New Hope's case, was The Hero's Journey. I think that by the later episodes, GL learned to follow his storytelling instinct rather than to constantly refer back to Campbell. But because Star Wars is a myth both by nature and by invention, the whole saga is mythically resonant, with or without consideration for The Hero's Journey or any mythologic theory. There's a difference between myth and mythology. To put it simply, Myth is being enthralled by the story in progress, and mythology is talking about it afterward. Myth begets Mythology.

I don't know if this responds to you effectively, but these are things I learned firsthand from creating my own fictional universe.

 

Meet Cade Skywalker, Luke's great-great-grandson who was born about 120 years after the battle of endor:

 

It just goes to show how hard it will be for the ST to come up with heroes and villains and themes and plots that haven't already been covered by the EU...

 

I always wondered how Cade stole Vader's pants. Were they just hanging out in the basement on Couscant or something.

 

I don't like it.

 

That's been a risk since the beginning; if it should happen, whether we accept it or reject it will depend entirely upon execution; in other words, if it's done well, it's forgiveable; if it's not, it isn't.

 

One thing that really bothers me about those Stormtroopers is that they haven't changed from the time of the films. I really think the next films should evolve from the technology of the OT and the PT.