The original Star wars trilogy is an aspirational
myth. By exploring the imagined future it kindles
belief and an excitement in the possibility of such a
technologically and spiritually advanced 'world'. 

The technological advancements are obvious and
numerous; the spiritual advancements consist entirely
in the concept of 'the force' and its phenomenal
reality.

 A mythic analysis of star wars:

leitmotif:
the hero's journey from spiritual naivety to spiritual
maturity

key tension:
dark side of force v light side of force
dark: aggression, fear, hate, power
light: defence, wisdom, harmony, surrender

this light/dark dynamic does not constitute a simple
dichotomy as the two are constantly interacting in the
evolution of most individuals in the film. Absolute
light and dark may be seen in yoda and the emperor
respectively. These are the polar characters: god and
devil.

the emperor is power incarnate. He is the
manifestation of the power principle in its
apotheosis. Ie total control/dominance. Or, more
mildly, Order.

Yoda is an honourable Jedi warrior. He is an egoless
vessel of the force in its ultimate aspect. The jedi,
of whom he is the last living representative, are a
spiritual elite who help maintain harmony in the
galaxy. Rather than seek to control the people they
seek to harmonise human affairs with the cosmic order.
The cosmic order being an essentially implicate order,
as opposed to the explicate and   repressive order of
the Empire. 

The empire is in the ascendency at the commencement of
the film. The hero is immature, adolescent - an
obedient, if slightly surly, adopted son. He is
catapulted into adventure rather than choosing it. It
is Ben kenobi and the death of his surrogate parents
that thrust luke into  the adventure.

Going beneath the surface we find strong mythic
connotations here:
the initial dynamic is one of external control. The
hero is not free, he is not his own man and doubly so:
 He is the charge and vassal of his uncle and his
uncle is a vassal of the empire. 

Events thrust Luke into adventure,  a  journey of
self-discovery,  of initiation. Luke is ready for the
adventure though, and this is established and key. The
inference is that adventure comes unbidden, but only
when the initiate is ready. This complementarity
illustrates the  general  relationship  (ususally
taken as paradoxical)  between free-will and destiny,
a universal mythic theme.

The threshold of adventure is gained at a spaceport
bar in Mos Eisley. Here Luke has his first flirt with
death, averted by the intervention of ben kenobi.  The
seriousness of the the adventure is established here -
it is life and death, but it is countered by the
strangeness and levity of the barroom clientele and
their interactions. The bar represents the hair's
breadth between life and death and the humour of this.
Again we have another ostensibly paradoxical pairing:
life/death situations treated with a whimsical air.
This is a common mythological theme and it is the
relativity of death that is inferred here, which is
simply the triumph of the comic over the tragic.  The
threshold is the attunement of the the individual
psyche to this truth such that the ensuing adventure
can be interpreted in the proper light.

>From this point onward the hero's journey is broadened
to include Han Solo's character. Han is cynical where
Luke is naïve; the man and boy. Han's worldly wisdom
and chutzpah are thematic. His daring, his effrontery
and his cunning intellect win him many battles over 
more powerful foes and also win him the princess, and
yes we are in myth territory again. Han is a
trickster. He outwits more powerful foes whose
reasoning is more linear, less lateral. He represents
the moral and practical superiority of the
free-thinking individual as opposed to bureaucratic
social authority.

On the other side of the equation we have Han's
mecernary nature and his general cynicism. For Han to
spiritually evolve there needs to be a  sacfrice on
his part, a sacrifice to a higher good. This good
being represeneted by the rebel cause and love,
especially his love for Leia.

Which brings us to the princess. Leia is the twin
sister of luke and in some ways is the female mirror
of him. However she is also a polar opposite to han
and in myth this means complementarity. she represents
benign social authority, whereas han is a rebellious
loner ('solo'). Good girls love bad boys. 

The relationship between han and leia is of anima and
animus: the complentary halves that form the symbiotic
whole that is romantic love. Leia's relationship with
luke is ambiguous at first. The love that grows
parallel to her love for han is of a subtly different
type: the violence is missing.  This violence is
passion: the fusing of opposing elements in the
crucible of life's drama.

Leia's sisterly love for luke and its reciprocation
exemplify the compassionate love that binds all to all
 (we are all brothers and sisters),  as opposed to the
passionate love that unites two into one. Love does
not  end with the beloved; indeed love can only grow
from love and the mutually catalytic effects of both
types are evidenced in the progression of Han's
character especially.

Luke's tutelage under Ben reaches a transition point
when ben allows himself (with luke looking on) to be
struck down by darth before saying to him that to kill
him will make him “more powerful than he can possibly
imagine”. His dissappearance upon death adds to the
mystery of his statement, underlining the relativity
of death. The reality of the 'other side' (the
implicate order) is reinforced continually from here
on with many interventions by ben's ghost. 

Luke is now ready to complete the first heroic phase
and does so by ignoring his targeting computer and
relying on the force to guide his shooting in the
death star attack. Luke trusts his own, force-attuned,
judgement over external technological control. The
result is a direct hit and the end of the death star,
though darth survives.

***

At the beginning of the second film Luke's journey
takes a detour to take up the theme of the master and
student once more The new master is yoda. The
ben-kenobi-yoda-luke dynamic is the most explictly
mystical in the film. It is here that the rational
meets the mythological. It is here that the force is
described and the metaphysical foundations of the film
are laid bare. The concept of the force closely
parallels the ideas of chi  and 'the Way' in Taoism.
The force is the life force and implicate order of the
universe. It is the immaterial energy that informs the
material universe. The force is a statement of the
immanence of the transcendent. This is the most
fundamental of all mythic themes.

Luke's training is interrupted by his own decision to
help his friends over the advice of his mentors. This
is a necessary step in spiritual evolution illustrated
beautifully in the recent mythic film Pan's Labyrinth.
This step is disobedience (Wilde's 'original virtue').
Luke has now taken total responsibility for his own
guidance, trusting his own feelings even over those of
his teachers. 

And this results in his facing darth vader, his
father. 

This dynamic is very powerful and mythologically
dense. Luke's father has been (nearly) totally
incorporated within the empire, so much so that his
very body is more technology than organism.    It
seems therefore that luke must overcome his father if
he is to overcome the empire. However as is made clear
by his earlier experience with yoda, to kill darth is
to kill himself; is to fail the jedi test. A catch-22
is apparent: luke must kill darth to defeat him but to
kill him is to kill his own father out of hate which
would seal his own dark fate.....the only
mythologically satisfactory resolution is to face and
overcome darth by appealing to the father that is
still within him. Initially the result is that darth's
superior strength results in the loss of luke's right
hand. Darth spares his son's life, appealing to him to
join him in ruling the galaxy. Luke's refusal is
another test passed and again events intervene to help
save his life (along with his growing aptitude with
the force). 

The moral of this mythic dynamic might be that sons
are to learn from their father's errors and
weaknesses, whilst refusing to abandon them on the
grounds of this. Sympathy, understanding and the
strength to avoid the fathers fate are complementary
here. 

Luke is now a defacto Jedi. His skills are sublime in
the rescue of han from jabba the hutt, with the help
of his sister, the redeemed lando calrissian and his
droids. The droids exemplify technology in the service
of life (hence the droids personas); vader is life in
the service of technology. Technology and nature are
not separate, the force binds all. 

Luke returns to complete his training with yoda. yoda
passes away after informing luke that his training is
only one step from completion: all that is left now is
a final confrontation with vader, his father. Luke's
prescience speeds this final battle which results in
him refusing to kill his father (after taking his
right hand, in return perhaps for the loss of his own)
and his father choosing to save his son by killing the
emperor. Vader is redeemed and luke has successfully
navigated the dark side and become a full jedi. The
journey is complete.


***


      
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