The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [275]
Star Wars: Getting the archetype wrong
For a final example of the sentimentalisation of the Overcoming the Monster archetype, we may return to the science fiction film which exceeded even the Bond movies in popularity, George Lucas's Star Wars (1977). We saw earlier how effectively this story seemed to touch such a deep chord with its audience, by finding contemporary imagery to express so much of the basic symbolism which had inspired myths and legends since stories began. What only later came to light was how deliberately and consciously this had been arrived at, when, in an episode almost unique in popular storytelling, Lucas drew on the knowledge of Joseph Campbell, the distinguished American writer on the symbolic role of the hero in world myth and folklore, in an effort to ensure that his story matched up as faithfully as possible to their archetypal patterns and imagery. From this he developed such important ingredients in the power of his story as the relationship between the aspiring hero, Luke Skywalker, and the `wise old man' Obi-Wan Kenobi who, like Merlin to Arthur or Gandalf to Frodo, initiates his young pupil into the mystery of bringing himself into harmony with `the force': the cosmic force of life itself, expressing the irresistible power of the Self to overcome the powers of darkness.
But however carefully Lucas tried to shape his script around these archetypal ground rules, there were certain crucial respects in which the resulting story betrayed the fact that, as a conscious construct, it had not got the pattern right. It was not based on a proper understanding of the underlying archetype. Particularly significant is what happens when the hero and his companions penetrate the dark labyrinth of the Death Star to rescue the heroine, Princess Leia. They succeed in freeing her, but in doing so they leave her captor, the monstrous Darth Vader, still alive and in control of his dark kingdom. This misses the very essence of what the archetypal symbolism is about. The anima can only properly be liberated at the moment when the monster is finally overcome. It is precisely because the shadow has been eliminated that she can finally emerge into the light. It is only by killing the suitors that Odysseus can liberate his anima Penelope; only when Perseus has defeated Poseidon's sea-monster that he can be united with Andromeda; only when Aladdin has finally slain the Sorcerer that he can be fully united with his Princess.
An equally telling aberration appears right at the end of the film when, in the great hall of the Rebel Alliance, we see Luke Skywalker and his ally Han Solo walking up through a cheering crowd, to be decorated for their bravery in saving the universe by the Princess herself. Although in Lucas's book version we are told that the hero only has eyes for the beautiful Princess as she looks down at him, what we see in the film version is not the cosmic union between man and woman we see at the heart of a true happy ending. It is not the moment when Odysseus and Penelope melt into each other's arms; when Cinderella is finally at one with her Prince; when Leontes can finally once again embrace his Hermione. Luke cannot be united with his Princess, because he has not yet achieved full mature manhood. As he and Solo together come to the platform to be congratulated, they are more like boys walking up in front of their classmates to receive the approbation of their teacher, or even `Mother .2
In two significant respects, the conclusion to the original film of Star Wars thus tells us much about the society which created it. The first is the way it ended on the image of two male heroes standing together side by side. It was D. H. Lawrence, in his Classic Studies in American Literature (1924), who first pointed out how many American stories, since Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), end not with the archetypal image of a man and a