I'm Bill Moyers. And I want to share with you a moment from our series on Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth. Campbell knew more about the world of mythology — the great stories human beings have told ourselves since the dawn of history — than anyone of his generation. Does a movie like Star Wars fill some of that need for the spiritual adventure, for the hero? Oh, perfect, it does the cycle perfectly. It's not a simple morality play. It has to do with the powers of life and their inflection through the action of man. One of the wonderful things, I think, about this adventure into space, is that the narrator, the artist, the one thinking up the story, is in a field that is not covered by our own knowledge. Do you, when you look at something like Star Wars, recognize some of the themes of the hero throughout mythology? Well, I think that George Lucas was using standard mythological figures. The old man as the adviser,

Well, specifically what he made me think of is the Japanese swordmaster. Remember, a Jedi can feel the force flowing through him. I've known some of those people, and this man has a bill of their character. Well, there's something mythological, too, isn't there, in the sense that the hero is helped by this stranger who shows up and gives him some instrument, a sword or a sheaf of light, shaft of light? Yes, but he gives him not only a physical instrument, but a psychological commitment and a psychological center. This time, let go of your conscious self and act on instinct. When he had him exercising with that strange weapon, and then pulled the mask over, that's real Japanese stuff. I'll take them myself. When I took our two sons to see it, they did the same thing the audience did; at that moment when the voice of Ben Kenobi says to Luke Skywalker in the climactic moment... Use the force, Luke.

Let go, Luke. The audience broke out into elation and into applause. Well, you see, this thing communicates. It is in a language that is talking to young people today. And that's marvelous.

Joseph Campbell and the Mythology of Star Wars

Joseph Campbell and the Mythology of Star Wars