Get all the details and see other images (including the UK covers with blurbs) at The Leaky Cauldron.

I am certainly looking forward to the release of this book. I bought a “Trust Snape” shirt to wear a few times during the next few months and for when I go to the midnight opening at Barnes & Noble (and probably at the Order of the Phoenix movie opening as well). That random people will understand the shirt’s meaning more clearly than most political slogans I could slap onto a t-shirt is a testament to the cultural significance that this story has.

One of the things that we often forget about the stories that are taking on a mythological significance in contemporary popular culture is that the current generation is mostly used to adapted stories. Anyone born after the original Star Wars trilogy will have been teenagers during the rise of comic-book adaptation films, The Lord of the Rings films, the disappointing return of Star Wars, etc. There are very few big mythic event films and stories that are original. The Matrix came close, but the overblown sequels squelched whatever power it had. When we went to see the Rings films, we did not need to ask “Will Frodo destroy the ring?” We knew. And if we didn’t know, we could read the book or ask someone who had. The big deal was seeing how Jackson could bring the story to life. The same thing with movies like Batman Begins, the Spiderman films, and the X-Men films. And even though the Star Wars prequels were original stories, we knew where everything was headed; the question was, again, “how?”

Not so with Harry Potter. Though I have some sense of where Rowling is going, I have mostly no clue how things are going to end up and I’m not sure what we will be left with at the end of Book 7. Since so much of this series hinges on what we do not know, there is a lot of pressure on her to deliver some pretty amazing revelations–and I don’t doubt she has plenty up her sleeve. But this is the point–we don’t know what will happen next, and there is something genuinely exciting about being here for a story that will be around for our children to read when we decide they’re ready.

The difference between having the significant stories of your childhood/teenage life being mostly retellings of the stories your parents grew up on and having original stories being released as you grow up is, I think, a significant one. J.K. Rowling herself provided, perhaps, the best evidence of this significance:

Q: Of the many things you must have heard people say about Harry Potter, what are some of your favorites?
A: My very favourite was from a twelve-year-old Scottish girl who came to hear me read at the Edinburgh book festival. The event was sold out and the queue for signing at the end was very long. When the girl in question finally reached me she said, ‘I didn’t WANT there to be so many people here, because this is MY book!’ That is exactly how I feel about my favourite books…nobody else has a right to know them, let alone like them!

When your parents give you The Lord of the Rings to read or the original Star Wars movies to watch, it is clear that such stories belonged to someone else at some time and made its way to you because it had some lasting significance. But when you find a book that doesn’t have that aged pedigree, that comes around to you on its own, the connection between you and that story–and your generation and that story–is far stronger. This girl’s connection to these stories is the perfect representation of this phenomenon, embodying the paradox that is at the very foundation of the experience of being told a story–especially these kinds of mythic stories that last through the years: The paradox of experiencing a story–one that is written with no one individual in mind–in a way that feels as though no one else could possibly understand it or enjoy it as personally as you do.

Here is a first look at footage from the upcoming adaptation of Pullman’s first His Dark Materials book.

There are many things that look promising about the film, but I’d like to say something about the theme of religion and fundamentalism in the series. A little over two years ago, press reports began noting that God and religion had been excised from the film version of the trilogy and fans went into an uproar. Philip Pullman responded by noting the following:

And that is why those who are intent on mischief will do what fundamentalists of every stripe always do: insist on a literal interpretation of every single word, a point-by-point identification of this with that, a ‘correct’ reading that’s authorised and approved and certified by the authorities they submit to. …There are more ways than one of telling the story of Lyra and Will

While I think this is entirely true, it is an unfair response to the reasons that fans cringe at the removal of references to religion–and Christianity in particular. In his defense, Pullman notes that the same fundamentalism that he criticizes in his trilogy exists elsewhere, providing the following example:

In our own world, that sort of power has been wielded at various times in the name of religion as well as in the name of ’scientific’ atheism. It’s wielded politically, and it’s wielded culturally; sometimes it`s a religious police force that beats women who aren’t wearing the correct dress, and sometimes it’s a cowardly press, cringing in front of corporate power, that cackles and jeers whenever it sees something it thinks it’s safe to criticise.

Again, I agree with what Pullman is saying here. The problem is that the reason that the religious critique of Pullman’s books was changed into a critique of a different form of the same kind of fundamentalism does not have anything to do with an artistic decision on the part of the filmmakers. It is entirely economic. As Christ Weitz, the director, said:

New Line is a company that makes films for economic returns. You would hardly expect them to be anything else. They have expressed worry about the possibility of HDM’s perceived antireligiosity making it an unviable project financially. My job is to get the film made in such a way that the spirit of the piece is carried through to the screen, and to do that I must contend not only with the difficulties of the material but with the fears of the studio.

To malign the fans who reject to this as fundamentalists is not only unfair, it is dishonest. The decision to change the focus of the trilogy’s critique was made by someone who had to ‘cringe in front of corporate power,’; not by a filmmaker with a sincere desire to retell Lyra and Will’s story in a different guise.

The problem with the change is twofold: (1) It is made to please the very fundamentalists–the real religious fundamentalists, particularly those of the American right–that Pullman’s book takes issue with. (2) In making the film appealing to these fundamentalists the filmmakers have to make the critique of fundamentalism a “safe” critique. As some of the promotional material indicates (see the official website), the critique is made safe by translating the Magisterium from a church governing body to a non-descript fascist regime. If the American Christians who New Line Cinema is afraid of go to see the film, they will then see “evil” defined as a group of vaguely defined “fascists.” Without the controversy of who the villains are, the critique becomes conventional. They might as well make the villains Indiana Jones style Nazis to make the trilogy’s original critique that much less effective. These villains don’t challenge the assumptions of the audience, they only reinforces common sense notions: facists and totalitarians (who most Christian Americans equate with atheists) are evil, Americans and Christians are good. The film will say, “Evil Fascists try to stop people from thinking for themselves and being individuals!” and the audience responds in kind “Boy! I’m sure glad we live in the good ‘ole US of A, where we don’t need to worry about fascists curtailing our freedoms and making us think like them! Things sure are great here!”

Perhaps I will be proven wrong by the film, but I cannot help but reflect that, given what has been released about the film so far, this choice has nothing to do with artistic integrity. It has everything to do with capitulating to the forces that are interested in gaining extra money and power more than using the money and power already available to artistically advance the cause of freedom of thought and creativity. If the film could not be made without capitulating to the fundamentalism of Hollywood focus groups and marketing executives then the only courageous decision would have been to either not make the film or for Pullman to disassociate himself from it. Instead, fans are recoded as the fundamentalist enemy; this is something that true facists and fundamentalists do–project your own mistakes, shortcomings, and misdeeds onto others and then persecute them.

UPDATE: One more thought on the issue of “controversy.” Though Pullman believes in the importance of capturing the essence of the story without necessarily having to translate each detail of it to film, he forgets that one aspect of the “essence” of His Dark Materials is that it is controversial. Making a film that attempts to ward off any potential controversy is in and of itself antithetical to the story’s nature.

Oddly enough, part of me feels that New Line would have a bigger box office success on its hands if it did make a controversial film. The film would get far more significant press if it had Christian groups protesting the film (such protests, of course, have had no effect whatsoever on the Potter film and books). Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ didn’t get all of the publicity that it did because everyone in the press couldn’t stop talking about how wholesome it was: it was controversial. And I would argue that that controversy–the controversy over its anti-semitism and its violence–had more to do with its financial success than anything (which may explain the box office failure of last year’s oh-so-wholesome and massively marketed The Nativity Story).

I find it truly fascinating how much expectations regarding the final Harry Potter book are hinging on opinions about the intentions of Snape’s character. Like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, Snape is the most interestingly “complex” character in Potter. So it will be worth seeing how Rowling deals with him, and how readers of the final book react to his role.

Here is a recent article concerning the interest in Snape’s fate and the legions of fans who fervently believe in Snape’s loyalty to Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix. Called “Under his spell” , it was written by Jamie Smith Hopkins for The Baltimore Sun and published on March 20, 2007:

Under his spell

Undercover good guy or pure evil? Either way, Harry Potter nemesis Severus Snape has fans obsessing over his fate in the final book

By Jamie Smith Hopkins
Sun reporter

March 20, 2007

When J.K. Rowling’s publishers announced that the final book in the Harry Potter series would hit stores this July, the agonizing began in earnest. Would she kill him? Could she kill him? Was there any point in reading if she did?

No, not Harry Potter.

Severus Snape.

For a surprisingly large number of Potter fans, mostly adult ones, the fate of the intrepid boy wizard – you know, the one the books are ostensibly about – isn’t nearly as interesting as what will happen to his ex-professor. The double-crossing Death Eater. Murderer of the beloved Headmaster Dumbledore. Greasy-haired, yellow-toothed, cuttingly sarcastic and, in the words of his creator, “deeply horrible.”

So why on earth do people love him? Why are apparently otherwise sane adults obsessing about him to the point that they run Snape Web sites, write Snape fan fiction, buy Snape paraphernalia (or make it themselves, because there really isn’t much of it out there) and craft essays with the care they might give to a doctoral thesis to prove that the murder is a clever diversion, and he’s actually good?

Well, I know why. I got sucked into this vortex years ago. (Handmade Slytherin House scarf? Naturally. Long black coat that billows in a satisfyingly Snape-like manner? Check. Husband who dressed up as Snape for Halloween, complete with $258 frock coat? Yeah, my fault.)

If you think I’m perhaps a lone weirdo, consider: “Severus Snape” on Google returns more than a half-million hits. A single blog-hosting site – LiveJournal.com – counts 390 communities and more than 400 users listing him as an interest, roughly the same number that list Harry Potter. He has songs written in his honor. YouTube videos. A monthly podcast. MySpace pages, for heaven’s sake (“Severus Snape has 3,370 friends”).

Even the bookstore chain Borders has chosen an all-Snape method of marketing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, including the choice of pro- or anti-Snape bumper stickers when you reserve the book. (Pro is winning.)

When popular Potter fan site The Leaky Cauldron (the-leaky-caul dron.org) asked fans to vote for their favorite character last fall, Snape beat out everyone except Harry and his clever friend, Hermione Granger. And this was, of course, after Snape killed Dumbledore and disappeared into the night, presumably en route to the evil wizard Voldemort, the dark lord who appears to be trying to take over the world.

Melissa Anelli, the webmistress of The Leaky Cauldron who appreciates Snape as a character but doesn’t like him the least bit, sums up the phenomenon: “It’s sort of scary.”

Rowling doesn’t seem to understand the attraction. At the 2004 Edinburgh International Book Festival in her Scottish hometown, she asked her audience a bit plaintively, “Why do you love him?”

“It’s bad-boy syndrome, isn’t it?” she guessed.

Well, yes.

And no.

The Rickman factor
Oh, sure, there’s a school of thought that blames all the Snape love on hormones and Alan Rickman, the actor with the seductive voice who plays him in the movies – the fifth of which, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, is due in theaters in July. Rickman comes with a fan base, and whoever decided to put him in that repressively buttoned-up Victorian get-up seemed to understand how that would affect adult women. We do seem to be Snape’s biggest fans.

But give us a little credit. Imperfect characters are compelling. Both men and women like the heroic-but-dark Batman. And the sardonic House of the eponymous television series. And Lex Luthor, at least the way he’s portrayed on TV’s Smallville, where – for a while – he had yet to cross the line into irredeemable villainy.

Such antiheroes are both ambiguous and familiar. They have the potential to be mirrors, Rorschach inkblots for us to ponder and therefore better understand ourselves.

“In a world that has known concentration camps … and all sorts of horrors, the notion of the hero seems anachronistic,” said Victor Brombert, a professor emeritus at Princeton University who wrote In Praise of Antiheroes: Figures and Themes in Modern European Literature. “It no longer corresponds to our needs.”

Snape, in any case, had some readers at hello.

“I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death,” he says to his new students in the first Potter book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and we thought, cool. A closet poet, our Snape, and frequently funny in an awful, I-can’t-believe-he-said-that way. People identify with this thirtysomething man stuck in a hated job, who never gets credit for his good efforts, who is irritable and quick to judge and deeply human.

“We know what it is to be lonely, angry, and unappreciated – to struggle to get through the day, surrounded by idiots,” a fan named Hologhost wrote on the fan site MuggleNet.com, adding: “I think we want Snape to succeed.”

Rachael Stiegel, 27, a Houston patent agent, loves that he’s a gray character in the black-and-white world of children’s fiction. Last year, she started a podcast called Snapecast, which now has about 5,000 listeners from more than 60 countries, including Iran and Saudi Arabia.

“If you took Snape out of the Harry Potter equation, I don’t think the books would have as many adult fans,” she said. “He adds the element of complexity that makes the books fascinating to older readers.”

Then there’s what Anelli calls the “dark, tortured soul seeking redemption” mystique. A mercilessly bullied child prodigy who apparently joined Voldemort in a fit of teenage spite, Snape recognized his monumental mistake and turned spy for Dumbledore – or at least that was the story pre-murder, and it’s the one that Snape fans still ardently want to believe. We know (hope, pray) there’s more to the story.

The party line goes something like this: Dumbledore, already near death and surrounded by some of Voldemort’s worst minions, sent a mental message to his spy to do it! Now Snape is a mole in Voldemort’s camp, perfectly positioned to help save the day!

We trust with the fervor of converts that he, as much as Harry himself, will emerge as Dumbledore’s man when the book – which its American publisher says will set a U.S. first-printing record of 12 million copies – is finally in our hands.

Rushdie’s theory
“Our theory,” said author Salman Rushdie, who rose to speak for us all at a reading Rowling gave in New York last summer, “is that Snape is, in fact, still a good guy.”

And we really don’t want him to redeem himself through death. If he can atone for his errors and live on, then – well – there’s hope for all of us.

Alas: This is not how such tales usually go.

“He’s the sort of character who … ends up dying sacrificially to prove his goodness,” said James Krasner, an associate professor whose specialty at the University of New Hampshire is Victorian literature, and who, more importantly, has $25 riding on his belief that Snape “obviously” killed Dumbledore on Dumbledore’s orders. (His teenage son took the bet.)

Of Rowling, Krasner said: “She’s very good at surprising you but also fulfilling the basic outline about how these sorts of stories work.”

Fans have started at least two online petitions begging Rowling not to do away with Snape. Neither well-publicized, the pair nevertheless together have more than 1,000 signatures. They sound quite desperate, as if Snape were truly real – and as if his fate is a foregone conclusion.

Stiegel thinks so. Snapecast has started doing pieces on the stages of grief. (Next month – anger.)

Beverly Wood, 40, a teacher and project manager in Green Bay, Wis., who is an administrator for Snape fan site BewitchedMind .net, is wavering between acceptance and denial.

“Maybe she’ll leave it ambiguous, … like he escapes the battle wounded, and we don’t know whether he lives or dies,” a hopeful Wood said, which just shows how low our hopes are.

Still, there was that tantalizing hint from the author in an interview last year. About how, despite her carefully plotted plans for what would happen and who would die, “one character got a reprieve.”

It could be him, right?

Please?

Best of luck, professor.
Five reasons to believe Snape is good (if not nice)

1. Headmaster Dumbledore’s death isn’t all it seems to be. After he pleads, “Severus … ,” there is a moment of silence, an opportunity for the two — both skilled in the Potter books’ version of mind-reading — to have a private chat. Snape fans think Dumbledore orders him to go through with it. At this point, the headmaster is already in dire straits, poisoned by a potion of Voldemort’s that — in what seems like a deliberate parallel — Dumbledore made Harry force-feed him.

2. We still don’t have reliable information about why Snape offered to spy on Voldemort, “at great personal risk,” in Dumbledore’s words. In the Potter books, what you don’t know is significant.

3. As he fled Hogwarts, Snape could have killed or kidnapped Harry. Instead, he stopped a Death Eater from torturing the teen.

4. The summer before these traumatic events, Snape saves Dumbledore from a potentially life-threatening injury. Why bother if he wanted the headmaster dead?

5. What’s the more interesting plot for the final Harry Potter book: Yeah, Snape is still bad? Or — surprise, Harry, the man you want to kill is on your side?

[ Jamie Smith Hopkins]

jamie.smith.hopkins@baltsun.com
For more about Severus Snape, go to baltimoresun.com/snape.

h/t The Leaky Cauldron

It is nice to have something constructive to do while I’m not doing what I should be doing. So here are some more interesting Tolkien tidbits for anyone interested. There is a poem in The Poetic Edda, a collection of Norse mythology from the twelfth century or so, called “The Catalogue of Dwarfs” (page 322-323). The ‘poem’ actually is just a catalogue. It lists names, but if you read the names you might see some familiar ones:

The Catalogue of the Dwarfs
(Dvergatal)
from “Voluspa,” Stanzas 9-16

Then gathered together the gods for counsel,/ the holy hosts, and held converse: / who the deep-dwelling dwarfs was to make of Brimir’s blood and Blain’s bones. / Motsognir rose, mightiest ruler / of the kin of Dwarfs, but Durin next; / molded many manlike bodies / the dwarfs under earth, as Durin bade them. / Nyi and Nithi, Northri and Suthri, / Austri and Vestri, Althjof, Dvalin, / Nar and Nain, Niping, Dain, / Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Nori,/ An and Onar, Ai, Mjothvitnir. / Veig and Gandalf, Vindalf, Thrain, / Thekk and Thorin, Thror, Vit, and Lit / Fili, Kili, Fundin, Nali, / … The dwarfs I tell now in Dvalin’s host / down to Lofar– for listening wights– / they who hied them from halls of stone / over sedgy shores to sandy plains. / There was Draupnir and Dolgthrasir, / Har and Haguspori, Hlevang, Gloi …[They] will ever be known, while earth doth last, / the line of dwarfs from Lofar down.

As you can see, these are most of the dwarves from The Hobbit and clearly the inspiration for the name Gandalf. Tom Shippey in his J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century offers a brilliant analysis of this (see page 15-17). Shippey argues that Tolkien, the linguist, would have asked why Gandalf (whose name would have meant “wand-elf” there) would be named along dwarves. If his name features the word “elf” in it then surely he was an elf. But a wand-elf might be something more…like a wizard. So now we have a wizard alongside a group of dwarves…what are they doing together? As Shippey argues, this is how the wheels in Tolkien’s mind start working and producing a story. This esoteric bit of poetry, through Tolkien’s linguistic analysis, becomes The Hobbit. The language produces the story–in every sense.

Though this blog has not been visited by a large number of people, I was surprised to learn that somehow people are finding some of my posts. I never intended this: I set up the blog to post articles by others that had interested me and might prove valuable for some later research project (I did this so that I could have the articles readily available in one place). But, since clearly many are interested in the popular culture, mythology, and fandom that fascinates me, perhaps I will try to comment more on what I post.

So here is some Tolkien blogging:

I was recently working on a project related to fairy tales and anthropology in the 19th century, and I became very interested in Andrew Lang. He was a Scottish anthropologist, classicist, folklorist, author, and journalist who seems to have involved himself in nearly every argument going on in Victorian England. He argued vocally with Max Müller over Müller’s theories of solar mythology (Müller contended that most ancient myths are really allegorical representations of nature), and he argued with Edward Tylor over the origins of religious thought. In the 1890s, he began collecting and compiling world folklore and mythology and published many volumes of color-coded “Fairy Books.” For children growing up at this time, Lang’s Fairy Books would have been much like the Grimms’ collection.

J.R.R. Tolkien, who was born in 1892, grew up as Lang’s books were published, and they had an enormous impact on him. In The Red Fairy Book, Lang included “The Story of Sigurd” from The Volsung Saga. The story, which featured Fafnir the dragon, excited Tolkien’s imagination and is particularly important to his later. As Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien’s biographer, notes (from J.R.R. Tolkien: A biography, page 30) :

[Tolkien] found delight in the Fairy Books of Andrew Lang, especially the Red Fairy Book, for tucked away in its closing pages was the best story he had ever read. This was the tale of Sigurd who slew the dragon Fafnir: a strange and powerful tale set in the nameless North. Whenever he read it Ronald found it absorbing: “I desired dragons with a profound desire,” he said long afterwards. “Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighborhood. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fafnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril.”

I am bringing this up because during my research on Lang, I found an excellent website on the Fairy Books. At that site, you can access every single one of the 13 books. Of course, they probably influenced many of Tolkien’s colleagues in the world of literary fantasy as well (Lewis would have been familiar with him too). So you can browse that website and read some myths and tales you may never have read before, or see how the myths you already know were presented to young Tolkien. Doing so, you’ll find all sorts of gems, like these from “The Story of Sigurd”:

“When Sigurd heard the story he said to Regin:

`Make me a good sword that I may kill this Dragon.’

So Regin made a sword, and Sigurd tried it with a blow on a lump of iron, and the sword broke.

Another sword he made, and Sigurd broke that too.

Then Sigurd went to his mother, and asked for the broken pieces of his father’s blade, and gave them to Regin. And he hammered and wrought them into a new sword, so sharp that fire seemed to burn along its edges.”

It is important to note that these were not collected by Lang in the same way that we think of the Grimms literally transcribing tales from “the folk.” Lang re-presented texts that he collected, and as such, anyone interested in the influence of these stories should see how they were presented to Tolkien–how Lang edited them and changed them from other sources to make them suitable for Victorian children.

Other connections between Tolkien and Lang: Tolken quoted Lang a few times in his famous essay “On Fairy Stories,” and while at Oxford, he actually supervised Roger Lancellyn Green’s dissertation on Lang (Green has written many books on modern fantasy writers).

Heat and Dust
Philip Pullman
Link

Since 1993, Third Way has been talking in depth to men and women who help to shape our society or set the tone of our culture. We spoke to Philip Pullman, the first author to win the Whitbread Book of the Year Award (and to be ‘longlisted’ for the Booker Prize) for a children’s book, on the 13th February 2002. He subsequently described this interview as ‘the best I’ve ever read’.

The interviewer was Huw Spanner.

This interview is chiefly concerned with the trilogy His Dark Materials, which comprises Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. Please note that, inevitably, it gives away some important turns of the plot.

A lot of people known as children’s writers seem to have had irregular or disturbed childhoods. Was that the case with you?
Well, my father, who was an RAF officer, died when I was seven, during the Mau Mau rising in Kenya – we were told he was killed in combat, but I’ve never really got to the bottom of what happened – and for a while then my brother and I lived with my mother’s parents in Norfolk. And then she married again and with my stepfather (who was also an RAF officer) we went to Australia for a couple of years, and then to Wales. And then I grew up and went to university.

What were the values that were instilled into you?

The conventional middle-class ones of the time. My grandfather was a clergyman and so every Sunday I went to Sunday school and church. I was confirmed, I was a member of the choir, all that sort of stuff.

We still had the Authorised Version of the Bible, and the Book of Common Prayer and Hymns Ancient and Modern – all those old forms of worship that had given comfort and joy to generations were still there for me to enjoy. Nowadays it’s all been swept away, and if ever I go into a church and look at the dreadful, barren language that disfigures the forms of service they have now, I am very thankful that I grew up at a time when it was possible for me to go to Matins and sing the Psalms in the old versions.

A lot of Christians are nonplussed by the picture you present of the church in His Dark Materials, which is unrelievedly cruel and oppressive. It doesn’t sound like the church you grew up in.

No. Grandpa was a very kind man – though a man of his own age, mind you: he was a Victorian, born in 1890 or so in a little Devon village, the sixth son and 13th child of a poor farmer, and unquestioningly both conservative and Conservative. His values were already beginning to look a bit dated by the middle of the century. For example, as the chaplain of Norwich prison it was his job from time to time to attend executions, to be with the condemned man for the last hour of his life and give him Holy Communion and go to the scaffold with him. It caused him a great deal of anguish, but he didn’t question it or rebel against it.

But he was a very good man who was full of love for me and my brother. He was a wonderful teller of stories, from the Bible and from his own experience – here, I’ll give you an example.

When the First World War came, he joined his local regiment, along with a friend from the village called Fred Austin, a big, powerful man and a wonderful horseman. Fred Austin didn’t have any leave for 18 months or so, and when eventually he came home his little daughter didn’t know who this frightening man was and she fled from him. But he was very gentle with her and he didn’t force the issue, he just spoke quietly; and after a few days the little girl came to him and let him pick her up.

And Grandpa used to say that this was like God. We’re frightened of God at first, but God is gentle with us and he loves us and wants us to come to him, so he doesn’t force himself on us but he waits until we’re ready to come to him. And that was the sort of values Grandpa would try to put across.

You’re not really giving us any clues to the source of the extreme antipathy to the Church in your books.

Well, all right, it comes from history. It comes from the record of the Inquisition, persecuting heretics and torturing Jews and all that sort of stuff; and it comes from the other side, too, from the Protestants burning the Catholics. It comes from the insensate pursuit of innocent and crazy old women, and from the Puritans in America burning and hanging the witches – and it comes not only from the Christian church but also from the Taliban.

Every single religion that has a monotheistic god ends up by persecuting other people and killing them because they don’t accept him. Wherever you look in history, you find that. It’s still going on.

But why is there no light and shade? It’s striking that you don’t portray the rebels as particularly good – Lord Asriel is as wicked as Mrs Coulter, I would say – and yet the followers of the Authority are monolithically odious, even though you admit that in real life there are decent people among the servants of God.

OK, that’s an artistic flaw.

A flaw in the artistry or a flaw in the argument?

I’m not making an argument, or preaching a sermon or setting out a political tract: I’m telling a story. And I accept that if I’d had more time to think about it, no doubt I would have put in a good priest here or there, just to show they’re not all horrible.

But there we are. If you’re writing a novel, especially a long story of thirteen hundred pages, there are always going to be things you wish you’d done differently. Artistic perfection is not achievable in anything much over the length of a sonnet.

And amongst the host of parallel worlds that you envisage can you imagine that there are some in which the Church has done more good than harm?

I certainly can. I might well write about such a place in the next book.

But this world we live in isn’t one?

No, not yet.

But there are lots of individuals I like and admire who belong to bodies such as the Unitarians, for example, or the Quakers. I don’t agree with the supernatural aspect of what they say, but they maintain a respect for differences of opinion, and on the whole they think that what’s important is what you do and not what you think. I’ve always believed that.

Many of the commentators in the media have seen you as a conscious antidote to C S Lewis, seeking to do for a moral atheism what he did for Christianity.

Yeah, well, it’s largely nonsense, of course.

What is your purpose in writing your books?

My intention is to tell a story – in the first place because the story comes to me and wants to be told.

That’s not an affectation, the way storytellers like to talk about things? That’s your genuine experience?

That’s what it feels like. I am the servant of the story – the medium in a spiritualist sense, if you like – and it feels as if, unless I tell this story, I will be troubled and pestered and harried by it and worried and fretted until I do something about it.

The second reason I do it is that I enjoy the technical business of putting a story together in a way that excites and gives pleasure to an audience. The third reason is that I need to earn a living – and there is another range of reasons beyond that which might include at some point the desire to make sense of the world and my experience of it and give a sort of narrative account of why things are as they are.

But I must come back to what you were saying about Lewis. I don’t think he did set out to evangelise. How many children do we know who have read the Narnia books and didn’t realise they were about Christianity? If he was trying to evangelise, he would have made it jolly clear that Narnia was… He wrote those books at great speed and under great emotional pressure, and I’m inclined to think this began with that famous debate when the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe carved chunks out of him.

I understood that he wrote the books to smuggle the values of the gospel into the imaginations of children past what he called their ‘watchful dragons’.

Well, so he claims, but I don’t think he did. The values depicted in the Narnia stories are certainly not the values I read in the Gospels. Hatred of the flesh? Condemning children for growing up?

In The Amber Spyglass, Mary Malone tells Lyra and Will that the Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake. Is that your opinion?

I think I’d agree with her, yes.

What do you find powerful and convincing about it?

It’s a very good story. It gives an account of the world and what we’re doing here that is intellectually coherent and explains a great deal. But then so do other stories. The Gnostic myth, for example, explains a great deal in a very different way. Very different.

The Christian story gives us human beings a very important and prominent part. We are the ones who Jesus came to redeem from the consequences of sin, which our parents – you know. It is a very dramatic story and we are right at the heart of it, and a great deal depends on what we decide. This is an exciting position to be in, but unfortunately it doesn’t gel at all with the more convincing account that is given by Darwinian evolution – and the scientific account is far more persuasive intellectually. Far more persuasive.

And, as I have said, there is another consequence of any belief in a single god, and that is that it is a very good excuse for people to behave very badly.

Is it not fair to say that a great deal of bad behaviour in the last century was the work of regimes that were atheistic, if not scientistic? Wasn’t Nazism, for example, based on a twisted reading of Darwinism?

Yes, but they functioned psychologically in exactly the same way. They had a sacred book that provided an explanation of history which so far transcended every other explanation as to be unquestionable. There were the great prophets – Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung – men so far above the human race that they might as well be exalted as gods. They were treated in just the same way as the Pope. Every word they said, every thing they touched, was holy; their bodies had to be preserved and filed past in reverential silence. The fact that they proclaimed that there was no God didn’t make any difference: it was a religion, and they acted in the way any totalitarian religious system would.

Well, perhaps. But you insist that the problem with monotheism is that it leads people to behave in an oppressive way. From the evidence of the last century one could say that atheism, too, leads people to behave in that way. And no Christian authority has ever killed anything like the tens of millions Stalin killed.

No, but give them the chance! If they had had…

Even proportionately. Also, there is, I think, good evidence that the Inquisition burnt far fewer people than the secular French state did.

Well, that was very comforting as the flames were licking round your toes…

I think the religions are special cases of the general human tendency to exalt one doctrine above all others – whatever it is, whether it’s Marxism, Islam or whatever it is, there is a depressing human tendency to say, ‘We have the truth and we’re going to kill you because you don’t believe in it.’

When did you realise that Christianity didn’t convince you? And what was it that gave the game away?

It was the usual questioning that takes place in adolescence. It began to seem impossible to reconcile the creation story with the scientific account. It became increasingly implausible that life continued after the body died. The claims of some religions – the assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven, the infallibility of the Pope – seemed to me such howling nonsense…

But you were brought up an Anglican.

Yeah, but it was things like that…

Can you elaborate what you mean by the phrase ‘the republic of heaven’, which appears in the last line of The Amber Spyglass?

The kingdom of heaven promised us certain things: it promised us happiness and a sense of purpose and a sense of having a place in the universe, of having a role and a destiny that were noble and splendid; and so we were connected to things. We were not alienated. But now that, for me anyway, the King is dead, I find that I still need these things that heaven promised, and I’m not willing to live without them. I don’t think I will continue to live after I’m dead, so if I am to achieve these things I must try to bring them about – and encourage other people to bring them about – on earth, in a republic in which we are all free and equal – and responsible – citizens.

Now, what does this involve? It involves all the best qualities of things. We mustn’t shut anything out. If the Church has told us, for example, that forgiving our enemies is good, and if that seems to be a good thing to do, we must do it. If, on the other hand, those who struggled against the Church have shown us that free enquiry and unfettered scientific exploration is good – and I believe that they have – then we must hold this up as a good as well.

Whatever we can find that we feel to be good – and not just feel but can see with the accumulated wisdom that we have as we grow up, and read about history and learn from our own experiences and so on – wherever they come from, and whoever taught them in the first place, let’s use them and do whatever we can do to make the world a little bit better.

And this, incidentally, is one of my quarrels with Lewis: the children in the Narnia books who have gone through all these experiences aren’t allowed to stay in the world and make it better for other people – they’re whisked off to heaven. That’s not a Christian attitude.

They spent quite a long time in Narnia, didn’t they, as kings and queens, bringing peace and justice?

Not in this world. They’re still children. They’re off on holiday with their parents and they’re all killed in a train crash. That’s grotesque.

Maybe it’s an artistic flaw…

It’s a bloody great big one.

It seems to satisfy a lot of people.

It disgusted me when I read it.

Lewis is a contradictory sort of character for me. I loathe the Narnia books, and I loathe the so-called space trilogy, because they contain an ugly vision. But when he was talking about writing for children, and about literature in general, Lewis was very, very acute and said some very perceptive and wise things. As a critic… And as a psychologist – The Screwtape Letters, for example, is full of very shrewd stuff about what it’s like to be tempted. I rate him very highly, but I do detest what he was doing in his fiction.

To go back to your republic: a lot of people now don’t want to live in either a kingdom or a republic, but in a kind of moral anarchy. ‘As long as I don’t hurt anyone else,’ they say, ‘you can just leave me alone.’

Yes, well, I’m against that.

But a problem many Christians see in atheism is –

The dogmatic certainty.

I was going to say that its logical conclusion seems to be nihilism.

Can I elucidate my own position as far as atheism is concerned? I don’t know whether I’m an atheist or an agnostic. I’m both, depending on where the standpoint is.

The totality of what I know is no more than the tiniest pinprick of light in an enormous encircling darkness of all the things I don’t know – which includes the number of atoms in the Atlantic Ocean, the thoughts going through the mind of my next-door neighbour at this moment and what is happening two miles above the surface of the planet Mars. In this illimitable darkness there may be God and I don’t know, because I don’t know.

But if we look at this pinprick of light and come closer to it, like a camera zooming in, so that it gradually expands until here we are, sitting in this room, surrounded by all the things we do know – such as what the time is and how to drive to London and all the other things that we know, what we’ve read about history and what we can find out about science – nowhere in this knowledge that’s available to me do I see the slightest evidence for God.

So, within this tiny circle of light I’m a convinced atheist; but when I step back I can see that the totality of what I know is very small compared to the totality of what I don’t know. So, that’s my position.

A lot of people assume from The Amber Spyglass that you must be an atheist.

Well, they can assume what they like. Of course, I don’t say, ‘There is no God.’ I say: ‘There is a God, and here he is dying’ – and this is what I was particularly pleased with, as a result of an act of charity. And he goes ‘with a sigh of the most profound and exhausted relief’.

But God is an impostor –

He’s the first angel –

Who is himself the accidental by-product of a meaningless universe.

It’s not meaningless. It was meaningless before, but it’s not meaningless any more.

This is the mistake Christians make when they say that if you are an atheist you have to be a nihilist and there’s no meaning any more. Well, that’s nonsense, as Mary Malone discovers. Now that I’m conscious, now that I’m responsible, there is a meaning, and it is to make things better and to work for greater good and greater wisdom. That’s my meaning – and it comes from my understanding of my position. It’s not nihilism at all. It’s very far from it.

Throughout His Dark Materials there’s a strong sense of ‘ought’. All the most attractive characters – Lyra and Will, Lee Scoresby, Iorek Byrnison, Mary Malone – are driven in the end by a sense of duty, at least to their loved ones if not to the world. Where in a world without God does that sense of ‘ought’ come from?

I’m amazed by the gall of Christians. You think that nobody can possibly be decent unless they’ve got the idea from God or something. Absolute bloody rubbish! Isn’t it your experience that there are plenty of people in the world who don’t believe who are very good, decent people?

Yes. I’m just curious to know where it comes from.

For goodness’ sake! It comes from ordinary human decency. It comes from accumulated human wisdom – which includes the wisdom of such figures as Jesus Christ. Jesus, like many of the founders of great religions, was a moral genius, and he set out a number of things very clearly in the Gospels which if we all lived by them we’d all do much better. What a pity the Church doesn’t listen to him!

Yes, absolutely. How, by the way, do you react to his statement ‘Unless you become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’?

He wasn’t right all the time.

So, you’re with Paul there, that it’s all about putting away childish things.

No, Paul was wrong as well, because you don’t put them away: you keep them with you as you grow.

Did you see the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?

Yes. I liked it very much.

Part of its message seemed to me to be that its two main characters had been wrong, as they themselves felt at the end, to sacrifice their love for each other for the sake of what they saw as a spiritual duty –

That’s what I felt.

What surprised me at the end of The Amber Spyglass is that that is just what you require of Will and Lyra. Suddenly you sound like a stern Christian moralist.

It’s kind of you to say so. No, I hope I’m clear that they’re not turning away from what you might call ‘sexual bliss’ because they think they should. It’s not that at all. They have their moment of bliss – whatever it is (and I don’t know what it is) –

I’m interested you say that, because I read a review that protested that they consummate their relationship and I thought, ‘I must have missed that.’

I don’t know what they did. I wrote about the kiss – that’s what I knew happened. I don’t know what else they did. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. I think they were rather young to, but still…

No, the reason they have to part in the end is a curious one and it’s hard to explain except in terms of the compulsion of the story. I knew from the very beginning that it would have to end in that sort of renunciation. (I don’t know how I know these things, but I knew.)

It’s very traumatic for the reader…

Do you think it wasn’t traumatic for me? I tried all sorts of ways to prevent it, but the story made me do it. That was what had to happen. If I’d denied it, the story wouldn’t have had a tenth of its power.

A Romantic might have thought, ‘Why can’t Will and Lyra go and live in a third universe and live fast, die young? What a wonderful story to tell the harpies!’

‘Live fast, die young’ is exactly what responsibility and wisdom set their faces against. These two children are setting out on a far more difficult and more valuable journey, which is the journey towards wisdom. This is a story about growing up.

So, your inversion of Paradise Lost is quite different in that, whatever Lord Asriel stands for, what emerges at the end is not in any way the triumph of self-will or self-interest. It’s really quite Stoical…

But of course the Satan figure is Mary Malone, not Lord Asriel, and the temptation is wholly beneficent. She tells her story about how she fell in love, which gives Lyra the clue as to how to express what she’s now beginning to feel about Will, and when it happens they both understand what’s going on and are tempted and they (so to speak) fall – but it’s a fall into grace, towards wisdom, not something that leads to sin, death, misery, hell – and Christianity.

And yet shortly after they have to renounce it.

Yes. Difficult.

OK, so we have both possible outcomes of Genesis 3. They embrace it and then they renounce it.

You know the maxim ‘Never trust the teller, trust the tale.’ You say that growing up is what life is all about, but what the ending of The Amber Spyglass seemed to me to say was that actually all the adventure of living comes when you’re a child. Life for Lyra and Will from now looks set to be dull, if not grim.

In that case, I guess I’d better write another book. There are many other stories that remain to be written, and maybe some of them are stories of what happened to Lyra and Will afterwards.

Many people’s experience of growing up is that life brings disillusionment and bitterness. Is it possible to keep the innocence of childhood and add to that the wisdom of experience? How do you avoid losing what was good and ending up with nothing better?

That is an interesting question. I don’t know, and I wonder whether it isn’t anyway partly a temperamental matter. There are people who are inclined towards pessimism or melancholy and who naturally see disillusion as being the natural state of things. It may be that there are people who are temperamentally eupeptic and constantly see everything as turning out for the better.

But I think it’s probably a bit more than that, and my recipe for seeing the good side of things is to look at the whole picture. If you look at a bit, you can sort of select for any emotional tone by choosing the right bit of history or your own experience. Look at the whole of it. Look at your experience in the context of everybody else’s experience. Always cast your eyes around as widely as you can. Use as much of your knowledge and your memory and the things you can find out – if for no other reason than that if you develop the habit of looking around you, if you encourage your own curiosity, you’ll find an endless wealth of things to be curious about.

What is it Robert Louis Stevenson says?

The world is so full of a number of things,
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.
[‘Happy Thought’ from A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885)]
He’s absolutely right. There’s no shortage of extraordinary and beautiful things to be struck by and to be amazed afresh by.

Does that mean you are fundamentally an optimist?

I don’t know. I’m not actually at all interested in myself.

Oh. I was hoping you could tell us what your daemon would be if you had one.

She would probably be a jackdaw or a magpie, because those are the birds that are traditionally interested in little shiny things and go and pick them out. They don’t really distinguish between a diamond ring and a bit of Kit-Kat wrapper.

Or between Paradise Lost and Neighbours maybe.

Good example. Of course, I know there is a difference between Paradise Lost and Neighbours, but in terms of story stuff they’re the same sort of thing – they’re both shiny. When you read:

High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,
Satan exalted –
[Paradise Lost, Book II, ll1-5]
What’s going to happen next? What’s he going to do? And when Drew lends Scotty some money and Scotty says, ‘I’ve put it all on a horse,’ you want to know: What’s going to happen next?
That’s why gossip is a great leveller: we all want passionately to know what happens next. Even the most extreme academic postmodernists, who believe that there is nothing outside language and that stories are written by themselves and fiction is just, you know, a play of signifiers without any ultimate significance and there is no such thing as narrative and everything is self-referential and you can’t trust the narrator and all this sort of stuff, as soon as you say to them in the senior common room, ‘Do you know who I saw going into the stockroom with so-and-so yesterday?’ it’s ‘Tell me more! What happened?’

You observed some years ago that, while children’s writers are addressing the deep questions of life, the novelists who write for adults only want to ‘cut artistic capers’. Is that still the case?

Oh, I think so. I said it to be provocative, mind you.

I think it has to do with this story business again. You see, when you write for an audience that largely consists of children, you have got to put the story at the centre of what you’re doing, and when you do that, you cannot be self-conscious and postmodern and tricksy and self-referential and all that sort of stuff that the literary types like. But that is actually a great advantage to you as an artist, because stories can say things more wisely and more profoundly and more directly than any commentary on stories can.

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© 2000 Third Way

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Only In Hollywood
It’s time for the envelopes, please. Tango hands out the Oscars for Most Dangerous Romantic Movie Myths
My friend Michelle and her on-again-off-again were off. Again. She complained that he just wasn’t going to the right lengths to win her back. “I need a big gesture,” she said. “I need roses. I need tears. I need Lloyd Dobler on the front lawn with a boom box raised over his head.”

Another friend, Laura, had not met anyone even halfway decent in months, and was starting to wonder if her best friend, Tiny Tony — a sweetheart who is unfortunately short, bald, and bulbous — might be the guy for her after all. “I’ve never been attracted to him or anything,” she said. “But maybe it’s a When Harry Met Sally situation. Maybe we’re meant to be and I just haven’t noticed.”

After almost 15 years as a faithful fan of romantic comedies, I’ve come to a painful conclusion: The movies we watch to supplement our love lives are actually sabotaging them. They make us wonder why our ex hasn’t appeared in our yard playing “In Your Eyes” at midnight even though, if he did so, we’d file for a restraining order, not a marriage license. They lead us to believe that an older, more sophisticated man who criticizes the way we look/talk/ dress will fall madly in love with our made-over selves — if it was good enough for Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, it’s good enough for us.

A lot of lip service has been paid to the idea that violence in films causes men to be violent
in real life. Why isn’t anyone calling for warning labels for movies that cause otherwise reasonable women to act like emotional psychopaths? Hollywood’s take on love leaves us dissatisfied with the relationships we have, and hungry for the sort of romance that simply never occurs in nature.
I’d like to tell you that this realization has caused me to throw out all my old videotapes. Into the trash with you, Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. You’ve set me up for failure, Rock Hudson. It’s documentaries and presidential biopics from here on in. But a girl’s gotta dream.
Still, it’s helpful to at least try to separate fact from fiction. In that spirit, I’ve identified some of the most common romantic-movie traps. If you feel yourself slipping back into fantasyland, get thee to a Blockbuster and rent Annie Hall — the only romantic movie I can think of that’s both satisfying and honest.
The Sleepless in Seattle Trap
Like Bill Pullman in the movie, your current boyfriend or fiancé may have committed some unforgivable crimes, such as having lots of allergies but no nickname. Then you hear a voice on the radio, or see a face across a crowded room. Suddenly, you know this stranger is the love of your life. OK, you already have a partner who’s perfectly stable and lovely, but I’m afraid you will have to end that relationship. After all, in the 30 seconds you’ve spent with the new man, you’ve learned everything there is to know about him. And. It. Is. Good. You use Google, gossip, mutual acquaintances, and expensive private investigators to track him down and ask him out to dinner.
See also: Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, A Walk in the Clouds.
The Real Ending: Over dinner, you realize he has bad breath, a wife, and absolutely nothing whatsoever in common with you.
The As Good As It Gets Trap
You’ve found a guy who has that certain something — as well as a bad attitude, a fear of commitment, or just a nonspecific nasty streak. Other than that, though, what a catch. Minor personality flaws won’t stand in the way of your fate. You decide that your love can change him, because that’s what true love does.
See also: Jerry Maguire, Reality Bites.
The Real Ending: You go to great lengths to show him that you’re worth loving before ultimately deciding that he’s never going to change — and that he’s the last thing you’d want to complete you, anyway.
The An Affair to Remember Trap
You meet the perfect man and make elaborate, romantic plans for the future right away. He takes your number (no need for you to take his) and promises to call the next day. When the phone doesn’t ring, you don’t worry — he’s your soul mate after all, there’s just been some misunderstanding. Two days later, you start to grow concerned that something has happened to him. Is he under a bus somewhere? Has he been taken hostage? You go from concerned to all-out panicked. Despite the gentle protestations of your friends that perhaps he’s just not that into you, you remain convinced that he was hit by a cab and rendered a cripple, and is too proud to leave his apartment.
See also: The Notebook.
The Real Ending: Three months later you see him dancing in a club with some chick in a tube top.
The When Harry Met Sally Trap
You’ve never been attracted to your male best friend, but recently things in the romance department have been less than enthralling. So you start to wonder — maybe, just maybe, The One has been staring you in the face all along. Who cares if he still lives in his mom’s basement? This is destiny, damn it.
The Real Ending: Prepare for an awkward, tequila-induced make-out session that definitely requires an “I don’t know what I was thinking” email the next day.
The Titanic Trap
You just made partner and need to focus on work, but you can’t get this new guy off your mind. His name is Bo, he never went to college, and he works at the burrito place where you sometimes grab lunch between clients. Your friends ask what exactly you hope to gain from this relationship, but luckily you’re not a snob like them, and you know that a person’s job isn’t what defines him.
See also: Sabrina, Pretty Woman, Sweet Home Alabama.
The Real Ending: At a company dinner, your boss asks Bo what he does and he replies, “I work the grill, but I’m hoping to be put on the register soon.” Face it: If Leo had made it to dry land, that relationship would never have survived.
The Stepmom Trap
None of your romantic fantasies ended with Prince Charming leaving you for his secretary. Nor did they include falling for an otherwise great man with two sizable and unavoidable flaws (i.e., his children). Don’t panic. Contrary to what you might think, this divorce stuff is a piece of cake. Your step kids hate you? All it’s going to take to turn that around are some good old fashioned sex tips from you (to make the brats more popular, duh) and the untimely death of their mother. Your ex couldn’t seem to tie his own shoelaces when you were together? Rest assured that once you’ve signed the divorce papers, he will clean up his act and become the kind of guy you meant to marry.
See also: The Philadelphia Story, High Society, The Parent Trap, Mrs. Doubtfire.
The Real Ending: You continue to hate the bastard for years to come, despite the fact that your shrink says rage won’t help you heal. And whatever side of the joint custody battle you might fall on — be it mom or stepmom — the kids aren’t going to make the situation any easier. If you’re a stepmom, get ready for the cry of “You can’t tell me what to do! You’re not my mother!” to take up permanent residence in your psyche. If you’re the real mom, the line will be “When we’re at Dad’s house, Bambi never makes us do our homework/eat our vegetables/stop playing with knives.”
The Pretty in Pink Trap
Your next-door neighbor just happens to be a Calvin Klein underwear model. Lucky you. You’ve brought him countless jars of jam that need loosening, and even gotten locked out of your place in your cutest dress. Yet he hasn’t asked you out. In the words of Journey, “Don’t stop believin’.”
See also: Notting Hill, Love Actually.
The Real Ending: There’s a fine line between healthy optimism and insanity. There’s also a reason the quarterback in high school always dated the head cheerleader — their kind is biologically predetermined to go forth and make other popular kids for everyone else to envy. It might be smarter to set your sights on the guy in 2B with the sweet smile and the receding hairline.

Volume XII: Spring 2006
Secular Versus Religious Fans: Are they Different?: An Empirical Examination
Stephen Reysen[*]
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Abstract

An 11-item survey was created and administered to examine differences between secular and religious fans with respect to fan behaviours and beliefs. Responses from 158 adults were examined. Responses from different secular fan groups (e.g., music, media, sports) were similar, lending support to the notion that fans are similar regardless of interest. Responses from different religious groups were also similar among themselves. However, secular fan group responses were different from religious member responses with respect to a number of the questions presented.
[1] In the present study, a fan was defined as a person who is a devoted and ardent admirer. Most empirical work focuses on sport fans, especially those who exhibit violent behaviour (e.g., Wann and Branscombe 1993). For example, Wann has created a scale to measure the level of identity sports fans possess with their target interest and how this predicts fan behaviour (for a review see Wann, Melnick, Russell and Pease 2001). To a lesser extent, fans of television programs have been examined. Given the ubiquitous nature of fandom one would surmise that a wealth of research exists on the topic. Some popular writers and theorists have compared fandom to religion. However, no studies have attempted to compare secular fans from different interest groups. Conclusions have yielded mixed results as to similarities and differences among religious groups (Frederick and Price, 2001; Furnham 1982; Khayyer 2000). And no studies have compared fandom to religion. The present study explores the sociological literature and examines the notion of fandom as a religion through empirical examination.

[2] The word “fan” is an abbreviation of fanatic. A fanatic is defined as “One zealously devoted to a religion” or “One who holds extreme views or advocates extreme measures” (Phelps 1995). For the present study, a religious “fan” was defined as a person who belongs to a religious group, and adheres to or manifests religious beliefs. The definition is applied to religious members excluding individuals who collect religious paraphernalia. This definition may be viewed as an overextension of the concept of a fan; however, theorists have drawn similarities between fans and religious members, thus encouraging further examination. Both secular fans and religious members strive for a connection with an interest and are devoted to the interest to some degree.

[3] Religion was defined as a “commitment or devotion to religious faith” (Mish and Morse 1993, 988). Religious beliefs were defined as tenets held by a religious faith group. A religious group was defined as two or more individuals who hold similar religious beliefs. In the present examination, respondents were asked to answer a questionnaire regarding their religious membership, assessing them as “fans of religion.”

[4] While no studies have empirically examined similarities or differences between secular fans and religious members, in his book, Celebrity, Chris Rojek (2001) discusses the religion-fan connection. He does not posit the legitimacy of a connection, but does offer possible similarities. Secular fans strive to lessen the distance between themselves and the target celebrity. This is exemplified by a fan’s quest to collect items used by or associated with the celebrity and visitation to celebrity burial sites. One possible explanation, “the St. Thomas effect,” cites individuals’ desire to authenticate a target celebrity by seeing or touching them in person. Barbas (2001) has developed a similar explanation. For both authors, there exists a parasocial relationship for fans, meaning that all relations between the fans and their interests are through media instead of face-to-face interaction. This parallels religion by seeking enlightenment through, e.g., the Bible, rather than speaking directly to the source. Lastly, both fans and religious members have sacred and profane worlds, rites of passage, rituals and heightened emotions with respect to their fan or religious interest.

[5] Gabler (1998) indicates that fandom has come to replace organized religion. Gabler suggests that as science and rational thought become more prevalent, religion and magic have waned. However, a void needed to be filled, individuals strived to find their lives meaningful, and celebrity culture was secular society’s answer. Religion has adapted by assimilating consumer culture, using similar forms of media communication. Religions are branding beliefs via the Internet, magazines and television (Rojek 2001). This means religions are trademarking their beliefs in consumer packages. Thus, religion and fandom hold similar appearances of information dissemination. Despite the caution expressed by some, bold statements continue to be made regarding a definite connection (for one such statement, see Doss 1999). The notion of fandom and religion as related phenomena or as similarly defined is untested and often disputed.

[6] Hill (2002) suggests that fandom is dissimilar to religion. Religious terms are simply used as a means to explain fan behaviour, although they have separate meanings. He instead calls the fan behaviour neoreligious. Fans are not similar to religious members, but religious labels have been given to fan behaviour. Duffett (2003) also argues against a connection. He states that once the popular culture has accepted the metaphor, or religious labels detailing fan behaviour, fans will be forced to into that mold.

[7] These ideas, however, are speculation by popular writers. No empirical studies exist concerning a connection between fandom and religion. The present study sought to explore this relationship. Two goals of the present study are to further the research examining fans, and to study any possible connections between fandom and religion. Included in the current study are three hypotheses: (1) different secular fan groups’ description of fanship would be similar; (2) different religious groups’ description of fanship would be similar; and (3) religious and secular fan groups’ description of fanship would be similar.

Method

Participants

[8] Surveys were emailed to webmasters of fan clubs, and numerous surveys were posted on Internet fan club bulletin boards. A number of email messages were returned due to inaccurate or outdated addresses, thus an exact response rate is unknowable. Three main groups of individuals were contacted: music fans, media fans, and religious individuals. A music fan was defined as a person who is interested in a particular band; a media fan was defined as a fan of a particular actor, director, or television program. A religious individual was defined as a person who belonged to a religious group and these were contacted through church websites. A majority of religious respondents belonged to the Assembly of God organization, a group arbitrarily chosen for the study. A total of 169 individuals responded: 11 responses were discarded due to the respondent leaving more than two questions unanswered or indicating they were less than 18 years of age, leaving 158 remaining responses included in this analysis (see Table 1 for respondent characteristics).

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Table 1

Characteristics of the Sample

N (%) M SD

Agea 33.36 14.25

Number of years a fanb 17.38 14.50

How big a fan (1-10)c 8.50 1.59

Gendera

Men 87 (55%)

Women 71 (45%)

Fan Groupa

Assembly of God 52 (32.91%)

Other religions 12 (7.59%)

Music 51 (32.28%)

Media 23 (14.56%)

Sports 12 (7.59%)

Other 8 (5.06%)

a Total N = 158, b Total N = 157, c Total N = 155

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Instrument

[9] The survey consisted of 12 questions concerning respondents’ fanship beliefs and behaviours. The questions are each of individual interest and are not intended to measure any one concept. These included: How did you become involved with your interest? Are you part of a fan club? Where do you get your information regarding your interest? How do you explain your interest to others? How do others view your interest? How do you deal with disagreement regarding your interest? Do you feel isolated when not around others who share your interest? Are you a bigger fan than someone else, and how did you compare? How big of a fan are you (1-10)? How long have you considered yourself a fan? What are your other interests? The survey was modified slightly for religious respondents. Instead of using “fan” or “interest,” the survey read “member” or “religion.”

[10] Informed consent was given to participants explaining voluntary participation, the ability to discontinue without penalty, and assurance of confidentiality. All participants acknowledged understanding of the consent and the voluntary decision to participate. The data were kept separately from participants’ identity and all emails were destroyed at the end of data collection.

Results

[11] The items appear face valid. Responses were read using inductive content coding, and frequent responses were categorized. All responses were read once and categorized according to similarity in answers. For example, when asked how they deal with disagreement one religious respondent stated, “I honestly love and pray for all people.” A fan of college football stated, “I don’t deal with them.” A fan of radio talk show host Bob Brinker stated, “I try to find facts to support my position and explain my reasons gently in order to convince them to alter their opinion.” The first example was coded as “love/pray”, the second “ignore,” and the third as “engage/challenge.”

Fan vs. Religious Group Differences

[12] Using chi-square tests of independence, no differences were found between secular fan groups for any survey question. Similarly, no differences were found between religious groups for any survey question. As a result, the religious fans’ responses were grouped together, and the secular fans’ responses were grouped together. These two groups of responses were then compared using chi-square tests of independence. The two groups differed significantly with respect to: how they became involved with their interest, if they are part of a club, where they receive their information, how they explain their interest to others, how they believe others view their interest, how they deal with disagreement, if they compare themselves to others, and how they compare themselves to others in the group (see Table 2).

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Table 2

Religious and Secular Group Statistically Significant Differences

How became involved

Religious (N = 64)

Secular (N = 89)

Friends

Church

Parents/ Family

Media

Internet

23.4%

9.4%

62.5%

4.7%

0%

25.8%

0%

18%

53.9%

2.2%

(c2(4, N = 153) = 57.12, p = .00)a

Part of a club or group

(N = 64)

(N = 94)

Yes

No

100%

0%

69.1%

30.9%

(c2(4, N = 158) =24.18, p = .00)

Where receive information

(N = 64)

(N = 94)

Internet

Family/ Friends

TV/ Magazine/ Newspaper/ Video/ Radio

Bible/ Historical Text

Group Leaders

1.6%

3.1%

1.6%

70.3%

23.4%

58.5%

8.5%

27.7%

0%

5.3%

(c2(5, N = 158) =127.73, p = .001)

Table 2 continued

How explain to others

Religious (N = 64)

Secular (N = 94)

Already Know

Relate to Self

Relate to Other

Glorify

Don’t Explain

Other/ Depends

0%

60.9%

17.2%

1.6%

1.6%

18.8%

3.2%

48.9%

6.4%

14.9%

12.8%

13.8%

(c2(5, N = 158) = 20.71, p = .001)

How others view

(N = 63)

(N = 94)

Positive

Neutral

Negative

65.1%

22.2%

12.7%

29.8%

40.4%

29.8%

(c2(2, N = 157) = 19.27, p = .00)

How deal with disagreement

(N = 64)

(N = 93)

Ignore

Retaliate/ Names

Engage/ Challenge

Love/ Pray

15.6%

1.6%

26.6%

56.3%

62.4%

5.4%

21.5%

10.8%

(c2(3, N = 157) = 47.76, p = .00)a

Table 2 continued

Compare with others

Religious (N = 62)

Secular (N = 93)

Yes

No

Not about that

46.8%

32.3%

21%

62.4%

31.2%

6.5%

(c2(2, N = 155) = 8.02, p = .01)

How compare

(N = 38)

(N = 62)

Time

Willing to Give

Personal Feeling

Other

10.5%

50.8%

34.2%

5.3%

46.8%

29%

14.5%

9.7%

(c2(3, N = 100) = 16.91, p = .001)a

a 20% or more of the cells have an expected count less than 5.

Bold percentages represent the most common response by group.

——————————-

[12] Religious respondents were more likely to have become involved in their interest through parents or other family members, while secular respondents were drawn in through media sources (e.g., television, radio, magazines). Secular respondents also were more likely to continue receiving their information through the Internet and media sources, whereas religious respondents cited the Bible and religious writings. Both groups of respondents explained their interest to others by relating the interest to them, although religious respondents did this significantly more. For example, a religious respondent would state what about religion had helped or changed them. Religious respondents stated that they believed other people viewed their interest in religion to be positive, while the secular group thought others viewed their interest as either neutral or negative. When confronted with disagreement, those in the religious group explained how they would pray or love the individual, whereas those in the secular fan group said they would ignore them. A majority of respondents in both groups agreed they could compare themselves with others. However, in the religious group, fewer agreed regarding comparing themselves to others. When asked how they made the comparison between themselves and another person in their group, the religious respondents cited their willingness to give up things for their religion. Secular respondents cited the amount of time they have spent on their given interest. For example, religious respondents frequently stated they would give their lives for their religion, whereas fan respondents stated they have spent their lives being a fan of their interest.

Age Differences

[13] To better understand differences due to age, another analysis was conducted. Respondents were split into two groups by median age: those 18-30 were termed “young,” those 31 or older were termed “old”. The age groups differed significantly with respect to: which group they were associated with, whether they belonged to a club, where they received their information, how they dealt with disagreement regarding their interest, whether they compared themselves with other fans or members, and gender of respondent (see Table 3).

—————————-

Table 3

Statistically Significant Differences by Age

Group Association

Young (N = 75)

Old (N = 83)

Religious

Non-Religious

44.6%

76%

55.4%

24%

(c2(1, N = 158) = 16.14, p = .00)

Part of a club or group

(N = 75)

(N = 83)

Yes

No

65.3%

34.7%

96.4%

3.6%

(c2(1, N = 158) = 25.35, p = .00)

Where receive information

(N = 75)

(N = 83)

Internet

Family/ Friends

TV/ Magazine/ Newspaper/ Video/ Radio

Bible/ Historical Text

Group Leaders

45.3%

6.5%

24%

12%

12%

26.5%

6%

10.5%

43.4%

13.3%

(c2(4, N = 158) =21.62, p = .00)

Table 3 continued

How deal with disagreement

Young (N = 75)

Old (N = 82)

Ignore

Retaliate/ Names

Engage/ Challenge

Love/ Pray

46.7%

6.7%

28%

18.7%

40.2%

1.2%

19.5%

39%

(c2(3, N = 157) = 10.15, p = .017)a

Compare with others

(N = 74)

(N = 81)

Yes

No

Not about that

60.8%

35.1%

4.1%

51.9%

28.4%

19.8%

(c2(2, N = 155) = 8.88, p = .012)

Gender

(N = 75)

(N = 83)

Women

Men

53.3%

46.7%

37.3%

62.7%

(c2(1, N = 158) = 4.07, p = .05)

a 20% or more of the cells have an expected count less than 5.

Bold percentages represent the most common response by group.

—————————-

[14] Younger respondents were less likely to be religious members than the older respondents. In comparison to older respondents, younger respondents were less likely to be associated with a fan club or group, and more likely to receive their information from media sources. Younger respondents were more likely to engage others who disagreed with their interest whereas the older respondent would love or pray for others. Older respondents were more likely to state that it is not about comparing themselves to others whereas younger respondents either agreed or disagreed that they compared themselves with others. Younger respondents were also more likely to be women.

Discussion

[15] The present study sought to explore the similarities between fans of different interests and the possible similarities to religious fans. A survey was administered to test for basic similarities in the belief processes of secular and religious fans. A number of significant results were found bearing on the original three hypotheses. The first and second hypotheses were supported: secular responses were similar among themselves and religious responses were similar among themselves. This is important for future fan research because comparisons can possibly be made across all fan groups. The third hypothesis was not supported: secular fan group responses were not similar to religious responses. Thus, the findings do not indicate a connection between fandom and religion.

[16] Significant group differences included the indoctrinating medium through which individuals became involved in their interest. Family members were much more likely to introduce individuals to religion. This finding might aid future conversion methods for religious groups. Religious respondents stated that they believed others viewed their interest in religion as positive, whereas secular interest respondents believed others viewed their interest as neutral or negative. This may exemplify the acceptance of intense religious interest, whereas other interests are seen as abnormal or maladaptive to the individual. The way respondents deal with others who disagree with their interest proved significant. Religious respondents were more likely to express love or to pray for the individual, whereas secular respondents stated they would ignore those persons. This could be due to the specific group doctrine. Religious members are taught to pray for those who disagree with them. Fan groups may lack any explicitly stated doctrine of love. Both groups agreed they compare themselves with others in the group; however the deciding factor they stated differed. Religious respondents stated they were willing to give everything for their religion, even their lives. Secular respondents used time as a deciding factor. This might show a real difference in loyalty or devotion to the interest between groups.

[17] Many conclusions may be drawn from the present study. First, in relation to age differences, there exists a possible trend for younger respondents to use the Internet to seek information more than older individuals. This may reflect the growing importance of the Internet among the younger generation. Another possible trend is that younger respondents are more likely to engage or challenge others who disagree with their interest. This enthusiasm to argue may extinguish as individuals mature in relation to the interest.

[18] The results support popular writers who dispute an association between fandom and religion (e.g., Duffett, 2003; Hill, 2002). Religious members were less likely than fans to use the Internet as a source of information which does not support assertions by Rojek (2001). The result concerning the similarities between fan groups (e.g., music, sports) is of particular interest for further studies of fandom. Fans may be similar regardless of the interest.

[19] Limitations of the present study include small sample sizes, unknown response rate, and lack of generalizability. A larger study may include more fan groups and religious groups to improve the validity of the results. Using more advanced Internet research methods may be able to track participants and record a definite response rate. Lastly, due to small sample sizes, the results may not be generalizable to other religious groups. Past research has yielded mixed results regarding the similarities and differences among religious groups (Frederick and Price 2001; Furnham 1982; Khayyer 2000).

[20] More attention is warranted for the examination of fandom due to the overwhelming presence of the phenomenon in our culture. The present study aids future research by providing empirical evidence supporting the notion of fan group similarities, and the lack of association with religion. Future studies may examine the concept of the fan more closely and construct a measure to quantify the degree to which individuals are fans.

References

Barbas, S. 2001. Movie Crazy: Fans, Stars, and the Cult of Celebrity. New York: Palgrave.

Doss, E. 1999. Elvis Culture: Fans, Faith and Image. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press.

Duffett, M. 2003. “False Faith or False Comparison? A Critique of the Religious Interpretation of Elvis Fan Culture.” Popular Music and Society (December): 1-4.

Frederick, C.M. and B. Price, B. 2001. “Thinking Creatively about Religion: Belief-related Differences.” Journal of Creative Behaviour 35,3: 205-24.

Furnham, A.F. 1982. “Explaining Poverty in India: A Study of Religious Group Differences.” Psychologia: An International Journal of Psychology in the Orient 25,4: 236-43.

Gabler, N. 1998. Life: The Movie. New York: Random House.

Hill, M. 2002. Fan Cultures. New York: Routledge.

Khayyer, M. 2000. “Comparison of Locus of Control among Muslim and Jewish School Students in Iran.” Psychological Reports 87,1: 183-187.

Mish, F.C. and J.M. Morse, eds. 1993. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 10th Edition. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster Inc.

Phelps, M.F., ed. 1995. Roget’s II: The New Thesaurus. 3rd Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Rojek, C. 2001. Celebrity. London: Reaktion Books.

Wann, D.L. and N.R. Branscombe. 1993. “Sports Fans: Measuring Degree of Identification with their Team.” International Journal of Sport Psychology 24,1: 1-17.

Wann, D.L., M.J. Melnick, G.W. Russell and D.G. Pease. 2001. Sport Fans: The Psychology and Social Impact of Spectators. New York: Routledge.

Author Note

[*] I would like to thank Constance Jones, Robert Levine and Ellen Ganz for their help with this research. Address correspondence to Stephen Reysen, University of Kansas, Department of Psychology, 1415 Jayhawk Blvd. Rm. 426, Lawrence, Kansas 66045-7556 [email: sreysen@jasnh.com].

Star Wars as Personal Mythology
by Jonathan Young
Link

Once again, an installment of the Star Wars series has become a movie event of galactic proportions. The spiritual underpinnings of the story have been widely recognized as a clear part of its enormous appeal. There has been much discussion on the mythic dimensions of the film. Now that the commotion has settled down, perhaps it is a good time to reflect on the implications of the tale for those interested in the life of the soul.
Early in the film, an imposing spacecraft is speeding through the darkness between planets. There is a crisis, and two Jedi Knights are on their way to help. The call to adventure is similar in all these movies because it matches experiences that are known to the audience. The events that cause us to develop strengths often begin as bad news. Something calls us to solve a problem, or survive an ordeal, and through this difficult process, we find that we are capable of more than we thought.

Like other fans, I have been eagerly looking forward to another visit to the amazing universe of the Star Wars adventures. As a writer on archetypal themes, I was recently invited to Harvard to lecture on the mythic elements in Star Wars. It is not difficult to read the episodes as wisdom tales. The key insights into the meaning of human experience are clearly present. The mythic imagination is essentially a template that can be endlessly re-worked. If we look at the films through a symbolic lens, the life-lessons are abundant.

Given the advantage of advance access to The Phantom Menace, I have had some time to think about the psychological themes of the story. Even in the starting points of the film, there are universal questions. What is the long-term effect of slavery – be it literal or figurative? What is the long-term effect of fear on one’s character and choices?

The key characters this time out include young Anakin Skywalker, who we know will eventually become Darth Vader (as well as Luke Skywalker’s father). Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn, played by Liam Neeson is the commanding presence of the film. His youthful apprentice is Obi-Won Kenobi, not yet a full Jedi Knight. Queen Amidala is the teenage ruler of a planet under siege by the Trade Federation. One of the gratifying aspects of Episode One is the important role played by strong female characters.

As before, the force is a central element in the adventure. In a recent issue of Time Magazine, Bill Moyers and George Lucas discussed my ideas about the meaning of the force. Beyond the honor of being quoted in such a conversation, I am reminded that the idea of the force is what makes the Star Wars films more than well-done science fiction. This mysterious energy is the key to the transcendent magic of the stories.

The Jedi describe the force as an energy field that sustains all living things. An individual may sense the force as intuition, or something spiritual. It is something beyond individual skill or wisdom. Whether I say I trust my inner voice or use more traditional language, like trusting the Holy Spirit, somehow I am listening for something beyond my own calculations. I’m trying to tune into a larger field of energy and knowledge. When a Jedi advises the hero to trust the force, he is saying that we must not put all our trust in what we can know clearly. There are mysteries and powers that are larger than our knowing and seeing.

The Jedi are the high priests of the force as well as the noble knights of the time. The Jedi began in still earlier times as a theological and philosophical study group. Only after long consideration of the force did they take up the idea of fighting for high principles and causes.

When we become attuned to values and energies beyond our immediate practical concerns, the effect on our lives may be enormous. Listening to the voices from deep within can change everything. Quiet pursuits like poetry and meditation can lead to daring action once you find a calling, or become aware of the needs of others. You might not think teaching is much of a life, until you see the face of a child excited about learning something marvelous. Allowing ourselves to be led by emotion and our deepest values can take us into surprising directions.

In The Phantom Menace, the threat of war has grown out of economic issues. This seems like an eternal motivation for conflict. In the present era, many standing armies are poised to go to battle over economic matters. The U.S. seems particularly willing to mobilize in regions that hold global oil reserves. Throughout history, trade issues with enormous financial implications can grow into deadly conflict.

The heroic man or woman in an initiatory adventure is a regular person. The story begins as a mundane situation. A boy is trying to win a race. Starting in familiar circumstances lets the audience know that extraordinary things can happen in ordinary lives. Tragedy often sets the larger story in motion. This is the summons, the call to the quest. In The Phantom Menace, it is a threat to the Queen’s planet.

The event that sets a fictional quest in motion is similar to what might happen to us. It is something that draws us into the engagement. In our life stories it might be the death of a parent, a divorce, a devastating illness, or a financial disaster. From there we can either collapse and give up on life, or we can rise to the occasion.

In the mythic moment, the individual’s issues become enmeshed with larger problems. The Jedi get involved as Ambassadors. Along the way, Qui-Gon discovers the gifted boy Anakin. The boy meets Queen Amidala and learns he is not the only one with challenges, society is in trouble — there are problems larger than his own. His personal circumstances and larger causes become intertwined as he goes to the threshold of adventure. His connection with Jedi teachers Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi represents contact with the higher self or inner master. The hero meets these key allies at the threshold moment. It is the jumping off point beyond which there is no return.

The hero might come to the adventure with many motivations. These might include trying to resolve some family difficulty. Anakin and his mother are slaves. Universal issues of personal freedom and dignity are represented in this detail. We can take the family angle literally in terms of personal drama, or see it symbolically. The image of the family can represent how our lives intertwine with others in all sorts of situations. Family dramas in dreams can reveal how various aspects of our inner lives get along with each other. Notions about family can be about how the past still influences us. Freud showed how the lives of people that came before us ripple down through our present-day emotional reactions to others.

The traveler may be seeking a transcendent experience. Usually the initiate is also looking for some undiscovered aspect of himself or herself. There is some wound that requires healing. Anakin Skywalker is moving toward several goals simultaneously. At some point, allies appear. This will include someone like Qui-Gon with extraordinary life experience. The guide has skills, secret lore, and wisdom necessary for the success of the journey.

There is a strong team effort in The Phantom Menace. A solitary warrior does not accomplish the solution. The initiatory quest is never a solo journey. The adventure is always collective effort, contrary to some immature fantasies of personal glory. Part of the lesson is to remember we are not alone. It isn’t an individual’s skill or strength by itself, that will resolve the situation. It is guides, allies, and animals that provide help at every turn. Even the comic Jar Jar Binks makes a crucial contribution. The seeker discovers that no single person can do the quest. Others provide assistance all the way through and back. There is much in these stories about humbling our arrogance.

This story shows how the call to service is not always welcomed. Not everyone on the team is eager for the adventure. The reluctant hero is an old theme. Some part of each of us is not pleased to face danger. It is not the presence of fear that is the problem, but how we handle it. Denial of fear is the worst, because then it lurks beyond our attention, often getting projected onto others.

The mentors can take many forms; an old teacher, a wise enchantress, a mysterious old magician, such as the strange creature Yoda. The wise one gives the hero something that is necessary for the quest. In The Phantom Menace we meet the council of the Jedi Masters. The high lodge of keepers of the wisdom is an ancient mythological motif. They may play some role in the possibility of initiation in the mysteries.

Gaining power is a challenging process involving proving good character. The rashness of youth must be tempered. The parallels in ordinary life may be as mundane as gaining the approval of a driving examiner to get a driver’s license. It could be completing arduous training to become a Marine. It might be as grand as completing extensive education to become ordained into a priesthood, certified as a teacher, or licensed as a professional. It could be gaining high office. If the position is in public life, the initiation may even involve an inauguration ceremony.

In this story, Anakin Skywalker comes through when things get tough. In the model of the heroic adventure, not all of the allies turn out to be loyal. There are betrayals and disappointments. Allies sometimes die early in the story. The quest is a long voyage with many lessons before the hero reaches the goal.

Queen Amidala and the Jedi Knights are the central aristocratic figures in a tale with many royal characters. The fascination with the realm of lords and ladies is a staple in science fiction and fantasy. It does not necessarily mean that the audience longs to live under the rule of Kings or Queens. The symbolism may be deeper still. It could be a yearning for the larger meanings of all those grand roles. Such titles included devotion to great causes. These were lives with meaning and dedication to service. The psychological significance might be that we long for our inner nobility. The qualities of character and purpose associated with such positions may be what is missing in an overly egalitarian and endlessly practical age. Seeking one’s truly noble qualities is a worthy endeavor.

At some point in our quests, we all reach bottom. This is the dark night of the soul when all seems lost. It may last years. It is the crisis of faith in the seeker’s life. This is like a baptism from hell. If we survive this ultimate ordeal, we will likely be able to face anything else fate throws in our faces. We can gain a depth of character by having seen the worst. It may involve personal failure or painful losses. It is tempting to wish the horrible things had not happened. That would miss the lesson. This is the most valuable part of the journey.

We can see in a well-told story such as this, how important it is to forge alliances with others. We can also look at the characters in a story as the various energies within ourselves. After all, we each have many personalities, and these various aspects of ourselves have to learn to get along if we are to accomplish anything. These competing interests tug and pull us in different directions. To be brave, or afraid, or loving, are all features of a single individual’s psychology. The story shows how to accomplish a working integration of an inner life. The tasks of learning to relate well with others and developing a well-balanced inner world are two sides of the same coin.

Initiatory adventures often include a great confrontation between good and evil. The task that is larger than we are, the fears greater than we have ever experienced. We each discover that we can survive ordeals we did not think we could endure. If we remember the lessons up to this point, we have discovered how to work with our allies. We have learned how to master the many conflicting elements within ourselves. Most important, we know we must trust the force. We have found how to stay in the flow of some wisdom larger than ourselves.

At some point, the individual’s actions must become synchronized with universal forces. This shift eases life’s basic loneliness. You are enmeshed in a larger purpose. You are meant to be in a certain place and fill a particular role. You are being yourself, truly and entirely for the first time. You have energies that you never knew about before.

Joseph Campbell described what happens if you followed your bliss, accepted your calling. Doors will open where you did not know there were doors. Help would come when you did not even know you needed help. Things are possible that would not have been possible for anyone else or would have been impossible for you in the past.

Because the Star Wars stories are set in another time, on fictional planets, we are able to get beyond the naturalism of most movies. Joseph Campbell felt that naturalism was the death of art. If the stories and characters are too realistic, it is more difficult to see the metaphors that carry the deeper messages of the story. When a story takes place in outer space, the audience knows that they are watching a work of the imagination. That is a key reason that the Star Wars series has been taken as conveying wisdom to a degree that is unusual for a Hollywood movie.

Campbell felt that Lucas had clearly understood his books and had rendered the key metaphors in contemporary terms. The central modern issue is whether we are going to let the machine control us. Campbell’s notion of the machine includes the corporate state. Once can gain a measure of power by becoming machine-like. This is the great temptation that is so hard to resist. To be fully human, we must not spend all of our energies becoming part of the larger machine. The alternative is to listen to the still small voice within.

Our core choices and values have to come from inside. Then, ultimately, it all turns around, and one must find a place in the world. A mythic story shows how we must find our own footing as individuals, and also how we can return from separation to make a contribution. If the story only showed how to rebel against conventionality, it would leave us as hermits or lost souls. The greater challenge is to rejoin the community, but on our own terms.

In Phantom Menace, we are aware that the boy, Anakin Skywalker, will someday become the evil Darth Vader. This explores another universal theme. The seeker will have to face the dark side within. Some part of the hero is in the villain. The initiate is fighting some aspect of family heritage within himself or herself. This shows us the limits of dualistic thinking. We learn to get past imagining the hero is good and the other is evil. Resolution will require warring factions within the individual to pull together.

Some have noticed that the Star Wars episodes are similar to each other. Yet, George Lucas is not making the same movie over and over again. He is aware that one must go through many initiatory cycles to claim the many lessons. Each time out, the initiate is able to accomplish something new that seemed impossible. Each effort is successful because it is in the service of a calling. When one is motivated by higher causes, you can sometimes do amazing things.

After each lesson, the seeker then returns with significant new psychological integration. To accomplish the many stages of claiming our gifts, several elements are required — we must gain access to the attributes of both genders, find a way to be aligned with the forces of nature, and develop connections with the best of allies. The companions are seekers themselves, in later cycles of the life-long quest. In a grand story such as this one, we see several generations in their various stages of enlightenment.

The releases of this series of films also now spans generations. Many who saw the first Star Wars movie as a teenager will now be bringing their own children to see Episode One. Each member of the audience faces challenges and lessons appropriate to his or her age group. There is a character on the screen at the right stage in the long unfolding story for each person to follow.

At the end of each initiatory adventure, there is a big celebration. The many different characters present symbolize different stages of life. At the same time they can represent the various aspects of an individual who is growing more fully aware of the many energies within. Part of what Lucas does so well is to tell a story that operates on many levels simultaneously.

The traveler comes back home with something to show for all the effort. This prize is sometimes called the boon, elixir, or blessing. It can be new wisdom, or a skill. Often it is an insight of great value to the historical moment. The challenge then is to pass it around. The boon does not belong to the adventurer alone. It is for everyone.

The seeker returns to an honored place in the community. Ultimately, being true to oneself includes being useful to others. The sense of fulfillment is extraordinary at that point. There is a clear sense of identity and role. Such a life moves with amazing energy. The force is then truly with us.

Galactic gasbag
Beneath all the pseudo-mythic Joseph Campbell hogwash, the roots of George Lucas’ empire lie not in “The Odyssey” but in classic and pulp 20th century sci-fi.
By Steven Hart
Link

April 10, 2002 | Another “Star Wars” movie, “Episode Two: Attack of the Clones,” is about to hit the cineplexes. As with all cosmological phenomena, certain strange and even frightening things are likely to happen as the event horizon draws near.

Hardcore fans will prepare for opening night by polishing their toy light sabers and getting their Darth Vader costumes taken out an inch or so. Fast-food joints and toy stores will fill up with merchandise bearing the faces of alien creatures. And some gullible middlebrow — most likely Bill Moyers — will once again recite the pseudo-religious doctrine that attributes the phenomenal success of the series to producer-director George Lucas’ skill at tapping underground streams of ancient legends, using Joseph Campbell’s work in comparative mythology as his dowsing rod.

Lucas himself was mum about any Campbell influence when the original Star Wars opened — “The word for this movie is fun,” he told Time in 1977 — but he began name-dropping the retired Sarah Lawrence academic (who died in 1987) as the movie became a pop culture milestone. Feature writers took him at his word, unwilling to believe that a mere science-fiction flick could be so popular unless some deeper meaning was at work. Campbell, happy to have his work associated with the most successful film series of all time, returned the favor by praising Lucas’ use of mythological motifs, though he had trouble keeping straight exactly which motifs were being used. The relationship built until the men have become as closely linked in the public mind as Chang and Eng.

Web surfers who click on the Joseph Campbell Mythology Center at Castlebooks.com can pony up $7.50 for thinly argued articles like “Star Wars and the Mythic Quest” and “Boba Fett: Archetypal Warrior.” (Frugal space voyagers will want the “Obi-Wan and Boba Fett Combo 2 Pak,” a steal at $10.) “Joseph Campbell: The Power of Myth,” a television miniseries built around Moyers’ adoring interviews with the great man himself, was taped at Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch in San Rafael, Calif., and the finished episodes offered plenty of “Star Wars” film clips along with the photos of Grecian urns and Hindu deities.

Three years ago, when Lucas was about to revive the series with “The Phantom Menace,” Time magazine sent Moyers to talk with Lucas about “the true theology of ‘Star Wars.’” Their dialogue, duly transcribed for the April 26, 1999, issue, reads like the minutes of the College of Cardinals on laughing gas. Trouble is, nobody’s laughing.

“With ‘Star Wars’ I consciously set about to re-create myths and the classic mythological motifs,” Lucas says. “I wanted to use those motifs to deal with issues that exist today.” For sheer pomposity, this is hard to beat, but Moyers does his best. “One explanation for the popularity of ‘Star Wars’ when it appeared,” he says, “is that by the end of the 1970s, the hunger for spiritual experience was no longer being satisfied sufficiently by the traditional vessels of faith.” So that’s why everybody lined up in 1977; they wanted a spiritual experience, along with really cool laser explosions.

Moyers isn’t the only institution in thrall to this proto-cult. A few months before the release of “The Phantom Menace,” the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum turned itself into a virtual annex of Lucasfilm by hosting “Star Wars: The Magic of Myth,” a promotional tie-in disguised as an examination of how Campbell’s ideas are used in the series. Even the normally sensible film critic Roger Ebert is part of the Greek chorus. “It was not by accident that George Lucas worked with Joseph Campbell, an expert on the world’s basic myths, in fashioning a screenplay that owes much to man’s oldest stories,” Ebert intones in his “Great Movies” feature on “Star Wars.” Thus is Campbell, who from his own accounts didn’t even meet Lucas face-to-face until the 1980s, virtually elevated to the position of co-screenwriter.

Like many of mankind’s oldest legends, this notion offers multiple levels of absurdity. First, if knowledge of “man’s oldest stories” underlies the popularity of “Star Wars,” then why is Lucas’ non-”Star Wars” résumé so dismal? Apart from conceiving the “Indiana Jones” films, which owe their box-office impact to the kinetic genius of director Steven Spielberg, Lucas has produced an unbroken series of flops. Anyone here remember “Howard the Duck”? Or “Tucker: The Man and His Dream”? “Radioland Murders,” anybody? And let us not forget “Willow,” which is a virtual textbook of Campbell’s mix ‘n’ match approach to mythology.

Second, and more damningly, the real roots of “Star Wars” are obvious to anyone not blinded by snobbery or the need for self-inflation. They lie not in “The Odyssey” or the “Upanishads,” but 20th century science-fiction magazines such as Astounding, Amazing Stories and Galaxy. The “true theology” of “Star Wars” was written not by Virgil or Homer, but Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Frank Herbert, E.E. “Doc” Smith and a host of other S.F. writers.

The original “Star Wars” and its sequels are echo chambers of tropes and images from literary science fiction, used in ways that strike a careful balance between affectionate familiarity and outright plagiarism. The first glimpse of Luke Skywalker’s desert homeworld, Tatooine, evokes the setting of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel “Dune”; Lucas even throws in a shot of a skeletal desert serpent reminiscent of Herbert’s gigantic sandworms. The amazing visuals suggest an eye nourished by the magazine art of Frank R. Paul, John Schoenherr, Kelly Freas and Chesley Bonestell.

Some of the borrowings are as close to theft as anything on the Stephen Ambrose rap sheet. Coruscant, the world-girdling capital city of Lucas’ galactic republic, is a direct steal of Trantor, the planet-wide megalopolis in Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” novels, which share with “Star Wars” the use of a watered-down version of Roman history to chart the rise and fall of galactic empires. Theed, the ornate city featured in “The Phantom Menace,” is a dead ringer for James Gurney’s Dinotopia. And the dread Ewoks in “Return of the Jedi” are just cutesier versions of the forest-dwelling aliens in H. Beam Piper’s “Fuzzy” stories of the 1960s.

Overshadowing all of them in terms of influence on “Star Wars,” however, is E.E. “Doc” Smith, whose mastery of galaxy-spanning space operas made him one of the most popular writers of pre-World War II science fiction. Starting in the 1930s, Smith began writing a series of space adventures set against the backdrop of an eons-long war between a race of benevolent aliens called the Arisians and their enemies, the evil Eddorians. During this proxy war, in which civilizations and races are pawns in an infinitely long chess game, the Arisians use Earth and other planets to breed a race of super police, the “Lensmen.”

The central figure in this struggle is Kim Kinnison, the cream of the Arisian breeding program, whose children ultimately deliver the coup de grace against the Eddorians and their multiclawed cat’s paw, the Boskonians. To read the novels of the “Lensman” cycle — beginning with “Triplanetary” (1934) and concluding with “Children of the Lens” (1954) — is to trip constantly over reminders of the Jedi and their grapples with the conspiratorial Sith.

Like the Jedi, Lensmen enforce order throughout the galaxy with an arsenal of paranormal powers that render them virtually invincible in combat. Where Jedi pay homage to the Force, Lensmen invoke the “Cosmic All.” Lucas’ Jedi get their Force quotient boosted by microscopic entities called midichlorians; Smith’s heroes are turbocharged by “lenses,” collections of crystalline, semi-sentient life forms attuned to their personalities. An early draft of “Star Wars” revolved around the search for the “Khiber crystal,” which sounds an awful lot like one of Smith’s lenses. There are even hints that Lucas has worked a Lensman-style breeding program into his saga, judging from the story of Anakin Skywalker’s immaculate conception in “The Phantom Menace.”

The scale of the action in the Lensman books is broader than anything in the Lucas universe — not content with wiping out whole planets, Smith’s Lensmen detonate entire solar systems without breaking a sweat — but the quality of the writing is about the same, which is to say awful. (Everyone has heard the story of how Harrison Ford, during the filming of the original “Star Wars,” groused about the dialogue: “You can type this shit, George, but you can’t say it.” E.E. “Doc” Smith goes him one better — you can’t read it, either.) The series underwent a successful paperback revival in the early 1970s, when Lucas was sweating out the first drafts of “Star Wars.” Dale Pollock’s biography “Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas” puts the Lensman novels at the top of Lucas’ pre-”Star Wars” reading list, though Pollock clearly didn’t realize the extent of Smith’s influence.

The last and most crucial link to “Star Wars” and literary science fiction is Leigh Brackett, the original scriptwriter for “The Empire Strikes Back,” the first sequel, and by any reasonable standard the best of the series. The late Pauline Kael was a tireless champion of journeyman director Irvin Kershner, and many film buffs take her lead in crediting Kershner with the movie’s sense of urgency and drama. But this does an injustice to Brackett, whose career uniquely bridged pulp science fiction and Hollywood. Brackett started out writing space operas in the Smith mode. Her first short story was published by Astounding in 1940, and she quickly became known as an expert pulp technician. She was also a capable teacher, upgrading the work of her husband Edmond Hamilton and tutoring the young Ray Bradbury, who credits her with getting him started as a writer.

Brackett was also adept at other genres. Her first novel, “No Good From a Corpse” (1944), was a mystery story couched in hard-boiled prose so convincing that director Howard Hawks told his secretary to contact “that guy Brackett” to help on his adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s “The Big Sleep.” Even when he found out she wasn’t a guy, Hawks liked her work well enough to use her on several other films: “Rio Bravo” (1959), “Hatari!” (1961), “El Dorado” (1967), “Rio Lobo” (1970) and “Man’s Favorite Sport” (1962). When not writing screenplays, Brackett cranked out a stream of novels: Westerns and mysteries as well as science fiction. Prior to signing on with Lucas, she scripted Robert Altman’s 1973 version of “The Long Goodbye” and wrote one episode of a short-lived television series based on Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer mysteries.

Brackett died of cancer shortly after submitting her first draft of “The Empire Strikes Back.” Though the film’s credits list her as screenwriter along with Lawrence Kasdan, Pollock says Lucas had to throw out her draft and start from scratch with Kasdan’s help. This is hard to swallow, bearing in mind that Lucas and Kasdan also co-wrote “Return of the Jedi.” The strengths of “The Empire Strikes Back” echo those of Brackett’s own work as surely as the mediocrity of “Return of the Jedi” matches that of Kasdan’s subsequent films, all built from secondhand materials: Chandler-lite for “Body Heat,” warmed-over John Sayles for “The Big Chill.”

“The Empire Strikes Back” is the film that makes obvious the paper trail linking George Lucas to literary science fiction; ironically, it also marks the beginning of Lucas’ unheroic journey from honest entertainer to galactic gasbag. The first recorded blats are to be found in Time magazine’s May 1980 cover story. Associate editor Gerald Clarke, who had praised the original flick for its lighthearted refusal to offer anything like a serious message, now finds “a moral dimension that touches us much more deeply than one-dimensional action adventures can.” A sidebar, ponderously headlined “In the Footsteps of Ulysses,” cites everything from “The Odyssey” to “Pilgrim’s Progress” before concluding that the “Star Wars” films “draw from the same deep wells of mythology, the unconscious themes that have always dominated history on the planet.”

The long and noteworthy career of Leigh Brackett, needless to say, figures in none of this; her links to a despised genre made her invisible to the pop-culture savants at Time. Lucas himself, who had guardedly acknowledged three years earlier that he enjoyed science fiction, now offers a carefully pruned reading list. “I wanted ‘Star Wars’ to have an epic quality, so I went back to the epics,” he says. “Whether they are subconscious or unconscious, whatever needs they meet, they are stories that have pleased or provided comfort to people for thousands of years.” Not only that, they aren’t protected by copyright laws.

Better still, “the epics” make for an infinitely classier set of influences than stories rooted in what remains one of the most stubbornly down-market literary genres America has produced. Would an eminence grise like Bill Moyers want to be seen trifling with spaceships and ray guns? Would film buffs who pride themselves on knowing every nuance of a silly Western like “The Searchers” stoop to analyze a lowly science fiction movie? Certainly the New Yorker would not have sent John Seabrook to profile Lucas for its January 1997 issue if people thought there were nothing more than sci-fi thrills going on.

Seabrook’s profile signals the completion of the papier-mâché Parthenon that Lucas erected around his series. “One can go through ‘Star Wars’ and almost pick out chapter headings from Campbell’s ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces,’” Seabrook writes, helpfully listing them as “the hero’s call to adventure, the refusal of the call, the arrival of supernatural aid, the crossing of the first threshold, the belly of the whale, and a series of ordeals culminating in a showdown with the angry father.”

Campbell specialized in treating religious imagery as a set of metaphors divorced from historical context, a method that allowed him to talk, for example, about the Crucifixion as symbolizing the tree of life in an agrarian society, when in fact it was a very concrete reference to a particularly atrocious form of execution, rooted in a very specific period. Campbell’s ability to generate whirlwinds of cross-cultural references makes his chatter sound tremendously erudite — his disarming style reduced Moyers to an awestruck supplicant in the “Power of Myth” series — but once the dust settles it’s hard to grasp the point of it all. So it’s no surprise that these alleged correspondences between mythical themes and “Star Wars” get a tad slippery when one tries to nail them down.

That “belly of the whale” business, for example, is supposedly evoked when the hero is swallowed up by a large monster. “This represents the entry into a mystical world where transformations occur, and the eventual escape represents a spiritual rebirth,” explains the program to “Star Wars: The Magic of Myth,” the exhibition that turned the Smithsonian into a “Star Wars” gift shop.

According to the program, this motif appears twice in “The Empire Strikes Back”: first, when Han Solo and Princess Leia unwittingly fly into the gullet of an enormous space slug; later, when Darth Vader is shown chilling out in “an egg-like meditation chamber.” But in neither instance does a significant transformation occur: Darth simply resumes his bad-guy duties, while Han and Leia keep on a-fussin’ and a-feudin’ until they declare their love near the end of the film.

Ur-daddy Joseph Campbell, on the other hand, found the motif in the original “Star Wars,” when Luke, Leia, Han and Chewie fall into the Death Star trash compactor, which promptly sets to work squashing them. This is explicated in the most unintentionally hilarious section of the “Power of Myth” interviews. “My favorite scene was when they were in the garbage compactor,” Moyers says, “and the walls were closing in, and I thought, ‘That’s like the belly of the whale that swallowed Jonah.’” Campbell replies that the scene is “a variant of the death and resurrection theme,” in which the hero begins to discover his power.

All of this would make sense if Luke used the Force to hold back the crushing walls. But nothing of the sort happens in this scene: Luke and his friends escape only through the timely help of the dithering robot C3PO. Innumerable action-adventure heroes have had to fight their way out of rooms in which the walls or ceiling slowly close in. Campbell is taking a standard cliffhanger plot device — one as hoary as having a mustachioed villain tie the heroine to a railroad track, or send her trundling toward a sawmill blade — and trying to pump it full of significance, with predictably flatulent results.

Other links between “Star Wars” and classical mythology tend to evaporate when subjected to a little thought, a chronic problem with so many of Campbell’s utterances. Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi, for example, is supposed to represent the “wise old sage” who instructs and guides the hero, Luke Skywalker, but Obi-Wan dies midway through the first film and reappears later only as a hologram offering supremely unhelpful advice, such as “Trust your feelings.” If the Force already resides within the hero, what need then for sage advice — especially when Obi-Wan sees no need to advise Luke that he is going off to duel with a villain who is, in fact, his father? That’s a bit of information any idiot, let alone a wise old sage, might consider just a wee bit important.

If this is the level of analysis at work, then why should this myth-mongering stop with Lucas? The original “Rocky,” released the year before “Star Wars,” follows Campbell’s mythic template much more closely than “Star Wars”: just imagine Burgess Meredith as the wise old sage, Burt Young as the guardian of the threshold and Carl Weathers as Darth Vader. (Pop quiz: Where do the pet turtles fit in?) Campbell’s approach can give any adventure story, from “Bulldog Drummond” to “The Perils of Pauline,” a place in the pantheon. In fact, his acolytes are hard at work doing just that with such movies as “The Matrix” and “The Wizard of Oz.” It adds up to little more than a party game for drunken grad students, or a smoke screen for filmmakers covering their tracks.

Worse yet, it continues the Hollywood practice of ignoring established science fiction works and writers while plundering their ideas. William Gibson’s “Neuromancer,” which established the science fiction subgenre called cyberpunk, paved the way for “The Matrix” as surely as the Lensmen inspired the Jedi. Philip K. Dick enjoyed a late surge of mainstream credibility, but his intellectually charged, emotionally vivid novels have yet to be properly filmed — all we have to date are dim genre exercises like “Blade Runner” and “Total Recall.” (One hopes the upcoming “Minority Report” will raise the bar a bit.) Steven Soderbergh is set to direct a new adaptation of “Solaris,” but odds are he connected to the material via Andrei Tarkovsky’s art-house film version rather than Stanislaw Lem’s challenging novel.

It’s long past time to pack away the togas, put the chariots up on blocks and send the spear carriers home. Let George Lucas spare us any more mystagogic claptrap and come clean about the real sources of his inspiration. His talking-up of Joseph Campbell did wonders for the man’s visibility. Lucas can now sprinkle some of that same stardust on a generation of unappreciated creators whose work mapped out the territory he has so profitably colonized. At the very least, he can spare himself a truckload of bad karma. Even Joseph Campbell could get behind that.