“In 2016 we are not only in Star Wars but also in Earth Wars for survival of possibly the human race and the planet.” Psychotherapist Howard Teich explains how Disney’s new blockbuster may be a psychological game changer, one that turns around war, violence, mass destruction.
The Force Awakens, the 2016 Star Wars sequel, is an easy blockbuster film. George Lucas sold his rights to Star Wars franchise to Disney for $4.1 billion. Now Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, and Han Solo join Mickey Mouse and Iron Man on Disney’s roster of global heroes and anti-heroes.
Star War fans wonder what will the Disney Corporation, one of the world’s biggest story tellers for children and families do with the Star War Universe in their future episodes?
Consider the influence on Lucas of an important classic work of modern times: Lucas had written two drafts of Star Wars when he rediscovered mythologist and American scholar Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces in 1975. Campbell’s ever popular narrative, The Hero’s Journey (a modern version of Homer’s Odyssey) provided Lucas with the blueprint and the focus he needed to draw his sprawling imaginative universe into a single storyline: “a quest for the good hero (as in light) to defeat the evil (or dark) anti-hero, an archetypal dynamic with tremendous and potent universal appeal.
However, this polarized thinking is presently at its strongest and most dangerous version in recorded history. The contemporary world’s violent tragedies and potential nuclear disasters foster strong adherence to this thinking of good and evil with nothing in-between.
Yet it is clearly subjective who considers themselves good and the other as evil. The dark aspect of the Hero’s Journey is now a living reality as we witness mass murder in the world, not just in the movies.
Campbell famously said, “. . .the old gods are dead or dying and people everywhere are searching and asking: What is the new mythology of this unified earth of one harmonious being.”
One of the Disney Corporations main philosophical beliefs is “We create happiness.” Therefore, could the Disney Entertainment Corporation’s help humanity heal from the dangers of “dualistic” (all black, or all white) thinking and truly awaken the Force? The Force, as described by Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi is an “energy field created by all living things, that surrounds and penetrates living beings and binds the galaxy together.”
In real life, physicists tell us that the “force carrying particles” result from the start of the universe, the Big Bang. The Force is a real vibration of the field of energy that began 13.7 Billion years ago. This Force field is still stretching through space and time, thus we are all “chosen ones,” according to science—regardless of race, religion or socio-economic status.
“The Force Awakens” is in everyone, it is our life force. The Jedi Masters say, “May the force be with us.” Could this awakening of this cosmic force be the foundation of the new global myth of one unified earth and one harmonious being? It is up to us—not just Disney Corporation!
