All of Life Is Grieving: What is a Hero?

The word hero gets thrown around a lot. In fact I’d venture it’s the center of the sham we call the culture war. From the left’s decrying of “hero worship” to the right’s senseless heroic lionization, the word is used a ton. In fact it’s used in so many contexts that the word barely has meaning.

So let’s back up. 

What’s a hero?

A hero is a scapegoat. If it’s a nice story he does it willingly. If he doesn’t it’s a tragedy. 

Yes, it’s that simple. 

Oh, right, scapegoats. A scapegoat is a creature who carries the sins of its people. It acts out the greater drama of its setting, and pays the ultimate price of death. Without a scapegoat societies don’t function. The anger and rage has to go somewhere! Folks like Rene Girard have explored this concept of the scapegoat being the basis for all societies, and we're not going to get into it more here. It is my basis for how I think heroes work. I base my thoughts on this from reading The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Iliad and Odyssey, and Arthurian lore in general, nevermind sources like the Book of Judges in the Bible.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is the earliest myth we have; we don't have a complete copy, just extracts. The general arc of the myth appears to be about a Nephilim mass rapist king, Gilgamesh, learning humility by coping with the prophesied death of his best friend, Enkidu, a man specifically made to become friends with Gilgamesh and then die. Gilgamesh manages to find a way to possibly bring Enkidu back... and fails because he's an ass. He comes back and becomes the king his people need him to be, humbled by his sorrow. Just like the rest of his people.

The Iliad is 500 some odd pages of a bunch of cool people being killed Mortal Kombat style because Achilles is a whiny bitch, who accepts at the end that he will not be able to avoid his death and makes peace with his enemies. Just like the rest of his people. No seriously, that's the Iliad. Powerful book, but pretty easy to sum up.

The Odyssey is about Odysseus trying to make his way home, only to be hindered because of his honorable actions during The Iliad; Odysseus is explicitly paying for the Achaen's victory over the Trojans. Odysseus has to walk many paths to come back home, finally ending in him bedding his wife, Penelope. Given that orgasm is usually classed as a similar experience to death in most pre-modern thought I've encountered.... yeah. Still fits. Like a glove.

The Book of Judges is filled with people who do not fit the modern "Christian" ideal of a good person, at all. And yet, because of their position within the whole (generally outcasts) they are used to keep Israel going a bit longer. And each story ends with the hero dying and "becoming a part of their people". That's a different thing for a different point in this series of blog posts, but that verbiage is important. Put a pin in it for now.

Arthurian lore is filled with statements like "If you keep doing what you're doing it's all gonna collapse" and "I know, but this is what I am". Whether it be Arthur demanding to marry Guinevere, even if it ruins his kingdom, or Lancelot bedding Guinevere despite knowing it was to destroy everything, or any number of such warnings and disregardings thereof, there's a demand to remain what you are, even if it's disastrous. To be you is best, even if that's tragic.

Star Wars is filled with heroes of this older tradition, with the ones who knew they were playing a part in a much larger thing, and were willing to play that part to the max. The difficulty of Anakin, Luke, and Ben was not in being a part of something, but in figuring where they fit and why. The journey each of these characters goes on is not simply who they are, but to whom they belong and what price they're willing to pay to do so.

Anakin Skywalker's arc is the entirety of The Skywalker Saga. From hopeful child to failed hero to villain to ascended being, Anakin runs the gamut of possibilities in The Skywalker Saga. If there is one story that is tracked all the way through, its Anakin's. That may surprise more than a few of you, but the sequels are actually the key to what being the Chosen One really is. Anakin is the one who brings balance between the living and the dead; Anakin defeats death itself, by eliminating the loss of individuality in the dead. Anakin's journey is essentially a cosmic one: he takes all the paths that all could take, and is therefore capable of going to everyone on the other side of the Force.

Luke, Anakin's son, is the beating heart of Star Wars. It is he that convinces Anakin to return to righteousness, it is he that shows Rey the importance of serving the Force, and who gives the Resistance the hope they need to fight Ben and the First Order. Luke's arc is in deciding to being the beacon of hope. In battling his cynicism and doubt Luke helps the galaxy come to grips with their own doubts and fears in resisting the darkness of the galaxy.

Ben Solo, Luke's nephew and Anakin's grandson, struggles with how to inherit the legacy passed down to him by Anakin and Luke. Half of the Force Dyad with Rey, Ben initially he rejects his destiny, killing his way up the fascistic First Order. Thanks to Rey and his parents, Leia and Han, Ben is redeemed from Palpatine's lifetime corruption. He saves Rey from death, fulfilling Anakin's goals of saving a person from dying in the first place. And, in so doing, Ben conquers the real enemy of Star Wars: death. The closest character Ben is similar to is Gilgamesh, but we'll get back to that.

A lot of ink has been wasted on the modern conception of the hero. The idea of the hero as this nice, clean, doesn't kill people, has no historical reference at all. In fact, the further back I go the more I find heroes seem to resemble more of what we think of as anti-heroes of today: people who had their goals and were going to get them, come hell or highwater.  The heroes of Star Wars more resemble this older archetype, not the modern demand that heroes be "good people".

All of Life is Grieving: Introductions

 

One of my oldest friends is the survivor of a child rape gang. I didn't know until well after I'd grown up, and when I did I was incredibly surprised: he'd been married for years and, while being an incredible source of wisdom and empathy, was otherwise just... well.. a normal guy.  He was not the person you'd imagine when you think "former child rape gang victim", at all. As a survivor of childhood rape myself I had the barest inkling of knowledge of what this poor person had been through. And I've not handled it half as well, I assure you! Go ahead, read this blog: there's some weird stuff on here. So when I asked him how he managed to not go crazy, my friend, using sadness to smile, told me "All of life is grieving."

I dedicate this entire thing to him. I don't know if he'll ever read it. I doubt it. But I hope he does.

Now, my friend didn't mean that you had to be sad all the time. That's not really what he meant by grieving. What he meant was more along the lines of "Life will always disappoint you, and if you don't accept the disappointments and tragedies as they are you'll not last long. You'll always live if you accept what is, pleasant or not." But All of Life is Grieving is a more poignant and poetic statement, don't you think?

What this has to do with Star Wars really should be obvious, but I'll spell it out: anyone who grew up with Star Wars has an image of it in their heads. I know I do. I was terrified of Vader as a child. That breathing creeped me out. Watching Luke process that the genocidal murderer he'd been fighting was actually his father and still had something in him worth saving was something I attached to. I just so happened to be living in the wake of my own tragedies and Luke's problem was my problem: someone was not who I thought they were, and I had to figure out what to do with it all. At six. Luke maintaining the humanity (and thus goodness) of his father helped me realize I had options in how to deal with my rapist. I did not have to hate her, I could control how I responded to the tragedy. A large part of my personality was formed in the experience of watching Luke pull the helmet off of Vader, to find an old, infirm, and pathetic man underneath. The monster was pathetic. To be a villain was to be pathetic.

I wish I could tell you that I've lived up to this ideal. I've tried. And tried. And tried. And tried. And I have failed. The resentment was just too much for me to deal with. Over the years I have become known by family and friends as a fusion reactor of rage. That is not what I ever wanted. I wanted to live up to this:

And I have not. I can't. The older I get the more I have realized I was never going to. With the return of my childhood memories at twenty-six I've realized that time was never on my side: eventually, no matter how hard I tried, I would not forgive, I would resent, I would do the thing that everyone else did before that wretched mask came off. And then one day I realized that even if the mask had come off I'd still not have done what Luke had done. 

The Last Jedi dropped not even a month after that realization. 

If it had come any later I shudder to think what could have happened to me. Because there was Luke, failing himself. Folks:

Time. 

Wears. 

People. 

Out. 

It is an actively destructive force on us all, and nobody survives it.  The forgiveness Luke had to show himself for being mortal became another model for me. No, I'd not done what Luke had done. But I could try again. I needed to try again. Time, that nice word for death, be damned, I had to try again. I could not change what I had failed to do, but I could change what I was doing... provided that I accepted (grieved!) what I had been up until that point. The story opened up what I thought were my options.

Hey look, the Star Wars fandom!

Everyone who has grown up with Star Wars has some version of that in their head. It may not be filled with as much darkness and angst, but they have it. That's what art does: it open us up and helps us understand the world and ourselves in a different way. That is a reason why art exists. So when someone adds to a story it produces whiplash! And it's going to be intense! And it's going to get ugly! Really ugly! 

And for me, initially? It wasn't. The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi were exactly what I expected of an actually serious look at the world of Star Wars post-OT.

No, I never really considered the EU a serious look at it.

No, I'm not a Disney shill. Remember what I just wrote about Luke. If you think that's got the hint of someone who hasn't spent a great deal of time thinking about Star Wars and what it means to him then I genuinely don't know what to tell you. And I have no idea how to else to communicate what it does mean than the above vulnerabilities.

For everyone else, no, I didn't consider the EU serious. Lucas didn't, as the below clip discusses very frankly.

 

And, really, why should he?

And no, if Lucas sells his property to someone they're not obligated to do what he wants with it. That's how selling something works. If you don't like that, I'm sorry.

All that out of the way I'll be frank: The Rise of Skywalker threw me for a loop. I like what it did, and we'll get to that as we go, but for the first time I felt that sting: it wasn't how I understood Star Wars. The lessons I'd learned from everything up till that point, the things they'd helped me process, were moved around and recontextualized. And that hurt. I didn't like (and still don't like) that feeling. The Rise of Skywalker changed things. For me, it really changed things. And for the first time I felt the whiplash, the burning resentment. The more I think on it the hotter it burns. There's nothing rational about it, at all. I could use rationality to justify it, but that's hardly the same thing as something being coherent in and of itself.

I do not know if that's what all the people hating on the sequels feel. In the final reckoning I doubt people will be found to be so different from each other, once all the shadows are stripped away. So, I have to assume on some level that what I have always perceived as fan-boi "You took my childhood" rage I encounter in all (yes, all, please own up to it) sequel haters has at least a passing similarity to what I feel.

But you what helps that?

Facts.

And introspection.

Let's try that out, shall we?

I guess I'll take a look at what TROS has actually turned the Skywalker Saga into. We'll go full Death of the Author, take a look at this thing as a totality, and see what happened.

There's probably a subsection of anyone reading this who will go "But why? It's a show about space wizards and lazer swords". To those people I say the following:

1. It is the silly things that are the most important and broadest ranging: utterly hilarious concepts such as love are much more important than gravity, which is much sillier than serious things like politics. I mean, really, standing on a ball that's spinning so fast that I'm effectively glued to its surface, unless I get far away enough? Don't tell me that doesn't sound absurd.

2. The exercise of a mind is more important than what it is the mind is focusing upon, by and large. I've frequently found that the skills developed in understanding and integrating fictional and recreative elements bring a measurable and obvious increase to my own ability to see the world as it is. I am more important than your idea of what is a serious matter.

3. At the end of the day the urge to understand is objectively better than the decision to be angry. 

4. Criminy's sake, if it makes you mad then it obviously means a great deal to you, and if you think I'm not going to call out that obvious bad-faith argument then you've not been paying attention.

So, off we go!