JOSEPH CAMPBELL

Born in 1904 and raised in White Plains New York, Joseph John Campbell began teaching at Sarah Lawrence University in 1932. He retired in 1972 and was visible through the efforts of journalist Bill Moyers. Joseph Campbell died in 1987.

Campbell was inspired by the work of modern writers James Joyce and Thomas Mann. Anthropologist Leo Frobenius was important to Campbell’s view of cultural history. A German explorer, archeologist, and one of the originators of the culture-historical approach to ethnology. Ethnology, now a major division of anthropology, deals with the study of culture in all of its aspects and that uses the methods, concepts, and data of archaeology, folklore, and linguistics in its descriptions and analyses of the diverse peoples of the world.

Campbell often indicated that the single most important book in his intellectual development was Oswald Spengler’s “The Decline of the West,” first published in 1918. Spengler’s premise depends upon the fact that Western culture is doomed and was already in the throws of decline. Spengler, like Frobenius, based his belief on the decline of all ancient cultures that have gone before us. "Is there logic of history?” Asks Spengler. “Is there, beyond all the casual and incalculable elements of the separate elements of the separate events, something that we may call a metaphysical structure of historic humanity, something that is essentially independent of the outward forms - social, spiritual and political - which we see so clearly? Are not these actualities indeed secondary or derived from that something? Does world-history present to the seeing eye certain grand traits, again and again, with sufficient constancy to justify certain conclusions? And if so, what are the limits to which reasoning from such premises may be pushed?" (From, "The Decline of the West.")

Devoting his academic career to demonstrating the importance of myth and its relationship to the human psyche, Campbell takes both Frobenius and Spengler’s theories a step further. Campbell's conception of myth is closely related to the methods employed by Carl Jung’s interpretation of dreams, which is heavily reliant on symbolic interpretation.

Symbolic interpretation became Campbell’s means to prove that all cultures have produced common elemental themes: Heroes, villains and even gods. Campbell believed that these themes arise from a common source. The world’s great religions, according to Campbell arise from folklore, allegories and local tribal religions. He attributes these parallels to a collective conscious shared by all humankind.

We have a deep psychological need for these elemental themes in society. The Bible’s Old Testament gives us Moses and the Ten Commandments, and laws that society must follow or be forsaken. Many elemental themes in societies have also served to entertain.

George Lucas had already written two drafts of “Star Wars,” when he rediscovered Joseph Campbell's “The Hero With a Thousand Faces,” in 1975 (having read it years before in college). This blueprint for "The Hero's Journey" according to Lucas, gave him the focus he needed to draw his sprawling imaginary universe into a single story.

In myths, characters often embody more than one archetype. The mentor, for instance, can have their own heroic arc, as can their own mentor. Just as Obi-Wan originally learned about the force from Yoda (according to the original trilogy), Joseph Campbell studied mythology under Heinrich Zimmer, an Indologist (anthropologist who specializes in India). In particular, Zimmer described the concept of Prana, which translates literally into "breath" and means "the all-pervading vital energy of the universe" (Buddhists brought the concept of Prana to China, where it is called Ch'i and later to Japan, where it is called Ki). This idea may have influenced Lucas' idea of The Force. Lucas, Campbell’s most famous devotee, hosted interviews with Bill Moyers at his Skywalker Ranch in California before Campbell’s death.

Campbell has also inspired other members of the film industry. Christopher Vogler, a story executive first with Disney and then 20th Century Fox, drafted “compendiums” of Campbell’s work. “The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers and Screenwriters” and “The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers.” Vogler’s “The Writer’s Journey,” has become the basis for a number of successful Hollywood films.

With Campbell’s identification of such elements in popular film: Hero, mentor, mentor’s mentor, near-death experience, shape shifters (is Han Solo really a nice guy?), temptation and redemption, hopefully audiences will reach the same conclusion as Campbell. That is: “Artists are magical helpers. Evoking symbols and motifs that connect us to our deeper selves, they can help us along the heroic journey of our own lives.”