Mythic Thinking

I did it. I consider it an accomplishment. I finished Brisingr. I didn’t have nearly this much trouble finishing the other two Paolini books, which I suspect is more due to the fact that he had a different goal in mind when he was writing them. By the third book, the story expanded such that it wouldn’t be possible for him to finish it within the confines of a trilogy. Back in September 2008, I attended a book signing of this book. My blog post about this event commented on an anecdote by Paolini, praising him for getting killed by his own myth. I still stand by this, because the Inheritance books aren’t bad. In fact, my only complaint about the books is that they are too much Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Dungeons & Dragons, and less original myth, but we live in an era of recycled mythologies, so I don’t really hold it against Paolini. It’s the paradigm of our times (which some might say is a shame).

**Spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk.**

The cons of Brisingr is that Paolini spends too much time in exposition, developing some new story lines and enhancing some existing characters to extremes that just aren’t crucial to the overall cycle. Cutting them out wouldn’t detract from the overall story, but it wouldn’t help them flow better. Again, I can forgive this (though this is the primary reason why I stopped reading the book for several months and why it took me almost a year to finish reading it).

The pros is that Paolini really brought out Eragon’s spiritual crisis, something essential to his hero-development-qua-individuation. As a Dragon Rider, Eragon has become tightly linked to all of the races of Alagaesia, the tiny “world” of the books. He has sworn fealty to Nasuada, the leader of the Varden, the human “rebel alliance” trying to defeat King Gallbatorix, the “Darth Vader former Rider” who rules over the land. As a rider, he is tied to a short rope to the Elves, the magical people of the land responsible for the Riders and their training. AND he was adopted as a foster-son by the Dwarf King, Hrothgar, and recognized by his clan as family-minus-the-blood. Because of these relationships, he has to learn all sorts of information about the cultures and beliefs of these respective groups. The humans seems to be indifferent because they are struggling for survival. The Elves are tied, through magic and the Ancient Language, to Nature, and place their beliefs in the land, not in anything beyond. The Dwarves, on the other hand, had a strong religious presence in extraterrestrial gods. They believe they were brought forth from the stone by a deity, or group of deities, and they worship in accordance in thanks for their lives. Eragon struggles with this idea of “god,” because from his vantage point it doesn’t quite make sense. Why should there be gods, when magic can manipulate the environment to make anything happen? This is an on-going struggle at this point. I mention that this is essential to individuation because, following Carl Jung, without this crisis we never question and never get to the roots of our psychic drives, and never become whole complete selves.

At one point, however, Gallbatorix reveals himself as being “like a god.” This is mainly because he controls the power of the dragons, which has made his magical powers infinite and thus making him nearly invisible. If myths of old have taught us anything, it’s that the fall of all villians is due their own ego-centric hubris, not necessarily because the hero is just *that* good.

I like to think of villians as shadow-run-amok. Villians harnass all sorts of dark energies and get consumed. The hero swoops in and puts a cap on this, thus balancing out his or her good energies with the dark energies of the villian. At some point they meet in the middle, and the hero walks away stronger for it.

I do recommend these books, especially for those interested in Young Adult fantasy fiction. They’re not perfect (and skip the movie entirely), but they are work the efford. Just as long as you get past some of the more boring points.

One of the greatest things about being behind the times on posting comments on reviews is that I have the benefit of reading other people’s comments and integrating them into my own. In the case of the recent Harry Potter installment, I find myself more compelled to comment on the reviews than on the actual movie itself.

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It is extremely difficult for me to write about Star Trek without going into geeky fan-mode, so I will begin with my entree into the Trek-verse. For me, it all started with the season finale of Season V of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I was completing elementary school and was attracted to the previews for this episode where these futuristic people go back into time because they found the head of their android commrade. The special guest star was Mark Twain, and the episode was “A Fistful of Datas.” I had no conception of a “cliffhanger” and faithfully watched ST:TNG every night waiting for the second half of the episode. During that summer of reruns, I obsessively learned everything I could about the show. What we now call “Classic Trek” was not being shown, so everything I learned about it came from books and the six movies. I finally saw some classic episodes during the summer rerun season a couple years later, which coincided with the time I finally learned what a “cliffhanger” is.

For this reason, I have always had a stronger connection to ST:TNG and the 6 films (The Motion Picture, The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock, The Voyage Home, The Final Frontier and The Undiscovered Country). None of the other series could capture my attention as strongly, though I give them all kudos for trying. If you have to do any homework before seeing the 2009 Star Trek film, see the classic pilot episode, the movies, and the TNG 2-part episode “Unification.” And be prepared to unlearn everything you just learned.

*Spoilers Likely in the Following. Read at Your Own Risk*

The film starts off with the USS Kelvin approaching some anomaly that surrounds this many-tentacled, squid-like ship. The Kelvin is attacked and the captain is asked to come aboard ship. He does, he dies, and the first officer takes command. The Kelvin is attacked and badly damaged, to the point that he has to evacuate everyone. He realizes that he has to stay aboard and manually self-destruct the ship, so he sends his wife, in labor, onto a shuttle craft and listens to the birth of his son over the comm. Serious tear-jerker. He blows up and we meet for the first time James T. Kirk.

What follows is an action-packed, cinematic experience that tells how the crew of the Enterprise comes together, but there are some major differences. This film takes place in an alternate reality, one set in motion when Spock tried to save the planet, Romulus, from a super nova. His plan backfired and he created this time-warping blackhole that sucked both his ship and the Romulan mining vessel (the many-tentacled, squid-like ship that destroyed the Kelvin) conveniently back into the past of Spock’s youth. I’ve seen enough Star Trek to know that it’s not a good idea to mess with timelines.

Kirk has the hardest time getting along with Spock, and it is this dynamic that lies at the crux of the whole film, not to mention is the most important dynamic within the Trek-verse. I don’t think any other incarnation of Trek has successfully pull this off. It would be far too easy to say that they are each other’s shadows, in Jungian terms. Rather, I suggest that they represent the ultimate (emotional) coniunctio. The coniunctio is the alchemical sacred marriage. This is the union of opposites: man/woman, sun/moon, etc. The symbolism is endless. Kirk is unbridled, raw emotion. He doesn’t think before he acts, and the best solution to anything is to act on first instinct, even if it means getting into needless fist fights. It is no accident that he is only of the only captains in Starfleet history to regularly go on away missions. He cannot handle being outside of the action and fun. In this alternate reality, Kirk’s emotions are suggested to be due to a lack of childhood control, a rebellious nature, because of his father’s death and his mother’s off-planet work. One of the early scenes in the movie shows Kirk driving his uncle’s hot rod at high speeds down the backroads of Iowa listening to the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage.” He is maybe 10 or 12 at this point, and can barely see above the steering wheel.

Spock, on the otherhand, is a homunculus. He is the son of a Vulcan and a human. Trek-lore tells us that his human mother had to go through all sorts of treatments just to make carrying him possible, because inter-species “breeding” isn’t easy. He is bullied as a youth (shown in the movie) for being the child of both worlds. He tries to control his emotions and embrace the Vulcan stance of pure reason and logic, but has a tipping point when people comment on his mother. By the time he gets to Starfleet, he chooses to be Vulcan and to suppress his human side, and this is the Spock Kirk meets. Super-logical, super-rational, and by the book.

Spock is so put-off by Kirk’s unbridled emotions that he has him marooned on a snowy, desolate planet. One that ressembles Star Wars‘ Hoth planet. Already this is suggestive of trying to “cool him down,” try to bring Kirk from the hot side of raw emotion to the cooler side of reason. Kirk is rescued from being eaten by a monster by none other than Future Spock (played by Leonard Nimoy, the only actor to reprise his role in the film). Future Spock clues Kirk into what their future holds and why this alternate reality exists, because Kirk is supposed to captain the Enterprise, not Spock. In Future Spock, Kirk sees the benefits of their friendship. Future Spock has found his balance, softening up his rational and logic, having learned from Kirk that sometimes irrationality is the key to solving a problem. Kirk takes this lesson to heart when he returns to the Enterprise (with Scotty and a new understanding of transporters), and goes easier on Spock, only after he tricks Spock into proving emotionally unfit to captian the ship.

The film ends with Leonard Nimoy reciting the familiar poem of Star Trek. “Space, the final frontier…” Afterall, Star Trek is a space Western. It allows the imagination that has already wandered into every nook and crany of our planet a place to project its adventures and myths. Perhaps for this reason alone, the Trek-verse has endured. Sometimes good and sometimes bad, the Trek-verse has always been there for the projections of the collective psyche. Mix with a familiar lines and jokes (”Dammit man, I’m a doctor not a physicist!”) and you have a recipe for what is sure to be a worthy movie experience.

For film details, visit their page on IMDB.

This has to rank up there with “Books I Wish I Had Read When I Was Writing My Master’s Thesis About Fairy Tales.” For those who have read J.R.R. Tolkein’s wonderful essay, “On Fairy-Stories,” half of this book will seem seem like a rehash of old news. Marie-Louise Von Franz contributes the Depth Psychological perspective to interpreting fairy tales while also revering the literary genre.

The first three chapters, “Theories of Fairy Tales,” “Fairy Tales, Myths and Other Archetypal Stories,” and “A Method of Psychological Interpretation,” cover the technical ground of her theory, beginning with the existing approaches to fairy tales (minus Tolkein), and moving closer into the psychology of fairy tales. She asserts that fairy tales, more so than myths, are the closest stories to the collective unconscious. This is because the stories are stripped of any definite location and character. They take place in a realm beyond reality (the Faerie in Tolkein terms), and rely entirely upon archetypal symbolism. Myths, on the other hand, go through the cultural filter, and thus have a distinct location and character. Because fairy tales do not have this added dimension, they can be transmitted across cultures and appreciated equally. Furthermore, because they are not tied to any specific culture, they can be molded and reshaped according to the storyteller’s perspective. This is why there are so many different versions of essentially the same story.

In the next three chapters, Von Franz demonstrates her own interpretive method on the tale of “The Three Feathers.” One of the key factors to interpreting fairy tales, she asserts, is to interpret them using the opposite of your dominant personality. This means, it helps to know your MBTI typeology so you can go against it and interpret using your weaker functions. If one is INFP, for example, interpreting under the filter of that typeology is too easy. So she suggests tapping into the weaker functions, ESTJ, to do the interpretation. In doing this, one will reveal just as much about one’s own unconscious as that of the collective.

The chapter I found the most rich, the last and longest of the book, is the chapter of “Shadow, Anima and Animus in Fairy Tales.” The three topics of the shadow, anima and animus are complicated but essential to understanding the make-up of the psyche. The shadow, simply, is one’s own personality shadow. All of the traits that are rejected throughout the course of ego formation get housed in the shadow, both good and bad. In fairy tales, these appear as characters who assist the hero and possess characteristics opposite to the hero. The two balance each other out and eventually will integrate by the end of the tale. The anima/animus dynamic often appears as the hero’s relationship with either a parent, a lover, or another relative. Von Franz observes that the animus appears less frequently in fairy tales than anima, but that doesn’t mean it’s absent or that the fairy tales are written only by men.

One of the overarching themes of the book is that fairy tales were once told by adults, but somewhere along the way, they were given exclusively to children. Like Tolkein and his contemporaries, Von Franz promotes the abandonment of these prejudices and restoring them to the adult world. I think this has happened as of late, with the rise of the mainstream epic fairy tale, such as Harry Potter.