Last month I ran across a reflection written soon after the tragic events at Columbine (Colo.) High School, on April 20, 1999. Earlier that year, I had watched as Bill Moyers interviewed George Lucas about the mythology of “Star Wars.” As we now approach the 15th anniversary of the tragedy, I continue to be impressed with the significance and relevance of this interview to Columbine and subsequent similar events.
The interview touched on a series of earlier conversations Moyers had with the late Joseph Campbell. That discussion was about universal stories, classical mythology and archetypal characters. Campbell made several references to Lucas and his Star Wars saga. Their conversation explored the complex and paradoxical nature of relationships among fathers and sons, mentors and students, and the concepts of heroism, power and evil.
The Moyers and Lucas conversation exposed what I believe is a crucial void in the hearts and minds of America’s troubled young men. Lucas said that the most popular Star Wars character among young boys is the enormously powerful champion of the Dark Side, Darth Vader. Vader is the former Jedi Knight, Anakin Skywalker, whom we meet as a boy of 10 in “The Phantom Menace.” Vader is the father of young Luke Skywalker. Luke believes he died heroically.
Moyers focused the discussion on a Jedi Knight’s relationship with The Force, his constant struggle with The Dark Side, and how these experiences relate to universally held ideas about faith, spirituality, transformation and redemption. The entire program had an authentic and prophetic quality that contained an implicit and important question for all who are concerned with the future of young men. That is: “Where have all the heroes gone?”
Throughout history and until recently, boys have been taught both the meaning of heroism and how to be a hero. That is, they learned what being good means and they were shown how to be good men. Once a boy absorbed these hero stories, usually by the age of 10 or 11, he and everyone in his yet small world understood that in time, and indeed, throughout life, his own, emerging “inner hero” would be tested.
These stories included characters and themes from universal and family narratives. They contained the values held by their families, cultures and communities along with the standards of behavior expected of them. For most cultures and throughout recorded history, their own tests were expected to begin in early adolescence. Today, Lucas suggested, it tends to begin later, at around 18 to 21.
As to the reasons Darth Vader captivates the minds of young boys, Lucas suggested that recent generations have not been effective in telling hero stories. Embedded in his observation is the idea that because boys are not getting the hero stories at an early age, they are left to find and define their inner hero in a popular-media-driven culture filled with MTV, Gangsta Rap and Grand Theft Auto.
Through perspectives gained over my past 15 years of engagement with the personal mythology and narratives of hundreds of adolescent and emerging adult males, I have come to understand that it is this competing narrative that has supplanted and distorted the hero stories.
To those who assert that the perpetrators of Columbine and Sandy Hook are somehow mentally deficient or broken, I would suggest that there is nothing wrong with their hardware or software. Rather, it is in, most cases, the “bad data” that has somehow penetrated the firewalls of their cultural legacy and corrupted their social DNA.
In my work with young men, I find that whenever we are able to engage a young man with his own, innate inner hero, he finds that he can and will do the right thing. Whether the conversation is about Arthur or Superman, a remarkable capacity for insight emerges. For example, in a group session among some especially challenged teens, I recall one 17-year-old exclaimed, “My Kryptonite is pot!”
Fifteen years ago, the Moyers-Lucas dialogue raised many questions as I began my work with young boys becoming men.
How can we learn which stories need telling today? When, how and through whom can we expect to pass them on? Have there really been fundamental changes in our culture that present insurmountable barriers to becoming more effective hero-story tellers? What is different today about the way we try to teach our young people the good stories? Was what Tom Brokaw calls “The Greatest Generation” the last to live out hero stories on a large scale? Was it the last generation of effective hero-story tellers?
Throughout history, men, especially grandfathers and elders, have been the keepers of the universal, the family and the personal hero stories. In my experience, it is only through the language of their example as they move through the warrior chapter of their personal narrative that the father can tell his own hero story.
I believe this is because of the normative friction inherent in father-son relationships. Each seems unable to readily hear or adequately proclaim either his own or the other’s hero story. For the boy, this is because his is still an evolving dream. For the father, this is because he has not yet made meaning of it through the yet-to-be-settled fog of battle.
As Campbell might say, what the boy becoming a man must do is find the faith in himself from which to draw the courage to step out into the wilderness of his first quest. What fathers can do is model strength, persistence and resilience as they encounter the tests that their own still evolving narratives present.
It seems to me, notwithstanding the structure of contemporary families, the presence or absence of fathers in the home or the condition of the communities that support them, we can and must do one thing now to help our young men successfully connect with their inner hero. That is, we must find ways to get mature, engaging, good men back into the hero-story business and support them as they clean up the bad data that has invaded the realm of so many young men’s dreams. If not, I fear we may lose these stories and, perhaps, any hope we may have of giving birth to another great generation.
Michael C. Cerullo, of Exeter, is a grandfather and a psychotherapist in private practice.
Editor's note: An earlier version of this column had the wrong name for Anakin Skywalker.