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S02E34: Manically Matriculating on Mythology with John Bucher
28 Plays13 days ago
This week we begin our conversation with John Bucher, the executive director of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, and explore the deep connections between mythology and Star Wars. It gets a touch deep... but you won't want to MYTH it!
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Email: SFASpod@gmail.com
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Transcript
Introduction to John Booker and Mythology Discussion
00:00:00
Speaker
We are diving into mythology and Star Wars with John Booker from the Joseph Campbell Foundation, and we're doing it real quick. Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short?
00:00:10
Speaker
Aren't you a little short for a star trooper? Welcome back to Short for a Stormtrooper. That was probably the most information in a cold open I've done in one of these shows yet.
00:00:23
Speaker
But it is your friendly host, Bob Gerard, and I am so excited to bring you all this episode. When we were in Tokyo for Star Wars Celebration, We went to a session, a panel on Ahsoka and mythology, ah the series Ahsoka and the mythology and the underworld and all sorts of good stuff.
John Booker's Star Wars Influences
00:00:44
Speaker
It was led by John Booker, who is the executive director of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, ah Marie Claire from What the Force podcast was there as well. And it was a great panel, very informative. Afterwards, I talked to John and I asked him if he would be willing to join us on this podcast.
00:01:02
Speaker
And he certainly was. So we had our conversation just this last week. It was great. I absolutely loved it. Have a lot of content to bring to you all from John. So get ready for part one of a multi-part short for a stormtrooper series here with the executive director of the Joseph Campbell Foundation. John Booker is me.
00:01:24
Speaker
All right, John, I would love to start with hearing more about you and your story. And how did you get into stories? And how did you get into Star Wars? And, you know, well what's your life? journey Tell us your whole life journey.
00:01:37
Speaker
Bob, I am a Star Wars OG. I was, you know, born at the right time. where I got to experience the original trilogy as a child that could ask for the toys for Christmas and collect the action figures. And that was just a significant part of my childhood was being immersed in, you know, these, these stories. And of course,
00:02:08
Speaker
while video was soon to come, um our our family didn't really have a VCR until maybe Return of the Jedi had had come out.
00:02:19
Speaker
um So you know my memory of these these stories really um came through playing with the action figures and recreating the scenes, you know having ah Luke upside down in my own ice cave and Yeah. know cutting Cutting open tauntauns, you know, with ah ah with with with the action figures. so yeah Did you put your Han Solo figure in the freezer?
00:02:46
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Had had to do it. so yeah So it all started there. And You know, I fell in love with storytelling
Journey from East Texas to Los Angeles
00:02:56
Speaker
at a young age. I was born and raised in East Texas and storytelling, you know, from the old Southern Baptist pastors to your uncles that sit on the porch and tell stories about going raccoon hunting at night.
00:03:08
Speaker
Storytelling is just part of the culture. And so Star Wars allowed me you you know, get into stories that were beyond going hunting or fishing or something like that and explore a galaxy far, far away, which for me um began my journey of imagining leaving home and going somewhere else to find life.
00:03:38
Speaker
which is what I did. i left Texas and I lived in Colorado for a while and I started collecting some degrees there in storytelling and film and communications. And then I went to New York for a while and worked in storytelling there. And about 20 years ago, found my way out to Los Angeles, where I live today, working in film and television and storytelling But it also launched my career in Los Angeles when I decided i wanted to know more about stories and went back to the the mythological roots of storytelling.
Influence of Joseph Campbell's Mythology
00:04:16
Speaker
um I, in college, had... become enamored with this guy named Joseph Campbell, who had written this book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces and outlined this idea called The Hero's Journey that George Lucas had read this book and in come in contact with this idea.
00:04:36
Speaker
And it really helped him formulate and and shape Star Wars. So I was very enamored with Joseph Campbell that had inspired George Lucas.
00:04:46
Speaker
I found out Joseph Campbell had a library dedicated to him in Southern California. So I went and I enrolled in this this graduate institute where I got a PhD in mythology and depth psychology, which informed my storytelling work,
00:05:03
Speaker
That led to me becoming the executive director of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, which is what I do today. That's amazing.
Mission of the Joseph Campbell Foundation
00:05:12
Speaker
And what's the mission of the foundation? Is it just to perpetuate Campbell's work? It's it's to preserve and protect and perpetuate Campbell's work for sure.
00:05:22
Speaker
But it also is about allowing people and inviting people to experience the power of myth itself, which is what I think Joseph Campbell was so amazing at doing was talking about about why mythology wasn't something we just studied in the sixth grade, but it still had relevance in our life today. So at the Foundation, that's something we feel is still important ah to connect people to why mythology matters.
00:05:52
Speaker
And I can't think of a better example of that than how we see myth come through in Star Wars. Well, you know what, John, and you're telling your story and I'm like, this dude is my brother from another mother. We have very similar backgrounds.
00:06:06
Speaker
You know, I also, what I did to recreate Star Wars, because again, we didn't have a VCR, was I had my action figures. I had the record, the LP of the story of Star Wars.
00:06:19
Speaker
And like every week I would basically act out with the action figures, the story that I was hearing, which is how I have the whole opening cross still memorized. um But I did not discover Joseph Campbell. I knew nothing about him until we went to the Smithsonian Institution. It must have been about 20 years ago. yeah And my friends and we piled my nephew. I think he was about 10, drove all the way from Chicago to Washington, D.C.
00:06:47
Speaker
And you know, our, our story then was we were there to see the holy relics, right. of All of the props and everything like that. I had no idea until I was exploring this exhibit, anything about Joseph Campbell or the hero's journey.
00:07:03
Speaker
yeah And it just clicked with me. So, you know, of course I bought the, I bought the book. I bought the, I've got it right here. You can't see it on the, on the podcast, but, um, you know This has been very formulaic for me in terms of how I think not just about about Star Wars, but also story in general and just the connection between the importance of mythology, like you were saying, and and life and the role of mythology.
00:07:32
Speaker
So yeah I'd love to hear more from you. like What do you think is the role of
Mythology in Star Wars
00:07:37
Speaker
mythology? And then how does Star Wars make that happen? Yeah, great question. Mythology has always been used by human beings to make sense of the world around us.
00:07:48
Speaker
It's through stories and storytelling that we make sense of this world and try and explain the things that we don't understand. So for many, many years, we didn't understand why sometimes during the year it got cold and other times it got hot.
00:08:04
Speaker
And we would create stories about gods and goddesses and mythological creatures and figures that explained all of these phenomenon that we experienced as human beings.
00:08:17
Speaker
Well, as our science developed, We came to understand why it got hot certain times of the year and cold other times of the year. But we stepped we kept telling stories around the things that we had yet to understand.
00:08:32
Speaker
And I would suggest that we still tell stories today about things that we're trying to reconcile within ourselves, about the things that we really don't understand.
00:08:44
Speaker
i think right now, there's a lot of cultural stories being told about AI, for example, because we don't fully understand what the repercussions of AI are going to be.
00:08:56
Speaker
So we're creating a lot of stories and we're creating boogeymen and we're creating- the Black Mirror side, right? right. Yeah, yeah. um And so i think you know mythology allows us to explore that.
00:09:09
Speaker
Now, why mythology works so well with Star Wars is people saw from Episode 4's release forward that Star Wars seemed to be about more than just this story out in space.
00:09:28
Speaker
It embodied universal lore. ah themes around good and evil and struggle. And, you know, with every episode, it seemed to go deeper into what it meant to be a human being.
00:09:44
Speaker
I mean, the the the scene in Empire Strikes Back, when Luke has to confront Vader on the Dagobah system and, you know, slices Vader and the the mask is cut in two and we see Luke's face inside the mask.
00:10:02
Speaker
This is ah scene that... Literally, I wrote pages and pages are about in my PhD thesis because there's so much happening there around what it is to face the shadow side of who we are.
00:10:19
Speaker
yeah People recognized immediately that Star Wars was about something more than just aliens and space. It was about... good versus evil, ah human beings and technology, and trying to reconcile what it meant for us to be human on this planet.
00:10:39
Speaker
And I think with every iteration of Star Wars, every new movie, every television show, um we go a little deeper into that exploration. And I'm here for all of it.
Personal Impact of Star Wars on Bob and John
00:10:50
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. And i I know for me personally, like, again, i'd be being the kid that Lucas made it for, I was, I think you and I are of a certain age, right? Like I was 10 years old when when A New Hope came out.
00:11:04
Speaker
We called it Star Wars back then we liked it. Yes. You know, ah let me put it this way. Like at that point, there were some issues and some questions I was starting to have about the mythology that I had been raised on that I didn't feel safe to ask.
00:11:20
Speaker
yeah And so when this story came into my life, then I was able to see answers to some of those questions or or to start to see a story that I could kind of hang my framework on as I was thinking about what it meant to grow up.
00:11:36
Speaker
And, you know, I was having a conversation with some friends, i think it was at my high school reunion that I was just at and say, you know, i' I've kind of explored, like, why is it that I love this so much still?
00:11:48
Speaker
yeah And I said, you know, that's really what it is. It's because it was the right story at the right time yeah to help me understand the world. that's And that's why I still love it. Same for me.
00:11:59
Speaker
Same for me. I still, to this day, look at how much of my worldview was shaped by Especially the the the first three films, you know, ah episodes four, five, and six were um so formative for me in shaping a view of who I was and who I could be.
00:12:23
Speaker
yeah You know, I really related to Luke Skywalker growing up, you know, on Tatooine in this, you know, farm type environment.
00:12:35
Speaker
um i You know, ah growing up in East Texas, I knew a lot things. Very Tatooine-y, right? Yeah, exactly. This is this is you know my story. And for this character to have the opportunity to ah leave that farm and and go on this incredible adventure and to fight the forces of evil and discover potential within themselves, I didn't have the language for it back then.
00:13:02
Speaker
But I definitely understood that there was something about Luke's story that resonated with me and what I wanted in the world. And I know a lot of kids, you know, ah really resonated more with Han Solo or they they resonated, you know, with other characters. But...
00:13:21
Speaker
For me, it was always Luke Skywalker. I saw myself in Luke Skywalker and that was the character that I aspired to on so many levels.
Podcast Wrap-up and Next Week's Teaser
00:13:34
Speaker
We will hit pause there and we will be back with more from John next week. We're going to dive more into the hero's journey and what that is. And it's going to be great. You're going to love it. So please come back next week for more from John.
00:13:47
Speaker
Make sure you hit like, hit subscribe, tell all your friends, jump into our Discord community. We've got a few people there who like to talk about Star Wars and would love to have more. So you are welcome to join us there.
00:13:59
Speaker
Link is in the description. Have fun. May the force be with you. We'll see you soon. Bye-bye.
00:14:29
Speaker
Who's that mindless choice to do? Podcasts help you see them through. Star Wars is your favorite unit. Let's chat for 15 minutes. Aren't you a little short?
00:14:39
Speaker
Aren't you a little short? Aren't you a little short for scorn trooper? Aren't you a little short for a slumber?