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Originally Posted by Bb
And I suppose that if you believe symbols and images cannot change meaning, you end up with this argument that a writer cannot use certain symbols and images, as they are beyond his power as a writer. Yet the Church regularly and frequently incorporated--some might say appropriated--pagan symbols into Christian iconography. And writers regularly and frequently take images and ideas and reclothe them as part of their argument, particularly when they want to say something about those previous meanings.
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Certain symbols cannot be manipulated easily, & some not at all. If Tolkien had used any of the images I quoted earlier he would have had to change the mood of the story & probably its outcome. Some images & symbols are 'primal' & resist manipulation, & if they are used by a writer they tend to take over the story & move it in a new (or 'old') direction. If you take any of those images & mediate on them you will experience specific reactions, which are not manipulable.
This is the reason why the Church only took [i]some/i] Pagan images over - some images they simply couldn't manipulate in the way they wanted - not even to demonise 'them', so they set out to intentionally remove any reference to them. This is also partly why certain things were removed from children's versions of fairy tales. Some images 'transform' - religious iconography is designed to produce a specific 'effect'.
If we take the Tarot images what we find is that they recur throughout myths & legends from all over the world, & it is very difficult to impose a different meaning on them than the traditional one, & if as a writer you make use of one of those images in a story, you will find it almost impossible to impose a new meaning on it & make the story seem 'real'. Basically, the story will go its own way. If you want to use a tarot image in a story you'll have to find one that fits the story you want to write.
But this is too complex a matter, & too far off topic, to pursue here.
As for Fordim's points re Star Wars, while I enjoyed the movies when I first saw them, aged 17, when I came to watch the 're-done' versions in the 90's (not to mention the latest two disasters) I found them to be empty & formulaic, not 'mythical' in any sense. Perhaps the reason for that was Campbell's influence. Campbell alsways seemed to me to have this tendency to want to reduce myth to its constituent parts, it building blocks - to break it in order to see what it is made of.
The difference for me between Tolkien's myth & Lucas' is that Tolkien's comes across to me as having its roots in the living earth, while Lucas' hovers in dead space. For me Lucas myth is not a conflict between good & evil so much as between machine & machine. It is a 'myth' for the machine age, where both sides use machines & 'machine' thinking, & so, not a 'true' myth at all. I know some will throw in the 'Force' as an example of the story's 'mythic' aspect, but for me it was simply a cop-out, a deus ex machina of the most blatant & unconvincing kind, or at best a clever trick which the hero performs to outsmart the baddies.
Or maybe I'm just a backward looking inhabitant of the Old World with an aversion to technology & its promise of 'salvation'.
I just hated all the dirty, oily, smelly machines all over the place - & as for that planet in film 1 which is completley urbanised, I have to admit the idea of it made me feel sick. (Though if I'm being honest, Lucas actually lost me back in '83 with those damn Ewoks!).