I am reading Micheal Meade's The Genius Myth.
He says that the hero myth is dying, needs to die, because it is not one hero that will appear to save us from the world's present problems. He says that we are returning to the cultures that say every individual must develop their own spark of genius and that together we can deal with the deep problems in the world.
Spoilers.
My first response to Star Wars was "Well, Luke certainly checked out to sulk, didn't he?" So much for the hero. But it's the threads that run through it and the teamwork and the women that make me hopeful.
When the third of the original series came out, I was so hopeful. "There is another." Another WOMAN, I thought, a GIRL, not just a token female princess. And then I was grievously disappointed. Oh, it's Leia, it's the damned princess, so we only get one female in three bloody movies. It sucked. Fuck that. It's not an image of the world. It's a male hero fantasy and doesn't give a shit about women. We might as well not exist. In fact, we didn't, except for a princess.
This time, not two, not three, but four strong women. I don't care about the villain's back story. Did his Uncle traumatize him into evil? Or his parents' divorce? Or a working mother? Oh, get over yourself. Grow up and deal with your PTSD. Some people decide to do the hard work of healing. And some people don't.
And the thread is teamwork, communication and each person's talents and their genius. Rey, like Luke, does not obey her teacher. She reaches out to the dark side. Luke loses his hand finding out the horror of his parentage. But with Ray, it's her reaching out that destroys the villain. Do I care who her parents are? I'd like to think that we all have talents that can be developed: and all of my patients are smart. Some of them do stupid things, sometimes for years, but they all amaze me. Kylo Ren steps in to help and then decides to take the power mad psycho's place, and no, she's not into that. Stupid boy, falling back into the hero-power-greed mode. Don't we need less of that? Do we all want to be faceless armored fighters sent out to fight for our side?
The world is NOT black and white. It's time for the individual hero to die and good riddance. It's time for teamwork, not for power and greed and one up man ship and needing villains to make ourselves feel superior. We all have our dark side and our light side and our own genius. That force is in all of us.