Writers starting with the
late Joseph Campbell have identified Star Wars themes in Greek,
Eastern and other myths and traditions. Since I tend to view the worlds
through the Celtic tradition, it seems natural to discover Boba Fett in
the focal point of that lens.
The Celtic universe
Our curvilinear Hyperborean
sensibilities have never seen eye to eye with rectilinear imperial power.
In Roman thinking, if you walk around four sides of a rectangle, you return
to your starting place. In Celtic thinking, if you walk around a circle,
you can just as easily turn up in the center of the next century, the next
world or the next story.
I contemplated the multispecies,
patched-together, idealistic Rebel Alliance of Star Wars as an uneasy
Celtic-style confederation pitted against a spit-and-polish, glossy, controlling
and cruel Roman-style Empire, with ambivalent
figures like Boba Fett on shifting ground between. In truth it's never
that simple in any galaxy. Compassion and hatred, light and dark -- and
gray complexity in particular -- spill unchecked across all borders.
Yet Star Wars makes
complete sense as a Celtic hero journey in search of a powerful otherworld
object. In some stories this is a sacred spring, a cup, a grail or a crock
of gold. In Star Wars it's a cauldron, in fact three cauldrons.
The cauldron of inspiration
is well known in Celtic myth. Drink one drop from it and you acquire the
spiritual gifts of poetry, prophecy and insight. In our galaxy, one word
for this breath of perception is awen or poetic inspiration. In
the Star Wars galaxy, I'd call it part of the Force, and the Star
Wars cycle largely deals with the loss and recovery of the Force's
spiritual power.
The Star Wars heroes
must overcome bitter hardships in their quest for peace and freedom in
their galaxy. When they succeed, the jubilant celebrations that end Episode
VI: Return of the Jedi sparkle and gleam like a metaphorical cauldron
of plenty, inexhaustibly overflowing.
But it's the dark cauldron
of rebirth that may hold the secrets of the shadowy Mandalorians and the
man we know as Boba Fett. I'll get back to this in a moment.
Lord of the (Bounty) Hunt
Years ago I was startled
by the Celtic names and traits of the Star Wars characters. Golden-haired
Luke fits perfectly as the heroic sun god -- he even walks the sky -- called
Lleu ("light") in Welsh and Lugh in Irish. Leia means "lesser" in Welsh;
in her pristine white gown and silver belt, like Arianrhod she makes a
fine moon goddess.
Less etymologically, Han
Solo is easy to cast as the sorcerer Gwydion: tricking opponents when he
can, fighting them if he must, ultimately coming to the rescue of his young
charge Lleu. And so on.
Boba Fett's counterpart in
this Celtic pantheon is equally clear, and always gives me a chill: Cernunnos,
lord of the otherworld.
As lord of wild creatures,
he wears stag's antlers and a neck torc and holds a serpent. In a detailed
portrait on the silver Gundestrup cauldron, he sits crosslegged among his
beasts between Apollo and Mercury, two classical gods associated with light
and dark. Neither light nor dark, he rules his own shadow realm. But Cernunnos,
later called Herne, is most famous and most feared as lord of the Wild
Hunt.
In dire need -- a war, an
invasion, perhaps a great disturbance in the Force -- the Wild Hunt awakens,
and the Huntsman gathers his terrible hunters. After Cernunnos takes his
human quarry, and he always does, the wrongdoer is also doomed to hunt
or be hunted forever. You wouldn't want to be Cernunnos's acquisition.
In his own galaxy, of course,
Boba Fett wears a dark red belt of power knotted around his waist instead
of a torc around his neck; he sports braided trophies instead of a serpent;
the antlers on his exotic headgear are reduced to a single powerful antenna.
His astronomical bounty fees sit in a credit account instead of a cauldron.
In the Star Wars galaxy, Boba Fett rules the hunt as the supreme
bounty hunter, silently waiting for his prey at the top of the gray-side
food chain.
How Boba Fett came to the
gray side we don't know; George Lucas won't tell us until Episode II.
Maybe in Fett's past lies some excessive pride or dereliction that brought
him down. Yet beyond his cold arrogance we glimpse justice -- in his view
at least -- integrity and restraint. If Star Wars were a Welsh poetry
cycle or classical Greek drama, Darth Vader, Obi-Wan
Kenobi and Boba Fett would be its tragic protagonists.
Black cauldron to clone
war
The cauldron of rebirth has
unusual power in Celtic myth. A dead warrior thrown into it returns to
life the next day speechless, perhaps by implication soulless. Sometimes
instead the cauldron bestows eternal youth. In other-galaxy terms, this
sounds like a compact early-model cloning facility with optional rejuv
treatment.
Boba Fett may be the most
obscure element in Star Wars, but second place goes to the Mandalorians
and Fett's unknown link with those vanished super-commandos. Were these
mercenaries, Imperial troops or soulless products of the cloning vats?
One story says the Jedi knights and Mandalorian forces virtually destroyed
each other in the Clone Wars.
The original trilogy never
mentioned Mandalorians; spinoff writers started the story of Fett's Mandalorian
battle armor. Recently we've heard that Episode II will feature
the Clone Wars and Boba Fett.
Traha or excessive
arrogance, a Welsh equivalent of Greek hubris, traditionally precedes
a fall from power and grace. It's an occupational hazard for smart heroes
and antiheroes who combine gray matter with grayscale ethics: crafty Odysseus,
for instance, or the devious Boba Fett.
Fett's arrogance also leads
him to define justice in his own way and summarily carry it out as enforcer,
judge and sometimes -- if we believe Darth Vader -- executioner. His downfall
plunges him straight into a Sarlacc monster's jaws.
In Celtic tradition, those
who fall from pride are doomed to exile and endless wandering. Homeless
wanderers who survive their grievous wrongdoing may find refuge and solace
in the end, but only after long painful expiation. It's easy to see the
solitary, silent Boba Fett in this role as survivor of his own self-wrought
devastation.
Not the typical role model
Boba Fett looks like a thug,
bears himself like an avenging spirit, shows no emotion, carries the scars
of an unknown past -- but even his sparse trilogy scenes include a few
contradictory moments.
When Vader has Han Solo tortured,
Fett tries to intervene in the only credible way at his disposal, by telling
Vader that he'll lose his fee if Solo dies; Vader promises not to damage
him permanently.
When guards load Solo's carbonite
slab onto Slave I (shaped, in true Cernunnos fashion, like a goat's horned
head), Fett gives his acquisition the honorific of "captain."
A moment of film edited out
of the trilogy special edition shows Fett's glare at Jabba when the gangster
feeds the dancer Oola to his pet rancor. In the Irish Táin Bó
Cuailnge, the Welsh Mabinogi and Gododdin and other hero
cycles, we find the same kind of steely deadpan overlaying a deeper humanity.
This character is the antithesis
of many things I believe, but since I started writing about Boba Fett I've
had to think harder about the complex choices we make every day here on
the gray side.
"The gods are constantly
tempting. Everybody and everything," George Lucas told Time magazine,
adding that "accepting self-responsibility for the things you do, having
good manners, caring about other people -- these are heroic acts. Everybody
has the choice of being a hero or not being a hero every day of their lives."
What do you think? Send your
comments to the editor.
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