The Wasteland of King Minos of Crete Meets the Wasteland of American Culture
On its surface, the myth of "Theseus and the Minotaur" seems like a straightforward quest narrative. Upon closer examination the tale also contains the thematic concerns that life as we know is a wasteland. Joseph Campbell addresses this issue in his classic text A Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell characterizes the wasteland as a world full of stagnation and a land filled with people living inauthentic lives. It is a world that evokes nothing of a common humanity's spiritual life, human potential or even human physical courage. (Campbell, 1972)In the wasteland myth of "Theseus and the Minotaur," the ancient island of Crete under King Minos is in thrall to a beast named the Minotaur. The young men and women of Athens are sacrificed to feed the beast and to keep the corrupt king safe. The young people are sacrifices, so they are not even given the implements to courageously fight back against the Minotaur. The reason for the Minotaur's presence on their island has nothing to do with their own morality; the bull-man is a punishment for the king's transgressions. Thus, their sacrifice is both purposeless and immoral as well as horrific. To kill the Minotaur, the heroic Theseus must secret a sword upon his person into the
But it is equally apt to see in the contemporary fixation of modern youth upon the "Star Wars" film series as further reflections of America as a cultural wasteland, a symptom of Moyers calls in his interview with Campbell, "the curse of modern society, the impotence, the ennui that people feel, the alienation of people from the world order around them." (Campbell, 1991) In Crete, Minos has made himself, and his threat from the Minotaur, into the purpose of the state religion. Rather than sacrifice to the gods with animals, the king sacrifices young people to the animal-Minotaur to save his own skin. He sacrifices the youth of the future to preserve his own present and elderly life and creature comforts comfort, and thus deprives the world of young people, and the gods of their rightful sacrifice of animals. The youth of Athens are the flowers of the dead land spoken of in Eliot, waiting to be trod upon by the needs of a corrupt king and corrupt society, until the hero comes and saves them. Also, in the interview, Campbell uses the 1977 George Lucas fantasy cult film "Star Wars" as evidence of the need for a modern retelling of the wasteland narrative. "A movie like Star Wars has to do with the power of life, as it contains standard mythic figures. The hero is hel
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Approximate Word count = 861
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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