Icarus

It's been a week now since the body of John Kennedy was discovered. I eulogized him in a different piece in this issue of Purr, but I want to reflect on why his death touched so many of us in such deep ways.

My columns have dealt with the way we perceive things, as presented to us by media of communication, and how those perceptions are shaped. For that reason, this, and not my eulogy, is the column for this issue of Purr.

I had the privilege of knowing JFK, Jr. tangentially, and yet, his death probably made me mourn more than any other in my life (admittedly, when it comes to death, an uneventful one). I had to wonder why. Even Princess Diana's death was more tragic than John's (until they reveal that Carolyn was pregnant, which I have no doubt she was), and yet this death...

Looking at his life, he had no great accomplishments to his credit. He passed the bar, but so many have done that as well. He started up a struggling magazine, but hell, you're reading the new "zine" format, so how big a deal is that? He married, he went to Brown, he rode a bike. All ordinary pursuits and accomplishments for someone with his background and economic class.

Yes, there was that whole thing of the Kennedy Curse, but how many families with 150 cousins wouldn't have an awful lot of tragedy and joy to share with each other?

And then it finally hit me, as I was driving on the New York State Thruway, and noticed that the flags were all at half staff: it was a myth cut short.

Or maybe a myth in full. I'll leave it to you to decide.

Cultures world wide contain some archetypal mythologies. I use "archetype" in both senses of the word as we know it, a Jungian sense as well as a truly shared experience.

Creation myths, for example, tend not to be archetypal. The Buddhists believe something different than the Judeo-Christians, and !Kung tribesmen have a totally different perspective. There's no shared experience, except the fact that there was nothing and then, poof, there was something.

Curiously, the Judeo-Christian creation myth is archetypal in the Jungian sense. More on that later.

Certain myths are archetypal. For example, the myth of the Great Flood is seen in cultures from China to the Middle East and even some Native American tribes, north to the Vikings and south to aborigines. The god(s) looked down, didn't like what they saw, and cleansed society of its ills.

John Kennedy's life was one lived in the shadow of his father (and to a far lesser extent, his mother), a shadow he had to work hard to get out from under, and there were several false starts: an acting career, his many attempts to pass the New York bar exam, even George magazine, but with each attempt, he gained more and more confidence in himself, and rose to greater challenges.

This is a trope that is in many mythologies. Of course, this trope would apply equally to women and mothers, but mythology, like history, is written by the winners, and sorry folks, but up to this point, men have "won" mythology as well.

Think about mythology, any culture's mythology, and you will find examples of the hero's journey. Whether it's the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, or Joseph's quest, or the Finnish Kaleva, even to movies today, including the entire Star Wars trilogy plus, to Field of Dreams and even last year's stunning October Sky, mythology is rife with stories of men struggling over obstacles that include overpowering their father's image, both the father's image of the son as well as the son's image of the father.

Because it's timely, let's look at the Star Wars form of this trope. In each movie, the interplay between a younger man or boy and his older role model(s) has been the key element in moving the story along. The most obvious example, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, is classic, almost Daedalean/Icarean in nature, only in a twist, the father flies too high and falls to his death, only to be redeemed through the son's work. There are others, though, including two obvious ones in the most recent movie The Phantom Menace, both involving Qui-Gon Jinn.

By the way, ain't that a ticket name, as we in the theater call them? "Qui-Gon" is an obvious distortion of the Buddhist art of qui gong.

Anyway, both the young Obi Wan and Annakin Skywalker look up to Qui Gon as a surrogate father, because, in Obi Wan's case, he literally is his father, as Obi Wan is taken from his family in infancy for his Jedi training. Annakin is taken as well, but only from his mother. Annakin never knew his father, therefore is now placing his fillial love into Qui-Gon (and then, Obi Wan).

Oh, and in case you didn't get the fact that The Phantom Menace cycle will parallel the New Hope cycle of Star Wars, here's my prediction that Annakin will discover that his father is also a Dark Lord. Email me, and I'll tell you who that will turn out to be.

Luke, Obi Wan, and Annakin each, in his own way, will seek to establish his own identity, one that does not require comparison to his father figures and yet would get their approval and love. It's frankly Oedipal, if you think about it.

Luke doesn't want to be a farmer, like his adopted father, Uncle Owen. He doesn't want to become a Dark Lord like his real father, Darth Vader. He doesn't want to take the advice of either Obi Wan (elder version) or Yoda, both fathers in his training. He rebels against them all, and in doing so, eliminates the Dark Lords, and becomes that Jedi that converges the dark and light sides of the Force. At the end, he sees his three fathers from the other side, and they shine their smiles at him in approval.

Only Jesus has more power in mythology, but then again, he listened to his Dad and look where it got him: doorman to His Father's Kingdom.

Glory comes to Luke because he establishes his own identity through his life's journey.

John Kennedy never did, and there's the tragedy of his life, because his father was so illustrious, and rightly or wrongly, was himself idealized and mythic, it made it that much harder for John to establish this self-identity, the sense that he could be taken seriously in his own right, and not defined as someone's son.

And our mourning? All mourning is more about the survivors rather than some sense of altruism for the dead. Mourning is an inherently selfish act, but in this case, I think we mourn more because it seemed that John was on the cusp of greatness for himself. He was striving for that goal of dissociating himself as Junior. Had he not, had he taken the quicker path and engaged in some of the foul behavior that his cousins did and in that way, established his identity (the Dark Side of the Force, if you will), we would just shrug our shoulders and say, "Too bad. Another Kennedy tragedy. What a waste."

But he didn't. He wanted this on his own terms, and the right way, but life wasn't long enough for him to succeed. It seems like he had turned the corner and started his way. And that is sadder than not trying at all.

Carl Salonen,

Visit his home page at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/de_Valois