Homepage › Articles › Entertainment › The Way of the Jedi Knight

The Way of the Jedi Knight

The notion that "culture always builds on the past" is one of the four main ideas put forth by Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford Law School, in his keynote presentation on free culture in 2002. What Lessig means by this is that in order to create and reinvent culture to our interpretations, we must look back to the past and draw inspiration and influence from there. George Lucas, best known for creating the Star Wars franchise, embraces this idea of cultural influence by drawing inspiration from bushido, or the Japanese code of conduct for a warrior, and using it in the context of the Jedi way of life.

Energies

The text The Way of the Knight holds many parallels to Lucas's intergalactic fictional world. Even the official name of the Jedi Order – the Holy Order of the Jedi Knights – is reflective of the Japanese bushido influence. What's more, the themes of the movie itself are reminiscent of Yamaga Soko's writings. One of the first topics that Soko touches upon is the idea that "humans and other beings are produced by two energies" and that these energies play a part in our lives and our understanding of the world around us. In the Jedi universe, Lucas has taken this idea and translated it to a more science-fictional idea that is now popularly known as the Force and the Dark Side, both of which are inherent in Jedi warriors upon birth. It is up to the Jedi himself to choose which side to act upon, much as it is the Japanese warrior's job to do the same with the energies in his own body.

Faith, Justice, and Duty

Soko goes on to say that the role of a knight is to be "personal conscientious, completely loyal in public service for a ruler, faithful in association with friends, and individually circumspect, concentrating on duty." This is very much like the Jedi knights in that they are a separate social group dedicated to promoting justice and protecting the innocent. In the film Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, Jedi Master Yoda speaks privately with Anakin Skywalker, who has been worrying over dreams in which his clandestine wife Padme Amidala dies. Yoda emphasizes that the Jedi should not grow attached to specific people because "attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed that is." It also takes away a Jedi's focus, which should naturally be solely on their duties as protectors of the law and the innocent. Yoda's wisdom continues to coincide with Soko's writings as the text progresses, including one passage where Soko stresses how properly "cultivating" yourself will help you, as a knight, balance your mood and mind, for they are not two separate entities but one and the same. For the Jedi Knights, this balance is key not only in them but in the world around them. The Dark Side of the Force is balanced by those who use the Force for good, such as the Jedi. The existence of their counterparts, or the Sith, help keep the good/evil dichotomy balanced in the universe, and when one side has too much power there is usually an intergalactic upset. This helps to emphasize the point made in The Way of the Knight that balance is crucial in maintaining proper poise and garnering further understanding of the Way.

Masters

Soko places heavy emphasis in a later segment on the importance of finding the right teacher to guide a new warrior in the ways of the knight. The teacher should help cultivate the warrior's mind and train him so he knows respect and how to "interact harmoniously" with those around him, including family members and citizens. He also warns against learning from a false teacher, because "without realizing it you'll become further and further from the Way under that person’s influence," which was the trap that Anakin fell into during Revenge of the Sith when he decided to learn how to use the Dark Side from Chancellor Palpatine. Lucas also used the previous idea of a warrior teacher and transformed that into the relationship in the movies that we see between the Jedi Master and the Padawan, who is usually a young, unskilled child that must learn the ways of the Force before moving up in the Jedi Order.

Cultural Influence

Critics of George Lucas might see this obvious influence of Japanese culture as an excuse to rail against him as an unoriginal and uncreative person in the movie industry, but it can be seen as quite the opposite. It takes a lot of skill and talent to adeptly handle both mythological and cultural archetypes and blend them together to create a style of cinema that, at the time of Star Wars' inception, was unseen and unmatched by anything else of its day. It also takes hard work understanding Japanese bushido and the text itself in order to properly recreate the themes and ideas in another setting entirely. Plus, using past cultures as an influential mechanism should not be treated as a negative aspect in the film industry, even though there is always a pressure to be "original" nowadays. Sometimes, as Lessig explains in his keynote presentation, original ideas must stem from somewhere and it takes a truly creative mind to rework old ideas and make them "new."

Though the Star Wars films primarily serve to entertain a wide spectrum of people, lessons can be learned that past cultures and texts play a large role in influencing the ideas and people in today's world.