The Greatest Story Ever Told
A typological perspective on The Force Awakens
By yaboyhud
There was a line out the door at the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland. “Ma’am, this line over here is if you already have tickets and the line over there is where you get your tickets.” What may have been confusing to the woman was the sign saying simply “Tickets Here”. The new Star Wars. The internet had hyped its coming for a while, but the impact of the movie actually hitting theaters proved crater-like. It quickly smashed all the early records, building momentum to the point where it soon became clear that The Force Awakens was crown prince for biggest movie ever. I was waiting in line to get a ticket but when I got close to the desk, I saw a “SOLD OUT” under the theater’s last 2D showing of the day. I had already waited in line this far, I figured I’d just see what happens. “So the 4 showing sold out?” I asked the guy. “Yeah it did. But someone just returned two tickets so…” He replied. To fill in the silence, he continued: “So I guess it’s your lucky day.”
Few movies have the power to move the sheer number of eyeballs away from technology, family and daily 201x life into another world like Star Wars can. The newest addition to the saga doesn’t disappoint. Highly received both critically and popularly, the movie skews towards crowd-pleasing and is refreshingly modern, making a candid point to debunk dusty expectations throughout. The aim of this piece is not to present a film critic’s analysis but instead look specifically at the cast of Star Wars through the lens of personality.
Human psychology is a vast field but one particular spoke, called analytical psychology, theorizes about the human condition through archetypes. Highly vague, and veering into mythology, archetypes are what Carl Jung called the recurring characters and events in the collective human unconscious that appear across seemingly isolated cultures and civilizations. For example the trickster fox, or sage owl. Later on, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was developed to simplify Jung’s research into four binary variables, of which 16 different shorthand combinations could be assembled into personality types.
When George Lucas was writing the original Star Wars, he developed an affinity to this concept of archetypes. He first read about monomyth and the “Hero’s Journey” in the book The Hero With A Thousand Faces, when he was still a student in college. The theory is that every story ever told is simply a retelling of the same general arc, a narrative that every human on Earth can relate to and understand. A New Hope follows this archetypal storyline and it reached resonance with the 70’s and 80’s moviegoers, eventually becoming the classic we know today. Personality types serve to describe the archetypal characters in monomyth through a modern framework. In the world of Myers-Briggs, everybody has a personality type, however, it can be thought to manifest itself uniquely in each individual. And as far as people can tell, it is immutable and you can only have one. Now as of this writing, by the grace of modern technology, more people will have seen, heard and talked about The Force Awakens than any other movie, play, or concert, ever. Let’s take a closer look at the personalities of a few key characters in Episode VII of the greatest story ever told.
INFJ
The Princess
“There are stories about what happened”
What makes personality types so intriguing is the amount of depth that can be demonstrated with so little. The MBTI test and the letters in its personality types are, again, simply shorthand for decades of research and should be considered as such. For example, our main character Rey is an INFJ, which expands to Introversion, iNtuition, Feeling and Judging. These qualities denote Rey’s psychological preferences in each of the four aforementioned binary variables, the other ends being Extraversion, Sensing, Thinking and Perceiving.
The INFJ is the absolute rarest of all the personality types, and is associated with the “princess” archetype. In the first installment of the trilogy, we see Rey nascent in the Force and eventually become quite adept as she learns to trust herself. Once subdued, twice hidden, the INFJ princess takes on the transformation into hero of the story so many people silently wish for. This black duckling storyline is found wrapping other INFJ’s in Hollywood, such as Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady or Emilia Clarke in Game of Thrones. (Clarke coincidentally also played Holly Golightly in a 2013 stage adaptation of the famous novella)
INFJ’s are archetypically quiet, cool, calculated and piercing in both actions and words. At the same time, the INFJ can be loud, wild and passionate due to Extraverted Sensing. But isn’t Introversion one of the letters in Rey’s type? Yes, but every personality has both Introverted and Extraverted sides, and what a person shows or withholds, either out of fear, guilt, responsibility or humility is all part of what makes us unique and human. Along with the previously mentioned binary variables, the four letter shorthand also unfolds into a cognitive function “stack”, of which Extraverted Sensing is one part. The depth at which one can pursue and argue personality types is currently endless, so I’ll leave curiosity to its own devices and just provide a surface understanding of personality types in this article.
Another day, another line on the wall. For years Rey has lived and learned to take and give what she can, and the only thing she has ever known is waiting for something to come. But the moments when she dons the helmet of a dead Rebel pilot, that far-off world she sees is hers alone. On a day like any other, the call to adventure comes. It takes on the form of a friendly, curious droid.
On a day like any other, the call to adventure comes.
Like anybody else, Rey is just fine with the status quo. Every day passing is another day closer to seeing her family again. She refuses the call until unnatural circumstances force her hand. The princess must leave everything behind and cross the threshold to accept this new adventure. Rey and her knight enter the belly of the whale, as her new ship, the Millennium Falcon, is swallowed whole.
Other INFJs: Rachel McAdams, Keira Knightly, Blake Lively, Rooney Mara, Carrie Anne Moss, Claire Danes, Olivia Newton John, Kristen Wiig.
ISFP
The Mentor
how do we blow it up? theres always a way to do that…
The ISFP is an artist, worldly aesthete, and burns like fire under a guise of Introverted Feeling. In the story, the ISFP fulfills the archetype of the good king. It is difficult to find another type that cares about life more than the ISFP. Han Solo, once a space cowboy, is now an old man on his last adventure where he must serve as the guide for another trouble-making maverick.
ISFP stands for Introversion, Sensing, Feeling and Perception. Sensing is the form of placing importance on what the senses can physically detect in place. (Opposing iNtuition) Perception means preferring to extravert your Perceiving function rather than your Judging function. Perception manifests itself as more figuring it out as you go, relying on a constant stream of new information to make choices, rather than preparing efficiently and executing smoothly. However, the input Perceiving function is always paired with an output Judging function on the other end.
For a girl without a family, Rey has learned the hard way to do everything herself until she meets a pair of smugglers trying to get back home. Unwillingly but inevitably, Han Solo and Rey are brought together and tested; Han sees the importance that this girl will have in the roads ahead. World-weary but alive, Han has lived through the fall of one Empire just to see another one rise in its place. Running away from problems never seems to make them go away.
The majority of stories are written from a male perspective, and incorporates a meeting with a goddess, the representation of purpose, and love. For Rey, her stories have told her about a legend named Han Solo, and her patient dreams have allowed it to come true. The ISFP Han serves as the archetypal mentor along this new adventure with his Extraverted Thinking. For the ISFP, the Thinking function is repressed, meaning it is buried deep in the unconscious and is brought out only in times of great desperation and need. It is guarded highly and incased in a shell of Introverted Feeling, the opposing counter function.
Extraverted Thinking provides practical advice, logic and order for an Introverted Thinker such as the INFJ. The teacher-pupil pair slowly earn each other’s respect through a series of escalating trials and bond as the old past meets the ripe present. When the mentor finally decides the student is ready, he takes our princess to see the oracle, where the student has a vision quest and rejects her destiny, just as the omni-present evil force finally catches up to her. Facing down against the final wall, the princess dies a sand scavenger, and is reborn a Jedi.
Other ISFP’s: Bradley Cooper, Chris Hemsworth, Paul Walker, Taylor Kitsch, Kellen Lutz, Eminem, Derek Jeter, David Beckham, Tom Brady
ESFP
The Villain
I will finish, what you started.
The four functions (S, N, T, F) described by the Myers-Briggs types are connected in pairs. Sensing is associated with iNtuition and Thinking is linked to Feeling. Although a person’s type only describes two preferences, because of this connection, it inherently it implies the other two. Thus every person has access to all four functions, but what is different is the polarity (E or I) on each, and the order. Our ESFP villain Kylo Ren is Extraverted Sensing dominant, Introverted Feeling secondary, Extraverted Thinking tertiary, and Introverted Intuition inferior. Our INFJ heroine’s function stack is Introverted Intuition dominant, Extraverted Feeling secondary, Introverted Thinking tertiary and Extraverted Sensing inferior. Readers will notice that one party’s dominant function is in fact the other’s inferior, creating the dynamic of good versus evil.
The ESFP is the archetypal popular kid, a golden boy brimming with potential. A natural leader, cool, charismatic, and commanding, an ESFP turned to the Dark Side is brooding, spiteful, and sarcastic. Dismissing what his family willingly bestowed, childish tertiary Extraverted Thinking leads Kylo to demand and forge his own path away from what was planned for him. With that rejection comes the casting away of Intuition, a function that was once controlled by his ISFP father. A power refused and denied until it cannot be ignored, as Rey is awakened in front of him.
Hero duels villain with her newfound powers in the Force, powers that have remained dormant and comes naturally. Intuition dominants have the ability to pick up mental capacities easily and most importantly, it is a rewarding process. Although everyone has access to all functions, some require more work. Recall from high school physics that work is equal to the Force times distance. Hard work and a boxing montage can make any function strong, and this overcoming of the energy required to do something great is a story that everyone with a personality type, and thus an inferior function, can associate with.
Kylo’s inferior function is Intuition, and he keeps it hidden under a mask of Extraverted Sensing, which manifests itself as brash movements, physicality and loud anger. He is dominant in the reality around him to make up for the mess within his heart and mind. In a snowy forest, there is a casual and incessant banging of ribs, as Kylo’s Dominant Sensing shows in confident savagery of combat, contrasting with the calculated, experimenting, and nervous Inferior Sensing of Rey. Treading carefully, and exploring only what she knows is safe, the princess, now battle-worn, is forced to unleash the whole of her unconscious power after being left with no choice but death. A packed theater cheers and cheers and cheers.
Other ESFPs: Ashton Kutcher, Chris Evans, Donald Trump, Adam Levine, Justin Bieber, Marlon Brando, Richard Gere
I whistled a poor version of the “Force Theme” as I walked out of the theater that night. That darn high-G. Storytellers that can somehow tap into the nerve of human myth truly achieve something special. I don’t know if you can call it the Force, but as a kid, I remember that as soon as I got to Price Chopper, the local grocery store, I was in the VHS rental section, seeing if someone had returned their one copy of “The Empire Strikes Back”. If someone back then had told me that the Force existed, that the stories I fell to sleep to were all true, that there was something just beyond reality, confirming what I felt but couldn’t think, I would have believed them. Everyone has it. The Force. It is sleeping, resting, waiting, to be awakened.
