Theory and Practice of Myth

Since we spent Friday connected various mythologies and discussing how many myths are based around a similar set of circumstances, we figured we would apply that type of thinking to a movie we watched this weed (because a certain uncultured swine had not seen it). That movie is Back to The Future. The movie focuses heavily on what is essentially an Oedipus complex, with the major difference being that Marty knows that the hottie is his mom. He does recognize that the past version of his mom is hot, as at one point he literally has to stop himself from saying so after he has been hit by his grandfather’s car. This is also a bit of a variation because in the movie, it is the mother that pursues the son. While Jocasta is complicit in the Oedipus story, it is Oedipus’ actions and ambitions that lead to their copulation.

In class we also mentioned how you cannot cheat death, but we can’t remember anything else about that. So basically, Sisyphus tries to cheat death and he is punished for all eternity, and Orpheus cheats death by taking back Euridice but he is punished cause he doesn’t follow the rules. This reminded me of the Deathly Hallows in Harry Potter because they tried to cheat death in the following ways: one man gets a resurrection stone brings people back from the dead, another gets a wand that is more powerful than death himself, and the third gets a cloak of invisibility so that death cannot find him when he is ready to die.
Tiresias cheats death because he lives 7 lives, 7 generations, and when he’s in the underworld he isn’t as dead as the other people – if that makes sense. A symbol that can be attributed to Tiresias are the snakes, the snakes are also attributed to Voldemorte because he is evil and kinda dead and whatnot. The snakes generally symbolize evilness, they screw up Tiresias’ gender and they screw things up in HP. Snakes, man. (note from Alex, we said snakes are kinda like representations of women….so what does that say?)

As some of you know, I’ve been binge-watching Smallville like crazy. And while I’m primarily watching it because it’s fun and I like having a show to knit and relax to, it’s also given me a lot to think about. So I’ve been thinking about the nature of stories converted to shows/movies, spoilers, and whether a myth is a myth if it feels the same.

Even without being a reader of comic books, there are certain things it feels that everyone knows about Superman. We know that Superman wears mostly blue and a red cape, we know that he and Lois are a couple, we know that Clark Kent is the “mild-mannered reporter” who is also Superman. But beyond that, how much can a teller of mythology alter and have it still be Superman? Probably quite a bit, actually. Every incarnation of the Superman story changes him some. Like in some, Clark Kent is the invented personna of Kal-el (Superman). In others, and the version I’m more familiar with, Superman is the invention of Clark Kent.
Smallville, somewhat of an origin/backstory of Superman, gets to play with the mythology of Superman. Like, traditionally Lana Lang is the teenage love interest for Clark. TV loves to thrive on romance, so they have Lana and Clark be together and break up and be together and so on. And if it were an independent story, the viewer roots for Lana and Clark to end up together forever, like they’re “obviously” meant to. But it’s not an independent story, and when they introduce Lois, what are we to think? There’s no reason for Lana and Clark to break up and him to drop everything and go off with Lois, but at the same time, knowing how the story ends up, we kind of want that to happen. So Smallville surprises us by having Lois and Clark have a clear dislike of eachother. Eventually they evolve to a place where they can take their role as a couple as they were always meant to. But as a telling of the story which knows what the outcome of that story must be, they can play with it as they go.

In some ways, many myths play with this expectation as well. Everyone who went to see Oedipus Rex knows that Oedipus sleeps with his mother and kills his father. So Sophocles’ job is not to tell you that. His job is to play with how it happens, how we lead up to the moment that Oedipus himself realizes it.
The audience is not surprised when Lois and Clark start dating, or when Oliver Queen is revealed as the Arrow, or when Lex Luther is revealed as the villain. We know these things, even if we aren’t overly familiar with the traditional comics that have built these things up. But shows like Smallville get to decide what to do with these basic tenets and how to evolve them into a bigger story.

Classic writers of myth do this too. One might consider a work like Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Ovid has all or many of the versions of the myths up to that point. In gathering them together in one work, he has to decide which parts of the story he’ll embrace. Is Odysseus the son of Sisyphus or Laertes? How did Tiresias become blind and prophetic? And so on.

Smallville gets to knowingly play with foreshadowing of the future, much like Vergil does in the Aeneid. So Smallville will sometimes have jokes, like, “What are you going to do, fly around the earth backwards so fast we go back in time?” which sounds absolutely ridiculous, but is something Superman actually does in the comics. Or they can talk about how Superman will be a symbol of hope, and when they have visitors from the 31st century, they can say everyone has heard of Lois and Clark and Lana. So too does Vergil, most notably in Book 6 when he’s detailing the entire line-up of people who will be born and how famous and influential they will be.

I guess my main thought on this is how much wiggle room there is in the telling of a story with as varied a background as these sorts of things. Both Superman and classical mythology have to deal with the fact that there are many different versions of the events leading up to whatever the current incarnation of the story is. The current myth-teller then has to decide how to deal with those versions, whether by simply ignoring all but one, somehow reconciling the differences into one amalgamous story, or forging some brand new path. The resulting story is then new, but not entirely new, because it has a history, most likely tied to the time and place in which it was created.

We have spoken about the relationship between science and myth. Both have historically been used to explain the unknown. Science fiction relates because it is similarly stories about things that we perceive as fantastical, but like science can potentially be understood and explained logically. The genre attempts to spend less time explaining though and embraces the idea of the fantastic with the facade of logic surrounding it to ground it in reality. For example, having recently seen Alien, there is an attempt to describe the alien as essentially a perfected creature through evolution (not going to get into the whole pre alien explanation of their being from Prometheus). This is an example of the more scientific side of science fiction. On the other, more mythical side, are movies such as Star Wars (not going into the prequel crap). There are some pieces of science in there, but the audience is expected to basically accept the force, despite it kinda just being magic. In this way, science fiction is essentially a blending of science and myth. It therefor comes off as semi believable, with the potential to change the way that audience think about or look at the real world.

So the class usually begins with a discussion of the content of the most recent Game of Thrones episode… I’m quite curious, I’ve not watched it yet, how does it tie in with our class? Like what sorts of things would make you consider it as myth-like? I’ve heard things about the show, I’ve read some reviews, but I need some first hand points; how is this relating to our class?

And to go a bit further on my Pocahontas post last week, and to feed off a comment I saw on another post, musicals are very much a form of myth in my eyes, yes even Disney movies. Musicals, with their catchy tunes and memorable characters, use those things to embed themselves into our memories; as do myths. When one tells a story, one usually wants this story to be remembered. We have evidence that Greek Tragedy was performed to music don’t we? Because songs stay in the brain better than dialogue in my opinion, a myth which is sung is more apt to be retold than a myth that is only spoken. So the Disney movies, and most all other musicals, are myths in that respect.

I know an obscene amount of song lyrics, and since my mind automatically gravitates towards Classics-related things I decided to list the ones on the top of my head, but as I looked up lyrics I found that there are hundreds more songs (most of them by weirdo bands/singers that nobody’s ever heard of), mostly about Odysseus travels, battles at Troy, Achilleus being a hero (which if they would have read the epic they’d know that they should just sing about his whining, mooommmm, Agamemnon stole my bitch, I don’t wanna fight, give me new armour so I look cool), lots of songs about Aphrodite/Venus (because ain’t nobody want to write a song about a virgin goddess, except one band who made a song called Minerva), and other things like unicorns (yes i found a real song about unicorns) and the chimera and sirens and things, and a reeeeaal creepy song about Orestes which I will provide the lyrics for your entertainment.

“Orestes” song by A Perfect Circle, lyrics: Metaphor for a missing moment. Pull me into your perfect circle. One womb One shape One resolve. Liberate this will To release us all, Gotta cut away, clear away, Snip away and sever this Umbilical residue that’s Keeping me from killing you, And from pulling you down with me in here, I can almost hear you scream Give me One more medicated peaceful moment, And I don’t wanna feel this overwhelming Hostility

Yeah…….
I’m sure Freud would have a hayday with this and all the sexual tension between mother and son. Although I disagree with this creepy interpretation of the Orestes complex, he hates his mother and wishes to kill her to avenge his father, NOT the other way around. Freud would want him to love his mother and kill his father like Oedipus. Maybe Orestes is gay though? Freud would be panicking in his grave to make Orestes gay.

So the following are the lyrics I know that reference classical stuff.

Aphrodite: Katy Perry’s song “Dark Horse” lyrics: Make me your Aphrodite.
       Tal Bachman’s song “She’s so high” lyrics: She’s so high, high above me, she’s so lovely, she’s so high like Cleopatra, Joan of Arc of Aphrodite”

      Shocking Blue’s song “Venus” lyrics: I’m your Venus, I’m your fire, at your desire.

Odysseus/Ulysses: Cream’s song “Tales of Brave Ulysses” Also about Aphrodite here, but the whole thing is just about Odysseus sailing and seein sexy Aphrodite and some singing sirens.

Necropolis: Tech N9ne’s song “Strange Music Box” lyrics” I’ve been hibernating in the deepest darkest part of Necropolis

Pandora: Tech N9ne’s song “Strange Music Box” again, lyrics: this box is worse than Pandora

Bacchus: A song by Krizz Kaliko that I cannot freaking find in my iTunes but the lyrics are I’ve got followers like Bacchus, implying that drunk chicks fall all over him (haha).

Constantinople (now it’s Istanbul): Of cooooouuuuurrrrse I’d mention this. They Might Be Giants song “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” lyrics: Istanbul was Constantinople now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople, been a long time gone, Constantinople.

Herakles: Bonnie Tyler’s song “Holding out for a hero” lyrics: Where have all the good men gone and where are all the gods? Where’s the streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds?

When we were discussing the political motivations of myths as a key function of their creation it reminded me of some discussions from film class (that only a select few cool people were part of) in which we discussed the politics of 300 and some other movies. Having recently(ish) seen the new 300, there is probably an even stronger argument for the franchise as anti eastern and spartan propaganda, with the Athenians openly discussing how the spartans are basically the coolest and best and most important people in the world. This isn’t only true for 300/s, so I wanted to think about movies I’ve watched recently to think about if they, as modern myths, also were in some way always politically biased. I watched die hard the other day and I think it takes very little imagination to see the film as anti German/European, but also sending a message of the noble, blue collar American. I on my way east watched the newest wolverine movie, which was set in Japan. It was comically racist at times and seemed to send a message that was more or less don’t trust those tricky Japanese people. Movies are designed often to teach a moral or to leave the viewer feeling like they have gained some knowledge or learned something, and it seems that the message often seems to be that us white Americans are great and that the rest of the world is evil. This is why there is the stereotype of the foreign villain in most movies, with thick Russian or German accents trying to destroy the purity of American life. There is additionally an implication that this great American system spits out more noble and honorable people than the flawed systems of the rest of the world. These same trends hold up in a lot of tv and movies, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say that it is in all of them or an unwritten rule that is in all media, but it does seem to be true much of the time. Rarely (I can’t think of a pure example) do we see a movie or show from the US in which there is a foreign protagonist attempting to triumph over an American villain.

So in Pocahontas there is a very old, very wise Weeping Willow who Pocahontas calls Grandmother Willow. She goes to Grandmother Willow for everything, she is Pocahontas’ maternal figure (her own mother passed away before the time shown in the Disney film). She appears as a very large tree with a face, and she can use all her vines like hands, quite an animate being. Pocahontas’ raccoon Meeko and the hummingbird Flit are able to see the willow take on this personification as well. John Smith even encounters Grandmother Willow as humanlike at one point in the story, so it’s not just a figment of Pocahontas’ imagination.  She’s a talking tree. I’m drawing a blank on the exact term we used in class on Wednesday, but I remember you saying this did fall loosely into it.

 That’s Grandmother Willow. 🙂

Anybody else have any Disney related topics that fit in this category of myth?

Here are a few more ideas to continue the discussion we had on friday.

In a similar story to the foundational myth of the Aztec, the Inca told a story in which nature dictated where their new and great society would start. In that story the gods said there where a staff would magically sink into the ground would be the location for a great capital city, which went on to become the capital of the Incan empire.

In every mythos/religion/belief system/what-have-you there is a Creation story, a flood story, and the origins of life story. Ovid, Hesiod, Apollodorus and probably a few others retell the Greek mythological creation story of earth and sky and water and whatnot, as well as the great flood, and how humans were created. In Sumerian belief systems there was a flood, and that story is almost identical to the flood in the Bible. The mythologies all use natural landscapes or essences (air, water, fire) and mold them into gods or creations of gods in order to explain why the world is what it is.

In the Lion King, Mufasa makes a big point of explaining to his son Simba that when animals die they go back into the earth, making everything connected. The point is that the Circle of Life is in us all. Later dead-Mufasa appears in the sky to Simba to tell him to not give up hope on defeating Scar, Mufasa is the sky and the earth and the stars and he is always with Simba. At some other point Simba is lying on the grass looking at the stars with his girlfriend and he tells her that he’d like to believe that Mufasa is the stars, as well as his other ancestors. Similarly the burning bush gives a godly message to the Jews or something, I didn’t pay attention in Jew classes….

To further prove the validity of Tron as a mythical source and to prove that it is possible to make connections everywhere, here are some further thoughts on the subject. In addition to the connections with Jung, there is a comparison to be made with the favorite story of his predecessor. We have discussed the Oedipus story a bit in class but if you think about it, the general ideas of the story, especially as Freud saw them, apply to Tron. As Freud sees the myth, the story teaches us that a father must fear the son that he has helped to create because that son will have a subconscious urge to kill him. This fear is mirrored in both films by Jeff Bridges, who helped to create a master computer program, that is in essence, his child. This creation then goes on to try to kill him in both movies. The program seems to especially be like his son in the new film where the program is made to look just like a younger version of Bridges, kinda like his son would.

On an unrelated note, my psychology professor this term is a firm believer that personality tests are myths. Since we discussed personalities and the types of characters that are always in epic stories, movies, etc, I figured it was relevant to bring up that some people think those character personalities have nothing to do with anything, while we think that characters need to have certain qualities in order to aid the story along. She even called them myths – how appropriate.

People think myth is a box, which is full of secrets. So what those secrets about? Historical or psychological? Is this like a psychological path of our ancestor or ourselves’? It is vague and complicated way to express. Is myth is people put information into a vague speech consciously or unconsciously? Why? If is conscious, it that for hiding information or it is a way to pass different information to different people? If so, why? Does the complicated form have to have function and meaning? Or the form of speech is the soul rather than context.

Maybe it is a joy to make up stories and to explain the world. When they explain they put the world into an understandable system for away from fear. It may be like a game that people play with the world and play with word, which also is the joy of language. Our ancestors connected natural phenomenon, human behaviors and old story togather, and try to figure out an answer. This is total optimism. It is about truth but it unimportant that whether it is truth. When we think myth is about truth, we miss the spirit of myth, creating and joy. Myth teaches us to play with the world like god. People can think about some important topic like death, life, gods, and so on with pain and fear. However, not everyone can get this point, and not everyone’s story is considered as myth. Someone make magical story and tell it, if many people spread it as a public story, it may become myth. When people spread the myth they also recreate the myth. When Odysseus told his story in the feast and Plato made up his myth in Symposium, they seem pretty aware of the joy.