Myth Takes

 

A mystery Shadowplayer, who wishes to remain anomalous, dropped in to add some thoughts to the mythic storytelling discussion. We’d been discussing stuff like Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces and Propp’s Morphology of the Folk tale.

‘Part of the problem is that both Campbell and Propp have what seem to me v. mechanical understandings of myth (tho the latter is sort of interesting til one gets his point, which happens pretty quick). Compare that to the understandings of roberto calasso (who you shd read), Joyce, Rilke… Jung is more interesting than Campbell and Eliade maybe more interesting still.

‘Victoria Nelson’s SECRET LIFE OF PUPPETS is a plenty intriguing modern study.’

I was promoted to reply, thinking of Campbell:

‘Listing the most common features of world mythology is sort of interesting but does that mean we SHOULDN’T take inspiration from less popular myths? George Lucas would presumably say YES.’

The Mystery Man shot back:

‘Not only that, but the Propp/Campbell (and to a lesser extent Jungian) models all focus on similarities and neglect or shave off difference. Whereas someone like Calasso, in his retellings, makes the crucial point that myths EXIST in their variants, their sum-total of tellings, and resist any “definitive” form. So laying them down on a structural grid, and cutting to fit the pattern, may have some interest, but it’s also a considerable violence.’

Me:

And again, it CAN have a rather deleterious effect on the imaginations of those seeking a “mythic model.”

Him:

‘It has a “deleterious effect” on EVERYONE.’

This is our fear: that people have a one-dimensional idea of mythic storytelling, in which all the individual quirks and strangenesses are chiselled away, and what’s left is a styrofoam Arnold Schwartzenegger or something.

Or a CGI Ray Winstone.