The New Mythology
by Marie Barnes ~ May 12th, 2009. Filed under: Comics, Games, Misc, Movies, Opinion.
I saw the new Star Trek movie tonight. While I’m vastly intrigued by the franchise, I can’t claim the status of a true Trekkie and one of the fellows I saw the movie with had never seen a Star Trek anything. Yet here’s the amazing thing. He had no trouble knowing about or understanding the characters or universe, the iconography of the U.S.S. Enterprise.
Many people who don’t know Star Trek nevertheless not only recognize the pointy ears and calm demeanor of Spock, that image means something to them. It has importance, an affiliation outside of nerdom.
Lately in cinema we’ve seen a retelling of old stories, old characters. Often things are changed; nothing is true to the “original.” Yet somehow the essence of those characters is the same. What may be deemed as their original form has grown greater and beyond the control of their creater. Look at Star Wars. Star Wars is much bigger than George Lucas; it is an entity of its own. Lucas made movies that his fans claimed to not be true Star Wars movies. These characters, these legends, now belong to the people.
And this is my argument: that these characters and stories—Star Wars, Star Trek, Batman, Mario, and more— are the new mythology. They are our Hercules, our Achilles, our Greek Gods, our Beowulf. They have importance to us as a people; they are our culture heroes. Academia has been viewing them, dismissing them, demeaning them, with this term of “pop culture,” aka culture that doesn’t last or is less worthy than something that is “classic” or “postmodern.”
Years and years from now, scholars will study Spock and his cultural significance, the meaning of the trials he faced, the importance of his friendship with Kirk. They’ll be teaching him to bored kids who sit at their desks waiting to get home and watch the latest episode of that one show. The professors will rail about the garbage the kids are into these days.
But this is our time, and these are our heroes, and we will continue to be fascinated and find our own unspoken meanings in each of their incarnations.
May 13th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
You forgot Urkel
May 19th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
I went to school with a guy who wrote his thesis on this, and even then I didn’t think of it as a new idea. I think it’s something I take for granted and most people don’t see. Anyways, this is very well written.
And I never rail against anything my students are into. Except maybe sleeping in class and throwing paper at each other. Which is the problem: they’re not into anything but themselves.