By way of cultural impregnation, the Phantom, the Ghost, becomes the interesting and beguiling figure , the star we’d all like to meet As Angela Carter points out the howling slavering wolf is the one we would all secretly like to meet.
Some argue that there is a universal substratum beneath all the great stories.
ie if one throws all the world’s religions into a giant stewpot and boils them down to make a stock, one finds that the universal stock always pre-existed the soup
However, the counter argument is that of such a confident mythographer is that such ‘static mono-myth’ appears deeply pernicious – ‘the very antithesis of the ceaselessly engaged and always subject-filled approach. However the argument here is that New studies are in danger of repeating the balkanisation of the old.
This seems an important caveat. If we take cultural myths as generally purposive, as governed by particular economic and political urgencies, we have to discount their universal applicability.
The rise of pc, diversity, trans etc into a more overt and articulated aspect of our lives may itself be an indicator of our arrival at a cultural state removed from the central anxieties of agricultural peoples – owning land and giving birth. Thus we now have the responsibility of making myths of our own. Our interest in films, TV etc can be explained in these terms: we are keeping an eye out for new revelations with which to create new myths
Some argue that there is a universal substratum beneath all the great stories.
ie if one throws all the world’s religions into a giant stewpot and boils them down to make a stock, one finds that the universal stock always pre-existed the soup
However, the counter argument is that of such a confident mythographer is that such ‘static mono-myth’ appears deeply pernicious – ‘the very antithesis of the ceaselessly engaged and always subject-filled approach. However the argument here is that New studies are in danger of repeating the balkanisation of the old.
This seems an important caveat. If we take cultural myths as generally purposive, as governed by particular economic and political urgencies, we have to discount their universal applicability.
The rise of pc, diversity, trans etc into a more overt and articulated aspect of our lives may itself be an indicator of our arrival at a cultural state removed from the central anxieties of agricultural peoples – owning land and giving birth. Thus we now have the responsibility of making myths of our own. Our interest in films, TV etc can be explained in these terms: we are keeping an eye out for new revelations with which to create new myths
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