Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Myth & Media

After watching the mythology presentations in our class, I have done a lot of thinking about the concepts presented in mythos and their relation to the modern day. What I have concluded is that many of the themes discussed in class are present in various facets of the media. For example, the trickster figure is a common trope in comics, movies, and even televised series. Stories make use of the trickster figure at various points, often for comedic purposes.

The female divine, too, can be seen in many aspects of the media, but is more specific to celebrities who bill themselves with a particular theme in mind. The male divine, though not quite of such epic and religious proportion as depicted in myth, is nevertheless present in modern media. Even sacred places have their, well... place. Those that might contest the relevance of myth in present day have only to look to the media to see examples of classic mythical figures.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Myth & Culture

For as long as I can remember, I have read. Books, magazines, brochures, comics -- so long as there is text, I am content to read it. I have gladly read and re-read stories over the years, sometimes starting a book again just after I've read it for the first time, certain I may have missed something. But of all those many tomes and texts, my very favorite type of literature is fantasy and myth. Something has always appealed to me about creation myths in specific, though I couldn't say just what it is about them I so enjoy. I like learning about myths from different cultures, too, as so many different cultures embrace unique and fascinating variants on the origin of man, how the sun came to sit in the sky, and so on. It makes me wonder about how those different myths come to define specific aspects of the culture and how they may have affected modern day societies.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Myth-ink Link

Many people regard myths as a thing of the past -- stories that are in relative conjunction with other legends and stock fantasy. However, myths are relevant to the modern day. For example, many people see graveyards as bad places to be, and perhaps even go so far as to associate them with bad luck, though there is only superstition to dictate such a feeling. As a culture, we associate graveyards with the dead (and rightly so), yet many old traditions from multiple different cultures suggest that the spirits of the dead are present in such a place, and that may be the reason why we, a culture otherwise ostensibly devoid of mythos, believe that graveyards are inherently bad places to be.

Superstition plays an unquestionable role in all of this, as well. If we did not believe that negative things would come as a result of our not observing a certain tradition or unspoken rule, we would most likely let a superstition, or myth, fade into obscurity.