Friday, November: Bandersnatches
BANDERSNATCHES
by Steve Steinbock
The Truth about Myths
(And the Myth about Truth)
As a recovering theologian and an armchair philologist, I have a gripe about the way the word MYTH has been maligned in popular speech and writing.
Words change. Meanings evolve. I’m the first to admit it. When Queen Anne allegedly told Sir Christopher Wren that his design for the rebuilt St. Pauls Cathedral was “artificial, amusing, and awful,” Wren took her comments for what they were: high praise. (Back then, artificial meant “artistically created,” amusing was “muse inspired,” and awful implied “full of awe.”)
The above anecdote may or may not have ever happened. But like Washington and the cherry tree or Lincoln and the forgotten penny, whether it actually happened is not as important as the truth (with a big T) behind it.
Whenever I see, read, or hear the word “myth” used as an antonym for FACT, when people say “myth” when they mean “falsehood,” I cringe. When I just want to tell them they can put their facts right where the cherry tree don’t shine. A myth is not a mistaken belief.
So what’s a myth?
The Greek mythos meant “thought,” “story,” or “speech.” Sure, the term has long been associated with ancient stories of gods and heroes. Classical myths are stories that were (and to an extent still are) used to convey a Truth.
I’m not suggesting that Zeus was a real guy who collected clouds and carried a thunderbolt or that Rome was actually founded by the whelp of a she-wolf. But I doubt there’s a fiction writer (or any artist for that matter) who hasn’t sought a muse. No one can develop a plotline without hanging on to Ariadne’s thread. Cupid and Psyche may not exist outside of human imagination, but every human born knows them intimately.
The problem with us dang moderns is that we have somehow gotten it into our heads that Fact and Truth are the same thing. They’re not. We read facts in textbooks and newspapers. And facts change, just like the meanings of certain words. Back in the mid-1970s, it was a “Fact,” agreed on by a “consensus” of scientists, and published in Time and Newsweek (so it must be true) that man-made gasses were leading to a new Ice Age. Today the “consensus” of scientists is that Global Warming is in our near future.
Polluting the earth is a bad thing. That’s a Truth. But facts (like Global Warming or Ice Age or whether or not Vitamin C actually helps us get rid of the sniffles) don’t exist in the same realm as Truth.
Now here’s a philological irony: going way back into proto-Indo-European, the words “fact” and “fiction” evolved out of the same root.
MythBusters is a cool TV show. I love Jamie’s mustache and Kari’s … well, that’s a bit too revealing. But why can’t they call the show “B.S. Busters” or “Crap Catchers” or something without slandering myths?
By now I’ve entirely lost track of what this column is about. I suppose it all comes down to why we love fiction. Those “made-up” stories can really pack a lot more truth your typical plain-wrapped datum. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a story is worth ten thousand facts. Now I need to find Ariadne’s thread, or Hansel and Gretl’s breadcrumbs to find my way out of this maze.
Happy Hanukkah.
What a great column. Of course I could be “mything”.
But I’m not. I’m glad to see that one of the heavy thinkers on this blog can write himself into a maze, too. Say what?
Happy Hanukkah
Melodie, you don’t “myth” a thing!
Very true, Steve, and thanks for saying it. I agree that Mythbusters should have come up with a better name. (What they are reallly talking about, usually, are urban legends, and the folklorists prefer the term belief stories… and sometimes MB goes way beyond those anyway.)
Joseph Campbell has been so absorbed into New Age stuff these days that I don’t know if anyone takes him seriously, but when I read The Hero With A Thousand Faces back in the seventies I felt as if all my life I had been shown snapshots of bits of the Sistine Chapel ceiling and now I was getting to see the whole picture. If you want to understand myth, that’s a great book to start with.
Campbell was pretty brilliant in opening people’s eyes to the meanings and motifs of myths. He sure opened my eyes. I do take his stuff with a grain of salt, though. He tended to overstate and was selective in the examples that he used, and he tended to portray a lot of Western traditions in a negative light. He was downright hostile toward anything Jewish.
His thoeries about the Hero’s Journey can be really helpful to fiction writers. Christpher Vogler wrote a nice book, The Writer’s Journey, which uses Campbell’s paradigm to help writers plot their stories. The caveat is that the Hero’s Journey and it’s 12 steps are a nice model, but they shouldn’t be written in stone. Any writer who tries to stick to it too religiously will end up with stiff fiction.
Clyde Ford, who lives in my town, )and now writes mysteries!) noticed that Campbell had ignored/disparaged African mythology. He wrote The Hero With An African Face to fill the gap. I highly recommend it.
Speaking of Myths, the book “D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths” is well worth your time for the great stories and the equally great illustrations. (And check out those family trees!)
The D’Aulaires book was my favorite book in the 3rd grade; so much so, that when I worked for Barnes & Noble I bought another copy.
The D’Aulaires book was a fav of mine as a child as well. Can’t even begin to remember how many times it has been read by me. It now sits on the shelf of the oldest child gathering dust. Time to take it down hubby:D
My WENCH?!?!?