As I described on my other blog, these stories come in many levels. We constantly tell ourselves stories about who we are, where we are going, why we are here. It's how things make sense to us, as part of some broader story--and when the link between our story and the story of those around us breaks, it can be profoundly isolating.
In part, that's because we write our own stories alternatingly as part of and in opposition to the broader supernarrative of our societies.
All societies have such supernarratives. They influence the tales we tell our children before bedtime. They drive career decisions, affect relationships, and structure institutions and laws.
These supernarratives--called monomyths--did not rise with mass media. Rather, they have existed since literally the beginning of recorded language (and perhaps before; I don't claim to know how cavepeople interpreted their paintings).
Ultimately, these monomyths help us crystallize our ideal citizens, encapsulating in a single person the values, hopes, and aspirations of the society. By describing our heroes, we learn what we believe, even if we cannot live up to our own ideals.
The classical monomyth, as put by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, runs as follows:
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder; fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won; the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.
The hero, after completing his mythic task, then typically stays in the community to lead them in a new, elevated state. Think Odysseus (Ulysses, for you Latin readers), Heracles (Hercules), and Jason.
More generally, the basic model is: a hero leaves his community, goes to some other place (physical or otherwise) to combat an enemy or an obstacle, and returns after winning in order to bring back benefits to the original community, wherein he is an important figure because of his actions. Star Wars follows this pattern; so do many Disney movies, such as Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast.
However, there is an alternative, more recently developed supernarrative that pervades American culture. I think of it as derived primarily from the Christian Bible, wherein Jesus emerges from within the Jewish people to save them (and, as Christianity spread, humanity) from their sins, and then disappears.
John Shelton Lawrence and Robert Jewett describe the American monomyth thus:
A community in a harmonious paradise is threatened by evil; normal institutions fail to contend with the threat; a selfless superhero emerges to renounce temptations and carry out the redemptive task; aided by fate, his decisive victory restores the community to its paradisiacal condition; the superhero then recedes into obscurity.
If you prefer another referent, you can look no further than pretty much every comic superhero ever: Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Catwoman, Captain America. Or movies: The Matrix, anything with John Wayne or James Bond (British, to be sure, but as Americanized in movies as they come), Gladiator, Ripley in Aliens, even Men in Black. I invite you to go down this list and see how many heroes fit the archetype.
In fact, I'd say 300 is the American monomyth (I will call it that, instead of Christian, as I did not invent it) intersecting with a classical foundation. The heroes go out from their community to face an external threat, but they end up sacrificing themselves (in Christian fashion?) and leaving it to others to complete the classical cycle.
I add only this slight twist: the American hero must remain, throughout the story, in some way apart from the community he is saving, because the threat usually has some insidious and/or internal component. He must be of the community in one way, yet distinct in order to defeat the threat.
We can see examples of this narrative pervading political discourse, particularly in the last few years. Certainly, some of President Obama's more zealous supporters make him seem like such a hero--but then, was not George W. Bush seen much the same, as an outsider coming in to reform the system for a few years and then retire to his ranch?
Perhaps more interestingly, we can see the same narrative in the present political opposition, with Tea Partiers and the like thinking of themselves as living in that community under threat.
Where does this leave Nietzsche's rejection of Christianity as unbefitting the great-souled man? How can we reconcile this picture of American idealism with Randian classical heroes?
Might the next century see a reversion to the classical monomyth, due to the massive collective action problems we face? Or might we need to forge a new one to deal with the tensions between individual identity and social existence wrought by technology?
Gear up. We've barely finished Chapter 1.
