Modern Mythology

[Marilyn/Absentminded]

well it's modern time,rather than ancient time lines.....occurrence of the shaping of brand new religion and legends and myths around it,out of more modern events.

 
I still don't understand what you're saying.  As far as I know cargo cults were based on actual visits from more technologically advanced cultures.  I don't know of any proven UFO visits.

I was going to say the legends and myths part made sense to me but not the religion part, but then I remembered the Raelians.  Not a cargo cult, but based on the whole starseed thing.

Absent

[spoOk]

I still don't understand what you're saying.  As far as I know cargo cults were based on actual visits from more technologically advanced cultures.  I don't know of any proven UFO visits.

I was going to say the legends and myths part made sense to me but not the religion part, but then I remembered the Raelians.  Not a cargo cult, but based on the whole starseed thing.

Absent

 
no your right. I never said anything about u.f.o.s
but they have generations now of families who've built runways and bamboo airplane effigies awaiting the return of the cargo drops.

[Waldhexe]

I'll disagree on Trek; it's too episodic, with too little overarching narrative. They've certainly borrowed mythological elements for episodes and the names of things (Vulcan, anyone?), but that's not the same thing as making myth.

It comes close, though. If the characters aren't archetypal, certainly the alien races are (Klingon = god of war, Romulan = evil trickster god, Betazoid = god of being annoying, etc.). And there are folks out there who have practically made it their religion, incorporating it into their lives as if it were real.

Yeah, It's not the same as ancient myths. I didn't mean to imply that it was.

I'd say it has a stronger entertainment aspect and it's not incorporated into ritual and religion like ancient myths.

I'm a bit sceptical about saying fandom is the same as religion. Of course some people find deeper meaning in some shows and love them doesn't mean it's necessarily a religios thing.

On the episodicness I'm not sure that's a disqualifier. Many of the ancient greek myths have episodic qualities and Star Trek has some overarching narrative - it kinda would matter how much overarch is required for something to be a myth or which myths we take as template. Might be interesting to compare Star Trek Voyager with the journey of Odysseus - then of course the Odysseus-story has an overarch which was much more meaningful to the identity of ancient greeks than Voyager's overarch.

The political aspect many myths had in history is something modern TV shows maybe don't have in the same depth. (Of course they have a political aspect and they tell also much about how a society sees itsself, but we don't built our identity as a people by telling myths about ancient heros as our ancestors like people did with Eneas in the middle age f.ex.)

Btw, haven't we discussed something similar on the old board? I remember that we discussed somewhere the definition and functions of myths...I have to search a bit...

[drekfletch]

Btw, haven't we discussed something similar on the old board? I remember that we discussed somewhere the definition and functions of myths...I have to search a bit...

 
I don't remember if it was a dedicated thread or if it was drift, but I remember at least one convo.  One of the major participants was Catja; and the thread as a whole explored the nuances between folktale, fairytale, and myth.

[SunflowerP]

I don't remember if it was a dedicated thread or if it was drift, but I remember at least one convo.  One of the major participants was Catja; and the thread as a whole explored the nuances between folktale, fairytale, and myth.

 


I found three places where Catja posted her long breakdown (there may be more; one downside to SMF's otherwise-great search function is that it gives you the last post that fits your search parameters in any given thread):  here, here, and here.  Each discussion is somewhat different, and Catja's breakdown may differ slightly in each instance to fit the context of that thread, so I'm including all three.

Sunflower