Hello, and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. We talk often about
the idea that superheroes are creatures of mythology, both the kind of modern myths
that they talk about, but also that like they echo for us the role
that ancient myths have often played, and many of them are based off of
ancient myths, even metaphorically down to Hercules, a literal character. And we
talk about that term mythology so often, but what does it actually mean,
What is mythology and how does it apply to the stories we love and how
have people written about this? And so we're going to kick this off with
Professor Matthew Cappelle recently of Montclair State University, the Fighting RedHawks, And anytime
Matthew has been on this podcast before, the topics such as mythology and anthropology
and all these things come up, and I've always thought, you know,
I'd love to dive deeper into this, and so today that's exactly what we're
gonna do. We're gonna start with just a discussion of mythology itself and then
look at one of the kind of seminal works in the field of mythology,
the myth of the American Superhero, which applies to so much of the stuff
we've talked about, and that's going to kind of be something we're going to
go back to from time to time. I know at a later point,
Matthew and I am also going to talk about Joseph Campbell and the Hero of
a Thousand Faces and all that kind of stuff. Matthew has been making a
facial expression indicating his fondness for that book. But we're starting out, like
I said, just with mythology itself. And so here's a nice simple question
for the professor. What is mythology? Oh no, I have no idea.
Mythologies might might be slightly different than myths. So can we start with
myth? Sure? Yeah, what is a moth? Okay, what is
a myth? What do you think of myth is? So I approached this,
I will say as a biblical scholar, and that's the way I come
from it. The simple definition I would use is that a myth is a
story that contains truth but not necessarily fact, and that whether or not it's
factual is actually fairly irrelevant. Oh. I love that definition. That's a
that's a really good definition. We can go with that. My definition my
definition is, and I'm stealing it from a much more important scholar than I
would ever be. My definition of myth is a story with an ideology in
it, right, So it's a it's a narrative with an ideology. Yeah.
That is to say, humans tell stories, and our stories have significant
leanings towards points of view, and when we all tell stories that give similar
ideologies, we're talking about myths and the stories. It does not matter at
all if the stories are true or not, because they actually are true.
So maybe we should start by dispensing with the notion that myth means false.
Yeah, so let me talk more about how I see it, because again
I would happily talk about most of the Biblical stories as myths, and I
don't use that. I'm a person who loves the Bible. It's the seminal
work of literature in my world, of many others as well, and so
they seem any problems in it. But one of the things that I learned
in scholarship, and I'm curious if you have other this is me remembering theories
from twenty years ago. But basically, it's the idea that we in the
modern age find it hard to understand how the limits of human knowledge. Back
in the time most of these myths were written or come up with. But
it's especially before the Enlightenment and before the scientific revolution, and that in most
of the world, like there was interesting science being done, but most questions
people approached with the idea like that when people talked about a pulling a chariot
of fire across the sky, if you asked someone, do you think that
that is literally what is happening? It's not that they would say, no,
it's a myth. I know that it's false. It's that the very
idea of asking that question wouldn't make any sense to them. That for a
large extent, the idea was you came up with stories that helped you explain
the truth of a situation because you're not really thinking about is this factual or
not? And so you know, again with like a lot of the Biblical
stories, you can see it that way, a lot of the Greek myths,
you'd see it that way, even to the point where you know with
some of the stories in the Bible or some other myths, like we know
there are some true things that we know. There was a flood in Mesopotamia
around about the time of the flood mythology story being created. We know there
was an actual person named Jesus at some point. He was killed by the
Romans, as they killed many people at that time. But the point is
that, like whether it's based in some sort of like what you know,
the same way. King Arthur is another great you know, we know with
our pen dragon I'm probably getting the name wrong, but we know there was
some night in a king in Wales at some point that inspired the myths and
the legends of Arthur. And in all these cases, whether it's whether it's
based in a fact or not to me is not the question. It's the
what is the truth that it tells us? Is that? How much that
would you have? If that's my paper? What great am I getting?
What? What revisions am I being told to made? Oh? That's a
straight B plus, well done? Okay, there we go, There we
go. I was just being made that was that's a great definition, and
I would probably get sut her name. So we have this notion that we
can talk about other people and their myths, but we don't talk about ourselves
and to our myths. And that's because the definitions we want to hang onto
for myth don't really deal with truth in contemporary culture, which is why people
can't go, oh, that story, that's just a myth. But in
reality, the fact that the story has relevance means it's just a myth.
But that's a different thing than saying it's just a myth, right, And
I think the classic example is the worst president after Franklin Delano Roosevelt is hands
down until recently, Reagan and Reagan used to just to be clear, if
you mean the worst president since FDR, not that FDR is one of the
worst presidents, Am I correct? That's correct? Okay, I'm just going
post World War two. If I had to pick a worst president before the
most recent last guy, I would have picked Reagan. And one of the
things Reagan used to do is talk about what we now think of as the
myth of the welfare queen. This woman who doesn't work and lots of kids
by lots of men and has a Cadillac in front of her house because welfares
pan for everything. This person never ever existed, but the story keeps getting
told, and the ideology behind the story, the racism, the lack of
acceptance of public help, means that it is a truthful story in that it
affects the way we behave even though the actual facts of it aren't correct,
And because it is such an incredibly racist form of a kind of mythology in
American society, we can also point out that Americans easily accepts stories with narrative
truths in them, with narrative values in them, with ideologies in them,
if they are in any way paler parallel to their current belief system. And
a lot of Americans, okay, let's say all Americans are kind of racist.
So it's an easy story to pass off as truth, which is why
it gets retold, which is why it's a myth. But to say it's
just a myth is not an insult. I would say the virgin birth is
just a myth, by which I mean whether it happened or not. The
way we tell the story is the important part, not whether it happened or
not. And I think that's a really important thing, is that we're not
using the phrase just a myth, And the idea that because it's a myth
it's not important is not as relevant. And it's funny when you mentioned Reagan,
I thought you were going to go in a very different direction, though,
I think it's just as mythological and certainly still very alive today, which
is the myth of the perfect America, you know, and that Reagan and
certainly more recent people have really tried to go back to. You know,
why, you know, why aren't we telling the story about how America is
the greatest nation in the world and it's always has been, and the divine
providence was very much a part of our myth for a long time. In
that myth, we don't talk about slavery and the internment of the Japanese and
the horal treatment of Mexicans and Native Americans and all that kind of stuff.
Pulling back though a bit, or actually maybe say narrowing the lens a bit,
is it fair to say that not only do we have myths on sort
of cultural national levels, but can families have their own myths? Like when
you know, people talk about, oh, great Grandpa, you know,
he always loved doing this, and he he you know, loved great Grandma
so much they built this heart. Like the stories that get passed down generation
to generation. I feel like just because the way people tell stories, things
get exaggerated, things get misremembered the truth of the story of him, you
know, your great grandpa being the embodiment of thrift or of love, or
of whatever virtue it is. There's some truth there perhaps, but really it's
just a story that the family tells to pass on a value that the family
wants to pass on to their kids. Is that would that fit also within
the realm of mythology or a myth, Yes, yes, I would say
it does. I think there are some myth scholars who would disagree with me
on that. But but I tend to be very anthropological in my idea of
myth, which means I think everybody is making myth all the time. So
who doesn't have a story if they're in a long term relationship or have been
about how we met and we all tell that story. Or my spouse and
I tell the story of how she woke me up one morning and went if
we get downtown, they can marry us, but we have to be there
before noon. Yeah, And we had to get married because they was moving
overseason. The country would not give her a visa, So we went and
we got married so we could get a visa. And it's a great story.
So we tell it all the time when people ask, because we literally
got up and ran to downtown Detroit and got married and went to my absolute
favorite building in Detroit, which doesn't matter, and then then we were able
to move to you know, Wales and hang out with the myth of Arthur
Pendragon nice And so what is mythology? Then? I think, I think
I have an idea of it, and if I'm right, it's going to
lead into my next topic. But what is mythology? Well, simply it's
just the study of myth, right, But there's two ways to think about
this. Myth scholars are are often shunted to the side. So in myth
scholarship, there's not really a meeting week it to go to. There's a
religious group of scholars in the United States, and myth would be there,
like I don't know, Bastard Nephew. Myth is not considered important to scholars
of religion generally, but but there's no place else you can go. There
was a very famous historian who in the early nineteen eighties was president of the
American Historical Association who specifically said myth and history are really close together, and
nobody would listen to him. After that interesting. He was a professor at
Chicago, Great Book myth History. He wrote a book, and I,
as a historian, I completely agree with him. I think history is just
myth with footnotes. So myth scholars have that problem. So instead of saying
we study mythology, myth scholars tend to be people who go, yeah,
I study myth I do mythography. I write about myth because mythography sounds like
a fancier word than mythology. You can add oology to the end of anything,
right, yea man, we do, But mythography is a whole different
ball of kittens. Well, and it's interest. I would think that it
would fit well into anthropology or perhaps sociology, as they like, Look,
this is a thing that communities do and the way that they passed down history
and stuff. I'm guessing there's a connection between the whole, like our modernistic
take of oh, it's just a myth, a myth means it's false,
and the idea that mythology is kind of the redheaded stepchild of this part of
academia. I say that as a redhead with a stepmother. To be clear,
Yeah, anthropologists are of course always better at everything than everybody else spoken
as a true anthropologist. Yeah, anthropologists are much friendlier towards myth, but
they also as a as a group have tended to be like, myth is
just one of the little things we have to take care of so we can
get to the stuff that matters. And the stuff that matters is a myth.
And there's a very famous anthropological story that I tell in my intro classes
all the time, which is I think it was a Linquist, really not
an anthropologist, who's talking to a Native American and the Native Americans said,
why is it what you believe is religion? But what I believe is a
myth. Yeah, that's a great question. And that is how we others.
We talk about other people's myths, we don't talk about our myths.
Yeah, and that's a nice way of creating a really great social distinction.
Yeah. I mean, and that's why for me as a Christian, I
promise is not gonna be about my religion all all episode. But just to
say this, that's part of why I very intentionally talk about my religion as
mythology. And both to say that doesn't I don't think that means it's not
important or there isn't some truth there, but that to me, the connection
to historical reality is not what matters, and I'm never going to make a
claim of historical reality to it. So with all that, so so with
all that, I'm really glad we're going to to explore that. We'll get
to kind of the heroes part of it in a bit. And this is
actually, I think a good way to lead into it, one of the
additional things that I think of with myths and and tell And this is what
I was I was wondering maybe this would be the definition mythology. I totally
get where I was way off. But as I understand it, not only
do individual myths have this power, but that when a community has central myths
that are passed down through the community. And again that can be you know,
parents teaching their kids about you know, what the what happened when you
know Grandma came over on the boat one hundred years ago, or great great
grandma whatever it is, or you know, a group of you know,
believers in a faith, tradition or a nation or city or whatever. That
a lot of what the myth becomes then is kind of the the shared language
that people can use to have discussions because it's very hard to talk about values
and things like that in the abstract. But that a lot of times,
you know, well, we'll look at like, Okay, George Washington is
the symbol of American honesty and forthrightness. And then when we discuss that,
sometimes you know, people will reference like, you know, what if what
if Washington hadn't you know I told people about the apple tree or whatever it
is that like or same in like you know that that religious traditions, it
is often people talk talking about different interpretations of the story or as we'll get
to the book that we're talking about a little bit today. Makes a great
case that others have made as well that Star Trek is a community that has
a shared mythology. And when people come together like we do on this podcast
to talk about the shared myths of the Enterprise or of the Jedi or things
like that, what's the role in mythology of it being something that people can
discuss like that. If you've ever been in a group of people that you
have nothing to talk about with, yeah, it's really hard. Yeah,
shared shared myths are a thing you you did something that I had planned to
do, which is do the Washington thing. But you know, Americans know
they're George Washington stories and they're Abraham Lincoln stories. And you know, so
I think Lincoln is footprints on the ceiling of the log cabin kind of stuff
in mud. And we tell these stories because they bring us together as a
community and because they give us something ideological to hang onto. And if you
don't have those two things in a group, you don't have a group.
So what myth does is offers the social blue that holds communities together, right,
And in that sense, myths are probably the most important thing in a
society that doesn't get studied by scholars. Yeah, and especially because these I
understand it. Sometimes, you know, conflict and community can often happen because
people are, whether explicitly or implicitly, they have different ideas of the myth,
you know. I mean that's right now in the United States. One
of the biggest social conflicts we have is over different interpretations of what does America
mean? And was it great? Or was it not? Or what does
all that mean? Or you know, just families arguing and things like that.
And again, I don't know how it quite with us in the academic
terms, but it seems that like a lot of times, when a community
argues over a shared mythology, that can either lead to a change in the
community and the community kind of adopting something new, or a split in the
community where one group breaks off, you know where, because they have a
different idea of what the mythology is or what it means or what it should
be. Yes, let's let's let's try Let's go back to star Trek and
try it that way. So there's an anthropologist named Conrad Philip Kotech. I'm
just putting his name out there because he's worth picking up some of his stuff.
And my wife knows him, and he has this book called Primetime Society
that you would not believe what he says about Star Truck, but it's perfect.
I mean, I think he's right. If you're of a certain generation
like old, like me, you probably grew up with certain things happening around
Thanksgiving in your school. Maybe there was a Thanksgiving play, and some people
were the Puritans Pilgrims, and some people were the Native Americans, the Indians,
and one person was the jerky maybe, and we tell the Thanksgiving story
over and over again, and we have since the Civil War and that story
is about bringing separate communities together and showing how separate communities can work together.
And so Conrad Philip Kotech said, and that is exactly what the Bridge of
the Enterprise does as well. It is a reformatting of America's Thanksgiving mythology.
People of different backgrounds, who look different, who act different, who have
different languages, can come together and be one unified thing, which is a
central part of American mythology. Right, So the question isn't is that true
for most Americans? The question is which people can't be part of it?
That's the thing Americans argue about, which is when I teach history, I
always make people read this Ben Franklin thing where he's like, We're not going
to be true Americans because there's too many Germans moving here. And he was
like, really upset about the Germans. And it's Ben Franklin. And we've
been doing that ever since. It's the Now it's this group, and now
it's that group, and a generation later that group is very American and it's
fitty. So the myth works to affect a way for people to become part
of the society. And it's funny because because again here, maybe this is
the conflict over different ways of of of interpreting the myth because that assimilation that
happens, which and that's a very loaded word, I mean in a varie
of different ways that can be very much a part of the myth. But
also that when the people object to those groups, it's almost always couched in
the language of they don't share our values, they're not like us. They
will make America different. And at heart, isn't that basically just a they're
going to change the myth. They're gonna they're gonna challenge the mythological understanding that
we have. Yes, let me tell you a story I think. I
think a podcast about myth in a general sense needs me to say a lot.
Let me tell you a story in American history, it's a really big
deal that Ford offered his employees five dollars a day. It's a really big
important thing. Henry Ford, the original founder of the Henry Henry Ford,
founder the Ford Motor Company, at one point decided to essentially pay his employees
twice what anybody else would pay them. People were getting two fifty a day
and he was paying them five bucks a day. But that's the story we
tell, but the background to that story is different, because the background is
Ford had people going to their employees houses to make sure they were living appropriately
before they got the raise. And living appropriately was is English spoken in this
home? Is are the children being reared in an American way, which at
the time was a big deal. Our people behaving in a proper Christian fashion.
And there were certain kinds of wasps that were acceptable and others that were
not. And it was not actually so much as like Ford was giving people
five bucks a day so they could afford to buy a Ford product, it
turned out for it was giving people five dollars a day so that they would
change the way that they behave to be more American as he saw fit right,
And that is that's how we do it right. And isn't that often
the case? Is that the myth not always, but that myths are very
often a positive passing down of tradition. And so of course you leave out
the bad stuff, you know, you leave out that great great Grandpa was
terrible, the great great grandma, or that you know, the American nation
was founded on slavery and genocide of the Native peoples and all these kind of
things, and I'm seeing an interesting and I promise where you get to the
superhero part. That's kind of the last thing I want to bring up on
this general point. Do you think this is fair to say that one of
the things that we're seeing in our society today is that social media, and
particularly the fact that we can learn so much more about the people who are
often mythologized, is breaking down a lot of myths. And it's not just
social media, it's the press. Is the just closer connections and well,
because I think, you know, we've had the myth of like the American
entrepreneur who becomes very rich and makes the world a better place, and everything
they did was smart, and maybe they were a little bit cutthroat, but
they made the world a better place. When we can see Elon Musk's tweets
and have that direct access, that loses a lot. But it's also the
same thing of you know, Babe Ruth was this mythological baseball figure because the
writers didn't talk about his womanizing or his drinking or his drunkenness or all the
kind of stuff that today is going to be all over the papers, and
so it seems and I think the same way in Great Britain, where the
royal family has become a lot less mythologized because the people now have so much
more access through the press and direct appearances and stuff like that. Do you
think there's a fair commentary there that even just in the last hundred years and
then especially in the last ten or twenty, that those myths are are being
harnished a lot because we have so much more direct contact with the people who
are making them or they're about. Like, I think that myths work best
when most people don't notice that they're myths. Yeah. Right, So once
you start seeing something that used to be a story we told that you are
now being exposed very directly. This is not true. It's hard to see
it as a unifying story for a culture. But at the same time,
that doesn't mean that there are no myths. It just means that you have
to find the new myths. Yeah, and what are the new myths?
And that's an interesting question that leads right to superheroes. What are the new
myths? Because yeah, no, I don't think if I were to say,
in a history class, which I also teach history, if I were
to give the whole like throwing a silver dollar across the comic story for Washington,
or I cannot tell a lie. I cut down the cherry Tree Washington
story. My students, at least when I was teaching in Manhattan, my
students would have been like, you should probably be talking about how many slaves
he owned. Yeah, because that myth no longer holds water for them.
It does not work. But so you that doesn't mean we have no myths.
It means the myths are different. Yeah. In fact, one of
the myths, one of the really important myths, is the myth of mythlessness,
more than the myth that we the myth that we have no myths,
the story that we've we've progressed, one of the great American myths is progressed.
We've progressed so far that we don't need myths anymore. Well, especially
because I wonder if we talked about the new myth. I'm pulling us back
to the real world for a second, and then I'm not even keep saying
that you know, and because like you know again, just to do the
one more real world example and about mythology and conflict. It feels to me
like with someone like Elon Musk, but also someone like Carnegie. We've always
had two myths that are kind of running concurrently. One is of the nobleman
who is very smart and very dedicated and hard working and pulls him up by
his own bootstraps and thus makes the world a better place because he makes so
much money and makes a product everyone wants and then starts Carnegie Mellon University or
whatever. And then the second myth, which is I think for the most
part secondary but sometimes is more in ascendance, is the myth of the greedy
millionaire that Americans have to unify to fight against, and that can even be
a trip like and there's a way to make the revolution part of that,
where King George and the English are that. And I think in our lifetimes
we've seen Elon Musk switch from one to the other. Like I remember ten
years ago he was lauded as this absolute genius who could do no wrong and
that he was going to save environmentalism and he was the future of everything.
Stame with Steve Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs and all the rest, and now
a lot of them have shifted into being. And I kind of wonder if
now we're going to get the myth of the billionaire idiot, you know,
who just doesn't know what they're doing, and that'll be a part of it.
It's not a myth. Most people in Silicon Valley got lucky ones and
now think they're geniuses. I'm sorry, it's just it's the way it works.
They're like I did in Facebook. Therefore, everything I say is going
to be correct, and so it's a psychological problem. So let's actually now
go to But but let me let me go somewhere with that. Okay,
So the obvious joke is I missed the days when the obscenely wealthy started new
universities and built libraries all over America to prove their value as opposed to building
rockets. I missed those days. I wish we had billionaires going. We
should. We should have more scholarships to the universities as opposed to I need
to colonize Mars and those that would be great. But at the same time,
it's important that I say that all a lot of our myths deal with
the obscenely wealthy and what they can accomplish, as we will see shortly.
Do you think that's a carryover from like, you know, Greek myths are
about the demigods. They are about people who have powers that humans don't have.
Hercules and Pericles and all these people. Is there a thread there between
like that? It's but that today the thing that gives you great power is
not being born of a god, but is being born into or acquiring incredible
wealth. Even people who are born into incredible wealth tend to say that they
acquired it. Don't think, well that's true. But but you know my
point? Can we draw that connection? Myths always tell the stories of somebody
who is special in some way, and the culture determines what constitutes that specialness.
So when you were talking about Carnegie, the culture was like they worked
hard and they became rich because they were smart, which is not a bad
mythological structure to have if you want to build a nation. I guess the
myths today are different than that when it comes to wealth. So how we
choose to understand the shift between god. Imagine there's an Elon Muski University,
because you know Carnegie, Mellon and Hopkins and Stanford. I mean, the
guy who found at Stanford was a racist, and if you go to Stanford,
there's still a lot of racists there. All of them are from Ohio
weirdly, but it's still Stanford. So I mean when those universities got founded,
they were almost immediately good universities. If Elon Musk founded a university,
it would be Trump University for Internet dweebs. Yea very different So okay,
so let's talk now about our actual heroes and capes and people like that.
Where does super art? Where does superheroes fit into the conversation about mythology.
I like to tell this story, and I know I've told you this before,
Matthew, But so when we study myths, we tend to create stories
that are more general and vague to catellect as many different kinds of myths together
and make them into something we can talk about. We tend to generalize,
all right, So I'm going to give you a general story. And I'm
stealing this general story, but it's a good one. The normal democratic ideals
of a society have failed. The elected members who are supposed to govern the
city or the nation are not doing their jobs effectively. There are people who
are stepping outside of the law and getting away with murder or theft or whatever,
and the police are corrupt and can't deal with it. And the government
is corrupt and is not fixing it, and even the government is now starting
to ruin my life because of their incompetence. So what we need is an
in scenely rich person who can ignore the accepted rules of democracy and step outside
of them, and having stepped outside of them, fix the system from the
outside so that it is more just for all of us. And that is
a story. That is a mythological statement. That is a mythological story.
And when I say wizit, you say that I'm not going to call Jared
Kushner Robin Yeah, because clearly it's both Bruce Wayne and it's Donald Trump.
Yes, it's both of them. It's it's and iron Man Tony Stark.
Right. We tell stories about people who are special, and people who are
special don't have to follow the rules. That's kind of the general way it
tends to work. There's very few times when those stories end with well,
then they get punished for not following the rules vs. Jesus Rhich is what
makes the story so good. Mostly our mythological heroes don't follow the rules.
But if those mythological heroes are essentially telling you that democracy is bad or democracy
has failed, democracy does not work. That's a bad thing for a society
that's trying to be a democratic republic. Right. So this The most recent,
really important non Marvel group of films were the Nolan Batman films, and
I have issues with Nolan, but they were incredibly important, and they were
incredibly popular, and they did incredibly well. And I would say I would
make the argument that the Nolan Batman films set up the presidency of Donald Trump,
that it created this like mythle It reinforced the mythological story of the billionaire
who steps outside of the rules of democracy can fix the problems for me.
So I don't have to get involved with my local city council, or I
don't have to get involved by running for congress or helping my congressman new stuff.
And that is how myths lead into the real world stuff. They help
us understand what normal people are doing. Yeah, well, the two response
is there. One is just to give another example of that. There was
a book called Waiting for Superman that was a book about trying to reform the
education system, and it was all about this idea that we have to stop
waiting for the outside hero to come and fix it. Now the author winds
up prescribing a bunch of changes to the education system that I don't know much
about, but that most of the educators I know are very Again, so
I'm not endorsing it from that perspective, but it's another version of this,
and I think the Nolan one, I mean, I admit it cuts deep
because it is some of my favorite well the first two or some of my
favorite movies. The third I think is that it basically an attack on occupy
and really the most pro cop thing I've seen in a long time. So
I'm pretty much agreement with you there, But I think that there's an extent
to which and this kind of goes back to the point I was saying about
people arguing of myths. It's that the superhero myths are great, and I've
always said I like the superhero myths that raise questions more than they answer them.
But the problem with that is that people can take them and use them
to interpret almost anything I want. You know, The Punisher is a character
who's very much meant to be a critique of policing, a critique of vigilanteism,
a critique of you know, Frank Castle is a hero, but Frank
Castle is also very much supposed to be a warning, a like this is
what we have to not let people become. And so the fact that uh,
you know, people who are very much in favor of like, no,
let the cops be the cops and do the Let trust us to do
the violence we need to do. You're a stupid civilian. You don't know
what we're doing. Don't give us of any oversight. Trust us are often
like adopting the Punisher into the Blue Lives Matter flag is to me really telling
and you know, and this is like again and one of the folks in
the Superheroes, which is to mean Another great example is Reagan using Born in
the USA, which is a song all about anti Vietnam, using it about
how great America is. Or more recently, someone really upset that the Twisted
Sister has all of a sudden because people the song we are not going to
Take It was being made into this like Republican Maga anthem, and they're so
upset that De Snyder of Twisted Sister, who appeared in full makeup in the
eighties every time he performed that somehow he was suddenly against mega principles. I
have to keep reminding myself to focus on the superheroes because there's so much in
the real world that I want to talk about. But yeah, I think
that to me, I think it's part of why I love Civil War so
much, because I think that my civil War. You mean the Marvel Marvel
Civil War. Yeah, no, I am. I do not have children,
but I grill, and I do tell dad jokes, and I have
a dad bod, and I have a whole shelf of books about the history
of the Civil War. So I love that history. But no, I
mean Marvel Civil War is fundamentally an argument about the myth of superheroes, because
the fundamental conflict that the movie then pushes past pretty quickly in order to get
to the fight scenes and the emotional stuff. But fundamentally it's about should superheroes
have some level of accountability and to some extent work within the law, or
should they not? And and is that basically just a struggle over the myth
of what these special people should or shouldn't be able to do. I think
that's the important argument to have. So, Okay, I love Batman,
but I think Batman is horrible. I just think Batman is horrible. I
like Batman. I liked all of the Batman movies in one way or another.
But for me, Batman is a very depressing commentary on American society.
Yes, because of the way I presented the story earlier, because we need
a billionaire to fix it. And sometimes we make him more likable because his
anti Democrats behavior is because he's really sad, as though that's his that's a
reasonable justification for being a fascist. Well you you would have had to appleap
to me. But but but but so Marvel Civil War. I haven't read
the comics, but I've I've heard about them a lot, and you've seen
the movie too much. And yes, I've watched the Captain American movies far
more often than anybody should. Thank you to my wife. The argument about
whether or not your special powers mean your special is the argument to have.
So I think Batman is horrible. But which which superhero do we have the
most movies about Batman? Probably? No, it's actually spider Man. Oh
interesting? Interesting? Yeah, and spider Man. Spider Man is better than
Batman because of the simple with great power comes great responsibility. Batman doesn't feel
that kind of responsibility that spider Man feels that Peter Parker feels or Miles Morales
feels that I have these special powers. I'm not trying to like operate outside
of the system except in this tiniest little sliver that I can without being unjust.
And then I'm going to give the bad guys to the cops, and
we're going to like say, cops are great in this narrative structure. That's
a much more hopeful superhero mythology than the Batman mythology is. Well, so
here I think there's something interesting, and here I'm going to wind up tying
in I think a central question to all this, but also defending Batman a
bit. And I'll start with bigger picture. When we talk about mythology,
often we are talking about stories that are hundreds, if not thousands of years
old, And a lot of biblical scholarship is about going back and saying,
with like Greek mythology scholarship or other things like that, is about trying to
go back and find what are the stories that didn't become the dominant version of
the myth And you know, you learned at the time there were like we
have the four Gospels, but there's something like thirty five gospels that we know
of that were written, all of which were people arguing about what is the
myth of Batman. I'm sorry of Jesus, but I just I just telegraphed
my point. I wonder if part of why it's hard to talk about them
in the same way is that that's the time period where now we've only been
talking about Batman for a hundred years, and we have these different versions of
the myth, because, for example, I would say that while yes,
there's a lot of cheesy fight scenes and jump in Jupiter, Batman, the
Batman sixty six TV show is very much democratic. He's very much working hand
in hand with Commissioner Gordon. The dark night of video games, especially in
comic runs go and I think the movies to some extent, You're right,
go very deep into Batman as the end, as the but the police are
all bad, so I have to do what the police won't do. And
here's the larger mythological question. They're going to get to this because it speaks
to what you're talking about, and I think this is the American mono myth.
We'll get into it a second. As you said, for a person,
there's a fundamental contradiction in a person saying that because the democratic system of
dealing with problems has failed, I am going to step And but what we
mean is that part of the democratic system is that certain groups of people are
given the ability to use force to deal with problems. And you know,
we can talk all about the problems of that itself and is that self democratic
and the like, but that a person who no one has appointed, no
one is elected, no one has chosen Batman is deciding what to happen to
criminals or not. I know that there's a theory and the myth of the
myth of the American the myth of the American superhero is a great illustration of
this, and we start talking about it more. But I want to get
to this point first. That superheroes are fundamentally a contradiction to democratic values.
I think that, and I think often they are. I wonder though,
if also there's another side of the story where the heroes are trying to be
a Cincinnatis figure, where the goal is not to say I will always and
forever live outside of this democratic world, but that things have fallen so much
that I need to step outside them so that I can help get them back
and to me, and we can say that that's completely a myth and it's
not possible. But I would argue that the two best examples of this are
V for Vendetta, where the hero makes a very clear point of saying I
want vengeance against the bad I want vengeance against the bad system, and I
want to inspire other people to build the new system. But I shouldn't be
a part of that, and two things should be separate. But also the
first and second of the Christopher Nolan Batman movies, and much like Last Jedi
into Rise of Skywalker, I think that the Dark Knight is kind of betrayed
by the Dark Knight Rises. But the fundamental thing that Batman is trying to
do in that is to say I was here because the world couldn't when I
started. The world couldn't have a Harvey Dent, and my goal. The
fact that a Harvey Dent could exist is a sign that the world's returning to
a time when I won't be needed anymore. And of course Harvey net is
turned and that whole thing is challenged. But this has been a very long
monologue just to get to I guess this fundamental question of is a superhero fundamentally
always anti democratic or can a superhero be recognizing that the democracy is broken and
stepping outside that in attempt to rebuild it. So what you're talking about is
is the superhero temporary? Yeah? Okay, first off, I'm wondering if
we should explain the Cincinnatis story. Sure, I'll go ahead. So it
is a myth in Roman story that I think there's it's not a myth,
he existed, Okay, they actually historical knowledge. Okay, it very much
became I think mythological as the way were told again and again, but certainly
based in true fact. Where basically, at a time in Rome's history when
it didn't have a strong executive central government focused on one person because it wanted,
you know it, Rome started, I think a lot of us forget
as a revolution against kings. That's why even when a the emperor, they
were never kings, and so you had a kind of diffused system of power.
But then there were the literal enemies at the gates, and so the
people all decided to take one of their one of the high ranking members,
this guy named Cincinnatis, and to make him a dictator for the purpose of
uniting the people during this difficult time of war there. And the important part
of the myth is that once he was no longer needed, he stepped down,
he handed back that power and it returned to a non dictatorship. Yes,
I mean he was dictator twice, and he the first time he gave
up power, so they run to him the second time. This is early
in the Roman Republic, right when it was a republic, before the republic
failed and it became the empire, though it never called itself an empire ever,
right and so like he's like five hundred BC probably so when Rome was
still like making sure it controlled the Italian peninsula, and part of what Rome
had to deal with was a warrior or tribal society called the Sabines cleue in
rebels right here, and and they were losing. They would have the way
their government worked as they'd have the Senate, and the Senate would have two
leaders in it, each that served a one year term. And both of
the leaders in the Senate were failing. They had a former senator named Cincinnatis
who was just a farmer, were retired farmer, and they went to him
and they said, we need you to be the dictator an actual title.
It's not like the word we use generally. It was a title to make
sure Rome doesn't fall. And so he was the dictator of Rome for I
think forty days, something like barely a month. And he defeats the Sabines
and he says, I did it, and I'm going home, and he
goes home, and that that is the Cincinnatis story, which is, by
the way, the way we started to talk about George Washington in the early
Republic. He was very much Cincinnatis figure. They literally and it's a great
story. They literally said he went back to his farm after the war and
then they called him to the president, calling a plantation owner of farmer the
man never held a till in his life, or you know how the gardening
could whatever. But yeah, exactly, so sorry interrupted, but yeah,
you needed to throw that in. So this really really old story of Cincinnatis
became a way for early Americans to talk about their now mythological figure of George
Washington, so that it made sense. And so the Cincinnatis thing works.
But Cincinnatis got one sequel. He was dictator twice. He got one sequel
and then he went home. So you know, how many Batman movies are
there. We can't have Batman as Lucius Cincinnatis forever because he never seems to
fricking go home and take the armor off and stop being Batman, which is
the whole point. So I am, I'm afraid I have to reject your
defensive Batman because as long as we keep making new Batman movies, we have
a problem what a society, because we keep because the story we want,
the story we want is failed democracy that it's an outsider to fix it,
and we keep wanting the story over and over again, which is which is
the symptom that we have to be very wary of. Right well, And
I guess to be clear, my point wasn't that therefore the entire Batman mythos
is better than you're making it out to be. It's that, I think,
kind of going to my original point, is that we are at a
point in time where many different people are interpreting the Batman mythos in different ways,
and that I think what Christopher Nolan did in that second movie, which
has been done a couple of times, there's some of it in Batman the
animated series, and I think some of it also in the new Batman movie
that I really loved the with Robert Pattinson. They were trying to offer a
different alternative of what if this is a Batman who was actively working to end
the time that he's needed And I think you know, even those like decided
they needed another movie, and so of course it didn't stick to that.
But that's my only point is that the Batman mythos is one that is being
argued about, and that I think you're right, the dominant part of the
story is the much more anti democratic version, but that I think that there
are some some versions of the story that do challenge that a bit. I
hope you're right. Yeah, So the purpose of a surgeon is to do
their work so that you don't need a surgeon anymore. R right, If
you continually need a surgeon, there you're circling the drain. There's a problem.
Batman can't be a surgeon for democracy, right, and none of the
superheroes can clue in the uber mentioned, none of the superheroes can be the
saviors of democracy, and I think that's a problem, that the fact that
we like superhero so much is a problem. Well, but let me push
back there somewhat with kind of what I'm saying before, isn't there a myth
of democracy that's part of the story you're telling, because, for example,
if the idea is that, like, you know, what's the as I
was saying, like, the problem with Batman is that he doesn't have the
government given legitimate use of violence. It's not like the governmental The people who
do have the governmental use of violence that that Batman is challenging do great with
that. You know, I think we would both agree that, like the
American policing system has all sorts of problems. There aren't just things that a
surgeon can fix. They're things that need to be torn out at the root.
And so so I definitely hear what you're saying, but I do wonder
if that there's a danger there also of saying I guess to me that the
superheroes that I'm most fond of are the ones that hold up the mirror,
and Batman, in my favorite version of him, isn't trying to say I
can be the one to save democracy. As you said, it's it's and
I think the from Mandetta is the perfect endeavor of this, but I think
other heroes are as well. Sometimes Batman, it's the I'm going to remind
people that they can save democracy. I'm going to remind people that this is
not the democracy right now that they think it is. There's the two interpretations,
right, the system is broken and we have to fix it, and
the other side is the system was working exactly as intended and we have to
get rid of it right right. The best meme of that I've seen recently
was Barbie and Oppenheimer say more about that. Yeah, but is the system
broken and fixable or is the system working correctly and unjust? That is the
question, right? And and do you think that there's pot like that there
are some superheroes who are more on the second side, because I definitely think
that some of them are. Yes, I'll go back to Spider Man.
But probably the easy answer is Captain America. In the Civil War movie,
he's on the other side than he is in the Civil War comic. But
but Captain America is very much the America part in the mythological sense, not
in the shingoistic sense. And it's and Chris Evans did such a good job
that Captain America does a really great version of the system can be fixed I
will help you fix it, but I will not take it over, which
is not a thing that iron Man would ever really do. Iron Man would
be like, I don't even care about the system. I don't. Yeah.
The fact that Chris Evans Steve Rodgers is very quick to a bay Nic
fury in a way that Tony is not. Yeah, Although, so the
question is how do we feel about hierarchical authority? Right? Well, and
Captain America's case, I actually feel like you have three different perspectives that he
goes through. He starts out as the system is just fine, and I'm
just kind of a supercop. I am a part of the democratic system.
I've been created by the democratic system, and the democratic system gets to give
me orders and tell me what I should do. He becomes there's a problem
in the democratic system. I have to cut it out. I have to
change it, and I have to remind people to get back to the democratic
system. And I to me, he goes from the supercop to the surgeon,
to the wrecking ball to the hydra has penetrated all levels of this and
it does have to just be completely torn down. I think that's a good
intropt. I just suddenly was reminded of. In the I guess the late
forties through the fifties, Superman a lot talked about racism being bad, right.
I mean, none of the people who love Superman were okay with that.
And you know, the first the Christopher Reeve Superman, the first two
Christopher Reeve Superman movies features a scene in one of them where he literally carries
an American flag back to the White House and puts it back on top and
says he's here to help. And that's a much better superhero than I'm really
sad and depressed and I have a gravelly voice. Yeah. And it's funny
because I think from the political science standpoint, Superman is the victor there.
From the interesting story point, I find Superman incredibly boring. You know,
Jessica Plumber keep me I shouldn't, but but I get it. I think
that there are they're definitely dangers in it kind of goes I guess. The
only thing that I would push back down is there as well, is I
think there's a danger in saying because of how people interpret a story that that
is the defining way we understand the story. And I'll one of my favorite
examples of an American myth is you know, John Brown. John Brown is
a person who the myth has dramatically changed in the last seventy five years or
so, or one hundred and fifty years. You know, at first he
was seen as like the epitome of activism gone wrong, of activism becoming terrorism
and the like. And now he's looked to as this incredible freedom fighter and
incredible a superhero I think in some ways because literally he's doing all the things
you're talking about. He's going the law is saying that slavery is legal.
He knows that that is fundamentally wrong. He's going outside of the law and
using violence to try and end slavery. And one of the groups that looks
to him as they're founding superhero because in their mind he's fighting to offend the
rights of people that the rest of the world doesn't think are people is the
hardcore bomb abortion clinics. People like That's they claim him as their founding father
because they think that's the term of the myth. And again, like the
Punisher and the Cops and so I just I definitely hear where you are going,
and we're kind of dancing around the myth American superheroes. We should get
into that directly. But that's my pushback I think that I had with a
lot of the book, but also with what you're saying, is that I
think a world in which superheroes become permanent is very problematic. You're completely right,
and here I think there's a fundamental paradox in superhero media in that it's
very hard to tell a story about someone who stops being the character when there
are billions of dollars to be made by continuing to make the character again and
again and again. I just want to have some defense of the fact that
I do think there are a lot of superheroes who, within their own stories
are trying hard to either be the Surgeon or the Wrecking Ball but not.
But they understand that a world in which is superhero needed shouldn't be the eternal.
But it's kind of blayed by the fact that we then keep telling the
story again and again and again. Yes, so let's let's be scholarly.
I have quotes. So we've been dancing around the fact that permanent superheroes is
a problem. Recent movie grosses look like it's not as much of a problem
as we thought, and So there's this thing called the American mono myth which
was originally written in a book in the nineteen seventies by a philosopher and a
theologian named Robert Jewett the theologian and John Shelton Lawrence the philosopher. And I
know John Shelton Lawrence. I did a book with him, so I'm going
to be biased. I think he's a great guy. What they were interested
in doing was showing how America had taken regular mythology and made it problematic,
and at the time, or right at the moment and when Star Wars is
coming out at the time, regular mythology was looked at as the Joseph Campbell
mythology. What Joseph Campbell called the mono myth and I'm just going to read
you his description of what Joseph Campbell said is this is the basic myth of
all humanity, which is this a hero ventures ventures forth from the world of
common day into a region of supernatural wonder. Fabulous forces are there encountered in
a divisive victory is one The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the
power to bestow boons on his fellow man that's Joseph Campbell in nineteen forties,
and that is basically every Western hero myth. He was not nearly as universal
as he hoped he was, but let's not let's not worry about that right
now. That is that is a way of describing a mythological structure that captures
a lot of different myth from from Jesus to oh, shoot, who's the
guy who gave us fire? Prometheus? But he also he Prometheus. He
pulls in a lot of Hindu myths, although I know a lot of Hindu
scholars have had great problems with how he interprets those myths. And yes,
and so, uh, we're recording this because we don't want to talk about
Star Wars during the strike. Joseph Campbell has a series of books after his
most famous book called The Masks of God, which is a way saying that
all of our myths are really about the same thing when it comes right down
to it. And every time I see the intro to Star Wars now where
they go through the masks, and those masks change depending on the show.
I think of the Masks of God, I think it's just beautifully done for
me personally, And so the question for Campbell was do we have universal myths?
And his answer was, yes, we do. But he had the
same problem that all myth scholars have. Every time a myth scholar defines myth,
there's a myth that gets left out because of the way they defined myth.
It's a virtually an impossible thing to define. So along come Jewett and
Lawrence in the seventies and they propose something they called the American mono myth.
And I'm going to read their description, and as I'm reading it, I
hope the listeners will think of Batman and iron Man. And I don't know,
has anybody seems Shane? Does anybody watch Western old Westerns anymore? John
Wayne the Cowboy is very much an American math yet just as much as Superman
today. Yes, the riding off into the sunset is the important part there.
So here's their definition. A community in a harmonious paradise is threatened by
evil. Normal institutions fail to contend with this threat. A selfless superhero emerges
to renounce temptations and carry out the redemptive task. Aided by Fate, his
device. Decisive victory restores the community to its paradisical condition. The superhero then
recedes into obscurity. The recedes into rescurity is a really important part that sequels
don't allow. And that is a really general myth structure for Americans, from
our westerns to our superhero movies. It works really, really well. Sometimes
the you know, into o security is death though, and that is part
of our myth and for Americans as well. I'm always reminded when I read
this of the death of Abraham Lincoln. Just Abraham Lincoln was probably the best
president we ever had because he saved the Union. Though how we define best
is a silly thing, but it's important to remember how perfectly his death aligned
with what it needed to align with so that he could become who he became
after death. So he was shot in Ford's Theater on Good Friday, yep,
and everybody found out about his death because of the way news worked in
eighteen sixty five, the vast majority of Americans found out about that death in
church on Easter Sunday. Yeah, and you are not ever Ever, then
I have a mythological structure works so perfectly. Again, if I wrote that
as Alley would script, people would go it's unbelievable, right, but it's
perfect. So what we, what we as Americans tend to do is look
at at that exact thing. But the whole how Lincoln wins the war is
the American mono myth. He totally does things that are illegal for presidents to
do. Yeah, I mean because he he has to do them or or
else. To me, he's the Cincinnatis, he's. Yes. Part of
why I argue sometimes with the best president is because he he's the closest I
think America has had to a dictator, and for a very noble just cause.
But but he suspends avieas corpus. He has all come to other uh,
you know, he's the one who says, I'm going to step outside
the bonds of power that I've been given in order to save the whole thing.
Yep. I also think interesting is that because I saw a study once
of this is a pole like twenty thirty years ago. But it was they
asked, you know, a whole bunch of people from all across the US,
when did Lincoln free the slaves? And the most widely held belief is
that he either had done it or announced he would do it when he became
president, and that that's why the South seceded, and that the set they
did, they knew that he was more anti slavery than they are. The
president should come along since then, But that the fact that Lincoln openly said
he was willing to not free the slaves it could save the Union, and
that he only did so much later into the war is totally forgotten. And
that's that's again, like the facts aren't fitting into the myth itself. Let's
also remember what the Emancipation Proclamation actually proclaimed, which was, henceforth, all
of the slaves in areas we do not control are free, right, I
mean, it was very specific. It would be like me going all the
robots of Mars are free, like I have any control over Mars and the
robots there. Mars is a planet populated holy by robots, so they should
be free. And the Emancipation Proclamation never freed any slaves because it only existed
as a propaganda tool during war. I'm freeing all of the slaves in places
where I do not have control right now is not freeing the slaves. It's
just not now. Juneteenth is a national holiday and I think it's just awesome.
But we, yeah, we ascribe too much to Lincoln that he that
he didn't do. But that's how myth works. We always ascribe the really
important things to some mythological figure. Right. So in the in the English
language, in the English language, the most books in English written by a
single about a single person. The winner is Jesus. Number two is Abraham
Lincoln. That's hilarious and I think that I think that's significant one. So
pulling that back to the mono myth idea, so, where do superheroes fit
in this idea of the monomith or why shoul let me just pull it back
in further, So what is their take on the monomoth? Because it clearly
sounds like I've read the book too, but I want to let you continue.
What's the problem with the mono myth? Well, I can just like
normal institutions fail to contend with this threat. Is the problem with the American
mono myth. It starts with believing that democracy is built to fail. To
a certain extent, democracy is built to fail. That's why it's so good,
right, And this notion, this notion of we need an outsider hero
who then will ride off into the sunset one way or another, is a
narrative structure that we as Americans have worked through all of the stuff we think
is important. We interpret a huge section of American Christians interpret the Bible in
that way because there are some really great stories to talk about that, if
you really think about them, are about a singular hero fixing the broken system
from the outside, which is not which is not an emphasis that a Christian
in England would use. It's just not so. This way of thinking of
heroism has changed the way we interpret our politics, and our Bible, and
our popular culture and what constitutes a good story on television or at the movie
theater, and it colors the way we interpret everything, which is why it's
a myth, which is why it's a mythological structure that we have to contin
and listen think about. Certainly, I think one of the best examples that
I read eighty five percent of the book. I did not get a chance
to finish it. But I don't think that they talk about this in the
book. But shameless plug here if you go way back into the archives of
Star Wars Universe podcast, and I'll probably actually just link it in the in
the show notes. I did a podcast with Becky Allen where we talked about
a different myth, but one that I think is very wrapped up in the
mono myth, which is the one great man of history idea. And you
know that and that part of the thing is that I think they're ascribing one
reason to a sociological event is very difficult. But I think one of the
reasons why things like labor unions and other man, you know, people look
at France and are like, why can't we do mass organizing on that scale?
Why can't we have national strikes? And one of the things that Becky
pointed out that I've since done more scholarship on and a lot of people have
talked about, is that it is the problem with this American mono myth is
that when you always are waiting for Superman, when you're waiting for that one
great person to come along, it's a lot harder to get people to say,
no, we are all Superman, we should all join the union,
we should all go out and protester, or whatever it is. And I
they know a quite good they don't use that quite that language, but I
think that's a point that is definitely implied through a lot of this book that
are really appreciative yes, but and I don't even have to say anything after
the blood. I don't think. No, I've no idea what direction you're
going, so please we do. So there's this notion in American culture,
much bigger than the American modern myth, that that sees the way in which
our progress works is through violence. And if there's if there's a thing that
Americans share, truly share with Marxists in a broad sense, it's even the
anti Marxist. Americans believe that history is progress. Right, And I'm an
American. I have our time not thinking history is progress because I really like
the new insulin on on. I see progress all the time, right,
And Americans are are unique, right, maybe not unique, are relatively unique?
Just a horrible phrase. And that they think, they think that the
progress comes through violence a whole. There's a trilogy of historical works that each
one is like eighteen hundred pages, the first one of which is called Regeneration
through Violence, which suggests that all the time we need to be good and
and a better group always starts with violence. Violence is the thing that makes
us new, as as a war scholar once said, war is the thing
that gives us meaning. Violence is the thing that makes America understand itself,
and if for the regeneration through violence was the frontier line. As we moved
into the frontier, we were violent and civilizing and violent and civilizing it as
we went along. And that is an integral part to the way in which
Americans think of their progress. Progress is not something that happens in committee meetings.
Progress is something that happens on the streets with Molotov cocktails, or on
breeds and bunker hill or wherever progress requires violence. Not that progress doesn't sometimes,
but for Americans, progress always seems to That's that's the mythological underpinning to
be worried about. Well. And so here, I love that you're saying
what you're saying at because this I you and I are not in the same
place with that. And I think this is my fundamental disagreement with the book.
And I I'm trying to I don't just want to give a ten minute
monologue about that, So I'm trying to think of how to break this down
in a couple of different plet parts. But the first thing I'll say is,
first of all, I want to be clear that those mass movements that
I was talking about are by no definition, you know, always violent,
and I think that that there's a myth that is like the myth of blm,
you know, riots and all sorts of stuff is a very important myth
to challenge saying with the idea like and you know, one hundred years ago
they would always talk about like unions are terrible because union rallies always turn violent
and it's no the Pinkerton's are attacking and it turns into self defense. But
I know that's where you were going. But I just want to kind of
clarify that, I think though to me, so let me back up and
just trying to talk about the book in general. There's so much I love
about the book, and I think it's it is speaking to so much truth
about a very true story in America, and the American monom myth is very
very real. And certainly I didn't get a chance to jump in with this
about Campbell, but I think one of the problems that I see with Campbell
is that while he has done some scholarship as an outsider to mythologies that are
not from the culture he's a part of, he is doing the very western
academic thing of taking his view and applying it to everybody, and I know
that certainly to me, some of the best critiques of Campbell have come from
people from very different cultures, saying, you are fundamentally misunderstanding our myth because
you're seeing it through your Western lens. And so I really love how they
narrow it down to the American Mama myth and the stuff about the individual,
the stuff about the person who arise and fade from history and all of that.
I think though that, and I am a person who bottomed out with
a master's degree in a professional degree, I do not have the academic rigor
that given you or the professors who wrote this book have, so I want
to be very aware of that. For me, though, I think there's
another myth that I grew up with that is now being challenged, which is
the myth of nonviolence, which is the Martin Luther King is the embodiment of
all that is good and pure of modern American progress, and Malcolm X is
the example of everything that is wrong and bad, and that if minority groups
just and again I'm very clear, this is not actually Martin Luther King.
This is the myth of him that if minority groups just ask nicely for their
rights and you know, let people be aware of their suffering, but then
suffer for the viewing of everybody else. That eventually Americans will find it in
their heart and will do the right thing. And I don't think either you
are of the people who wrote this book are buying into that at all.
But I do think that as a part of that, the blurring that happened
is the difference between aggressive violence and self defense and that people often would look
at like the Malcolm X's of the world as as you know, they're so
aggressive and not understand what he was talking about was violence is being done to
my community constantly. I'm just advocating that we don't turn the other cheek,
and that even Mark Martin Luther King was not a pacifist like Gandhi. He
was the first to say, like, yeah, give me armed troops to
help get those little girls into the schools. It's just that he didn't want
to use violence as a specific organizing tactic as a strategy. This is turning
into the long model age and apologize and so please jump in anytime you want
to tell me how wrong I am. But I think therefore, as a
part of that we equate any kind of violence as the same, and in
superheroes we get this all the time, where someone will say I will not
kill and I will not murder, as though they're the same thing, as
though fighting back in self defense, and that causing a death of someone or
even fighting against someone who is a threat to you is the same thing as
plotting their murder. And where I really and yes, it is because I
love Star Wars that the Star Wars chapter is the one that I think I
objected to the most, but because in the Star Wars chapter one of the
things that he talks about is how you know it's not really he basically says
that Star Wars is fascist. I think they specifically say that because the idea
being that the rebels are still using violence to fight for their republic, and
he talks about how you know, they give a great speech about violence and
then they just go up and blow up the Death Star. The authors,
though, failed to mention that the Death Star was literally seconds away from obliterating
a planet full of people and had already obliterated a planet full of literal billions
of people. And to me, especially when you tie it in specifically and
say governmental fighting for a government through violence is inherently fascist. I have to
ask, please tell me when Hitler was outvoted. He wasn't. Hitler was
defeated through violence. Democracy was restored to Germany through violence and to most of
Europe, and the democracy it was restored is highly problematic. I mean,
I think one thing we can say about all this is that is the problem
that these heroes are challenging democracy, or that actual democracy has never really existed.
It's always been oligarchy and cops and all these kind of problems. That's
the whole of the set of canon worms. So I guess that's just where
I am defending superheroes a bit, because I think that the idea that the
use of violence is inherently fascist, even when it is the use of violence
to try to create a system of a more democratic government, I just can't
believe that. And I'll close we just saying that. It's where again,
V for Vendetta is to me my perfect embodiment. It's why I love V
for Vendetta so much, because what V does is he says, I will
use violence to clear away the things that make everyone so afraid of non violence,
of being non violent, and he does that, and then all the
people who he inspired march on the troops who don't fire, and the actual
democratic revolution that happens is completely non violent. It's just inspired by this man
of violence. Okay, we'll time it later or either seven minute monologue or
even fifteen tell me all the ways I'm wrong. It's impossible to tell you
all the ways you were wrong because it's not a it's not a monologue that
needs to be picked. Apart that way, I will say in defensive Jewett
and Lawrence that I think they're a big issue with blowing up the Death Star
had more to do with how it was presented narratively to make the audience excited,
that that the violence itself was the exciting thing. And as it happens,
So we were preparing for this, you read eighty five percent of the
book. I've read the whole book, but not recently, but I like
I have a cop an electronic copy, and so I went through it again
on my iPad. But sitting down today I picked up the hard copy,
which had like a lot of notes. But one of the things that I
kept, and I don't know why I kept it, but one of the
things I kept was the note from the person who sent it to me,
which was their publisher, a guy named render Ventil, and it's like,
I'm sending you this complimentary copy from because the authors asked me to. I
hope, blah blah blah, you'll review it or something. And I think
I wrote a review in some academic journal, but I had forgotten render vent
Till Render vent Till It was worked at the publishing company that makes that published
this book, which is Urdman's, which is in Grand Rapids, Michigan,
which is perhaps one of the most conservative Christian places I've ever been. And
I'm from Michigan, so I've been there a few times. And he's also
related somehow to a really important theologian named Cornelius Van Till, who was like
the guy who makes calvin is important again. He's like a straight up neo
Calvinist, you know these free will is problematic. And so this guy,
who I would associate with a very specific kind of Christianity, was really excited
by the myth of the American superheroes a book because it actually was not like
that. It's a it's a very open ended liberal argument to make. And
so you had this long monologue. Here's my critique of your long monologue.
I have no critique. The thing about long monologues is we're interpreting the myths
when we do them, and the interpretations are the things that are worth talking
about. And you don't discount to the interpretation. You just react to the
interpretation. So I reacted to your little death star thing, but probably more
for me than from them. That's how. That's how societies work. Yeah,
I'm both an anthropologist and a historian, and if you were to ask
me how I could tell if a society was failing, I wouldn't say it
had to do with economics or social units or anything. I would say,
you know, a society is on its way out when it taught stops sharing
the same stories together. Yeah, that's it. As soon as they're not
sharing the same stories, you need to be worried. But I'm also,
by training as an anthropologist by one thing on that. Yes, And I
think a great example of that is the X Men are one example where you
have Magneto and Professor X at various points of the story either have fundamentally different
ideas of what it means to be a mutant or they're more agreeing or they're
more disagreeing in our own world. You know, a lot of people today
would say that, like the difference in like red state, blue state of
US just fund we have such fundamentally different understandings of the American myth that it's
almost becoming two different stories is to me the perfect illustration of what you're talking
about there. Yes, okay, but as an anthropologist, I was trained
as a biological anthropologist, which means I taught human evolution and human genetics a
lot when I first started teaching, and I'm pretty good at teaching them.
Though I wouldn't call myself a evolutionary anthropologist anymore. But here's an evolutionary thing
that I think is important that can be used as a metaphor. When you're
looking at traits in a population from an evolutionary perspective, the less variability there
is in the trait, the better the traite is working. When you see
a lot of variability, it means that that there's biological experiments going on to
see what's going to work going forward. So, and you see a lot
of variability in blood types, that is a statement about how we have not
been dealing we have not been evolving those particular things in a way that led
to a single conclusion. If you change a couple of genes for putting together
a heart, you don't have a person anymore. You have a dead thing.
But you can change a couple of genes for eye color and still have
a person, right, And the variability there tells us something about evolutionary experiments.
I think the variability in American myth right now is exactly the same thing.
I don't think it's as problematic as we think. I don't think.
I don't think the red stats are going to march into the Blue States because
there are blue people in the Red States and red people in the Blue States.
Very true, right, And the fact that we are experimenting with different
interpretations of American mythology is just a statement that we are trying to figure out
what progress is for us as a people right now, and the question is
can we figure that out well? And I guess that's actually that is a
fantastic point. And I wonder if that's the perfect lead into the much more
summarized version of my long monologue of my only critique, because I do think,
like so much of this book is dead on. My only critique of
what they and I think is something you were saying of superheroes being the reification
of this myth is I feel like that is probably true for the majority of
superhero stories, and certainly for a lot of superhero stories. But I think
I would argue that more recently, a lot of the writers of these stories,
both on film but also in books and in comic books we're often you
can probably stray a lot further, have very consciously been aware of that and
actively been trying to make their version of a superhero story in argument, like
to put it in dialogue with a mono myth and change it. And so
that's where you get the image of the like Batman being so sad and broken
is not part of a lot of those original stories, and it's certainly the
idea that maybe he's wrong is never a part today it is. Becky Allen,
I talked about one thing what we got onto that talk about the myth
of the rugged individual, which I think again is tied end but not exactly
the same. It was because of Rogue One where the writers had very consciously
said, we want this to be an ensemble movie because we wanted to not
be about that one great hero. We want it to be about a team
of people. And I guess to me, what I what I would say
is that instead of thinking that heroes are a product and a reification of the
mono myth, that's problematic. That because the Motto myth is so strong,
superheroes, like any part of our culture, are going to be in conversation
with the monto a myth. But that I think it's a great conversation because
it opens us up to the critique and that a lot of them are engaging
in critique of the Monto myth, some self awarely and some not, rather
than it just being a repetition and a strengthening of it. Yes, I
see exactly what you mean, I think, and yeah, that's kind of
the point. And I will I will agree that there's a lot of credit
to be given there. I think a lot of it goes to Tony Gilroy.
Right. So, I've been thinking about a term. I actually asked
you about this on Facebook, Matthew. I've been thinking about a term a
lot because I needed to use it for an introduction to a book I was
writing. The term is eschithological hope and eschatological hope. Eschatology is the study
of the end of the world. It tends to be part of Christian theology,
but it works everywhere. And eschatology is, you know, what happens
at the ending of the world and immediately thereafter. And so I've just edited
a book on the PlayStation game Horizon zero Dawn and its sequel, which takes
place a thousand years after the end of the world exactly a thousand years,
which was a weird number, has nothing to do with Jesus, nothing,
And it reminded me of what the Myth of the American Superhero book says about
eschatological hope, which is it's a thing in which people who are part of
the outside can, through their violence of the American mono myth, become part
of the structure of the mythology. Again, that the end of things allows
the outsiders to become part of things. That is the new thing. And
I kind of I kind of think that that's where we're at. We're all
questioning if we're part of this American system, and I think we should have
schizological hope. I think we should think that the parts of the American system
that we can finally get to the point where we agree these are the things
that need to be fixed, will allow us to expand who's included in it
so that the exiles will feel as though they're part of it. Again,
that's the hope part. I mean to quote Martin Luther King, you know,
the idea of the arc of history bends towards justice. To me,
it's not. It is by no means coincidental that that is a Christian pastor
saying that, because it's a very eschatological idea and it's so much about just
the fundamental basis of how you think that it's kind of hard to get people
who aren't who are raised in an eschatological world like we all are, because
even a Christian and also has a lot of eschatology in Islam. It's just
the idea that time is linear, that that that history is linear instead of
being cyclical like it is in a lot of other places. And so yeah,
that idea that like we can have the hope that it's going to get
better and better and better. I totally agree with the last you know,
and well, we also all in the United States were raised in a world
where there was a nuclear eschatology to deal with. Yeah, I mean,
we all expected the end. We all expected the end to happen, probably
within our lifetimes. And there's still a huge group of Americans who would say
that now they're talking about the return of Jesus, not you know, the
Soviets nuking us. But we still talk about how the world is going to
end a lot, which is why we have so many zombie stories. Yeah,
I think it's very true. The last thing that I will maybe it's
cut pushed back, or maybe it's engaging further dialogue with both the authors and
with you, is what you said about the problems of trying to tell the
stories of our values or trying to raise these questions about like important questions about
what is the nature of democracy and how do we deal with problems within the
democracy and all those things, and problems being like problematic individuals or groups or
whatever it is, with the idea of who gets desired with being problematic being
a very important question there. And then yeah, I can understand, like
I'm a record as saying I want civil war where it's just Tony and Steve
arguing, arguing for two hours about what should happen, But instead to make
the movie you got to have violence, you know. I have loved that
these Star Wars TV shows and even more than novels, are giving us a
lot more of the people sitting in rooms debating what should the nature of democracy
be after the Republic? And I think, I credit some of the shows
of I think are actually addressing some of the points that were brought up about
what happens when you try to return a republic through warfare and what happens with
that. I definitely I think there are some good points there, even if
I think they go too far. But here's the thing. Star Wars has
taught me an incredible amount of values, and it's given me a place to
think about my values and challenge my values, and they've changed over time.
Star Wars has informed me to be, I think, a better person,
a better citizen. But at five years old, I didn't watch Star Wars
because of Luke and Yoda talking about the nature of anger. I watched because
the X Wings were cool. And when I was a kid, you know,
if there were vitamins I needed to eat, my mother would sometimes you
know, stir them into something I wanted to eat. And I guess I
wonder like, yes, violence is probably too much a part of the American
character, and I'd like to see more stories about non violence. And honestly,
I think the return of American unions and the fact that we're starting to
pay more attention to the protests in other places like to me, BLM was
a great movement forward against that kind of story, because again, BLM is
not inherently violent by any means. It's when the cops attacked that. Don't
use the past tense. Okay, thank you, my apologies, because yeah,
you're right, it's very much still a current thing, to be sure,
But at the point of story, if you're saying that we want stories
that will pass along values or give chance for people to talk about ideologies and
values, you have to get them to pay attention to the story. And
so I guess that would be my pushback of like, I think the way
capitalism makes us tell stories is really problematic, and like there always has to
be a love story, or there's never a love story, and that's just
as probably all of that I agree with, I guess, I just I
don't see it as quite a much of a problem because I know people white
people who didn't really understand subtle racism until I've gotten great listener feedback from people
who said, look, I never really understood what people were talking about by
like microaggressions and subtle racism until I watched Falcon walk into a bank and try
to get a loan and saw the way the loan officer treated him of like
assuming he was an athlete, or you know, not not thinking of him
and treating him very differently than they would have a white person. And so
I guess that's kind of my final pushback because I I overall think superhero stories
are fundamentally good, because I do think that they well, let me put
it this way, actually, I would say I don't think superhero stories are
good or bad. I think there are a tool, and I think there're
a tool that can be used to recreate the American modern myth and all its
problematicness, or the a tool used to challenge it. So, in other
words, you're saying superhero narratives are good because they can help us change.
I'm saying they have to. I'm saying that's there too. Yeah. Yeah.
Then what you're saying, which goes all the way back to the beginning,
is superheroes are good because they're mythological, because it's through myth that we
figure out how to change. Yeah, which is a perfect conclusion to have,
and I cannot argue with your point. I agree with your point completely.
I'm just less optimistic about it. That's fair, That's certainly fair.
But yeah, I think that makes real sense. And I definitely think,
honestly the strike is giving me a little hope as well, because I think
it's very hard for myths to challenge the underpinnings of society when the people who
benefit most from the current society as it is are profiting are the ones deciding
what myths get told and not told on screen. And I do think that
a lot of the things that are pushing the furthest are things like Beef Vendetta
or the TV show Shira, or a lot of the independent comic books or
novel or things like that, where it's it's further from the hands of the
profit centers, and there's don't be able to make a book, to be
sure, but there's more chance to you know, really challenge these things without
you know, somewhere from Warner Brothers or Disney going like that's a little too
radical for our air. So the reason Star Trek is better than Star Wars
is because they have better meetings. The best episodes of Star Trek always take
place in one room, and they're always a meeting, and the discussion of
what's going to be important is told through myths. It just is. So.
If we use superheroes to do that good. If we use heavily fictionalized
biopics to do it good, if we if we use comic books good,
if we use speeches from the president good. It's the stories. And yeah,
you're right about the strike. Its myths are stories and the storytellers are
on strike. That that that's that's scary because the writers are the most important
people in that. I think. Great, we have one more big question
I want to ask you, but we've gone way over time, so I'm
gonna save that for the members. So h the question is going to be
about what it is when we know that the myths are when when we know
the people writing the myths as opposed to myths that are passed down and all
the like. And uh, it is a great time to become a member.
All members you only pay five dollars a month or fifty five dollars a
year. It's basically the same thing as Patreon, but we're now I have
joined the True Story FM family of podcasts, so it's not a member,
it's now a membership there, but you get access all this great stuff,
add free content, bonus content, access to there's a great True Story FM
discord was a great way to talk to me. That's in the show notes.
But there are some member only channels. We're going to start doing some
member only live feeds, so great time to become a member. And right
now during the strike, twenty five percent of everything that comes in from membership,
and this is therefore at this point it's a donation both from me and
the True Story Family of podcasts. Twenty five percent of that goes directly to
the strikers, the funds to help the people are on strike and all the
other people who are affected by that strike. But if you're not a member,
of course, there's all still lots of great ways to get in touch
with us. You know, if you go to the Ethical Panda dot com
or go and find this show on True Story the note, the links to
all of that will be in the show notes. You can find all the
ways to contact me on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, email, etc.
At some point we'll probably jump the ship of Twitter, but I'm waiting for
like a solid ship to pull up next to it, because right now I
have invites for eight different platforms that and I can't keep track of that.
But you know, always contact me on social media. Are there, would
love to hear you, And of course, if you have feedback about this,
Matthew is definitely gonna be back at some point talking about mythology and we'll
probably do your feedback then. So but if you want to talk to you
directly, Matthew, what should they know about you and how to follow your
cool stuff? Well, I'm anthropologist and historian, as I've said more and
more more times than I should have, So I'm basically an academic and I'm
one hundred and seven years old. So I got rid of my Twitter account
a long time ago. Death threats are horrible. I have a Facebook account
and nothing, and you know, a static web page that is about my
scholarship. But right now I edit a book series on video games and tabletop
games called Studies in Gaming. And if you wanted to find out about how
we can talk about the stories told in games. That's the thing I would
look at. It's about fifty books now. So if you were to just
google Capel kap elll because everybody mis smells it and studies in gaming, you'd
find a bunch of books on things as diverse as dungeons and dragons. And
we just have a new Magic the Gathering book that just came out to you
know, Call of Duty, so and everything. And I just turned in
a manuscript on the Horizon games, as I said, so look at that.
And if you really wanted to talk to me, you can find me
on Facebook by my name. But also as I said, I will I
will foward on any emails and get Matthew's comment as well, or just read
your feedback when Matthew comes back on the air, which hopefully will be soon,
because it turns out there's a lot more in mythology that we haven't covered.
In the future, will try to cover it. In about ninety minutes,
I apologist went on so long, but there were monologues that needed to
be had and points that needed to be made. So to everyone who's been
listening, thank you so much for being a part of all this. To
our members, just hold on for one more moment. We'll get to your
Patreon section, but to everyone else, thank you so much. We have spoken