“Most viewers simply feel captured by a film like Death Wish or The Shootist. They are not aware of being ritually instructed, because myths derive from and appeal to the unconscious rather than the conscious mind. Although the process within an individual may be largely unconscious, the mythical paradigms of his culture have already been …
And Serves Him Right
“Beginning in 1868, Martha Farquarson developed the female redeemer figure in the Elsie Dinsmore series: Elsie was a pious heroine who redeemed others by bursting into tears at hardness of heart. She brought her irreligious father to repentance by fainting at the piano when he tried to force her to play secular music on Sunday” …
Angel of Death
“In 1929 we enter what we choose to call the axial decade for the formation of the American monomyth. Here the unknown redeemer on a horse becomes the ‘Masked Rider of the Plains’; his sexual renunciation is complete; he assume the uniform and the powers of angelic avengers; and thus he grows from mere heroism …
Credotainment
“The American monomyth is giving rise to new forms of confessional faith . . . we conclude . . . with the notion of ‘credotainment,’ confessional movements based upon entertainment products” (Lawrence and Jewett, The Myth of the American Superhero, pp. 12-13).
An American Variation on the Myth
“Americans have not moved beyond mythical consciousness. Moreover the form of the classical monomyth, with its symbolic call for lifetime service to a community’s institutions, allows us to highlight its absence in the distinctive pattern of what we call here the American monomyth. Although there are significant variations, the following archetypical plot formula may be …
Some Protestantism as Arch-Romanism
“The holy community which Calvin sought to set up in Geneva represents in some ways a completer integration of Christianity with civilization than anything Europe had yet seen. It is true that there emerges within Calvinism, especially in its later Puritan developments, a more negative attitude toward the cultural amenities than had been present in …
The Cape and Beret Problem Again
“Before romanticism declared art the province of a talented, bohemian few, drawing and painting were both common scientific tools and signs of personal refinement” (Virginia Postrel, The Substance of Style, p. 170).
Reinventing Yourself
“I like that merges into I’m like that. Identity prevails” (Virginia Postrel, The Substance of Style, p. 101).
Bit By Bit
“Not all personalized expression looks good to other people, of course. Especially in the early days of desktop publishing, a lot of amateurs went in for the multifont ransom-note look. PowerPoint presentations are still often hard to read or cluttered with clichéd clip art, and the Web is full of ugly sites. But, on the …
About Time
“Although clever allusions still have their place, the breakdown of modernist ideology means that it’s no longer necessary to hide aesthetic pleasure behind postmodern irony and camp” (Virginia Postrel, The Substance of Style, p. 13).