“To the extent that women have begun to appear in this shooter world, they do so as caricatures—with cartoonishly erotic bodies. The characteristic pose of Laura Croft from Eidos’s Tomb Raider is a straight-on view of her scowling face, skinny waist, pneumatic breasts, and two huge guns that she’s aiming directly at you. Like other …
A Problem in the Ritual Catechesis
“The beauty of fluid movement through the screens and the technical challenges of doors, elevators, and teleporters can captivate players for hours at a time. But the story arc is invariable: you, the righteous one, are licensed to kill until you die yourself. And you can revive yourself to kill again” (Lawrence and Jewett, The …
Disnified
“When Disney turned to live-action films, he transferred the techniques and mythic patterns he had developed through animation . . . Far be it from us to carp at cleanliness, but the sanitizing urge is central to the power of Disney’s mythic artifacts, and even the most sophisticated minds have been willing to surrender themselves …
Catechism at the OK Corral
“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).