The Modern Myths, by Philip Ball

[lisa_goldstein]

Philip Ball starts by debunking the popular idea about myths, that “[w]e grew out of gods and myths because we have acquired reason and science.”  Instead, he thinks we have our own myths, and that they reflect and comment on our culture the way the old myths commented on theirs.  The stories he uses to illustrate this are Robinson Crusoe, Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, The War of the Worlds, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Watson stories, and Batman comics.  (You may be wondering, as I did, what happened to The Lord of the Rings.  “A modern myth,” says Ball, “is not an old myth retold in modern times.”  Instead they use the trappings of their times; they “do not feature kings and queens, dragons and heroes.”  Okay, then.)

Just this idea would make the book worth reading.  But Ball takes his theory and runs with it, with thought-provoking comments on nearly every page.  The consensus about Frankenstein is that it’s about a scientist meddling in things humanity was not meant to know.  But, Ball says, its “themes are so rich and diverse that the conventional interpretation of it… is desperately inadequate.” It “comments on … slavery, social justice and imperialism.  It is about birth and death, family and kinship… [It] confronts profound religious questions.”

It’s the same for all the books on the list.  All of them have multiple meanings, meanings that reflect the times in which they were written.  But — and here comes the most interesting part, the big enchilada of thought-provoking ideas —  the stories themselves are clumsily written.  The authors have gone down into the unconscious and dredged up powerful symbols, symbols that speak to their times, but they are not in complete control of their material.  The creators of Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and Batman, for example, seem unaware of the homosexual subtext of their creations — though Bram Stoker was probably gay, and probably did have some murky idea.  

So there are gaps in these narratives, “ambiguities and contradictions” that anyone can take advantage of.  Other people can write their own versions, and the stories get told over and over again, each time differently, growing and changing with the surrounding culture.  And so we get a gay Holmes and Watson, but also a Watson who is female and Asian, in the TV show Elementary.  We get a vampire story “recast as fairy tale” in the Twilight books.

I said the book was “thought-provoking,” so here are some of my thoughts.  Is Ball saying that most myths, like the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Elder Edda, the Marabharata, started this way, with crude stories that reflected the unconscious of the surrounding culture?  Were they then picked up by poets like Homer, and turned into masterpieces?  But what about the beauty and poetry of myths, where are they in Ball’s design?

One more impressive thing about Ball: he speaks the language of academia (though his writing is clearer and more accessible than that of most academics), but he also knows more about popular culture than practically anyone.  He’s seen all the movies, read all the books.  He even knows that the character was originally called “The Batman.”  You can’t argue with him about this, so don’t even try.