What is a myth?
Myths
have always been part of most, if not every society. They are in fact important
concepts in the "process of making culture"(1).
But what really is a myth? Where does it come from and how does it develop?
I
will try here to describe and explain the development and usage of myths
to give an introduction on the topic and to provide some basic knowledge
about it, which should help to understand the topic as a whole. I will
also try to give some examples to make understanding of this rather difficult
topic more easy. Therefore I will use some examples also of the myth of
the American west.
The
word "mythos" is Greek and means "speech" or "story"(4).
So to say myths are spoken stories based on history. This of course is
a very vague and also incorrect description. It is, if at all, surely not
possible to describe the complex phenomenon of the myth in only one sentence.
Nevertheless this statement includes two important keywords concerning
myths: story and history.
Regular
stories have many things in common with myths, such as the narrative type
of presentation or the usage of metaphors. Metaphors are in fact a main
concept of myths. People use them to explain new phenomena by using older
concepts. The method to see new phenomena as different occurences of
older
ones is part of the process of creating a myth. In my opinion it is also
a reason for the existence of myths, because people use myths not only
to express basic opinions of their society, but also to explain new phenomena
and happenings within their society.
The
"ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA" defines myth as "a symbolic narrative,
usually of unknown origin and at least partly traditional, that ostensibly
relates actual events and that is especially associated with religious
belief. It is distinguished from symbolic behaviour (cult, ritual) and
symbolic places or objects (temples, icons)." (3)
A different definition says: "A myth is a traditional story whose author
is unknown. It [...] uses the supernatural to interpret natural events
and to explain a culture's view of the universe and the nature of humanity."(5)
To
Roland Barthes (1915-1980), a french philosopher and linguist, who spent
many years to examine the role of the myth in culture, a myth is a construction
which is created and maintained by those signs and values of a certain
culture which are the most dominant. In his opinion the dominant value
of a (in his case the French) society is the culture of the bourgeoisie
and he thinks that "the very principle of myth [is to] transform history
into nature".(2) Throuh this the dominant values
are kept alive in the minds of the people and over time they appear as
something natural, even if they did not develop naturally.
To
summarize this a bit I would say a myth is always something which comes
from the past, which is used to interpret something in the present and
which uses idealized images or concepts of the society to do so. This is
surely an image which is not clearly shaped, but the following points should
help to make it more precise.
The
roots of every myth are to be found in history. Every myth has a more or
less true historical background. Most myths of course have very few things
in common with the real history, but they developed out of it. By continuous
usage and inheritance a myth expresses more and more the ideology of the
society it is used by. The mythology of the ancient states of Greece for
example represented the Greek form of government and ideology. The Gods
were divided into several categories and they had a hierarchy, just like
the Greek government, with an unrestricted sovereign - Zeus - the God of
the Gods. This continuous usage also happens more in a narrative than in
a logical way and it is characterized by the following three factors: abstraction,
reduction and compression.
Due
to these three factors a myth becomes more and more a collection of symbols,
icons and also stereotypes during time. (1) Those
symbols or icons inhabit a complex system of associations and it is possible
to express such a system by using only one phrase. For example if someone
thinks of an icon as "The Frontier" he inavitably has to think of related
things like indians, Daniel Boone or the railroad, because these things
are part of the myth "Frontier". Barthes contends that "Myth is a value"
which robs images of their historicity.(2) These
images or icons are then used to keep up the dominant bourgeois culture
and maintain its status quo. An example for this is a cover of a French
magazine which shows a black French soldier, who allegedly salutes the
tricolor. In Barthes opinion the working of myth has distorted this image
in a way it becomes a statement about the French imperialism. This serves
to keep the bourgeois culture and also transformes the historical characteristics
of it to something "eternal, inevitable and not to be challenged"(2).
Myths also try to explain the problems of history, but because of its unavoidable inconsistency no myth is proof against historical facts. One can of course describe the life back in the west in the most colorful pictures, but he can not deny that there also have been hunger, diseases and plagues. This is the point where a myth reaches the end of its wisdom. But this is also the reason why every myth is characterized by the processes of continuity and revision. In fact this is the way a myth develops. It is altered and abstracted by different people who pass the myth on to others, it is compressed and reduced by different tellers, who leave out this or that point, depending on their own ideology, social class, or other factors which may differ a lot during time. These processes can be seen as examples for revision. Nevertheless the myth keeps its main idea during time, which represents the continuity. Taken all this together after many years there is a myth which has developed out of a story, based on historical facts, and which is reduced to the main ideals of all the people which were involved in its development.
During time a myth also appears to be created rather by nature than by history, although it is always mostly a product of human thought. This is also the reason why there is no such thing as the author of a myth or something similar usual to stories or narratives.
Thinking
about the development of a myth the next important question to me is the
question of what kind of people are involved in spreading a myth and by
doing so are maintaining and spreading the ideology of their society. J.F.
Kennedy was only one of many American politicians who used an old image
in his election campaigns, when he talked about a "New Frontier" in 1960.
Since the 1890s politicians talk about an exchange of the old western frontier
for new frontiers related to world power and industry. They use the same
old myth over and over again and alter and adjust it as needed.
This
is a very successful strategy indeed, because (nearly) everybody knows
about those myths and everybody has nearly the same images and icons in
mind. By using the metaphorical function of myths and assigning mythic
images to todays problems, these politicans, but generally every user of
a myth, create the vision that recent problems are only different occurences
of older ones - which of course have been solved. But they have not only
been solved, the way this happened has always been a glorious and outclassing
one. People might also feel being part of something important and big in
history because of this.
Myths
generally are very important to society. They help people to understand
phenomena in the present, they carry the ideology of the society and they
let the past appear not just as something which has happened, but as something
which was of great importance and which in a way has occured naturally.
In
the case of the myth of the American west it is not different: the ideology
of the US is displayed perfectly by the old myths dealing with the wild
west. Happenings in the past always appear as naturally justified and the
icons, images and other metaphors are still used by certain people to explain
current circumstances and phenomena.
- 1: Slotkin, Richard, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1992
- 2: "ENGL 300--Spring 1996 Texts and Contexts" University of Delaware [Accessed Tues Jan 23, 2001]
- 3: Encyclopaedia Britannica , headword "myth" [Accessed Tues Jan 23, 2001]
- 4: "Definition of Myth", Brandeis University [Accessed Tues Jan 23, 2001]
- 5: "A Definition of "Myth"", Grose Educational Media [Accessed Tues Jan 23, 2001]