Early Theorizing - American Mythology

[talkstowolves]

Some of my first formalized thoughts on American Mythology, taken verbatim from an e-mail to a friend:

America has no mythology... like other cultures have mythology.

That's right. We don't have the ethnic background for it.

Okay, okay, so the Native Americans have a mythology, yes. But that's not American. That's Native American.

You see, America is made up of people who abandoned their own cultures (for the most part) and came to a
new land to make a fresh start. They brought their beliefs with them, but those beliefs had to be adapted
to (and ended up being molded by) the new land in which the people found themselves. (I am especially
interested in examining that critical change point by researching new immigrants to the USA and how their
personal mythos is warped in the first-generation Americans born to immigrant parents.) Because people
were eventually stripped of their ethnic identity and thrown into the so-called melting-pot of America,
their mythologies faded away.

Of course, a contemporary mythology has slowly evolved in America, but it's actually a relatively unhealthy mythology. The mythology of America involves it being:


the land of plenty (but often the land of waste considering the huge portions, etc.);

unparallelled beauty (Americans idolize unhealthy concepts of beauty represented by supermodels that
aren't even real. And this high bar of beauty can be met by, well, pretty much no American.);

the land of the young (Americans are pathetically scared of aging and death-- hence the obsession with
plastic surgery);

the land of purity/deviance (America has a real split personality when it comes to sexual topics. There is a serious lack of sexual education and it's almost considered taboo in some ways-- that's the Christian
Fundamentalism. On the other hand, there's the pornography industry that promotes a pretty unhealthy
view of sexuality.)

Those are some of the bigger topics in contemporary American mythology. I know they're mostly negative,
but America hasn't represented its virtues for many, many years now (if it ever really did represent its
supposed virtues). Instead of fighting for freedom for everyone, we're now involved in a war in Iraq that's more about control. Instead of being the "land of the brave," more than half of the youth of America would never wish to serve in its military. Instead of being the "land of opportunity," hardly anyone can find a suitable job in spite of the appropriate college degree.

Sometimes I feel like America is a lost country, and I'm not sure how we'll reclaim that fundamental
American spirit.

Comments

[catwalk.livejournal.com]

i'm not so sure.
i think our mythology comes more in the forms of
folklore and ghost stories... paul bunyan and
escaped psychos with hooks for hands and the like.
just as icons differ between tribes and countries,
the figures and imagery differ between regions.

[talkstowolves.livejournal.com]

Those exist within the mythological framework, yes. The individual stories represented through folklore and urban legend contribute to the larger Myths that represent a culture.

I suppose I should clarify that we don't have mythology as other cultures have mythology in the sense that our mythology was never inseperable from our religious/spiritual beliefs.

[catwalk.livejournal.com]

then there are the mormons... ;-)

[ironed_orchid]

Of course, a contemporary mythology has slowly evolved
in America, but it's actually a relatively unhealthy
mythology.

I don't think that your finding it 'unhealthy' makes it any less potent in the cultural imagination. Things like 'land of the free' and 'land of opportunity' are very powerful, and they can work to make anyone who isn't completely free and who doesn't have a lot of opportunities feel like this is due to something that they lack, rather than due to social injustices. I know this isn't necessarily what you are after when you think of mythology but it affects how people read individual stories and what they take from them.

As for the not representing America's supposed virtues, this is probably because what was once seen as virtuous is now seen as more dubious - like killing native americans to make space for new european settlers. That was then seen as brave and intrepid, now it's view as oppressive.

[talkstowolves.livejournal.com]

There's no question of it's potency, and that's a very good observation. Thank you.

[reticent-manner.livejournal.com]

America has plenty of mythology. The contemporary mythologies you mention all have roots in the 18th/19th centuries. Typical white mythologies are going to be patriotism (Republican Motherhood for women, which is actually pretty interesting - this idea pops up in children's books and stories for women) and individualism and liberty; that's where George and the cherry tree tale and Honest Abe come in, but also Horatio Alger (which are pretty abdunant 19th century) and John Henry stories. You could also consider many sentimental and domestic works in the 19th century to function as mythologies as they deal primarily with how women are to be guided by God (Wide, Wide, World; The Lamplighter; Ruth Hall; Uncle Tom's Cabin). Slavery gave way to some of the best myths, which appear in songs and other works of art (quilts, for one), but Charles Chesnutt (turn of the 20th century) is a good example of "conjuration" mythologies (see "The Goophered Grapevine" and "The Conjure Woman ") and how those myths are sustained after slavery.

You could also look at how America seeks to build its own mythology by using other forms (and, ultimately, fails in a way), with books by James Fenimore Cooper and his attempt at capturing the expansive and natural America (Deerslayer is probably best in the series though Last of the Mohicans is probably most well known) and Charles Brockden Brown's "Weiland," which was an attempt to take the gothic and make it American (with no castles or landed gentry, it was pretty hard; he tried nonetheless). And the land of purity/deviance brought to mind "Charlotte Temple" by Susana Rowson (1791) which has become this sort of epic mythology complete with gravesites in New England claiming to be poor (fictional) Charlotte (originally published in England, but it is American in theme).

So while Americanists (like me) get chided for our area of study because America is still in its infancy, there is still a lot to work with in terms of mythologies that have nothing to do with Native Americans (although something like "Hope Leslie" by Catherine Maria Sedwick is good because it's revisionist history in the good way by altering the falsehoods about Native Americans). Just like everything else that has to do with America, it has to be tweaked and reconfigured. But perhaps the most inherent Americanism in terms of mythology is that Americans have to make it new and make it particular to them.

[agravaine.livejournal.com]

Well I have never studies mythology, though I do love it, so I maybe way out of place here.

America has a mythology, other than our folklore urban legends and legends, I consider something of a myhtology laid out in some of the writings of Faulkner. umm specifically the section of "The Bear" in Go Down Moses, but also his treatment of the hearth in the later sections and Pantaloon in Black.

I don't think America is so much a lost country, (but then again I also think that stopping genocide and dictators is not reprehesible. I am only sorry, very sorry, it took Sept. 11 to make some people open their eys to some of what has been going on in other places.)

I suppose the image of the cowboy or gunfighter soed not qualify as a mythological hero in some way. I don't know. I have Joseph Campbells book about heroes but I have yet to read it, to busy with required readiong for classes.

Like I said, I am probably way out of place, but here is my opinion anyway.
Thank you for considering it.

Also, as a seconf genderation American from my parents I hear all the time that this is the land of plenty, or the land of oppurtunity. My grandparents came here with nothing and their children led a better life here than they could have at home. Now my sister and I are going to college, we are the first in our immediate familyy to be doing so. And one one side of the family completely the first at all, the other side had more rapid success so some of my aunts and uncles went to college, but I think only one finished with a BA. ANyway I am still friends with a great deal of immigrants or first generation Americans and they believe there is much oppurtunity here, more than they could have had at their native countries. We all keep our own traditions but incoprorate them into the new, so when we celebrte Thanksgiving we have turkey but also rice and beans and lasagna. From the Italian side of my family we have many of the superstitions alive and well that my grnadparents came over with. On my Irish side my Grnadmother tried to discourage retaing the "Old country" so my sister and I are trying to retrieve it.

I know this has not been helpful for a mythology study, sorry.
Agravaine