Cowboys and Musicians

Today was a productive day. We had an interview with Chris Jones, a grad student who's teaching a course on Myth and Life for the anthropology department at Tulane University. I was a bit trepidatious about this particular interview, specifically because we didn't get much of a chance to talk to Chris before we began the interview and so I didn't know much about the class he taught before we started.

The more it went on, though, the more it became evident that this class is searching for the exact same sort of thing we're searching for. Specifically, the course examines the influence of mythology in our daily life. Chris said that many people think of "myth" as a story about a god or a great hero, but this isn't always true. Myths can be more commonly seen as stories (and, within these stories, situations or archetypes) that are embedded in our subconscious rather than our conscious. Let me give you the brilliant example that he gave.

There's the myth of the American cowboy; how many times have you seen this in Westerns? A lone gunslinger riding through the desert comes across a poor town of common folk who are being terrorized by a sinister "baddie," usually an escaped convict or a notorious gang leader. The sheriff of the town, a well meaning, likeable kind of guy, is nonetheless completely ineffectual at bringing said evil to justice. Lo and behold, the stirrup-laden hero, after deciding that this is one fight he'll have to tough out alone, charges in on wherever the bad men are, guns blazing, and after a thrilling fight, stands triumphant. Once justice is delivered and peace is restored to the town, the hero rides off into the proverbial sunset, awaiting the next time he may be called on to intervene.

And here we have George W. Bush; quintessential cowboy trope with the Texas swagger, and Iraq, the poor town of depressed citizens being terrorized by the big, bad Saddam Hussein. Obviously the protectors of Iraq, whatever they may be, are rather ineffectual at their job and so Bush, deciding it's his heroic duty to go in alone without the help or approval of the U.N. (or for that matter any other country), charges in, guns blazing, captures the bad guy, and is now working on setting up peace and prosperity in Iraq (i.e., democracy) so that he can ride off into the sunset and leave the country to its own government. But always, America will be there, riding around the desert somewhere, ready to be called on again to save the day whenever need be.

Now, regardless of your political affilliations or how you feel about Bush or the war or even America, you'll have to admit that there are some very obvious parallels going on here. People who support Bush and the war are honing in on this very American myth of our country as great protector and any other country as damsel in distress. How many other times throughout history has this happened? And aside from any political underpinnings of this particular example, this motif is common in many other kinds of stories.

After I recognized this "myth" is also chracterized in the comic books of Batman, Chris humored me. Here we have Gotham City as an urban jungle taking place of the desert town, and Joker, The Penguin, or Catwoman as the threat that needs to be dealt with. Commissioner Gordon and the Gotham City Police are the enforcers who more than have their hands full, and so Batman, as the lone dark vigilante who acts outside of the ranges of the local law enforcement, takes matters into his own hands.

Obviously, Chris pointed out, we would hesitate to recognize that there is something like a "Batman myth," but certainly the stories of this costumed hero are very mythic archetypes in their telling. So then we get to delve into the influence of characters like John Wayne and Batman on the public conscious, and specifically the imaginations adolescent boys. How many times do boys want to see themselves as the lone hero who can stand up to the bully, using force only when necessary, and make the playground safe once and for all? I know I did. The fact that it never actually got around to happening didn't matter, the possibility was always there. And still there are certain things that come up in life that seem I'll have to handle alone, and I need only to call on mythic archetypes or heroes to remind myself that it can be done. This, Joseph Campbell would say, is the "Power of Myth."

We are going to a coffee house tomorrow night to hear some free live music (what else is New Orleans known for, right?) and then hopefully we'll score an interview with the band who I suppose uses music to tell stories. At least the man I spoke with on the phone told me "that's where you need be" to find what we're looking for.

So, like I said before, today was a productive day.