Pop culture and the Goodies vs Badies trope

[Lexicus]

Zoroastrianism is a dualistic religion dividing the world into good and evil. Its roots likely extend to the 2nd millennium BCE. The idea that there is no moralistic conflict (good vs evil) in stories before 19th century Europe appears to be complete nonsense but I'm going to give the article a read before I render final judgment.

 

[Live trash can]

I find the question to be higly interesting. Even though it could seem like nonense. I am sure there is some truth in it.
Makes me think about Heroic Epic in Civ 3 and 4.

 

[Kyriakos]

Interesting. That makes me think about the Bible. That is about 2000 years. How many stories from that do people remember?

I actually remember a few: the kind-hearted Samaritan, the story of Job, how Moses made a way through water, and Jesus's miracles.

Are those examples of excellent story-telling?

But I remember much more vividly Star Wars. And other Sci-Fi movies/series.

Imho, of the biblical stories, only the tower of Babel is notable in a literary way. And even that might not have been that intentional. The stories are written in a very simple way, and in the new Testament they are similar to Aesop imo.
The old Testament ones are far bleaker/messed up, obviously.

 

[Live trash can]

Imho, of the biblican stories, only the tower of Babel is notable in a literary way. And even that might not have been that intentional. The stories are written in a very simple way, and in the new Testament they are similar to Aesop imo.
The old Testament ones are far bleaker/messed up, obviously.

But simple stories can be just what is needed.
From a modern perspective, it is children who first encounter the Chritstian faith. They learn of it in school. And to them I think simplicity can be a factor!

 

[Evie]

Yes but "notable in a literary way" is a very poor measure of how likely a story is to mark popular consciousness.

 

[inthesomeday]

I think the real take away is that those stories that have stood the test of time are more complex and just better stories than many stories that receive popular acclaim in contemporary life. That observation about what stories stand the test of time shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Pop culture necessarily appeals to the lowest common standard. They are necessarily simple.

When the Romans threw Christians to the lions, they absolutely demonized the Christians into single-dimensional beings of pure evil exactly as Uwe Boll does with the antagonists in his films. But in 2000 years, it wouldn’t be Uwe Boll’s films that stand out as exemplars of culture just as we don’t think of circus games in that way today.

This is an interesting perspective minus the classist undertones. The stories that we remember from a long time ago aren’t the ones that present boring lackluster moral binaries because those stories lack depth and thus aren’t likely to be remembered for a long time. The Bible as an exception should be considered remembering the context by which we still remember the Bible: concentrated and concerted effort by people with weapons to maintain the Bible’s popularity.

 

[Farm Boy]

Love is powerful indeed. Classy too!

 

[Ryika]

“All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.

All of them?

Sure, he says. Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist.”

 

[Lexicus]

So, I'm reading the piece from the OP and it's weird. I kind of get what she's saying but I feel like she's sort of missing the point of some of the stuff she cites.
Like here: this bit:

For example, when in the PBS series Power of Myth (1988) the journalist Bill Moyers discussed with Campbell how many ancient tropes Star Wars deployed, they didn’t consider how bizarre it would have seemed to the ancient storytellers had Darth Vader changed his mind about anger and hatred, and switched sides in his war with Luke and the Rebels. Contrast this with The Iliad, where Achilles doesn’t become Trojan when he is angry at Agamemnon.

I think this is kind of a weird thing to say, and that the ancients would surely be moved by Vader's display of familial piety, unwillingness to watch his son be tortured to death.

I think she's sort of right in her argument, but she's just phrasing things poorly sometimes. When she claims that "in old folktales, no one fights for values" it's plainly wrong - in the Iliad, all the characters fight and die to uphold the aristocratic system of values that defined the culture that produced those stories. Achilles' anger at Agamemnon is because the latter violated the code, specifically the section on the distribution of plunder, and the whole war is fought because Paris committed the grave offense of not merely seducing, but actually absconding with another aristocrat's wife.

I also think that her argument can't be complete because moral dualism has been a not-insignificant part of human culture since Zoroaster more than 2,000 years ago. Moral dualism is an important part of all the Abrahamic religions.

 

[Hygro]

Yo, maybe this author had a bad idea and then ran with it.

 

[Mouthwash]

I also think that her argument can't be complete because moral dualism has been a not-insignificant part of human culture since Zoroaster more than 2,000 years ago. Moral dualism is an important part of all the Abrahamic religions.

Yeah, I was surprised she didn't suggest religion as the catalyst. I think the Crusades are probably the best example of good-vs-evil thinking.

 

[Evie]

(Actually, wouldn't the ancient Greek be *pretty* unhappy with Luke for refusing to do as filial piety command and join his father? Then again, Luke did explicitly refuse to kill his father so they might go for that).

Hmmmm. This brings to mind an interesting line of thought, tho. Because the Trojan War is one of very, very, very (verrrrryyyyy) few cases in (western) mythology and folklore to involve something even close to the impersonal sides we see today (and even then, the sides are largely based on solemn, personal oaths and family ties). The "Heroic Age" of mythohistory and folklore, so to speak, is all about personal relations : factions are formed on family ties, friendships and (at the most impersonal) solemn oaths. Which stands to reason, as for much of human history, this was pretty much the key underpinning of all social organization. The impersonal political or social order or organization that exist beyond interpersonal relations is comparatively a fairly recent addition (at least in the West), and we tend to accept their stories (those that have survived to the present day), their sagas as history, not mythology or folklore.

In short, I'm thinking a Galactic Empire or a Mordor largely rest on social models that would have been essentially unfamiliar if not entirely unknown to the primary audiences of what mythology and folklore has reached the present day, but that of course are much more familiar to modern audiences than the ancient clannic and feudal orders associated with folklore and mythology.

ETA: the Matter of France (the Carolingian legends, ie the Song of Roland), cast against the backdrop of the Franks and Christendom versus Muslim Saracens does come close, tho.

ETA to ETA : the Matter of France being largely forgotten today while the Matter of Britain is known worldwide probably largely comes down to the very different relations Britain and France had with he middle age circa the nineteenth century. Prior to that, Roland was as famous as can be and appeared in countless retellings of his story. But come the XIX century, and you have Britain romanticizing the Middle Ages, and France at the same time demonizing the age of petty nobles and arbitrary kings. Retelling Arthurian legend fit the mood of XIXth Century Britain; retelling the Carolingian ones did not fit that of France (Joan of Arc, on the other hand - a commoner, fighting for the Nation, betrayed by a treasonous king and destroyed by a corrupt church - hits all the right notes for XIXth century France). Then comes the XXth and American/Anglosphere cultural dominion, and Arthur and the Round Table become an international symbol.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Interesting. That makes me think about the Bible. That is about 2000 years. How many stories from that do people remember?

I actually remember a few: the kind-hearted Samaritan, the story of Job, how Moses made a way through water, and Jesus's miracles.

Are those examples of excellent story-telling?

But I remember much more vividly Star Wars. And other Sci-Fi movies/series.

Who was the evil character in the stories of Jesus' miracles?

As for Moses, he didn't care about the non-Hebrew slaves, and apparently neither did his god. So much for all those pious speeches about how slavery was wrong.

Is his story an example of good story-telling? Well, I've certainly seen The Ten Commandments enough times. It was an annual event with my grandmother and me (she was a Charlton Heston fan and I liked Yul Brynner), and I've seen it several times since she died. No matter that I find the preachy parts more funny and ridiculous every time I see it now, it is still a pretty impressive feat of movie-making.

 

[Live trash can]

Who was the evil character in the stories of Jesus' miracles?

I wasn't thinking of them as good and evil-stories. Just good stories.

But the duality of the devil and God is lurking in the background.

 

[Lexicus]

Yo, maybe this author had a bad idea and then ran with it.

Problem is it's not an entirely bad idea. I mean, I sense she's on to something in terms of people adding explicit Black-and-White Morality to traditional folktales as part of the project of building nation-states. But to claim that moral dualism played no role in culture before that project seems to stretch things too far.

Yeah, I was surprised she didn't suggest religion as the catalyst. I think the Crusades are probably the best example of good-vs-evil thinking.

I'm somewhat surprised you didn't go with the Islamic conquests there

 

[Kyriakos]

"Monsters instead of people that symbolize moral weakness" is world-class nonsense : the monsters are often implicity, and in some case explicitly (eg, Fafnir, explicitly a human-like being turned into a dragon due to greed) the product of moral weaknesses. Other examples of monsters in classic mythology that are the fruit of humans mistakes, either directly (eg, a human's own failing turn him into a monster : Fafnir) or indirectly (eg, the failings of another human result in the creation of a monster : the Minotaur, Grendel). The link between the human and the monstrous is also highlighted by some of the most famous monsters of the late medieval and renaissance belief system : the werewolf (a human abandoning the civilized ways and becoming a slave to their bestial instincts) most notably. Vampires and even to some degree Witches (the Renaissance version) also fall into this scheme.

Then to compare that with Star Wars, when Star Wars explicitly goes out of its way to dehumanize Vader and paint him as exactly that : a monster. He, like the Ringwraiths (or the Orcs, for that matter) in Tolkien, have only the vaguest sense of humanity left to them ; they (Vader and Ringwraits), like Fafnir and werewolves, are humans turned into monsters by their own flaws. Obi-Wan even directly allude to this : "He's more machine than man". Vader is a cybernetic monster, or so we're lead to believe ; it's only after the Empire plot twist that we begin to see the leftover traces of humanity, that Luke will be able to use to redeem him in Jedi. The Ringwraiths, for their part, have no traces of humanity left, and can only be destroyed.

Re werewolves and lycanthropy, in greek myth the first werewolf was Lycaon, some king who tried to trick Zeus (because he wanted to see if Zeus really was omnipotent), so served Zeus the cooked meat of some of his sons. Zeus identified what was going on and turned Lycaon into a wolf. Story possibly alluded to the pre-olympian times, and some pre-archaic human sacrifice.

 

[Live trash can]

Re werewolves and lycanthropy, in greek myth the first werewolf was Lycaon, some king who tried to trick Zeus (because he wanted to see if Zeus really was omnipotent), so served Zeus the cooked meat of some of his sons. Zeus identified what was going on and turned Lycaon into a wolf. Story possibly alluded to the pre-olympian times, and some pre-archaic human sacrifice.

I understand that the Greek gods and heros were ideals and role-models in their age?

What kind of society could that lead to?

But we might not be any better today...

But at least there is a wide varitety of stories and role-models today.

 

[Kyriakos]

^Greek myth always presents it as hugely dangerous to go against the gods even by accident, so it is no surprise what happens to Lycaon. Though i suppose he is mostly punished so severely due to trying to trick Zeus, and secondarily due to the abhorrent (and already gone in the archaic era) practice of human sacrifice; yet in some versions of this myth Zeus goes on to resurrect the just son of Lycaon, who was cooked to be served as a meal. That said, some classical works present Zeus as just, others present him as another usurper (famously in the play Prometheus chained).
There are even different versions of how powerful he was next to other gods or titans, eg in one version (Hesiod) he easily defeats Typhon all by himself, while in another (Homer?) he is first cut by Typhon into thousands of pieces, and then is reconstructed by Hermes and finally defeats his enemy.

 

[Live trash can]

I wish I knew more about Norse mythology, but I believe the Norse believed that dying in fighting led you to Valhalla. Where they feasted and fought without end.

And dying in bed (being sick) led to something less favourable.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

I am fond of the tropes Good Versus Good, White Versus Grey, Grey Versus Gray, and No Antagonist.