Modern mythology  

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Hollywood is iconic for modern mythology
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Hollywood is iconic for modern mythology

"Mythologies (1957) is a critique of consumerism and a precursor to Guy Debord The Society of the Spectacle (1967)."--Sholem Stein


"Peter dons the requisite Spandex and goes out to battle evil."--Our Gods Wear Spandex (2007) is a book by Christopher Knowles

Eiffel Tower in Paris, France  The status of technocratic icons within contemporary society (the Citroën DS, the Eiffel Tower etc.) is a theme in Roland Barthes's Mythologies
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Eiffel Tower in Paris, France
The status of technocratic icons within contemporary society (the Citroën DS, the Eiffel Tower etc.) is a theme in Roland Barthes's Mythologies

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Modern mythology refers to 20th or 21st century mythologies.

Mythology is alive and well in the modern age through urban legends, New Age beliefs, certain aspects of religion and conspiracy theories. In the 1950s Roland Barthes published a series of essays examining modern myths and the process of their creation in his book Mythologies. Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (1873-1961) and his followers also tried to understand the psychology behind world myths.

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In popular culture

Film and book series like Star Wars and Tarzan have strong mythological aspects that develop into deep and intricate philosophical systems. These items are not mythology, but contain mythic themes that, for some people, meet the same psychological needs.

Also worth mentioning is the P-Funk mythology.

Tolkien

Mythopoeia is a term coined by J. R. R. Tolkien for the conscious attempt to create myths; his Silmarillion was to be an example of this, although he did not succeed in bringing it to publication during his lifetime. C. S. Lewis, shared his views of myths as expressing fundamental truths.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

Also, it is worth mentioning Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), a non-fiction book, and seminal work of comparative mythology. In this publication, Campbell discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero found in world mythologies.

Mythologies by Barthes

In the 1950s, Roland Barthes published a series of essays examining modern myths and the process of their creation in his book Mythologies.

In art

Artists such as Gustav Klimt continued to be inspired by Greco-Roman mythology, as evidenced in such paintings as Danae (1907-08).

Myth and modern science

Many twentieth-century theories of myth rejected the nineteenth-century theories' opposition of myth and science. In general, “twentieth-century theories have tended to see myth as almost anything but an outdated counterpart to science […] Consequently, moderns are not obliged to abandon myth for science.” (Segal)

Carl Jung

Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (1873-1961) and his followers also tried to understand the psychology behind world myths. Jung argued that the gods of mythology are not material beings, but archetypes — or mental states and moods — that all humans can feel, share, and experience. He and his adherents believe archetypes directly affect our subconscious perceptions and way of understanding. Following Jung, Joseph Campbell believed that insights about one’s psychology, gained from reading myths, can be beneficially applied to one’s own life.

Claude Levi-Strauss

Like the psychoanalysts, Claude Levi-Strauss believed that myths reflect patterns in the mind. However, he saw those patterns more as fixed mental structures—specifically, pairs of oppositions (e.g., raw vs cooked, nature vs culture)—than as unconscious feelings or urges.

Mircea Eliade

In his appendix to Myths, Dreams and Mysteries (1959) and in The Myth of the Eternal Return, Mircea Eliade attributed modern man’s anxieties to his rejection of myths and the sense of the sacred.

Myth in modernity

Scholars in the field of cultural studies research how myth has worked itself into modern discourses. Mythological discourse can reach greater audiences than ever before via digital media. Various mythic elements appear in popular culture, as well as television, cinema and video games.

Although myth was traditionally transmitted through the oral tradition on a small scale, the film industry has enabled filmmakers to transmit myths to large audiences via film. In Jungian psychology myths are the expression of a culture or society’s goals, fears, ambitions and dreams.

The basis of modern visual storytelling is rooted in the mythological tradition. Many contemporary films rely on ancient myths to construct narratives. The Walt Disney Company is well-known among cultural study scholars for "reinventing" traditional childhood myths. While many films are not as obvious as Disney fairy tales, the plots of many films are based on the rough structure of myths. Mythological archetypes, such as the cautionary tale regarding the abuse of technology, battles between gods and creation stories, are often the subject of major film productions. These films are often created under the guise of cyberpunk action films, fantasy, dramas and apocalyptic tales.

21st-century superhero films such as Clash of the Titans, Immortals and Thor continue the trend of using traditional mythology to frame modern plots. Authors use mythology as a basis for their books, such as Rick Riordan, whose Percy Jackson and the Olympians series is situated in a modern-day world where the Greek deities are manifest.

See also





Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Modern mythology" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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