I think Nanobyte is confusing contemporary society with the centuries of pre-television culture, when the great mythic elements were formed, largely through orally transmitted stories. Whether Jack in the Beanstalk will survive the next hundred years, I don’t know – can it stand next to Sesame Street?
But here’s the bottom line: there are hundreds of stories that DIDN’T survive with any popularity. And Bettleheim didn’t think that was just because some are “cool” and some aren’t; a story survives for centuries because it appeals at a very basic, primal level. That’s the whole point.
Bettleheim being who he is takes that primal level often to be sexual, but other elements are involved as well – folk tales are about growing up and going out into the world to make your own fortune, about taking on personal responsibility, about breaking away from parents, about handling sibling rivalry, etc. If you don’t like the idea of sex rearing it’s ugly head, will you accept that those elements play a critical part in folktales?
Look: suppose Mommy sits you down at age four and says, “Sometimes I will punish you, or otherwise act in a way that you may perceive as unloving, but it’s really all for your own good.” Impact on you? Zip!
But if Mommy tells you a story about a little girl who overcomes her wicked stepmother, by being good and virtuous, and just by being herself… that conveys the message (at a subconscious level).
The richness of folktales (according to Bettleheim) is the depth of meaning (at mostly subconscious levels) that children can take from them. When a child is at one stage of development, he/she likes Little Red Riding Hood; when he/she outgrows that one, Jack and the Beanstalk has different lessons to teach.
Nano says: << Gimme a break! Hollywood only wants money.>> Reread what I said, Nano – I said that Hollywood wants to understand what makes one story successful/popular and another not. That’s the way they make money, they don’t back stories that they think won’t be popular.
[quote]
Nanobyte, are you deliberately being obtuse?{/quote]
No. You are probably the type who would take an herb for an ailment simply because there are people somewhere in the world who have taken it for your ailment for thousands of years. Is the Phoenician/Greek/Roman alphabet so unique, irreplaceable and faultless that we couldn’t use something better? Same goes for all that storytelling; it’s just habit and legitimacy based on ‘well it’s there’. So is your appendix. But mine is gone, because it ruptured early on. No “deep” meaning. Just nature. Who needs it? Same goes for religions.
Good for what? Better for whatever than some other dumb thing you could easily make up. A lot of kids like you to make up stories, many of which they like at least as well – if only halfway good at it. These established tales survive simply because they have some of the very simple-minded elements I mentioned in my last post in them. If you want to convince a rational person otherwise, you’ll have to set up some very controlled tests continuing for a full child-rearing period. I just can’t get off on 'it’s this deep, contorted way, because I believe it is, or because non-objective academicians write that it is. Most preschool kids are relatively simple. Fairy tales are quite simple, with no lessons on how to get through adolescence – just bits and pieces of things that went on when they were dreamed up or from later times. I really detest the silly mysticism of psychologists, sociologists and novelists. The stuff they write resonates in some way with their own brains (lots of roome in there to echo, I guess), and it gets them a fast buck, I seems. If people want to read it for entertainment, OK, but to me it shows no universal meaning, only these person’s peculiar notions of “deep” mental gyrations, apparently. They shouldn’t dump this stuff on society as the gospel, that’s all. Same thing goes for religion.
Exactly what is it that establishes your belief that this is so. Supposing, instead the kid went out and rode his bicycle. Would that “touch [him/her] in some deep way”? Do you think either one would make the different whether he would become a Bill Gates or a Bill Clinton, she become a whatever? They attract some kids for a certain length of time because they include very direct and rudimentary dumb little things in them.
No, little Johnny is not going to listen to “Jack and the Beanstalk” and then think, “By jiminy, suddenly my vague fears about adolescence and parental relatonships have been cast in a whole new light. Thank goodness that delightful tale contained such valuable insight into a child’s psyche.”
Glad you’re learning.
But Johnny might start thinking how fun it would be to leave home and go on an adventure
and outwit someone much bigger than himself.
Oh phooey! Any decently adventurous kid would slap the book down and go on his own adventure that had nothing to do with that story, and certainly not relate outwitting a giant to anything he might do in his adventure, such as catching polliwog in a creek or something. There might be one sort that might do something of the nature of which you speak, in a very crude way, i.e, a future psych-socio-novelist might sit there and dream of something like that. . .until his mother called him to supper.
I read the “Lord of the Rings” as a teen-ager, engrossed by the action and the magic and the poetry.
Well, the subject here was Grimm’s fairy tales. I think it’s indeed nice that, by the time you reached your teens, you had advanced to fantasy for the advanced fantasizer. That trilogy came long after my teen years, but I was definitely not into fantasy then anyhow, and I’ve never read it, and can’t conceive of why anyone would. Fantasy disgusts me. You’d’ve been right in there at Columbine High. OK, you’re right, it isn’t all dangerous; most of it’s just plain silly. But, in any case, what that reading did with your brain in your teen years is totally off the subject of what Jack and the Beanstock might be claimed to do with a preschool kid’s brain. There’s no continuity in what you drift around with at all; but I wouldn’t expect such with someone so far into fantasy as to still be reading it in his teen years. I assume you’re a humanities teacher of some sort.
Well, I never read it, but I have no idea why I should’ve relate what I should, could or would want to do to a fairy story for retarded teen-agers. I was interested in the world around me that I could do something with, however limited. I don’t see any difference between your reading that book and your holing up in a video-game arcade.
I only read that because the made me do it for school. My reaction to it was ‘Yeah, I guess so, whatever.’ What was it supposed to have to do with my world. Didn’t live where there were any islands. Or was it “Tom Sawyer”? Were they different?
Guess that happens when you read all those fairy stories. But tell me, how do you center things like that; I can only do it by putting characters at least every other space. Damn reality catches up with me every time. All because I never got Goldilocks sorted out from Red Riding Hood, I suppose. There were 3 bears, weren’t there – the father, son and holy ghost, I think. Trilogies bug me; I’m a binary sorta guy.
Ray (Are you the “expert” in the first post. . .who’s still wondering why his adolescence didn’t come out otherwise?)
“I could tell you things about Peter Pan
Or the Wizard of Oz (there’s a dirty old man!)”
As kunilou pointed out, I’m simply quoting Tom Lehrer. His points are as valid today as when he made them nearly 35 years ago. Anyone interested in this satirical musical genius can visit http://www.wiw.org/~drz/tom.lehrer/publications.html .
Geez, Nanobyte reminds me a little of the folks in “Fahrenheit 451,” who got rid of books not because they were evil, or out of fascist beliefs, but because, gosh, who wants to sit around and read all these stories, these terrible stories, and be made to care about what happens to these made-up people you’ve never even met, and get your emotions all messed up, and . . .
So, let’s see: You don’t like religion, philosophy, psychology, sociology, science-fiction, fantasy, fiction in general . . .what, do you live in a box?
If you think there are no sociological or psychological phenomena which haven’t by this point been fairly well quantified and studied, well, you’re mistaken. If you think there are no myths which are pervasive throughout all cultures, having developed independently, and which continue to infuse each culture and how the views themselves, you’re mistaken again. And if you think there aren’t science-fiction and fantasy writers who are also serious men of science, you’re mistaken for the third time.
On the subject of Star Wars, a Bill Moyers book on mythology delved deep into the persona of Darth Vader. In the book, he said that Vader personified the “man stuck in the system”, who lost his soul and humanity out of loyal service to the material plane. This was represented by his machineness and his loyalty to the Emperor which grew out of his early self-seeking.
Further, even though he always knew that Luke was his son, Lord Vader was able to conveniently ignore this fact as his star rose within the Empire (allegory for working man lets family grow apart). Yet, upon realizing what his work habits were doing to what “really matters”, almost too late, in Return of the Jedi.
When I read this, and assuming it’s somewhat sensible, I wondered, did George Lucas really think all this through as he created the characters?
“Where there is clarity, there is no choice. And where there is choice, there is misery. But then, why should I speak, since I know nothing?”
This reminds me of what Professor Tolkein thought of those who attempted to show that the Lord of the Rings was a book that attempted to shed some light on current events through allegory.
Foreword to the Second Edition, J.R.R. Tolkein (1965)
Basically, as he says elsewhere, he just tried to make up a good tale. So many times, I think we try to make too much of what we like, disliking the notion that we enjoy rather simple fare…
Star Wars has an exhibition going around the US just now called ‘The Magic of Myth’, and the accompanying book goes really really deeply into how the story’s mythical and fairy tale origins are what make more enduring and popular as almost any other movie out there.
But I also think it went far too deeply. Unlike Tolkien, George Lucas does admit his intentions were to create a fairy tale for a new generation, and based his story on certain standards of myth and legend, but I think it’s only there on the most obvious levels - Princesses and evil Emperors and pretenders to the Throne, a young boy who discovers his powers and is the one hope to overthrow the tyrant. Any deeper down and they’re just reading too much into it.
Yep, Nanobyte, you’ve pegged me: I’m a retarded, herb-using, humanities professor who holes up to play video games. It’s a good thing you don’t believe in reading deeper meaning into things or you’d really analyze my psyche.
Seriously, though, you seem to hate all things fictional. I’m curious whether you read any fiction at all, and what kind. If you do, why do you think those particular stories appeal to you? If you don’t … well, I’m just not sure what to make of that.
DSY, please note that the quote from Tolkien was about allegory, and he (quite rightly) denied that his work was allegory.
However, I bet that if you asked him if he thought that his work had deeper meanings, such as that good triumphs over evil, that heroism can be expressed in unconventional ways by quite ordinary people, that evil exists, etc… I bet he’d say, Yes, of course. He never (so far as I know) denied that his stories had meaning to human beings; he only denied that they were allegory.
In contrast, Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM is allegory; it’s clear what the animals represent, it’s clear what the historical realities were.
The folk tales are NOT allegory, but draw upon symbols and meanings that resonate within the psyche of both teller and listener. Tolkien draws upon those folk tales, which he remakes to suit his own purposes.
And to offer my answer to the general question, NO, I think most artists are not really aware of the depths of meaning of their work. The ones who think they are fully aware of the depths of meaning are the conscious, intentional, deliberate intellectual artists… The gut-feel artists draw upon depths that they are usually unaware of.
Let me state an underlying position and then tear into individual posts here.
I DON’T MIND PEOPLE GETTING OFF ON NON-FACTUAL STUFF OR ARCHAIC OUTLOOKS, IF THAT’S THEIR IDEA OF ENTERTAINMENT, BUT I STRONGLY OBJECT TO THEIR TRYING TO INFLUENCE THE REST OF SOCIETY WITH THIS STUFF, OR THEIR TRYING TO INDOCTRINATE OTHERS WITH THE THESIS THAT THE BASIS OF THE GOOD LIFE, PROPER BEHAVIOR, ETC. SHOULD BE DERIVED FROM THIS STUFF, RATHER THAN EVOLVING AROUND EXTERNALLY PERCEIVABLE REALITY.
I find it disgusting that so much of these “teeming millions” repeatedly ignore real incidences of problems or successes of our society or its environment. . .until some sly character, for either monetary or political reasons, publishes so dippy book of fiction that dwells on such topics. Then everybody emotes all over the place on a bunch of distorted product of this character’s particular mind, motivated by who knows what – and then politicians, practicing psycho-social types, law enforcement, lawyers, judges and the whole reactive entourage go into a flurry of knee-jerk oratory, legislation, judicial decisions and whatever, based on this fictional crap, instead of on sampling of the real world. Writers of fiction are simply plugged into themselves, not what’s really out there. I don’t need them. If others are hooked on them, its fine for them to get their rocks off on such stuff, but that should be the end of it. What’s the matter with reality. . .or simply ignoring what’s written about anything, and dealing directly with reality or new ways to rationally relate to it? And another thing, fictiona addicts tend to go around espressing how deeply they think, and how deeply the authors they read think, and make statements that people who deal with reality or read about it are shallow and mechanistic or zombies of the system; but I tend to see them as only self-centered, not really of any great depth, not too bright, always analyzing things in subjective ways that are not subjectable to proof, and continually craving attention. A plague on the house of fiction and all its devotees.
pld:
Needless to say, I haven’t read that overheated sci-fi, but I can see that it really did things for you. See above. I haven’t gotten rid of anyone else’s fiction books, and I haven’t gotten rid of any of mine either, because I haven’t read any that were mine. I know that’s a cardinal sin in your eyes, but you know. . .I don’t__________! (From all your reading, I know you can fill in that blank with many very to-the-point remarks.)
I didn’t say I didn’t like philosophy. . .if it’s mine. If the above are all that are in your life, certainly it is you who live in a box. Occasionally I read some of the above. . .in self defense. Gotta know what the enemy is up to, right?
Sociological and psychological “phenomena”, “principles”, or whatever are, by definition, subjective. In simple terms, if you live in a context in which the ones under discussion satisfy your subjective outlook, then you claim, yeah, that’s the way things are. If you live in another context, where these don’t ring your bell, you say they don’t exist the particular way or don’t hold. If you claim some certain statistics on some strictly objective behaviors of people or groups of them, you are making a statement outside of psychology and sociology.
Suppose you give us some examples. But right off, I can certainly ask you exactly how you are able to establish with certainty 100% independence of any given two instances of a particular prototypical myth in two different cultures.
No, I don’t think that, and didn’t say anything to make anyone believe I did. Isaac Asimov at least thought he should be taken as a serious scientist. He was a combination of some other seemingly incompatible things also. What people combine in their lives doesn’t prove anything about how a another party should evaluate or otherwise view the individual matters such people take up. I understand there are serious biologists who claim to believe in Creation Science.
Fretful P:
What is “the ARG220 school of literary criticism”? I just tell it like it is. . .as seen from the outside of lit(t)erature.
El M Loco:
In re Bill Moyer’s book on mythology, as to Star Wars, you asked:
I only saw the original Star Wars movie. It seemed to me Lucas simply considered, “What would people who like to see a bunch of things shooting around on a star-filled screen, and corny animal-modified human-like beings sitting at a bar, accept as appropriate simplistic, grandiose supersocietal ethical and governmental notions that can be stirred into my very marketable masterpiece?” Hey, Lucas is simply into whatever fits his special effects and sells like crazy to the hoi polloi. Darth Vader? Hey, Luddites got money.
DSYE:
Of course, I think your post is really neat. I love it! “A good tale” is what it’s all about. Nothing wrong with that – for those who like “good” tales, so long as such readers accept that there is nothing “deep” in it that makes people and societies tick. And such a writer of a good tale, together with all his aficionados, should not see other people – who would rather read of facts, or do something other than read – as being subversive androids with nothing but gears in their heads, because real people are the ones who read into the simplest fiction all kinds deep “human” meanings, and don’t act, in their lives, except in ways they see good guys or bad guys act in works of fiction.
GuanoLad:
Of course, I also go with your post. That ain’t guano.
AuntieP:
Well, I was listening reeeeeeeaaaaaaalllll carefully at the time, but back then (1931) they didn’t give fetuses computers to analyze sound tracks for psychobabblers, so I have no definitive evidence on that subject.
Clark K:
Well, if you expect me to believe you inhabit phone booths near the Daily Planet, I just won’t believe it. A lot of reporters’ work tends to pick up fictional characteristics these days, but you’re just toooooooo far gone.
See what I mean, Folks? This sort never gets out of his hole sufficiently to realize that many, if not most people NEVER OR SELDOM READ FICTION. I don’t read any, unless you want to include short jokes or comic strips. Why do I think the latter
It’s when you say that you haven’t read a book and don’t plan to read it, because you just KNOW by instinct that it sucks. This sort of thing doesn’t exactly add credibility to your argument.
See “Life in Heaven, Part 2: I’d Rather Laugh With the Sinners than Cry With the Saints” in GD for a classic instance.
Porp, you mean you go through life continually evenly sampling everything, even though you’ve learned that you’re not interested in certain categories of things. . .just so that you can provide substance to possible arguments against your choice of interests? I don’t believe it. Someone like that wouldn’t need a brain / doesn’t have a brain.
I assume you have statistics/cites to back this up. Admittedly “people I know” aren’t a representative sample, but the greater majority of them do read fiction (and that’s “people I know”, not “friends” or “people who have the same tastes I do”). I find it hard to believe that nearly everyone I am acquainted with fall into this hidden minority.
You do realize that the descriptions “things I am not interested in” or “things I don’t like” are not equivalent to “things that suck”.
Additionally, most people realize that not all items in a classification are identical. People who dislike a category of (fiction/music/movies/television/food/whatever) will often find that they enjoy one or two examples of that genre of (whatever) while still not finding the overall genre especially interesting.
Gee, Ray, no wonder you’re so tense - you never have any fun. Some of us read fiction for entertainment, not to further any political agenda. We can enjoy flights of fancy without having to believe “it’s all true” on some level. I promise you I never, ever believed “Leave It To Beaver” was for real or that the Cleavers were a better family than mine. I resent being lumped in to your vision of hand-wringing, over-emotional, mouth-breathing fiction readers.
However, I have to agree with you that nursery rhymes don’t touch on some sort of Jungian pool of human experience. I think they are remembered and passed on because of several structural traits. First, they use repetitive elements - 3 bears, 3 little pigs, 3 blind mice and multiple boys named “Jack”. They use bits of poetry like “Fe Fi Fo Fum” or “Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin,” making the words easier to remember and repeat. And you’re told them when you’re young, when your little unlined brain is soaking up stuff left and right. You grow up, have children of your own and surprise! you still remember the stories you heard as a kid and tell them to your own progeny. Once a group of stories like this gets written down, it spreads even further - you no longer need to rely solely on your slowly disintegrating memory. You can learn the fairy stories of some cultural group other than your own - and pass them on.
<< I think they are remembered and passed on because of several structural traits. >>
Of course. No one argues that there is only one rational behind the traditions. Certainly the poetry, the repetitiveness, the silliness, the miraculousness, all play a part – as does the fact that a parent tells them to the children. (My father used to tell me about his adventures when he was in the Army during WWII and fought on Mars. Not sure how old I was when I understood that he was making it up, but I enjoyed those stories immensely as a small child.)
Shakespeare has a line like, “To be or not to be,” which is famous worldwide. Yes, it has a repetition to it, yes it has a poetry to it. But it also strikes at a very common human experience, at the core of the human soul, existence vs nonexistence. That line is only meaningful to certain ages, of course; a small child would find it incomprehensible, outside his/her range of experience.
Why do you deny that a fairy tale like Jack and the Beanstalk can’t have a similar response, that strikes at the soul of the listeners? Notice that some fairy tales are consistently beloved by certain age ranges; three little pigs is usually much younger children, Jack comes later, Cinderella later still. Kids get almost obsessed with these stories, and you can’t tell me that’s ONLY the simple repetitiveness or literary format.
Well, give me a f’rinstance of this near obsession. Does the child obsess over the story alone? If he or she is obsessing over Cinderella, will any version do or is it one particular version that captures his or her imagination? Grimm’s version of Little Cinders is a lot different than Disney’s.
So you’re saying 'tis only human to be suicidal. And I’m defective, since I haven’t considered committing suicide. Well, I would add that I believe those who involve themselves with fiction and fantasy tend to rub closer to suicide, but on the average, not close do the writers of such. Gee, do you think I could become more humanly suicidal if I read all that stuff? I think Shakespeare is particularly ridiculous, and people run around repeating word formations that only he ever used, thinking they are English.
I simply deny it because, having no soul, I’ve never experienced such a strike, and whether or not others have souls, I’ve never detected evidence of this from the behavior of others. Since it is you, CKDH, who has postulated it, it should be your obligation to substantiate it, not just emote your support of it. What evidence do you put forth that Magellan sailed around the world because his parents read Jack and Beanstalk to him at the age of 3? Exactly how would you go about getting such evidence anyhow?
To Kat, I’ll back off on most people don’t read fiction, as it applies to females, but hold to it otherwise. Those who hold the positiveposition, that most people do, should be the ones to first present data. It is the positive that is supposed to be proven, not the negative.
And I get called “tense” for making a rational analysis of the negative affects of fantasy, to which none here makes substantive comment, while CKDF just keeps saying, “Ya gotta believe it; ya gotta believe it.”
Look at it objectively: Both 1) nursery rhymes and fairy stories and 2) all those works of adult fiction and fantasy are simply viruses. They infect a society and are rapidly spread throughout a goodly part of it – because of their reality-mimicking structures, not their functional value to the society. ‘1)’ are quite harmless, while ‘2)’ are insidiously destructive in many subtle ways in many cases, though not all. The parent companies of McAffee and Norton should get out some antisociotics for them as soon as possible.
Even if kids, in general, did get obsessed with them at the time, this certainly wouldn’t prove that their later feats in life had anything to do with the stories. But I disagree than anywhere near a substantial number of kids get “obsessed” with stories. What is it you hear preteen kids talk about mostly? Not the fantasy they read about (and insofar as that, it is all about contemporary pop stuff), but the everyday real-world stuff they’re involved in or is going on that relates to their milieu. According to the media, most grade school kids get only as literary as Pokemon at present, and even there their interests are mainly trading Pokemon cards with other kids, all the same as non-legible items, such as marbles might be traded. Your only basis for all you say is your own addiction to such stuff and to the Force you feel is with you. And somebody in there put in some connection with Jungian psychobabble. You guys are nothing but self-arranged avatars. None of you claimed story-centered entities seems to wish to admit his/her productive occupation.
Uh, no. Experiments are designed to test the null hypothesis. If the assertion is, “Most people do not read fiction,” that is (or should be) a proveable assertion. The fact that you have no cite besides your opinion speaks volumes. That’s a real pussy way to say, “Well, it’s simply true because I say it is.” You know, that thing you’re chiding everyone else for?
You also seem to be under the misimpression that people who read fiction believe that it is real, another dipshit assertion that you can’t prove.
No, he’s saying it’s human to contemplate the questions, “Why do I exist? And what would it be like if I didn’t?” This question has been examined by the religious and nonreligious alike.
I am the most areligious and unsuperstitious person around, but even I recognize that one can be inspired to do things by the words of others, fictional or otherwise.
More unproven assertions . . . you excel at those. The theory of natural selection alone would seem to have eliminated those members of the species who prefer false reality to reality if your idea was true. What surivival value would there be in avoiding reality in favor of “realty-mimicking structures”? None.
Oh, admit it. You’re just a boring person and are quite envious of those who are able to enjoy themselves.
I work at a media relations newswire. What does that have to do with it?
If the above are all that are in your life, certainly it is you who live in a box. Occasionally I read some of the above. . .in self defense. Gotta know what the enemy is up to, right?