Hello everyone, and welcome back! It’s #FandomFriday at the Wandering Mythologist this week. In this occasional feature, I plan to examine the ways that certain popular stories are developing communities and meaning-making, and sometimes even beginning to bloom into full-blown modern mythologies. In last week’s #MythMonday post, I talked about how the success of that framework has denatured the old traditional mythic systems but left some large gaps in the fulfillment of human mythic needs.
Some of the traditional frameworks, particularly the ones which have released any claim on physical truth and embraced their metaphorical condition, are still managing to to partially fill those gaps for their adherents. But in today’s world there are a large number of people for whom those frameworks are proving dysfunctional or even psychologically and sociologically damaging. These people still have mythic needs, however, and one way or another those needs must be met.
If we think back to the centrality of lore to a mythology, it shouldn’t be too surprising that the beloved stories of today’s popular culture phenomena are beginning to help fill those needs, through the sense of identification and community that rises up around them with the development of a fandom. The interesting thing about popular culture fandoms is that they are able to capture the imaginations of people vastly removed from the original geographic, ethnic, or cultural origins of the stories at their base. Think of the K-pop or anime invasions in the Anglophone sphere, the statue of Rocky Balboa in Žitište, Serbia, or the huge success of the Witcher franchise, bring Slavic myth to the wider world through books, some incredibly popular computer games, and an original series on Netflix.
Because these stories started out quite consciously as stories, and have never made any claims on ultimate or physical truth, the psychological identification and even religious expression that they engender in their fans are not so easily denatured by the scientific framework. “What Would Jesus Do” eventually has to overcome in the mind of a believer the impossibility of the still-claimed truths of a virgin birth or bodily Assumption. But, as demonstrated by researchers in 2016, “What Would Batman Do” is actually quite a useful question. The five-year-old children in that study who demonstrated such an improvement in executive function had not been told their whole lives that Batman was a physical incarnation or that Gotham City is a real place in the physical world. For them (and us) Batman has always been a story, a metaphor — but the mythic guidance of the Dark Knight is still powerful enough to have a scientifically measurable influence on behavior.
Scholars in the fan studies realm have long examined how fans find religious and psychological meaning in the shared lore of their fandoms, which in our context here illustrates how they are beginning to at least partially serve to support Campbell’s first two (religious) and fourth (psychological) functions of myth. From people answering ‘Jedi’ to the religious question on a census form to the conscious psychological identification reflected in the popularity of cosplay at conventions, the lore of popular fandoms is beginning to have significant impact on people’s lives beyond what could be expected of mere entertainment.
The mythification of popular culture is even more visible in the support of Campbell’s third (sociological) function. Sport and media fandoms in particular have often been intertwined with changes in beliefs about the right and ethical way for humans to see themselves in relationship to other humans; think of Star Trek’s famous interracial kiss, or Joss Whedon’s endless stream of badass female protagonists, or Caitlyn Jenner’s high-profile gender transition. All of these were controversial in their time, but the powerful mythic guidance that arises from them has inexorably become more and more accepted in the ethical landscape of today, even for people who are not necessarily fans. The positive revisionism of ethnic, gender, queer, and even increasingly ecocritical scholars has always tapped into the ways that the mythic guidance provided by fan objects is so often at the forefront of value shifts in society.
I believe this is exactly what Joseph Campbell means when he says myths enforce a moral order, or shape an individual to the requirements of society. If lore that has religious and psychological elements does this effectively, in my mind it is a living myth.
Joss Whedon is commonly asked why he writes so many strong women characters. He once gave several answers in a speech, but his last is the one that sticks in my mind: “Because you’re still asking me that question.” That is a man who understand how fandom works, and that is an answer which fully understands the power of myth.
So, that should be <ahem, more than> enough to introduce my concept of fandoms as mythologies. Next time, we will leave off the long-haired theory and start digging into specific examples of living myths, looking at several of the nearly innumerable stories, both ancient and modern, which are working hard to provide ethical guidance and meet the mythic needs of people today.