Mark Is Stunningly Brilliant Except When It Comes to Classical Mythology

[Note: Ken neglected to provide a title for his first post, so I made one up. — Mark]

Classical mythology is, perhaps, far more ingrained in Western society than my co-blogger Mark may realize. From a scientific perspective it would appear that the only contribution is to naming conventions for some astronomical objects and some of our technology. From a literary and anthropological perspective, however, I don’t think you should underestimate the impact. It is from this perspective that, I believe, a high school English teacher would be motivated.

Actually, I remember that part of freshman English. I received a crappy grade on homework writing about Greek mythology in a modern setting. At the time I didn’t understand the poor grade, but much later realized that it was because, apparently, I took the idea too “frivolously.” (I wrote a mock weather forecast using some of the myths as inspiration and included hand-drawn satellite weather maps.)

Notwithstanding that experience, as I studied anthropology and literature I began realize the huge impact that classical mythology exerted on Western culture. The stories really are repeated over and over in all sorts of books, television shows and movies. The Hercules and Xena shows were heavily based upon such mythology for example, sometimes using plot lines almost verbatim and are obviously more than influenced by the classical myths. Other times the stories are there, but hidden better in a modern retelling such as with The Godfather, Jaws, or Star Trek.

From an anthropological perspective the influence is even greater. Pauline Christianity (what 99% of the world just calls “Christianity”) is based in large part on Greek and Roman mythology since the disciple Paul was using it in a (very successful) effort to convert the Roman world from polytheism to monotheism. He took the Jewish messianism movement and merged it with Roman beliefs to found his version of Christianity which is a fundamental, pervasive part of Western culture.

Classical mythology is not history in the same sense as the writings of Josephus are; they are not a record of specific historical figures and events. They are, however, an influential part of our cultural history which still exerts a great deal of cultural influence to this day. I would even say it could be called a religion even if it isn’t very actively practiced anymore. (The Hellenic Polytheistic Reconstructionism movement has, apparently, been enjoying a bit of a surge recently, so it could even be termed a current religion.)

I’ll take Mark’s word as Gospel that the new Clash of the Titans movie sucks and will studiously avoid it. I’m not sure it’s fair to blame it on the original stories themselves, though. Nor would it be wise to hope that those stories never be used again in modern culture. After all, I often enjoyed Xena: Warrior Princess. And not just because of the outfits worn by the protagonists.