Monday, June 27, 2011

The Power of Myth and Multiculturalism

The power of story can still overwhelm. It can move us to tears, makes us bark in laughter, or enlighten us to the plight of others. However, there is another aspect, that of pedagogy. I think it is an error to relegate myth to an ancient or pre-modern setting. As I hope to prove in this paper, Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey is still very much alive, and by not acknowledging this, modern man has created a troubling situation for himself. One only needs to look at the myths scientists have created of mankind’s journey from barbarian ape to civilized “monkey in a suit” to see how the monomyth is used today. In this paper, I would like to prove that the American dream also falls into this category. There seems to be an ongoing thread throughout multi-cultural media on what exactly this ‘Dream’ entails. Do we have to leave behind the ones we care for? Do we have to enter a new world of experiences to grow? Can we ever return? The coming of age story, the growth of consciousness, is what gives these movies and written works power. And it is timeless. The hero must go on a quest after a boon or vision to bring back to his community and revive it. Campbell describes how the hero must “leave the world that [he’s] in and go into a depth or into a distance or up to a height. There, [the hero] come[s] to what was missing in [his] consciousness in the world [he] formerly inhabited. Then comes the problem either of staying with that, and letting the world drop off, or returning with that boon and trying to hold on to it as [he] move[s] back into [his] social world again" (The Power of Myth 158). We see this same quest time after time. In Sherman Alexie’s Smoke Signals, Victor must travel to find his father’s body and save figuratively himself, and similarly in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Arnold ventures off the ‘rez’ to enlighten himself and learn. Milkman, in Toni Morrison’s The Song of Solomon, must also journey forth and discover his past, and so does Esperanza in Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street and Ashima in The Namesake. The hero must leave the community, venture forth to find a way to revive it like the Celtic fisher king, and return, offering the boons they have received. If only it were that simple in these texts. The tension, it seems, does not primarily have to with the outer life in many of these stories, but the inner. The venturer grows guilty of leaving those he loves behind, he begins to miss the things he perceived which made him ‘him’, and must learn to “walk in two worlds”. And that is where the American Dream comes in: in today’s world, there is no recognition of this quest. We don’t know the importance of the journey, of holding on to those we love, of the power of initiation, or of the biblical phrase, “let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth” (Matthew 6:3). The world is a mystery to us because modern man does not realize the unhealthiness of his dreams: the desire for fame and money. There are no longer in any myths to frame our worldview in our material, postmodern, post-structural universe. What is the American Dream and how do the books we have read and the films we have watched showcase this?

Societal myth may be dead, but stories are not. One only needs to look at the box office receipts or the New York Times best seller list to see this. Humans will always need narrative to describe their lives; they will always need stories to place themselves in the world. The only way we can see things is in relation to everything else—and that is what myth gives us, a way of examining the outer and inner world. The difference today is that we do not acknowledge that stories offer us ways to live “a good life”. We go towards them for entertainment, critical analysis of plot or character, or to see what the tale has to say about our perception of reality. Examining multicultural texts, however, more mythic themes emerge. In Smoke Signals, Victor is the hero. His mother makes him promise that he will return when he goes on his adventure to find his dead father and bring home the truck. The theme of leaving and coming back is resonant through many multicultural texts. If Victor had not come home, he would have been failing in his own quest. This film can be quite overt in its themes. If it had been a white male in the lead role, this would have been another coming-of-age Hollywood film, but it's not. We can see Victor, accompanied by his ‘Shaman’, Thomas, traveling from his home, his rez, out of the state, and into the greater world. There are dangers here, and when he finally gets to where his father lived and died, it’s almost as if he is travelling into hell like Orpheus and trying to bring his dad out again. All healthy boys should go through this initiation of becoming a man. He must learn to stand on his own two feet and not depend on others. He must learn his past and overcome it—a more masculine theme, also presented in The Song of Solomon. These are experiences everyone can relate to, and it’s one of the reasons why the authors chose tales such as these—they are timeless and speak to the universal experience of man. They also give us a map to live by. A young man reading Alexie’s Diary almost has a guide to his own life. The guilt associated with leaving those behind, a feeling Charging Elk also has when he thinks of his parents in Heartsong by James Welch, is necessary to become a man. Girls become women because they have to (an initiation right for a young girl is shown in the documentary When Your Hands Are Tied when she gets her first period), boys have to learn how to leave their mothers and walk in “two worlds”. The quests portrayed in many of the texts were masculine in nature—they were the quests for self-actualization. However, this is probably appropriate in a post-gender world.

It is important to define exactly what I believe the American dream is. I will be brief and concise as possible. Essentially, the dream comes down to this: we must leave our families and try to find ourselves out there amongst the greater society. In doing this, the one leaving hopes to better himself in the grasp for fame, respect, and fortune, and the ones left behind hope the leaver will return and bring back something. However, what makes these goals unhealthy stem from the fact that we don’t realize what we are doing. Hollywood has broadcasted the triumphant hero, but no one seems to realize that these stories are performing a myth making in the vacuum. In almost all of these blockbusters, the hero becomes famous, overcomes the great villain, and returns a stronger or better person. In the modern world, we lack initiation; we lack elders’ stories telling us how to live a good life. We have forgotten that being a mother is a heroic act, that providing for a family is glamorous and an honor. Instead, we aspire to be celebrities, because we lack healthy roles. These stories give us roles. They show us that Pilate is a hero in her own right, and so is Macon, Milkman’s father. That Ashima is an amazing person just by raising her family and returning to India. That Jin in American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang becomes something better by accepting who he is. Acceptance. In this society, we are told unconsciously to never accept who we are, to reach for something more, even if it’s an impossible goal. Everyone wants to be a celebrity; everyone wants a 1,000 friends on Facebook, or 10,000 upvotes on reddit. These desires destroy us. They hollow us out. By reading multicultural lit, there is a chance of rediscovering what is important to our lives.

In the books and films we have been exploring, the theme has been “walking in two worlds”, a phrase which I have been using a lot because I think it is the most important idea of the class. The characters have had an awful time dealing with letting go. In The House on Mango Street, the major conflict for Esperanza at the end is not forgetting where she came from, and the importance of going back. This is almost an origin story. Yes, Esperanza loses her innocence in more than one way, but this seems to be before her great adventure of setting out on her own. Again, it’s a masculine quest—the quest of living on your own, of being respected, of gaining riches. It’s the American dream again. The metaphorical fates tell her, “When you leave you must remember to come back for the others. A circle, understand? You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can’t erase what you know. You can’t forget who you are” (Mango 105). Esperanza deals with this guilt, and most assuredly, it echoes in Sherman Alexie’s children’s novel.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a story of a native boy also living in more than one community. Arnold, like Esperanza, has the ability to leave the slums in which he grew up, but he also shares the guilt of deserting the ones he loves. This guilt is symbolized with the character of Rowdy, “the toughest kid on the rez”. The final pages of the book show Rowdy and Arnold playing a game of basketball. Arnold thinks, “I hoped and prayed that they would someday forgive me for leaving them. I hoped and prayed that I would someday forgive myself for leaving them” (Alexie 230). Rowdy tells the skinny kid to stop blubbering. (It’s almost as if Sherman directed this line at himself.) Arnold realizes he does have to leave if he wants a better life. Arnold was born with water on the brain. Water is always flowing, always moving to a new location. “I always knew you were going to leave. I always knew you were going to leave us behind and travel the world” Rowdy tells Arnold (Alexie 229). I think Alexie, like in When Your Hands Are Tied, condones this nomadic American dream, but at the same time reminds us not to forget where we came from. It’s never easy curtailing to the greater culture. And this book should almost be read as a guide to doing it. You have to get out of your safe environment to grow as a person. You have to experience new things and places. You have to use this societal monkey on your back in healthy ways, don’t go down dead end paths, learn to be greater than the circumstances you think would allow. Strive for more, that is the American dream right there. Arnold, again, is learning not to forget, not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Yes, he will experience the American dream, but he must not forget where he came from because it will be the only thing which will enrich him later. That is also essentially what Milkman is learning in The Song of Solomon. He is learning that he must accept the sins of his fathers and mothers, of his people to progress. The life he was living before was vapid, but now he is filling it. He cannot continue unless his consciousness grows, and at the end, it does, but he is too late. Guitar is already there. Perhaps Milkman forgave his family, but he didn’t forgive his friend. The one person who brought him through, who introduced him to aunt in the first place, is the one who kills her. Milkman’s community is dying, and perhaps this is a critique of his indifference.

The American dream is one of progression. A man or woman starts out low and then rises upward, towards a goal, be it success, riches, or power. In modern America, there is so much pressure put on kids to be something—to get an amazing job, to be the head of the company, to be a venture capitalist, an entrepreneur, to be famous like Brad Pitt or Denzel Washington. It is this system which causes kids like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold to shoot up a school, for young Muslim men to ram planes into buildings (they feel left behind), and for Timothy Treadwell to get eaten by bears in Alaska. It also leads to people rejecting society, who can’t stand the pressure. I think of Chris McCandless as portrayed in “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer or the hikikomori sufferers in Japan. Some people would rather commit suicide then live. People forget to enjoy life because they are distracted by the bait-and-switch. That is why atheism is growing so quickly—it reflects people’s world view. In the end, they realize all this work was in Ecclesiastical vanity. The Buddha would say to be happy, you must free yourself of this desire for things, to be something more than you are. This is impossible. You realize the desire to be free of desires is itself a desire. Your will breaks down. You start to see the universe as it really is. Cisneros’ definition of culture would be the place where you came from. It would be that street in Chicago where you grew up, where you were initiated into the ways of the world. It would be the place you lost your innocence, and the people you lost your innocence with. In the end, culture is people. They propagate it, they continue it. When Esperanza stares back at her past, she remembers this family she left behind. She had to if she wanted to go on her “journey”. She dreams she could take them along with her. But it’s impossible. Her friends, her family, her neighbors, they continue living in the ghetto, while she moves on without them. The American dream is one of regret, loss, and suffering. It is repeated again and again in our cinemas: Spiderman, Superman Returns, The Lord of the Rings, Thor. They all begin with a hero who is demoralized in some way. They all try to fight and beat their way to some great victory over a villain. They all lose friends along the way. But in the end, when it’s all over and they can rest, the movie finishes. We never see the Tennyson’s “Ulysses”, Shakespeare's “King Lear”, or even Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. Just “The End”, and the credits role.

The American dream can lead to great things but it can also destroy. It forces us to leave our comfort zone and embark on missions of glory. It requires us to better ourselves, to make more of ourselves, if we ever want to be respected by the rest of society. There are many good things about this system. It leads to astonishing growth in the sciences, in money, and in material needs in general. What it doesn’t leave room for is family, spirituality, or, generally, the arts. These are things you do in your free time, lesser non-economical tokens of our lives. These novels and films try to remind us that we also need to nourish the other half—the right half of our brains. We have focused so hard on the outer appearances that we forget to enrich ourselves. The material world is just a game, but the inner world is eternal; rightly so, the American dream can give us riches and fame, but it can’t give us happiness, we have to accomplish that through other means. Everyone is always leaving, striving for something, demanding more, and this is only made worse by easy money and our debt based society. To forget where you came from is to forget who you are. In The Namesake, Gogol does, but returns to his culture after he begins to feel it trickle through his fingers upon the death of his father. You should not forget the past. You should not leave the ones you love behind. Modernism robbed the world of mystery and made us into pleasure monkeys. The return of spirituality is important in this context. We need to feel important, respected, and wanted, but the only ones in our culture who seem to receive that are the rich and the famous. We need to bring back honor in motherhood, fatherhood, in the crone, and the elder man. We need to not get rid of our system but expand it. As I see it, we are dying a slow, painful death by materialistic rationality, and it hurts. People don’t know where to turn to. The multicultural texts we explored seem to point the finger towards where we grew, the people who we love, find solace there. I agree. It is part of an ever-expanding mode of thought, which I hope returns. The government continues to make infringements on the family unit. It is a death by a thousand cuts. Bring back the community. Bring back the group of friends who want to spend the rest of their lives together. Bring it back in a healthy way, not with gangs or the mafia. We lack a sense of place, of being. If our collective myths and stories could revive that, then we should. Like Epicurus said, do what makes you happy. And what makes most people happy are relationships and connections to others. The nation state essentially killed the town and is slowly killing the city. If we must dissolve the state, then we must. We must do what makes us happy.

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