Myth
reconciled with science by the reconfiguration of myth, not by any reconfiguration of science. Only at the end of the century, with the emergence of postmodernism, has the deference to science been questioned.
In so far as twentieth-century theories have not challenged the supremacy of science, why bother trying to reconcile myth with science? Why not simply accept the nineteenth-century view and dispense with myth in favour of science? The twentieth-century answer has been that the restriction of myth to either a literal explanation (Tylor) or a symbolic description (Frazer) of physical events fails to account for the array of other functions and meanings that myth harbours. The tell-tale evidence of these other functions and meanings is that myth is still around. If Tylor and Frazer were right, myth would by now be long dead.
D. W. Winnicott
In the twenty-first century the question is whether myth can be brought back to the external world – without facilely dismissing the authority of science. As a way of doing so, I propose applying to myth the analysis of play by the English child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott (1896–1971).
For Winnicott, play is acknowledged as other than reality: children grant that they are just playing. Play grants itself the right to treat a spoon as a train, and a parent is barred from asking whether
the spoon really is a train. But once play is over, the train is again a mere spoon. Still, play is more than fantasy or escapism. It is the construction of a reality with personal meaning. It takes something from the everyday world – a spoon – and transforms it into something more – a train.
As adult extensions of play, Winnicott, in stereotypically English fashion, names gardening and cooking, in both of which one creates a world with personal meaning out of elements from the external
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world. Winnicott also names art and religion, in both of which one constructs a world with a far deeper meaning:
It is assumed here that the task of reality-acceptance is never completed, that no human being is free from the strain of relating inner and outer reality, and that relief from this strain is provided by an intermediate area of experience which is not challenged (arts, religion, etc.). This intermediate area is in direct continuity with the play area of the small child who is ‘lost’ in play.
(Winnicott, ‘Transitional Objects and Transitional
Phenomena’, p. 13)
In Winnicott’s terms, play is a ‘transitional’ activity. It provides a transition from childhood to adulthood, from the inner world of fantasy to outer reality, and from the known outer world to the unknown one. Just as a child clings to a physical object – a teddy bear – to create a safe world that then enables the child to explore with confidence the outside world, so an adult clings to
an internalized object – a hobby, an interest, a value, or, I suggest, a myth – that then enables the adult to deal with a much wider world. Just as the child knows that the teddy bear is not Mummy yet clings to it as if it were, so the adult recognizes that the myth is not reality yet adheres to it as if it were. Myth is ‘make-believe’.
Doubtless not all myths are treated as make-believe. Some myths can likely be taken only as unassailable truths – for example, myths about the impending end of the world. Other myths can surely be taken either way – for example, the belief in progress, ideologies, and world views like Marxism. Taken as make-believe, these kinds of myths serve as guides to the world rather than as depictions of the world.
The ‘rags to riches’ myth would fall here – if, that is, a mere credo dare qualify as a myth. The credo can certainly be held as a dogma, as ironically it is held at least as effusively around the world as
in America itself, and can lead to frustration and recrimination
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Myth
when it does not pan out. But the myth can also be held as ‘make-believe’ – not as a false characterization of American life but as a hoped-for one. Here America is seen as if it were a haven of opportunity. The present-day epitome of this myth is Anthony Robbins, salesman par excellence for success. His myth is a
story – his story of his own rise from loser to winner. What, according to Robbins, keeps others from succeeding? Not trying.
Admittedly, Robbins’ myth is still about the social world and not about the physical one. Better, then, are the biographies of those credited with divine-like powers – namely, celebrities. It is they who lead campaigns not merely to eradicate poverty, racism, and other social ills but also to end pollution, curb global warming, and save species. They can get things done that whole nations, even the United Nations, have failed to achieve.
The most elevated of celebrities are Hollywood stars. Like the popular conception of god found in Homer and even the Hebrew Bible, Hollywood stars are rarely seen in person and, when beheld on the screen, are gargantuan in size, can do anything, take on disguises, and are immortalized in their films. They have qualities so hyped as to be superhuman: not mere bravery but fearlessness, not mere kindliness but saintliness, not mere strength but omnipotence, not mere wisdom but omniscience.
A sceptic might protest that where gods are gods in private as well as in public, film stars are stars only on screen and are mere mortals off screen. But surely most fans make no distinction. The on-screen qualities are expected to be the off-screen ones as well. In fact, film stars are assumed to be playing themselves on screen, simply ‘acting’ as they themselves would in the situations in which they are placed. Fans are dismayed to learn that in ‘real life’ their favourite actors fall short of their roles – literally so in the case of the not very tall Mel Gibson. Robert Mitchum had to caution his fans not to expect military strategy from him. Greta Garbo had to become a recluse to preserve her youthful image. Gay Hollywood actors
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dare not come out, lest they no longer be cast in straight roles. Tom Cruise is professionally obliged to sue anyone who calls him gay.
It might be said that where gods are born, film stars are made. And it is well known how capricious becoming a film star can be. But surely most fans believe that film stars are born, not made. When Lana Turner was spotted innocently drinking a milkshake at Schwab’s drug store on Hollywood Boulevard, she was discovered, not invented.
It might be said that film stars cannot, like gods, do as they please. But surely most fans assume that stars are immune to the laws to which the rest of us are bound. Thus it shocks fans for their favourites to be subjected to arrest for drug taking (Robert Downey, Jr), shoplifting (Winona Ryder), or even paedophilia (Michael Jackson).
It is a cliché that contemporary film stars are drawn from a far wider array of types and that they are as much antiheroes as heroes. But the biggest box office draws, male and female alike, still look the part on screen, and it is looks, not acting ability, that put
them there.
The terms used of fans’ admiration say it all: stars are ‘idolized’ and ‘worshipped’. And the greatest are called ‘gods’. As ‘stars’, they shine brightly in a heaven far above us. Fans are ‘star struck’.
Against my argument that film stars are modern gods, it might sensibly be argued that these days nobody believes the hype. No one believes that Hollywood stars are really different from you and me. They may have a bigger disposable income, but they face the same obstacles and tribulations as the rest of us. What sells better than an ‘unauthorized’ biography of a star – a biography that brings a star down to earth? If nothing else, the revelation of the disparity, put mildly, between the on-screen Rock Hudson, the quintessential heterosexual hunk, and the off-screen Rock Hudson, withering
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away from AIDS, surely drove home the difference between on-screen persona and off-screen reality.
But this hard-nosed view of present-day fans is the naive one. Fans continue to ‘idolize’ and ‘worship’ stars, not in ignorance of their flaws but in defiance of them. The flaws are either denied or discounted. It is not that fans don’t know. It is that they don’t want to know, or else don’t care. But their devotion is not mindless. It is done knowingly. It is, following Winnicott, make-believe,
not credulity. It requires the refusal to let contrary evidence get in the way.
Cinema-going abets the deification of film stars. The cinema blocks out the outside world and substitutes a world of its own. The more effective the film, the more the audience forget where they are and imagine themselves in the time and place on the screen. Things are permitted in films that never happen in the proverbial ‘real world’. In films, as in heaven, anything is possible. The phrase ‘only in the movies’ is telling. To go to the cinema is to suspend disbelief. It
is to agree to ‘play along’. The ultimate payoff of cinema-going is encountering the actors themselves, even if only on the screen. Going to the cinema is like going to church – to a set-off, self-contained place where God is likeliest to be found. Cinema-going combines myth with ritual and brings gods, hence myths, back to the world – and does so without spurning science.
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