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I've just made the requisite number of copies of the test I'll be giving my students in less than two hours, and there's no urgent correspondence awaiting me, so I can either stare out my office window for the next 90 minutes (the view just now is spectacular, with the skyscrapers of downtown glowing sort of pink in the light of the setting sun), or I can catch up on some of the OTHER stuff I've been meaning to post about lately. No contest, really, since I can look at the pink buildings all I want while I'm typing.
First, I'm sure everybody else is already aware of this, but I've just recently stumbled onto the blog of Ronald D. Moore (formerly of DS9 and now the guiding light of BSG for the Sci-Fi channel), whose most recent entry, posted on Feb. 4, is devoted entirely to reflecting as a Star Trek fan on the "bright side" of no new professional Trek productions for the first time since the late 1970's. I never realized how similar his experience was to my own, with both of us able to remember with some fondness the days when the fans alone were responsible for expanding and perpetuating the Trek universe. For the one or two other people (besides myself) who hadn't yet read it, Ron's blog is at http://blog.scifi.com/battlestar/
On a related note, I finished taking notes (well over 20 pages worth, typed up) on The Myth of the American Superhero, by John Shelton Lawrence and Robert Jewett (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI: 2002) on Tuesday the 8th (yet another project that was keeping me up late at night). The authors devote several chapters to the problems (as they see it) of the Star Trek mythological franchise. Many of their arguments in earlier chapters were quite convincing and alarming, but I did have to question the applicability of their criticisms in the case of my favorite of the later Treks, Deep Space Nine. It seemed to me that DS9, as well as BtVS and AtS (and yes, even X:WP!), provide notable exceptions to the monomythic pattern identified by Lawrence and Jewett.
To begin with, the authors won my full attention by linking their analysis of the American monomyth to our nation’s response to Sept. 11, 2001:
pp. 15-16 [writing in late 2001] -- “Some of our mythic certainties about the special and favored place of America in the world came to expression with the surprise attacks of September 11 . . . . The official interpretation of these tragic losses has carried an American mythic stamp from the very first moments. Divorcing the events from any connection with U.S. policies, President George W. Bush stated that ‘America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.’ . . . While the simplicity of myth and the prospect of vengeance offer special comforts in a time of mass murder, the notion of destroying evil on a worldwide basis may draw us toward spiraling conflicts that we can never hope to control.”
pp. 16-17 -- “In our current situation, we believe that examining the American monomyth -- the endlessly repeated story of innocent communities besieged by evil outsiders -- can help us gain a better perspective on the dangers we face. We invite readers to join in our venture of studying the national mythos. It was never more timely to project our fantasies onto a mirror that renders them with less distortion.”
p. 26 -- “The action of the American monomyth always begins with a threat arising against Eden’s calm. . . . In Star Trek’s original series, challenges arise from interplanetary baddies such as Romulans, Klingons, or aggressive gods. In Star Trek’s Next Generation and Voyager series, the disturbances of harmony originate with forces such as the Borg or Q. In the blockbuster success, Jaws, Amity Island’s tranquility is shattered by the marauding supershark. Spiderman and Superman contend against criminals and spies just as the Lone Ranger puts down threats by greedy frontier gangs. Thus paradise is depicted as repeatedly under siege, its citizens pressed down by alien forces too powerful for democratic institutions to quell. When evil is ascendant, Eden becomes a wilderness in which only a superhero can redeem the captives.”
p. 29 -- “The redemption of paradise by lone crusaders would have been unnecessary in American mythology if actual experience with democracy had matched the Edenic expectation. Most of the materials we describe in this book share . . . [the] pessimistic premise that democratic institutions cannot lift the siege. Citizens are merely members of a spectator democracy in which they passively witness their redemption by a superhero. This presumption is dramatized on a world scale in the recent blockbuster film Independence Day (1996).”
p. 30 --“In this situation the President of the United States abandons his constitutional role as Commander in Chief, assuming the role of a superheroic pilot who personally flies sorties against the alien mothership. In response to a super threat against Eden, the normal agencies of a democratic government become invisible.”
“Like so many other features of the monomyth, this theme of the defenseless ‘city set upon a hill’ seems to have been decisively shaped by cowboy Westerns in the last third of the nineteenth century. At that time the expected Eden of the West was suffering repeated setbacks.” [economic disorders, political corruption, disillusionment of reformers]
“. . . the Westerns offered an immediate mythic solution. Posed against the failures of democratic institutions, the dime novels and Wild West shows offered unofficial redeemer figures on powerful horses, impartial outsiders whose zeal for the right and sympathy for the underdog would triumph over evil.” [Does anyone else hear the theme song from ”Blazing Saddles” in their heads as they read this?]
p. 36 -- “With 1929 we enter what we choose to call the axial decade for the formation of the American monomyth. Here the unknown redeemer on a horse becomes the ‘Masked Rider of the Plains’; his sexual renunciation is complete; he assumes the uniform and the powers of angelic avengers; and thus he grows from mere heroism to superheroism.
“The development of the sexually renunciatory superhero, the most distinctive feature of the monomyth, accelerates to its climax soon after the 1929 release of the sound-film version of Gary cooper’s The Virginian. With the technomythic advance of sound film, the embodiment of the monomythic heroism became even more compelling. The shock of the Depression and the rise of unprecedented foreign threats to democratic societies provided the background for the creative advance. In this same year the comic-book version of Tarzan appeared. . . . ‘This was a little after the start of the great depression: big corporations were crashing and misery was widespread. . . . Tarzan finds himself again - like the American people - without weapons to fight off all the perils.’ But Tarzan, like the many heroes who were to follow him, was more than merely human. The first of the major pulp-novel crime fighters, The Shadow, also appeared in 1929. With the alter ego of Kent Allard the aviator, this mysterious figure performed super feats against the enemies of civilization in some 325 complete novels written over the next two decades. Buck Rogers was also created in 1929, and with ascetic supercop Dick Tracy appeared in 1931. The widely popular pulp imitators of The Shadow, such as Doc Savage, The Phantom, and The Spider, appeared in 1933. Probably the most systematic presentation of a superman appeared in Philip Wylie’s novel Gladiator, written in 1930, which depicts the prodigy son of scientist parents who proves invulnerable to machine-gun bullets. It was this figure who provided the model for Siegel and Shuster’s Superman. The two teenagers developed their comic superhero as a way to counter ‘the hopelessness and fear in the country’ in 1933, but they did not market Superman successfully until 1938.”
pp. 36-37 -- “A decisive factor in the axial decade was the emergence of serialization in the new and more powerful technomythic media. Comic books and radio programs required a heroic format with traditional appeals of adventure and redemption but without marital resolution at the end. Sexual renunciation had to become permanent because, if the hero rode off with his bride into the golden sunset as did the Virginian, it would entail creating a new redeemer figure for the next episode. Once involved in family and business complexities, a hero would have to pass the redemptive torch to the next candidate. The new media offset this problem by allowing a presentation of heroic action more spectacular than any made credible before. Heroes could fly across the frames of comic strips with impunity, or thunder on their mounts at incredible speeds across the sound-effects stages of radio programs. . . . Miraculous redemption thus came to replace the blissful union of married partners as a fitting expression of Eden’s restoration.” [The birth of the “Bonanaza Syndrome”?]
p. 42 -- [Superman’s boundless leaps turn into the power of pure flight with the first motion picture cartoons:] “The transcending of human capabilities had reached its apex. When combined with the appealing structure of Superman’s plebeian alter ego, Clark Kent, a beguiling fantasy world took form. The redemptive god with superhuman strength was disguised as Everyman, thus breaking out of the bounds of democratic ordinariness. For the first time in modern, secularized America, superhuman powers became widely distributed in fantasy.”
p. 43 [with Superman, as with the Lone Ranger, the “sexual segmentation” (Clark can’t be with Lois as long as he’s Superman) is permanent] -- “The other superheroes of the period were presented with similar strategies of segmenting the element of sexual need out of their personalities. The classic Batman has a permanent relationship with his male counterpart, Robin, but he never forms an abiding relationship with a woman. . . . Torch, Sub-Mariner, Green Lantern, and Spiderman rescue girls but never marry them. The list of single saviors goes on at length: Wonder Woman, Lady Blackhawk, Mary Worth, Rex Morgan, and Marcus Welby. And judging from the fatalities that befall the fiancees of Ben, Joe, and Hoss Cartwright . . . , merely planning to marry a fictional redeemer may be the riskiest job in America.”
p. 44 [origins of Captain Marvel, with Billy Batson receiving limitless power from an ancient figure who looks suspiciously like the ‘Ancient of Days’ in old Sunday School literature] -- “The connection of these superhero materials with the American religious heritage illustrates the displacement of the story of redemption. [emphasis mine] Only in a culture preoccupied for centuries with the question of salvation is the appearance of redemption through superheroes comprehensible. The secularization process in this instance did not eliminate the need for redemption, as the Enlightenment had attempted to do, but rather displaces it with superhuman agencies. Powers that the culture had earlier reserved for God and his angelic beings are transferred to an Everyman, conveniently shielded by an alter ego. Even the most explicit references to the mythology of the ancient world are conditioned by this new superhero paradigm.”
[describes the TV series Isis which began in 1975 - which I remember as the Shazam/Isis Adventure Hour on Saturday mornings.]
p. 46 -- “The superheroes thus provide a secular fulfillment of the religious promises . . . They cut Gordian knots, lift the siege of evil, and restore the Edenic state of perfect faith and perfect peace. It is a millennial, religious expectation -- at least in origin -- yet it is fulfilled by secular agents. The premise of democratic equality is visible in that superhuman powers have to be projected onto ordinary citizens, yet their transformation into superheroes renders them incapable of democratic citizenship. Moreoever, total power must be pictured as totally benign, transmuting lawless vigilantism into a perfect embodiment of law enforcement. That such fantasies suddenly became credible in the popular culture is the abiding legacy of the axial decade. Although they had not yet appeared in the minds of their creators, the parameters for Kirk and Spock, Dirty Harry, Rambo, and the Steven Seagal characters were already defined. They were ready to play out their roles of redeeming the American Dream, along with their nonviolent cohorts from Heidi and Mary Poppins to Lassie and Flipper. . . . Henceforth, materials for mass audiences would have to undergo a kind of mythic alchemy to fit the new monomythic consciousness. A story paradigm as potent as Hercules or Odysseus had been born, spawning its off-spring in a popular culture that would soon encircle the world. It would not be long before the American monomyth became a subculture of Planet Earth, massaging especially the consciousness of youth and adults, evoking a wide array of imitative behaviors.”
pp. 47-48 -- “In these conventions the monomyth betrays an aim to deny the tragic complexities of human life. It forgets that every gain entails a loss, that extraordinary benefits exact requisite costs, and that injury is usually proportionate to the amount of violence employed. The bold figures of Superman and Flash and the dramatic hoofbeats of the great horse Silver may seem to lack ambiguity; but the paradoxes of the monomyth abound. The American monomyth offers vigilantism without lawlessness, sexual repression without resultant perversion, and moral infallibility without the use of intellect. It features a restoration of Eden for others, but refuses to allow the dutiful hero to participate in its pleasures.”
p. 71 [citing the non-violent “Heidi”-model of domestic redeemer]-- “This image of the ideal woman as an angelic redeemer figure communicating divine love to a fallen world became a crucial tenet for Victorian literature in the wake of Dickens. These angelic girls give us an image of selfless love devoid of sexuality, combined with a perfect conformity to the post-Puritan virtues of cooperativeness, cheerfulness, and submissiveness. Redemption here takes the form of adjustment to circumstances rather than the annihilation of incorrigibles. The suffering servant replaces the horseman with the avenging weapon. Except for the seemingly instinctive need of these Victorian heroines to submit to male authority, they betray no sense of female sexual identity.”
p. 74 -- “This redemptive paradigm [of Heidi] matches the monomythic outline at every point. The unselfish redeemer, lacking in any sexual consciousness, achieves marvelous solutions through which she restores Edenic happiness, and everyone lives happily ever after. This mythical plot varies from the masculine heroic patterns only in the means of redemption, which are psychologically and religiously manipulative rather than violent. Whereas the men achieve sexual segmentation through renunciation, superheroines like Heidi simply remain in a prepubescent state forever.”
pp. 82-83 [citing Ruth Shalit’s New Republic article from 1998 on Touched by an Angel] --: “‘Evil, misfortune, even death: in this upbeat cosmos, all may be avoided or reversed. Tragedy is nothing but a plot device. Pain is real only so that it may be repealed.’ All it takes is a smiling team of angels, a momentary flash of glowing hair, and some well-chosen words about acceptance, love, and accepting responsibility. The God of these stories is a narcissistic projection completely lacking in the transcendence confronted by virtuous Job. In place of human maturation gained through self-understanding, exertion, and suffering, instead of robust freedom and responsibility, these stories promise that super agencies will solve our problems and make us happy. This is truly a religious opiate, more potent and more illusory than the targets aimed at by Marx and Freud.”
p. 83 -- “The most serious question to be raised by these schemes of domestic redemption concerns their efficacy in helping mere mortals cope with reality. What is their likely impact on persons facing the irremediable conditions of disability, accident, natural catastrophe, financial loss, human evil, and death? What message do these stories offer to the poor, the defeated, the frustrated, and the disappointed?
“Materials such as Heidi, the Little House on the Prairie [TV] series, and the Touched by an Angel series imply that if superheroes were present, they would solve a vast array of problems quickly and painlessly. But since there are no such figures outside of popdom, there really seems to be little that can be done. Passivity in the face of adverse circumstances becomes linked with a tranquilizing nostalgia for Eden. The message is that all good people—and even a few vicious ones—deserve happy endings, no matter what their limitations; however, since such happiness is not available in real life for most people, the natural conclusion is that something must have gone dreadfully wrong. A selective, nostalgia-drenched presentation of the past thus erodes the ability to live in the present and awakens the yearning for total solutions offered by the modern propagandists of redemption.
“The impact of the domestic redemption scheme on communal and familial leaders may be equally problematic. Those who identify with the redeemer figures and seek to emulate their feats in real life will find that targets of redemption are not as easy to change as one might expect. Nor is adversity easy to alter.”
pp. 83-84 -- “But since an illusion of perfect selflessness is essential to the redemptive scheme, the mythic alchemy denies one’s personal motivations in order to mask manipulative campaigns. The myth teaches those seeking to emulate superheroes not to place their cards on the table, not to admit their own emotional needs, and hence always to assume the attitude of the injured servant when thwarted. When the stance of the innocent savior proves futile, explosions of indignation are imminent. . . . Massaged by the myth to believe that they require no growth or adjustment to adversity, would-be superheroes and -heroines have a disconcerting tendency to withdraw from sustained encounters with reality.”
pp. 84-85 -- “[R]esources of tragic realism are required to cope with contemporary adversity. That they can be embodied even in popular materials suited for children is shown by the [Laura Ingalls] Wilder novels. There can be no facile assignment of tragedy to high culture and melodrama to popular culture. . . . Such materials may provide the vision needed to live with domestic struggles as well as circumstances inflamed in part by our own flawed efforts to redeem. They reveal that life can be deeply satisfying without monomythic Glad Games, happy endings, and bountiful rewards bestowed by virtuous Heidis. Rejecting this strand of mythology should reduce the patriarchal expectation that women need to be angelic servants of men, accepting the abuse that such roles entail. These myths are a self-destructive hindrance to maturation for both men and women. While loving angelic miracles carry less collateral damage than do violent heroics, they advance the ethos of democracy no more than does the brute force of the Virginian or Buffalo Bill. By abandoning the hope for problem solvers with super powers, we may develop the courage to accept our communal responsibility for those structures of family, economy, politics, or religion that are essential for the maintenance of a humane world.”
pp. 224-226 -- “A major source of Star Trek’s appeal, we shall argue here, is rooted in its fidelity to the American monomythic archetype of plot, character, and communities in peril. Star Trek has given its selfless heroes an intergalactic scope of responsibility, benignly joining science with redemptive tasks.
“The duty to act as wise and virtuous saviors is the role that spans all the television series and the films. And although Star Trek has considerable popularity in our militantly anti-socialistic democracy, its political values amount to a form of ‘military socialism’ that we see operating in the family-oriented teams who guide the voyages. The inner circle of leaders on a starship and their living arrangements bear a clear resemblance to the philosophical ‘Guardian’ class of Plato’s Republic, a group deprived of private property and individual family relationships: thus freed from material temptations and the demanding distractions of an ordinary family life, the liberated Guardians were to rule society according to the principles of science.”
p. 228 -- “From its very beginnings, Star Trek provocatively dramatized ideas about time, personal identity, emotion and reason, androids and their inner life, interspecies relationships, future technology, and alternative political forms. . . . For those who lacked such philosophical or scientific interests, but were concerned about the intractable conflicts in American life and the Cold War, the program swept several centuries forward, leapfrogging beyond the fears of nuclear or racial Armageddons, and showed a multicultural spectrum of ‘survivors,’ confident and happy in their life work together. The accounts of those who have been inspired by Star Trek have been legion since the mid-1970s. Fans of the program, including its creator, Gene Roddenberry, believe that the program had abandoned a destructive mythic past in order to affirm a far healthier vision of the future.
“While we concede Star Trek’s unsurpassed creativity as a serialized program, the camaraderie and quality of its ensemble acting, and its frequently convincing displays of technology, we believe that its imagined ascent into the future is weighed down by its conformity to the conventions of the American monomyth.”
pp. 231-232 -- “The moral vision of Star Trek in its original incarnation thus partook of Pax Americana’s spirit and rhetoric. Its basic moral principle is zeal for the mission. . . . But when we measure this moral quality against standards forbidding deceit, adultery, and violence, we are struck by the lack of restraint. What we have here is moral zeal attached solely to the mission and to a particular vision of what amounts to ‘the American Way.’ It is a zeal transcending both due process and the moral code of the Federation’s own ‘noninterference directive,’ which Kirk has sworn on pain of death to uphold. This directive is consistently broken in Star Trek episodes when it is ‘necessary’ to do so for the fulfillment of the mission. It was thus an effective format for reinstating in the realm of fantasy some of the American values that floundered in the 1960s against ugly obstacles in Vietnam. Dedication to the ideals would alone suffice, in fantasy if not in reality: zeal for one’s own value system justifies the intervention in someone else’s.”
p. 233 -- “Despite the quality and sophistication of much that was done in the original Star Trek and its successors, there is much that appears to be a reworking of traditional American ideology. However, as one might expect with creations of this sophistication, there is a hitch in linking any notion of myth with the original Star Trek series.”
p. 236 -- “When we compare the themes of the Star Trek series with the content of classical myths, we immediately see similarities. . . . The first is saga, which features a protagonist journeying to unknown and dangerous regions and undergoing trials to test his strength and wit. . . . But in materials embodying the American monomyth, the saga of maturation [in Joseph Campbell’s interpretation of the classical monomyth, as journey from childhood to maturity] tends to be replaced by the defending of innocent communities against malevolent attacks.
“Gene Roddenberry’s original prospectus for Star Trek, featuring the format of ‘Wagon Train to the Stars,’ aims at saga.”
p. 237 [second mythic pattern is sexual renunciation:] – “The protagonists in some mythical sagas must renounce previous sexual ties for the sake of their trials. They must avoid entanglements and temptations that inevitably arise from satyrs, sirens, or Loreleis in the course of their travels.”
“Yet the ‘ultimate adventure’ [quoting Campbell] is the mystical marriage...of the triumphant hero-soul with the Queen Goddess of knowledge. In the current American embodiments of mythic renunciation there is a curious rejection of sexual union as a primary value.
“In Star Trek each hero is locked into a renunciatory pattern closely related to the mission. On long expeditions in outer space, for example, there is no intrinsic reason why the captain would not be accompanied by his wife and family. . . . But that would violate the mythic paradigm.” [goes on to quote Roddenberry about Kirk being married to his ship and his command responsibilities]
p. 239 -- “This renunciation of sexual love for the sake of loyalty to one’s comrades goes far beyond the classical monomyth. It is seen perhaps most clearly in the person of Spock.”
pp. 240-241 [Noting that Kirk, Picard, and Janeway are married to their ships, and even Sisko is a widower of several years’ standing when we meet him -- but they say nothing of Sisko’s romance and final marriage in last three seasons of DS9] -- “All of these triumphs of renunciatory duty over sexuality in Star Trek reflect Gene Roddenberry’s philosophical views about the possibilities of intimacy. . . . Extending an essentially platonic notion of ‘true love’ to the Star Trek-type settings, Roddenberry argues against marriage. . . . Thus the lonely duty of being married to the ship, in Star Trek’s ethos, is not a deprivation but a perfection. The duties of the bridge permit deeply satisfying friendships, unimpeded by the attractions and distractions of human desire and human bodies. As Batman might say, ‘Holy saintliness!’”
[personal note: see the Deep Space Nine Companion on rationale behind finally getting Odo and Kira together in a sexual relationship—they’d already decided that Odo would end the series as goo in the Great Link, and they wanted to make sure that he had to give up something precious to him (a satisfying sexual relationship with Kira) in order to do that. Does this actually support their argument in regard to DS9?]
pp. 241-242 -- “This skepticism about marriage as a possessiveness that works against military friendship is allied to the frequent sense that family authority must be rejected to permit Federation duty, that this duty is a higher calling than mere family can understand. When family members come into the vicinity of heroic crew members, they are disruptive and embarrassing.”
“In this distancing from the threats that families pose to the spiritual perfection of the Federation military command, Star Trek stands with the Buddha, who abandoned his family in search of enlightenment; it also stands with the spirit of Jesus’ response to Peter . . . [in Mark 10:29-30]. Those who leave behind their earthly attachments for the life of Star Trek will harvest the heavenly friendships that transcend the ordinary intimacies of sexual commitment and family.”
p. 242-- “The third mythical pattern running through the episodes of Star Trek is redemption. In the classical monomyth, the beautiful maiden must be redeemed from the clutches of the sea monster, the endangered city spared from its peril, and the protagonist redeemed by fateful interventions in the nick of time. This pattern is much more diffuse in the classical monomyth than in the modern materials that lie closer to the American pattern. A classical hero may experience supernatural assistance as he crosses the threshold into the realm of initiatory adventure and then returns; and he may confront trials embodying the redemption of others. But his own redemption takes the form of gaining mature wisdom, achieving atonement with his father, enjoying union with the goddess, and returning home with benefits for his people. The redemption scheme in materials such as Star Trek has nothing to do with the maturation process; rather, it fits the pattern of selfless crusading to redeem others.”
[See aid from the Prophets in DS9 as exception to this pattern? Supernatural assistance even in Sisko’s birth? Plus, deliberate character arcs, showing personal growth and maturation in all major characters over the seven seasons of the series. Model definitely doesn't hold up in that respect.]
p. 243-- “Mr Spock embodies the redemptive role in a particularly powerful way. His half-Vulcan origin makes him a godlike figure, peculiarly capable of effecting benevolent transformations.”
“In short, Spock is perceived as a god, which matches the requirements of the mythical pattern, namely that without a superhuman agency of some sort, there is no true redemption.”
p. 244-- “A final mythic feature to note in Star Trek is its utopianism. The escapist appeal to its fans is the presumption that in the distant past Earth somehow abandoned poverty, racism, and war.” [see “Past Tense” parts 1 and 2 in DS9. Possible that ‘Enterprise’ suffered because it seemed too close to the present? In the latest series, we’re still in the process of doing the hard work required to lay the foundations for ‘paradise’?]
p. 245-- “But in the end, what disappoints us about Star Trek, as a supremely successful series of mythic tales for a democratic nation, is that its vision of perfection seems limited to men, women, and assorted aliens under military command. They move rootlessly through the galaxies, as married to their starships as the Lone Ranger is to the great horse Silver—and most of them as subordinate as Tonto. They show no signs of civic responsibility or leadership as that would be normally understood in a democracy with rooted citizens. Star Trek’s world is, of course, somewhat closer to democracy in spirit than the stories of hereditary rule and restoration that we get in other manifestations of the myth such as The Lion King or Star Wars. Yet, despite the years of programming opportunities to create mythic texts that somehow embody the fullest range of democratic aspirations, there is something important missing here.”
I'm out of time and must run to class, but I'll have more to say about the authors and about the exceptions to this pattern offered by the above-mentioned shows later tonight.
First, I'm sure everybody else is already aware of this, but I've just recently stumbled onto the blog of Ronald D. Moore (formerly of DS9 and now the guiding light of BSG for the Sci-Fi channel), whose most recent entry, posted on Feb. 4, is devoted entirely to reflecting as a Star Trek fan on the "bright side" of no new professional Trek productions for the first time since the late 1970's. I never realized how similar his experience was to my own, with both of us able to remember with some fondness the days when the fans alone were responsible for expanding and perpetuating the Trek universe. For the one or two other people (besides myself) who hadn't yet read it, Ron's blog is at http://blog.scifi.com/battlestar/
On a related note, I finished taking notes (well over 20 pages worth, typed up) on The Myth of the American Superhero, by John Shelton Lawrence and Robert Jewett (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI: 2002) on Tuesday the 8th (yet another project that was keeping me up late at night). The authors devote several chapters to the problems (as they see it) of the Star Trek mythological franchise. Many of their arguments in earlier chapters were quite convincing and alarming, but I did have to question the applicability of their criticisms in the case of my favorite of the later Treks, Deep Space Nine. It seemed to me that DS9, as well as BtVS and AtS (and yes, even X:WP!), provide notable exceptions to the monomythic pattern identified by Lawrence and Jewett.
To begin with, the authors won my full attention by linking their analysis of the American monomyth to our nation’s response to Sept. 11, 2001:
pp. 15-16 [writing in late 2001] -- “Some of our mythic certainties about the special and favored place of America in the world came to expression with the surprise attacks of September 11 . . . . The official interpretation of these tragic losses has carried an American mythic stamp from the very first moments. Divorcing the events from any connection with U.S. policies, President George W. Bush stated that ‘America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.’ . . . While the simplicity of myth and the prospect of vengeance offer special comforts in a time of mass murder, the notion of destroying evil on a worldwide basis may draw us toward spiraling conflicts that we can never hope to control.”
pp. 16-17 -- “In our current situation, we believe that examining the American monomyth -- the endlessly repeated story of innocent communities besieged by evil outsiders -- can help us gain a better perspective on the dangers we face. We invite readers to join in our venture of studying the national mythos. It was never more timely to project our fantasies onto a mirror that renders them with less distortion.”
p. 26 -- “The action of the American monomyth always begins with a threat arising against Eden’s calm. . . . In Star Trek’s original series, challenges arise from interplanetary baddies such as Romulans, Klingons, or aggressive gods. In Star Trek’s Next Generation and Voyager series, the disturbances of harmony originate with forces such as the Borg or Q. In the blockbuster success, Jaws, Amity Island’s tranquility is shattered by the marauding supershark. Spiderman and Superman contend against criminals and spies just as the Lone Ranger puts down threats by greedy frontier gangs. Thus paradise is depicted as repeatedly under siege, its citizens pressed down by alien forces too powerful for democratic institutions to quell. When evil is ascendant, Eden becomes a wilderness in which only a superhero can redeem the captives.”
p. 29 -- “The redemption of paradise by lone crusaders would have been unnecessary in American mythology if actual experience with democracy had matched the Edenic expectation. Most of the materials we describe in this book share . . . [the] pessimistic premise that democratic institutions cannot lift the siege. Citizens are merely members of a spectator democracy in which they passively witness their redemption by a superhero. This presumption is dramatized on a world scale in the recent blockbuster film Independence Day (1996).”
p. 30 --“In this situation the President of the United States abandons his constitutional role as Commander in Chief, assuming the role of a superheroic pilot who personally flies sorties against the alien mothership. In response to a super threat against Eden, the normal agencies of a democratic government become invisible.”
“Like so many other features of the monomyth, this theme of the defenseless ‘city set upon a hill’ seems to have been decisively shaped by cowboy Westerns in the last third of the nineteenth century. At that time the expected Eden of the West was suffering repeated setbacks.” [economic disorders, political corruption, disillusionment of reformers]
“. . . the Westerns offered an immediate mythic solution. Posed against the failures of democratic institutions, the dime novels and Wild West shows offered unofficial redeemer figures on powerful horses, impartial outsiders whose zeal for the right and sympathy for the underdog would triumph over evil.” [Does anyone else hear the theme song from ”Blazing Saddles” in their heads as they read this?]
p. 36 -- “With 1929 we enter what we choose to call the axial decade for the formation of the American monomyth. Here the unknown redeemer on a horse becomes the ‘Masked Rider of the Plains’; his sexual renunciation is complete; he assumes the uniform and the powers of angelic avengers; and thus he grows from mere heroism to superheroism.
“The development of the sexually renunciatory superhero, the most distinctive feature of the monomyth, accelerates to its climax soon after the 1929 release of the sound-film version of Gary cooper’s The Virginian. With the technomythic advance of sound film, the embodiment of the monomythic heroism became even more compelling. The shock of the Depression and the rise of unprecedented foreign threats to democratic societies provided the background for the creative advance. In this same year the comic-book version of Tarzan appeared. . . . ‘This was a little after the start of the great depression: big corporations were crashing and misery was widespread. . . . Tarzan finds himself again - like the American people - without weapons to fight off all the perils.’ But Tarzan, like the many heroes who were to follow him, was more than merely human. The first of the major pulp-novel crime fighters, The Shadow, also appeared in 1929. With the alter ego of Kent Allard the aviator, this mysterious figure performed super feats against the enemies of civilization in some 325 complete novels written over the next two decades. Buck Rogers was also created in 1929, and with ascetic supercop Dick Tracy appeared in 1931. The widely popular pulp imitators of The Shadow, such as Doc Savage, The Phantom, and The Spider, appeared in 1933. Probably the most systematic presentation of a superman appeared in Philip Wylie’s novel Gladiator, written in 1930, which depicts the prodigy son of scientist parents who proves invulnerable to machine-gun bullets. It was this figure who provided the model for Siegel and Shuster’s Superman. The two teenagers developed their comic superhero as a way to counter ‘the hopelessness and fear in the country’ in 1933, but they did not market Superman successfully until 1938.”
pp. 36-37 -- “A decisive factor in the axial decade was the emergence of serialization in the new and more powerful technomythic media. Comic books and radio programs required a heroic format with traditional appeals of adventure and redemption but without marital resolution at the end. Sexual renunciation had to become permanent because, if the hero rode off with his bride into the golden sunset as did the Virginian, it would entail creating a new redeemer figure for the next episode. Once involved in family and business complexities, a hero would have to pass the redemptive torch to the next candidate. The new media offset this problem by allowing a presentation of heroic action more spectacular than any made credible before. Heroes could fly across the frames of comic strips with impunity, or thunder on their mounts at incredible speeds across the sound-effects stages of radio programs. . . . Miraculous redemption thus came to replace the blissful union of married partners as a fitting expression of Eden’s restoration.” [The birth of the “Bonanaza Syndrome”?]
p. 42 -- [Superman’s boundless leaps turn into the power of pure flight with the first motion picture cartoons:] “The transcending of human capabilities had reached its apex. When combined with the appealing structure of Superman’s plebeian alter ego, Clark Kent, a beguiling fantasy world took form. The redemptive god with superhuman strength was disguised as Everyman, thus breaking out of the bounds of democratic ordinariness. For the first time in modern, secularized America, superhuman powers became widely distributed in fantasy.”
p. 43 [with Superman, as with the Lone Ranger, the “sexual segmentation” (Clark can’t be with Lois as long as he’s Superman) is permanent] -- “The other superheroes of the period were presented with similar strategies of segmenting the element of sexual need out of their personalities. The classic Batman has a permanent relationship with his male counterpart, Robin, but he never forms an abiding relationship with a woman. . . . Torch, Sub-Mariner, Green Lantern, and Spiderman rescue girls but never marry them. The list of single saviors goes on at length: Wonder Woman, Lady Blackhawk, Mary Worth, Rex Morgan, and Marcus Welby. And judging from the fatalities that befall the fiancees of Ben, Joe, and Hoss Cartwright . . . , merely planning to marry a fictional redeemer may be the riskiest job in America.”
p. 44 [origins of Captain Marvel, with Billy Batson receiving limitless power from an ancient figure who looks suspiciously like the ‘Ancient of Days’ in old Sunday School literature] -- “The connection of these superhero materials with the American religious heritage illustrates the displacement of the story of redemption. [emphasis mine] Only in a culture preoccupied for centuries with the question of salvation is the appearance of redemption through superheroes comprehensible. The secularization process in this instance did not eliminate the need for redemption, as the Enlightenment had attempted to do, but rather displaces it with superhuman agencies. Powers that the culture had earlier reserved for God and his angelic beings are transferred to an Everyman, conveniently shielded by an alter ego. Even the most explicit references to the mythology of the ancient world are conditioned by this new superhero paradigm.”
[describes the TV series Isis which began in 1975 - which I remember as the Shazam/Isis Adventure Hour on Saturday mornings.]
p. 46 -- “The superheroes thus provide a secular fulfillment of the religious promises . . . They cut Gordian knots, lift the siege of evil, and restore the Edenic state of perfect faith and perfect peace. It is a millennial, religious expectation -- at least in origin -- yet it is fulfilled by secular agents. The premise of democratic equality is visible in that superhuman powers have to be projected onto ordinary citizens, yet their transformation into superheroes renders them incapable of democratic citizenship. Moreoever, total power must be pictured as totally benign, transmuting lawless vigilantism into a perfect embodiment of law enforcement. That such fantasies suddenly became credible in the popular culture is the abiding legacy of the axial decade. Although they had not yet appeared in the minds of their creators, the parameters for Kirk and Spock, Dirty Harry, Rambo, and the Steven Seagal characters were already defined. They were ready to play out their roles of redeeming the American Dream, along with their nonviolent cohorts from Heidi and Mary Poppins to Lassie and Flipper. . . . Henceforth, materials for mass audiences would have to undergo a kind of mythic alchemy to fit the new monomythic consciousness. A story paradigm as potent as Hercules or Odysseus had been born, spawning its off-spring in a popular culture that would soon encircle the world. It would not be long before the American monomyth became a subculture of Planet Earth, massaging especially the consciousness of youth and adults, evoking a wide array of imitative behaviors.”
pp. 47-48 -- “In these conventions the monomyth betrays an aim to deny the tragic complexities of human life. It forgets that every gain entails a loss, that extraordinary benefits exact requisite costs, and that injury is usually proportionate to the amount of violence employed. The bold figures of Superman and Flash and the dramatic hoofbeats of the great horse Silver may seem to lack ambiguity; but the paradoxes of the monomyth abound. The American monomyth offers vigilantism without lawlessness, sexual repression without resultant perversion, and moral infallibility without the use of intellect. It features a restoration of Eden for others, but refuses to allow the dutiful hero to participate in its pleasures.”
p. 71 [citing the non-violent “Heidi”-model of domestic redeemer]-- “This image of the ideal woman as an angelic redeemer figure communicating divine love to a fallen world became a crucial tenet for Victorian literature in the wake of Dickens. These angelic girls give us an image of selfless love devoid of sexuality, combined with a perfect conformity to the post-Puritan virtues of cooperativeness, cheerfulness, and submissiveness. Redemption here takes the form of adjustment to circumstances rather than the annihilation of incorrigibles. The suffering servant replaces the horseman with the avenging weapon. Except for the seemingly instinctive need of these Victorian heroines to submit to male authority, they betray no sense of female sexual identity.”
p. 74 -- “This redemptive paradigm [of Heidi] matches the monomythic outline at every point. The unselfish redeemer, lacking in any sexual consciousness, achieves marvelous solutions through which she restores Edenic happiness, and everyone lives happily ever after. This mythical plot varies from the masculine heroic patterns only in the means of redemption, which are psychologically and religiously manipulative rather than violent. Whereas the men achieve sexual segmentation through renunciation, superheroines like Heidi simply remain in a prepubescent state forever.”
pp. 82-83 [citing Ruth Shalit’s New Republic article from 1998 on Touched by an Angel] --: “‘Evil, misfortune, even death: in this upbeat cosmos, all may be avoided or reversed. Tragedy is nothing but a plot device. Pain is real only so that it may be repealed.’ All it takes is a smiling team of angels, a momentary flash of glowing hair, and some well-chosen words about acceptance, love, and accepting responsibility. The God of these stories is a narcissistic projection completely lacking in the transcendence confronted by virtuous Job. In place of human maturation gained through self-understanding, exertion, and suffering, instead of robust freedom and responsibility, these stories promise that super agencies will solve our problems and make us happy. This is truly a religious opiate, more potent and more illusory than the targets aimed at by Marx and Freud.”
p. 83 -- “The most serious question to be raised by these schemes of domestic redemption concerns their efficacy in helping mere mortals cope with reality. What is their likely impact on persons facing the irremediable conditions of disability, accident, natural catastrophe, financial loss, human evil, and death? What message do these stories offer to the poor, the defeated, the frustrated, and the disappointed?
“Materials such as Heidi, the Little House on the Prairie [TV] series, and the Touched by an Angel series imply that if superheroes were present, they would solve a vast array of problems quickly and painlessly. But since there are no such figures outside of popdom, there really seems to be little that can be done. Passivity in the face of adverse circumstances becomes linked with a tranquilizing nostalgia for Eden. The message is that all good people—and even a few vicious ones—deserve happy endings, no matter what their limitations; however, since such happiness is not available in real life for most people, the natural conclusion is that something must have gone dreadfully wrong. A selective, nostalgia-drenched presentation of the past thus erodes the ability to live in the present and awakens the yearning for total solutions offered by the modern propagandists of redemption.
“The impact of the domestic redemption scheme on communal and familial leaders may be equally problematic. Those who identify with the redeemer figures and seek to emulate their feats in real life will find that targets of redemption are not as easy to change as one might expect. Nor is adversity easy to alter.”
pp. 83-84 -- “But since an illusion of perfect selflessness is essential to the redemptive scheme, the mythic alchemy denies one’s personal motivations in order to mask manipulative campaigns. The myth teaches those seeking to emulate superheroes not to place their cards on the table, not to admit their own emotional needs, and hence always to assume the attitude of the injured servant when thwarted. When the stance of the innocent savior proves futile, explosions of indignation are imminent. . . . Massaged by the myth to believe that they require no growth or adjustment to adversity, would-be superheroes and -heroines have a disconcerting tendency to withdraw from sustained encounters with reality.”
pp. 84-85 -- “[R]esources of tragic realism are required to cope with contemporary adversity. That they can be embodied even in popular materials suited for children is shown by the [Laura Ingalls] Wilder novels. There can be no facile assignment of tragedy to high culture and melodrama to popular culture. . . . Such materials may provide the vision needed to live with domestic struggles as well as circumstances inflamed in part by our own flawed efforts to redeem. They reveal that life can be deeply satisfying without monomythic Glad Games, happy endings, and bountiful rewards bestowed by virtuous Heidis. Rejecting this strand of mythology should reduce the patriarchal expectation that women need to be angelic servants of men, accepting the abuse that such roles entail. These myths are a self-destructive hindrance to maturation for both men and women. While loving angelic miracles carry less collateral damage than do violent heroics, they advance the ethos of democracy no more than does the brute force of the Virginian or Buffalo Bill. By abandoning the hope for problem solvers with super powers, we may develop the courage to accept our communal responsibility for those structures of family, economy, politics, or religion that are essential for the maintenance of a humane world.”
pp. 224-226 -- “A major source of Star Trek’s appeal, we shall argue here, is rooted in its fidelity to the American monomythic archetype of plot, character, and communities in peril. Star Trek has given its selfless heroes an intergalactic scope of responsibility, benignly joining science with redemptive tasks.
“The duty to act as wise and virtuous saviors is the role that spans all the television series and the films. And although Star Trek has considerable popularity in our militantly anti-socialistic democracy, its political values amount to a form of ‘military socialism’ that we see operating in the family-oriented teams who guide the voyages. The inner circle of leaders on a starship and their living arrangements bear a clear resemblance to the philosophical ‘Guardian’ class of Plato’s Republic, a group deprived of private property and individual family relationships: thus freed from material temptations and the demanding distractions of an ordinary family life, the liberated Guardians were to rule society according to the principles of science.”
p. 228 -- “From its very beginnings, Star Trek provocatively dramatized ideas about time, personal identity, emotion and reason, androids and their inner life, interspecies relationships, future technology, and alternative political forms. . . . For those who lacked such philosophical or scientific interests, but were concerned about the intractable conflicts in American life and the Cold War, the program swept several centuries forward, leapfrogging beyond the fears of nuclear or racial Armageddons, and showed a multicultural spectrum of ‘survivors,’ confident and happy in their life work together. The accounts of those who have been inspired by Star Trek have been legion since the mid-1970s. Fans of the program, including its creator, Gene Roddenberry, believe that the program had abandoned a destructive mythic past in order to affirm a far healthier vision of the future.
“While we concede Star Trek’s unsurpassed creativity as a serialized program, the camaraderie and quality of its ensemble acting, and its frequently convincing displays of technology, we believe that its imagined ascent into the future is weighed down by its conformity to the conventions of the American monomyth.”
pp. 231-232 -- “The moral vision of Star Trek in its original incarnation thus partook of Pax Americana’s spirit and rhetoric. Its basic moral principle is zeal for the mission. . . . But when we measure this moral quality against standards forbidding deceit, adultery, and violence, we are struck by the lack of restraint. What we have here is moral zeal attached solely to the mission and to a particular vision of what amounts to ‘the American Way.’ It is a zeal transcending both due process and the moral code of the Federation’s own ‘noninterference directive,’ which Kirk has sworn on pain of death to uphold. This directive is consistently broken in Star Trek episodes when it is ‘necessary’ to do so for the fulfillment of the mission. It was thus an effective format for reinstating in the realm of fantasy some of the American values that floundered in the 1960s against ugly obstacles in Vietnam. Dedication to the ideals would alone suffice, in fantasy if not in reality: zeal for one’s own value system justifies the intervention in someone else’s.”
p. 233 -- “Despite the quality and sophistication of much that was done in the original Star Trek and its successors, there is much that appears to be a reworking of traditional American ideology. However, as one might expect with creations of this sophistication, there is a hitch in linking any notion of myth with the original Star Trek series.”
p. 236 -- “When we compare the themes of the Star Trek series with the content of classical myths, we immediately see similarities. . . . The first is saga, which features a protagonist journeying to unknown and dangerous regions and undergoing trials to test his strength and wit. . . . But in materials embodying the American monomyth, the saga of maturation [in Joseph Campbell’s interpretation of the classical monomyth, as journey from childhood to maturity] tends to be replaced by the defending of innocent communities against malevolent attacks.
“Gene Roddenberry’s original prospectus for Star Trek, featuring the format of ‘Wagon Train to the Stars,’ aims at saga.”
p. 237 [second mythic pattern is sexual renunciation:] – “The protagonists in some mythical sagas must renounce previous sexual ties for the sake of their trials. They must avoid entanglements and temptations that inevitably arise from satyrs, sirens, or Loreleis in the course of their travels.”
“Yet the ‘ultimate adventure’ [quoting Campbell] is the mystical marriage...of the triumphant hero-soul with the Queen Goddess of knowledge. In the current American embodiments of mythic renunciation there is a curious rejection of sexual union as a primary value.
“In Star Trek each hero is locked into a renunciatory pattern closely related to the mission. On long expeditions in outer space, for example, there is no intrinsic reason why the captain would not be accompanied by his wife and family. . . . But that would violate the mythic paradigm.” [goes on to quote Roddenberry about Kirk being married to his ship and his command responsibilities]
p. 239 -- “This renunciation of sexual love for the sake of loyalty to one’s comrades goes far beyond the classical monomyth. It is seen perhaps most clearly in the person of Spock.”
pp. 240-241 [Noting that Kirk, Picard, and Janeway are married to their ships, and even Sisko is a widower of several years’ standing when we meet him -- but they say nothing of Sisko’s romance and final marriage in last three seasons of DS9] -- “All of these triumphs of renunciatory duty over sexuality in Star Trek reflect Gene Roddenberry’s philosophical views about the possibilities of intimacy. . . . Extending an essentially platonic notion of ‘true love’ to the Star Trek-type settings, Roddenberry argues against marriage. . . . Thus the lonely duty of being married to the ship, in Star Trek’s ethos, is not a deprivation but a perfection. The duties of the bridge permit deeply satisfying friendships, unimpeded by the attractions and distractions of human desire and human bodies. As Batman might say, ‘Holy saintliness!’”
[personal note: see the Deep Space Nine Companion on rationale behind finally getting Odo and Kira together in a sexual relationship—they’d already decided that Odo would end the series as goo in the Great Link, and they wanted to make sure that he had to give up something precious to him (a satisfying sexual relationship with Kira) in order to do that. Does this actually support their argument in regard to DS9?]
pp. 241-242 -- “This skepticism about marriage as a possessiveness that works against military friendship is allied to the frequent sense that family authority must be rejected to permit Federation duty, that this duty is a higher calling than mere family can understand. When family members come into the vicinity of heroic crew members, they are disruptive and embarrassing.”
“In this distancing from the threats that families pose to the spiritual perfection of the Federation military command, Star Trek stands with the Buddha, who abandoned his family in search of enlightenment; it also stands with the spirit of Jesus’ response to Peter . . . [in Mark 10:29-30]. Those who leave behind their earthly attachments for the life of Star Trek will harvest the heavenly friendships that transcend the ordinary intimacies of sexual commitment and family.”
p. 242-- “The third mythical pattern running through the episodes of Star Trek is redemption. In the classical monomyth, the beautiful maiden must be redeemed from the clutches of the sea monster, the endangered city spared from its peril, and the protagonist redeemed by fateful interventions in the nick of time. This pattern is much more diffuse in the classical monomyth than in the modern materials that lie closer to the American pattern. A classical hero may experience supernatural assistance as he crosses the threshold into the realm of initiatory adventure and then returns; and he may confront trials embodying the redemption of others. But his own redemption takes the form of gaining mature wisdom, achieving atonement with his father, enjoying union with the goddess, and returning home with benefits for his people. The redemption scheme in materials such as Star Trek has nothing to do with the maturation process; rather, it fits the pattern of selfless crusading to redeem others.”
[See aid from the Prophets in DS9 as exception to this pattern? Supernatural assistance even in Sisko’s birth? Plus, deliberate character arcs, showing personal growth and maturation in all major characters over the seven seasons of the series. Model definitely doesn't hold up in that respect.]
p. 243-- “Mr Spock embodies the redemptive role in a particularly powerful way. His half-Vulcan origin makes him a godlike figure, peculiarly capable of effecting benevolent transformations.”
“In short, Spock is perceived as a god, which matches the requirements of the mythical pattern, namely that without a superhuman agency of some sort, there is no true redemption.”
p. 244-- “A final mythic feature to note in Star Trek is its utopianism. The escapist appeal to its fans is the presumption that in the distant past Earth somehow abandoned poverty, racism, and war.” [see “Past Tense” parts 1 and 2 in DS9. Possible that ‘Enterprise’ suffered because it seemed too close to the present? In the latest series, we’re still in the process of doing the hard work required to lay the foundations for ‘paradise’?]
p. 245-- “But in the end, what disappoints us about Star Trek, as a supremely successful series of mythic tales for a democratic nation, is that its vision of perfection seems limited to men, women, and assorted aliens under military command. They move rootlessly through the galaxies, as married to their starships as the Lone Ranger is to the great horse Silver—and most of them as subordinate as Tonto. They show no signs of civic responsibility or leadership as that would be normally understood in a democracy with rooted citizens. Star Trek’s world is, of course, somewhat closer to democracy in spirit than the stories of hereditary rule and restoration that we get in other manifestations of the myth such as The Lion King or Star Wars. Yet, despite the years of programming opportunities to create mythic texts that somehow embody the fullest range of democratic aspirations, there is something important missing here.”
I'm out of time and must run to class, but I'll have more to say about the authors and about the exceptions to this pattern offered by the above-mentioned shows later tonight.
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Under that rubric, I would argue that BtVS and AtS and DS9, at the very least, qualify as 'The Good Stuff' -- no big win, and at the last it's not about 'saving the world' but rather changing the world, even if only by fighting a hopeless battle to show the Powers and Principalities of this age that human beings (super-powered and undead or not) will not go gently into that good-night.