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as Myth: The Soul-Awakening Magic of the Cinema I've grown up in love with the movies. I can recall the moments of my life that hinged around trips to the theater, that swung on whether or not I could score an extra five cents to buy one of those all-day Charms suckers that lasted through the whole feature and turned your tongue a brilliant magenta. I've spent many a Friday night at the movies, my pile of ticket stubs saved in a clear glass jar. I talk about movies, and even more, I think about them and the impact they've had on me. As for my favorite films, I watch them over and over, seeing new things each time. What is it that draws us to the movies? How does a piece of film have the power to wring tears and laughter from our depths and pull gooseflesh from our arms? Why do we spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year in support of the film industry? Why are books written, awards given, and lifetimes devoted to film? Why do we argue about the best films of all time, the outstanding performances, the greatest characters? As a rule, people are passionate about their favorite movies, and are quick to recommend and defend them, as well as to watch them over and over again. Why? Why does it matter so much? Why does film seem to touch us so deeply? If this paper could suddenly morph into film, the image would now fade to the television series, Northern Exposure (NX), set in fictional Cicely, Alaska. In episode 5.7, "Rosebud," Native American Shaman Leonard Quinhagak hopes to discover the white collective unconscious by delving into American folklore (Northern Exposure, "Rosebud"). INT: THE BRICK, Cicely's main watering hole and restaurant. Shaman LEONARD QUINHAGAK sits at the bar, nursing a beer and rifling through a pile of papers. HOLING VINCOEUR, the bar's sixty-something proprietor, walks over to say hello.
(Looking interested, LEONARD gets out a tape recorder and microphone, and turns it on.)
In the foreword to Myth and the Movies, Christopher Vogler describes the stories of the earliest humans. "From their awe and fascination with the mystery of the world's grand design they forged the first mythic stories. The myths were attempts to explain, in an indirect, poetic, metaphoric way, the purpose and place of the humans in the vast design" (Voytilla vii). According to Rosenburg, "Myths reflect human nature with its needs and desires, hopes and fears. Myths reveal the human condition. . . . [and] cultural responses to the ever-important questions: Who am I? How should I lead my life? Thus, they reveal the different ways in which human beings respond to the issues that unite them" (xiii). Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia defines myth is "A story belonging to any culture that is derived from primitive beliefs, presenting supernatural episodes to explain cosmic forces and the natural order"(715). Given their extension across numerous civilizations, myths are timeless and––considering cultural variations–– are nearly placeless as well With the tools provided by myth, people search for answers to eternal questions, such as, "Who made this world, and why? . . . How do we relate to the great forces of life and death, female and male, creation and destruction, light and darkness?" (Voytilla vii). Such stories are precisely the ones Leonard seeks in questioning Cicely's residents about the myths that may have been instrumental in directing their lives. INT: THE CHURCH, site of Cicely's town meetings and community events. LEONARD sits at a table at the front of the church, below the altar area. The table is covered with files, papers, and his tape recorder. MAGGIE O'CONNELL, a fiercely independent bush pilot, sits across the table from LEONARD. MAGGIE leans forward slightly, watching as LEONARD arranges his notes. Several other townspeople, including one WOMAN, sit behind MAGGIE in the pews. LEONARD speaks into the microphone, reading from his papers.
(Raising her eyebrows and nodding slightly, MAGGIE gives LEONARD a look of validation.)
(MAGGIE leaves. The WOMAN rushes up and plops into the chair. She doesn't even wait for LEONARD to tell her to begin. She gestures as she speaks, her eyes wide.)
(Fade to black, as LEONARD looks at the WOMAN with puzzled disbelief.) Many psychoanalysts have attempted to explain myth in terms of human behavior. Sigmund Freud views myth as the expression of unconscious wishes, fears, and drives. Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell see myth as the expression of a collective unconscious, in which a universal set of characteristics determine how persons everywhere respond to the process of living. Other interpretations include myth as the essence of religion (Mircea Eliade), the struggle for survival in the face of economic uncertainty (Paul Radin), and abstractions of a common structure (e.g., good versus evil, life versus death) (Claude Leví-Strauss). Leví-Strauss also believes that myth often uses opposing characters as a way to overcome contradictions, conflict, and struggle (Rosenberg xx-xxii). According to Rosenberg, the functions of myth are to teach, to inspire, and to share cultural knowledge or perspective (Rosenberg xvi). Myths exist to explain the nature of the universe and to instruct the community in the attitudes and behavior necessary to function successfully in that culture. In other words, myths teach people how to become civilized. Which brings us back to Leonard. While stories of maggot-infested hairdos and giant loggers aren't what he has in mind, he perseveres, certain that the mythic stories he seeks will surface. Fade to INT: Once again LEONARD sits at his table in THE CHURCH. He is alone. His papers and tape recorder are in a very neat pile set to one side and his feet are crossed on top of the table. He reads a copy of Newsweek and looks distracted. SHELLEY VINCOEUR, HOLING'S nineteen year old airhead-esque wife and THE BRICK's barmaid, enters. LEONARD doesn't change position and barely looks up.
(SHELLEY leans forward, conspiratorially. LEONARD waits, showing no expression.)
(SHELLEY sits back, looking very satisfied.)
(LEONARD looks at her stolidly as the scene fades to black.) In another part of Cicley, Ed Chigliak is having his own problems. Ed, a young Tlingit and a Shaman-in-training apprenticed to Leonard, is also a budding filmmaker with a prodigious knowledge of film and filmmaking. Town magnate Maurice Minnifield has decided to bankroll Cicely's first film festival and has put Ed in charge. Stimulated by the genius of Orson Welles, Ed has selected Orson Welles as the festival's focus, with Welles' masterpiece, Citizen Kane, at its center. INT: ED CHIGLIAK looks out the window from inside the GROCERY STORE where he works. He is watching MAGGIE O'CONNELL, who is not only the town's bush pilot but also its mail carrier. MAGGIE has just parked across the street, her pickup full of mail and packages. Grinning broadly, ED drops his broom and walks over to meet MAGGIE. EXT: A street in CICELY.
(MAGGIE and ED both nod, looking pleased.)
(MAGGIE leaves. ED stands in the street, pulling out arm lengths of film and holding them up against the sky, a beatific smile on his face.)
In watching Ed Chigliak, we see the tremendous power of the mythic presence of Orson Welles. Jung and Campbell believe that the contents of the collective unconscious are expressed as archetypes: mother, child, hero, trickster, giant, etc. The archetypes themselves are affected by the unique physical, social, and other characteristics that belong to the culture in question; yet, as archetypes, they retain a set of basic characteristics that allow their lessons to be understood in any context. For example, a hero is a hero, whether he is Oscar Schindler in Schindler's List or Odysseus of Ithaca. A warrior is a warrior, whether Sheriff Brody in Jaws or the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf. A wise figure is a wise figure, whether Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars or Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce. And a mother is a mother, whether she is Fraulein Maria in The Sound of Music or Hera, goddess of marriage and birth (Lindemans). Films teem with mythic archetypes that are easily understood and internalized, and many schools of psychotherapy, including Transactional Analysis, believe that humans try subconsciously to pattern their lives in accordance with these mythic archetypes. To Ed Chigliak, Orson Welles and his "Charles Foster Kane" character are mythic archetypes of epic proportion. For help in getting the festival on its feet, Ed contacts his friend, Orson Welles biographer and film director Peter Bogdanovich. In a classic bit of NX surrealism, no one questions the fact that twenty-one year old Ed not only knows Bogdanovich, but has conducted a multi-year fax correspondence with him. Bogdanovich arrives in Cicely to serve as keynote speaker and advisor for the film festival. EXT: The WOODS around CICELY. ED is walking with movie director PETER BOGDANOVICH, and the two are discussing the book that BOGDANOVICH wrote about Orson Welles.
(ED laughs nervously, wrings his hands, and blows air in and out of cheeks as they walk out of the scene.) A common theme of myth and legend is that of human weakness. Traditional heroic myths examine the relationship between a hero's values and his responsibility to society. But no hero is perfect, and their weaknesses and mistakes often end up being as important to the overall lesson as are their heroic qualities (Rosenberg xvii). In many cases, their greatest strengths (e.g., Odysseus' intelligence and confidence) may prove to be their greatest liabilities. We see this in Luke Skywalker's careless adolescent bravado in Star Wars, and in the fisherman Quint's mano-a-mano attempt to take on a killer shark in Jaws. INT: The LIVING ROOM of MAURICE MINNEFIELD'S home, where ED has just arrived. MAURICE, a retired astronaut, is a wealthy businessman and sees himself as the town Patriarch. ED and MAURICE stand inside the entry, talking about the soon-to-be Cicely Film Festival. Although MAURICE has funded the festival and has charged ED with putting it together, ED has made no progress on the actual arrangements, and MAURICE is obviously displeased. ED gropes through his jacket pockets, takes out a bottle of pills and tosses back a couple.
(ED sits. MAURICE paces.)
Fades to black. If we consider Ed Chigliak to be the mythic hero of NX "Rosebud," we must assume that he has both heroic potential and potentially fatal weaknesses. The conflict between Ed's responsibility to society (Maurice and the film festival) and his quest for self-realization (artistic vision) is also apparent. If the mythic protocol is followed, Ed's journey will end with transformation, and a requisite loss of innocence. Orson Welles is quoted as saying, "Even if the good old days never existed, the fact that we can conceive of such a world is, in fact, an affirmation of the human spirit. That the imagination of man is capable of creating the myth of a more open, more generous time is not a sign of our folly. Every country has…a season of innocence, a dew-bright morning of the world" (Olson). The concept of innocence, and the motifs surrounding its loss, frequently surfaces throughout mythology in themes of self-realization or coming of age. INT: THE BRICK. LEONARD sits at the bar, his left elbow on bar and his head propped in his left hand. With his right hand he holds a straw and plays absentmindedly with the ice in a glass of water. He looks extremely bored. SHELLEY comes up behind him. She seems excited.
(LEONARD holds his hand up and stops her.)
(As SHELLEY leaves, ED walks up.)
(Fades out. Time passes.) INT: THE BRICK. CHRIS STEVENS, town disk jockey, philosopher-free spirit, and resident clergy (via a divinity degree obtained by answering an ad in the back of Rolling Stone magazine), is playing pool, LEONARD walks up to CHRIS. LEONARD looks completely dejected, his shoulders down, his hands in his pockets.
(Walks away. LEONARD sits back in his chair, frowning. Time passes.) INT: Cicely's THEATER. ED sits alone in the empty theater, watching Citizen Kane. It's the scene where Kane, Leland, and Bernstein churn out their first newspaper. As ED watches, LEONARD enters the theater and stands one row behind him.
(LEONARD sits down in the row of seats behind ED and watches ED, carefully.)
Leonard's words pay homage to the soul-awakening magic of great art and cinema, locating "the white collective unconscious"—American collective myth—within our movies. Leonard's words resonate deeply and ring true, particularly as spun in the magic web of Citizen Kane and Ed's transformational journey. But beyond these fictional discoveries, is there any evidence supporting the claim that, in American culture, film serves as an effective expression of myth? Writing in the Washington Post, Ken Ringle says, "Nowhere have we enshrined the myth more deeply than in that most American of art forms, the motion picture." Vogler adds, "Humans enhanced the myths and…explored mythic dimension through dance, music, drama, and all the other arts. With movies, we found a medium ideal to represent the fantastic world of myth. Movies embraced myth, both for story lines and for a deeper influence in structure, motifs, and style. A new and powerful link in the mythic chain was forged" (Voytilla vii). Voytilla believes that the common thread through all classic films, from comedies to tragedies to adventure films, is partly or entirely based on believable myths that cross culture, religion, and nationality, and that emphasize the relationship between ancient storytelling techniques and present-day culture (vii). Psychotherapists make the assumption that there are a great many psychological mechanisms operating within a person as they watch a film, resulting in a "complex meaning making process that occurs while watching every movie from Citizen Kane to The Waterboy" (Young). The process has historical roots, dating back to ancient Greek times where drama was used intentionally to induce an emotional and instructive catharsis. Such explanations help to explain why mythic stories so effectively bridge one generation to another. In further examining the idea of movie as myth, it's helpful to consider how well the conventional themes and archetypes of myth hold up against some of the best films of all time, those from the American Film Institute "100 years … 100 Movies" list (Firstenberg). One of the best known mythic themes is the heroic journey, the particular work of spiritual philosopher Joseph Campbell. The heroic journey presents a deeply metaphoric situation in which the voyager-hero must venture far from home, usually descending into a dangerous territory that places him at risk for death (Voytilla vii). Only after great struggle and often great loss does the voyager undergo a profound personal transformation and return home. The heroic journey is a common recipe for many of our most well-loved and remembered films, for example, Lawrence of Arabia, The Wizard of Oz, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Schindler's List, Star Wars, and Platoon. Epic myths are those whose story or central struggle plays out in grand scope, set against great forces or great historical change. Gone with the Wind, The Birth of a Nation, Dr. Zhivago, and Ben-Hur are notable examples of epic films. The heroic myth involves a character who is responsible for other people, who usually occupies an elevated position in society, and whose hubris ultimately brings them crashing down from their pedestal, as in Citizen Kane, The Godfather, and Mutiny on the Bounty. Another example is the monster myth, where the central character puts him or herself in danger by attempting to conquer a dangerous creature, real or imagined. Jaws, King Kong, Snow White, and Silence of the Lambs fit into this category. And let's not forget the category of myth that teaches or instructs people regarding their role in or responsibility to family and society, as demonstrated by The Graduate, Easy Rider, It's a Wonderful Life, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, and The Grapes of Wrath. In divining the myth within the movie Vogler notes, "It takes…patience and imagination to find the [mythic metaphor] in less obvious genres, such as romance, film noir, comedy, and drama. There the trials, mentors, thresholds, and elixirs may be metaphorical, invisible, but nevertheless are a potent presence" (Voytilla x). Occasionally we're lucky enough to have a screenwriter or director tell us outright that their film was deisgned to evoke responses to mythic elements. For example, in discussing 2001: A Space Odyssey, novelist and screenwriter Arthur C. Clarke says, "We set out with the deliberate intention of creating a myth. The Odyssean parallel was clear in our minds from the very beginning, long before the title of them film was chosen…All of the mythical elements in the film—intentional and otherwise—help to explain the extraordinarily powerful responses that it has evoked from audiences and reviewers." At all times we must remember that every movie can be interpreted in a myriad of different ways, all potentially correct. "You can never come to the end of…the metaphors that can be drawn from [films]" (Voytilla xi). As Joseph Campbell says, "The hero has a thousand faces" (xi). And as Indiana Jones says in Raiders of the Lost Ark, "It's not the years honey; it's the mileage." Why do some films seem to touch us forever? We might suggest that a person's movie preferences have something to do with an innate urge they feel, a need to hear the right mythic stories to fill whatever gaps are inside of them, or to help them answer questions about their path in life, its directions, or its meaning. Whether a person feels an particular affinity for films involving family issues, war, personal struggle, horrifying monsters, etc., may have a lot to do with their own unanswered questions. For example, in discussing The Wizard of Oz, film critic Roger Ebert writes,
A graphic demonstration of the human importance of mythic stories can also be seen in the mental health profession, where film—a medium capable of symbolizing the full range of human behavior and emotion—is often used as a means of intervention and therapy (Young). Much as small children use toys to enact learning sequences repetitively until the lesson is internalized, perhaps we seek to watch and rewatch a certain genre of movies, working through the mythic lesson until we can hold it up, mirror-fashion, to see our own, strengthened reflection looking back. INT: In Cicely's THEATER, ED and LEONARD continue their previous discussion as they watch Citizen Kane.
(ED looks hard at LEONARD.)
(As the scene fades, Kane's robust, smiling face fills the screen, hanging over ED and LEONARD.) In the NX "Rosebud" episode, the viewer is gifted with a story within a story…within a story. First is the heroic journey of young Ed Chigliak. In trying to discover his life's purpose, Ed embarks upon an mythic odyssey into his own unknown. The story climaxes when Ed—the self-doubting wannabe filmmaker—discovers and faces his weaknesses, makes a powerful moral choice, and begins to realize his dreams. Second, one of the greatest films of all time—Citizen Kane—is used as a teaching/healing myth to catalyze Ed's movement along his path. Third, these two threads are woven together seamlessly to teach us about the function of myth in society and, even more importantly, about film as a vehicle for myth. In "Rosebud," a gorgeous, careful, soul-touching synthesis of image, word, and mythic presence delivers the final message: behold, the power of film. INT: ED'S garage apartment. ED sits at a desk, in front of a typewriter. Circus-like music plays softly in the background as ED rolls a piece of paper into the platen and begins to type slowly, hunt-and-peck style. As he hits the first page return and the carriage snaps to the left with its requisite "ding," ED sits up straighter, letting his breath out, a smile stealing across his face. ED types faster, and the music begins to pick up.
(The camera pulls back, framing a now smiling ED who is typing even more quickly now, and using all of his fingers. The circus music picks up as the scene fades to black.) Sources Cited Citizen Kane. Dir. Orson Welles. Perf. Orson Welles. RKO Pictures,1941. Clarke, Arthur C. "2001: A Space Odyssey." Internet Resource Archive: Meanings. 2001. <http://www.palantir.net/2001/meanings/clarke2.html>. Ebert, Roger. "Roger Ebert's Review: The Wizard of Oz." Chicago Sun Times, Inc. The Jitterbug! A Site Dedicated to "The Wizard of Oz" and the Missing JITTERBUG Scene! 29 July 2001. Geocities.com. Nov. 16, 2002. <http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/Tower/2198/review.html>. Firstenberg, Jean Picker. "AFI's 100 Years … 100 Movies." American Film Institute. June 2002. <http://www.afi.com/tv/movies.asp>. Jones, Cindy. "Using Movies as a Therapeutic Metaphor." Counseling Academic and Professional Honor Society International Vol. 15 No. 2. Summer, 2000. <http://www.csi-net.org/publications/news/99998500.html>. Kael, Pauline. Reeling. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1976. Lindemans, Micha F. "Encyclopedia Mythica: Mythology, Folklore, and Legends." Encyclopedia Mythica. 22 Feb 2002. <http://www.pantheon.org/>. Murphy, Bruce (Ed.) Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia. 4th ed. New York: Harper Collins, 1996. Northern Exposure: "Rosebud." Dir. David Fresco. First broadcast 8 Nov.1993 (season five). Home video recording of television broadcast, recording date unknown. Olson, Charles. "Orson Welles Information and Resources." Chymes.org. 3 Nov 2002. <http://www.chymes.org/hyper/welles.html>. Raiders of the Lost Ark. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Paramount, 1981. Ringle, Ken. "Ask Shane or the Godfather: Pre-emption is Un-American." Concord Online Monitor. 21 Nov 2002. <http://www.cmonitor.com/stories/news/recent2002/1121_preemptive_2002.shtml>. Rosenberg, Donna. World Mythology: An Anthology of the Great Myths and Epics. 2nd ed. Lincolnwood, Illinois: NTC Publishing Group, 1994. Voytilla, Stuart. Myth and the Movies. Studio City, California: Michael Wiese Productions, 1999. Young, Stephen D. PSY 250: The Psychology of Film. Dept. of Psychology, Hanover College. 2001. <http://psych.hanover.edu/department/youngst/psy250.htm>. Nominated by Sue Mach, English Department |
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