Mythology & Superheroes: The American Monomyth

Hello, and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. We talk often about the idea that superheroes are creatures of mythology, both the kind of modern myths that they talk about, but also that like they echo for us the role that ancient myths have often played, and many of them are based off of

ancient myths, even metaphorically down to Hercules, a literal character. And we talk about that term mythology so often, but what does it actually mean, What is mythology and how does it apply to the stories we love and how

have people written about this? And so we're going to kick this off with Professor Matthew Cappelle recently of Montclair State University, the Fighting RedHawks, And anytime Matthew has been on this podcast before, the topics such as mythology and anthropology and all these things come up, and I've always thought, you know, I'd love to dive deeper into this, and so today that's exactly what we're

gonna do. We're gonna start with just a discussion of mythology itself and then look at one of the kind of seminal works in the field of mythology, the myth of the American Superhero, which applies to so much of the stuff we've talked about, and that's going to kind of be something we're going to go back to from time to time. I know at a later point, Matthew and I am also going to talk about Joseph Campbell and the Hero of a Thousand Faces and all that kind of stuff. Matthew has been making a

facial expression indicating his fondness for that book. But we're starting out, like I said, just with mythology itself. And so here's a nice simple question for the professor. What is mythology? Oh no, I have no idea. Mythologies might might be slightly different than myths. So can we start with myth? Sure? Yeah, what is a moth? Okay, what is a myth? What do you think of myth is? So I approached this, I will say as a biblical scholar, and that's the way I come

from it. The simple definition I would use is that a myth is a story that contains truth but not necessarily fact, and that whether or not it's factual is actually fairly irrelevant. Oh. I love that definition. That's a that's a really good definition. We can go with that. My definition my definition is, and I'm stealing it from a much more important scholar than I would ever be. My definition of myth is a story with an ideology in it, right, So it's a it's a narrative with an ideology. Yeah.

That is to say, humans tell stories, and our stories have significant leanings towards points of view, and when we all tell stories that give similar ideologies, we're talking about myths and the stories. It does not matter at all if the stories are true or not, because they actually are true. So maybe we should start by dispensing with the notion that myth means false.

Yeah, so let me talk more about how I see it, because again I would happily talk about most of the Biblical stories as myths, and I don't use that. I'm a person who loves the Bible. It's the seminal work of literature in my world, of many others as well, and so they seem any problems in it. But one of the things that I learned in scholarship, and I'm curious if you have other this is me remembering theories from twenty years ago. But basically, it's the idea that we in the

modern age find it hard to understand how the limits of human knowledge. Back in the time most of these myths were written or come up with. But it's especially before the Enlightenment and before the scientific revolution, and that in most of the world, like there was interesting science being done, but most questions people approached with the idea like that when people talked about a pulling a chariot of fire across the sky, if you asked someone, do you think that

that is literally what is happening? It's not that they would say, no, it's a myth. I know that it's false. It's that the very idea of asking that question wouldn't make any sense to them. That for a large extent, the idea was you came up with stories that helped you explain the truth of a situation because you're not really thinking about is this factual or

not? And so you know, again with like a lot of the Biblical stories, you can see it that way, a lot of the Greek myths, you'd see it that way, even to the point where you know with some of the stories in the Bible or some other myths, like we know there are some true things that we know. There was a flood in Mesopotamia around about the time of the flood mythology story being created. We know there was an actual person named Jesus at some point. He was killed by the

Romans, as they killed many people at that time. But the point is that, like whether it's based in some sort of like what you know, the same way. King Arthur is another great you know, we know with our pen dragon I'm probably getting the name wrong, but we know there was some night in a king in Wales at some point that inspired the myths and the legends of Arthur. And in all these cases, whether it's whether it's based in a fact or not to me is not the question. It's the

what is the truth that it tells us? Is that? How much that would you have? If that's my paper? What great am I getting? What? What revisions am I being told to made? Oh? That's a straight B plus, well done? Okay, there we go, There we go. I was just being made that was that's a great definition, and I would probably get sut her name. So we have this notion that we can talk about other people and their myths, but we don't talk about ourselves

and to our myths. And that's because the definitions we want to hang onto for myth don't really deal with truth in contemporary culture, which is why people can't go, oh, that story, that's just a myth. But in reality, the fact that the story has relevance means it's just a myth.

But that's a different thing than saying it's just a myth, right, And I think the classic example is the worst president after Franklin Delano Roosevelt is hands down until recently, Reagan and Reagan used to just to be clear, if you mean the worst president since FDR, not that FDR is one of the worst presidents, Am I correct? That's correct? Okay, I'm just going post World War two. If I had to pick a worst president before the

most recent last guy, I would have picked Reagan. And one of the things Reagan used to do is talk about what we now think of as the myth of the welfare queen. This woman who doesn't work and lots of kids by lots of men and has a Cadillac in front of her house because welfares

pan for everything. This person never ever existed, but the story keeps getting told, and the ideology behind the story, the racism, the lack of acceptance of public help, means that it is a truthful story in that it affects the way we behave even though the actual facts of it aren't correct, And because it is such an incredibly racist form of a kind of mythology in American society, we can also point out that Americans easily accepts stories with narrative

truths in them, with narrative values in them, with ideologies in them, if they are in any way paler parallel to their current belief system. And a lot of Americans, okay, let's say all Americans are kind of racist. So it's an easy story to pass off as truth, which is why it gets retold, which is why it's a myth. But to say it's just a myth is not an insult. I would say the virgin birth is

just a myth, by which I mean whether it happened or not. The way we tell the story is the important part, not whether it happened or not. And I think that's a really important thing, is that we're not using the phrase just a myth, And the idea that because it's a myth

it's not important is not as relevant. And it's funny when you mentioned Reagan, I thought you were going to go in a very different direction, though, I think it's just as mythological and certainly still very alive today, which is the myth of the perfect America, you know, and that Reagan and

certainly more recent people have really tried to go back to. You know, why, you know, why aren't we telling the story about how America is the greatest nation in the world and it's always has been, and the divine providence was very much a part of our myth for a long time. In that myth, we don't talk about slavery and the internment of the Japanese and the horal treatment of Mexicans and Native Americans and all that kind of stuff.

Pulling back though a bit, or actually maybe say narrowing the lens a bit, is it fair to say that not only do we have myths on sort of cultural national levels, but can families have their own myths? Like when you know, people talk about, oh, great Grandpa, you know, he always loved doing this, and he he you know, loved great Grandma so much they built this heart. Like the stories that get passed down generation

to generation. I feel like just because the way people tell stories, things get exaggerated, things get misremembered the truth of the story of him, you know, your great grandpa being the embodiment of thrift or of love, or of whatever virtue it is. There's some truth there perhaps, but really it's just a story that the family tells to pass on a value that the family wants to pass on to their kids. Is that would that fit also within the realm of mythology or a myth, Yes, yes, I would say

it does. I think there are some myth scholars who would disagree with me on that. But but I tend to be very anthropological in my idea of myth, which means I think everybody is making myth all the time. So who doesn't have a story if they're in a long term relationship or have been about how we met and we all tell that story. Or my spouse and I tell the story of how she woke me up one morning and went if we get downtown, they can marry us, but we have to be there

before noon. Yeah, And we had to get married because they was moving overseason. The country would not give her a visa, So we went and we got married so we could get a visa. And it's a great story. So we tell it all the time when people ask, because we literally got up and ran to downtown Detroit and got married and went to my absolute favorite building in Detroit, which doesn't matter, and then then we were able to move to you know, Wales and hang out with the myth of Arthur

Pendragon nice And so what is mythology? Then? I think, I think I have an idea of it, and if I'm right, it's going to lead into my next topic. But what is mythology? Well, simply it's just the study of myth, right, But there's two ways to think about this. Myth scholars are are often shunted to the side. So in myth scholarship, there's not really a meeting week it to go to. There's a religious group of scholars in the United States, and myth would be there,

like I don't know, Bastard Nephew. Myth is not considered important to scholars of religion generally, but but there's no place else you can go. There was a very famous historian who in the early nineteen eighties was president of the American Historical Association who specifically said myth and history are really close together, and nobody would listen to him. After that interesting. He was a professor at Chicago, Great Book myth History. He wrote a book, and I,

as a historian, I completely agree with him. I think history is just myth with footnotes. So myth scholars have that problem. So instead of saying we study mythology, myth scholars tend to be people who go, yeah, I study myth I do mythography. I write about myth because mythography sounds like a fancier word than mythology. You can add oology to the end of anything, right, yea man, we do, But mythography is a whole different

ball of kittens. Well, and it's interest. I would think that it would fit well into anthropology or perhaps sociology, as they like, Look, this is a thing that communities do and the way that they passed down history and stuff. I'm guessing there's a connection between the whole, like our modernistic take of oh, it's just a myth, a myth means it's false, and the idea that mythology is kind of the redheaded stepchild of this part of

academia. I say that as a redhead with a stepmother. To be clear, Yeah, anthropologists are of course always better at everything than everybody else spoken as a true anthropologist. Yeah, anthropologists are much friendlier towards myth, but they also as a as a group have tended to be like, myth is just one of the little things we have to take care of so we can get to the stuff that matters. And the stuff that matters is a myth.

And there's a very famous anthropological story that I tell in my intro classes all the time, which is I think it was a Linquist, really not an anthropologist, who's talking to a Native American and the Native Americans said, why is it what you believe is religion? But what I believe is a myth. Yeah, that's a great question. And that is how we others. We talk about other people's myths, we don't talk about our myths. Yeah, and that's a nice way of creating a really great social distinction.

Yeah. I mean, and that's why for me as a Christian, I promise is not gonna be about my religion all all episode. But just to say this, that's part of why I very intentionally talk about my religion as mythology. And both to say that doesn't I don't think that means it's not important or there isn't some truth there, but that to me, the connection to historical reality is not what matters, and I'm never going to make a claim of historical reality to it. So with all that, so so with

all that, I'm really glad we're going to to explore that. We'll get to kind of the heroes part of it in a bit. And this is actually, I think a good way to lead into it, one of the additional things that I think of with myths and and tell And this is what I was I was wondering maybe this would be the definition mythology. I totally get where I was way off. But as I understand it, not only do individual myths have this power, but that when a community has central myths

that are passed down through the community. And again that can be you know, parents teaching their kids about you know, what the what happened when you know Grandma came over on the boat one hundred years ago, or great great grandma whatever it is, or you know, a group of you know,

believers in a faith, tradition or a nation or city or whatever. That a lot of what the myth becomes then is kind of the the shared language that people can use to have discussions because it's very hard to talk about values and things like that in the abstract. But that a lot of times, you know, well, we'll look at like, Okay, George Washington is

the symbol of American honesty and forthrightness. And then when we discuss that, sometimes you know, people will reference like, you know, what if what if Washington hadn't you know I told people about the apple tree or whatever it is that like or same in like you know that that religious traditions, it is often people talk talking about different interpretations of the story or as we'll get

to the book that we're talking about a little bit today. Makes a great case that others have made as well that Star Trek is a community that has a shared mythology. And when people come together like we do on this podcast to talk about the shared myths of the Enterprise or of the Jedi or things like that, what's the role in mythology of it being something that people can discuss like that. If you've ever been in a group of people that you

have nothing to talk about with, yeah, it's really hard. Yeah, shared shared myths are a thing you you did something that I had planned to do, which is do the Washington thing. But you know, Americans know they're George Washington stories and they're Abraham Lincoln stories. And you know, so I think Lincoln is footprints on the ceiling of the log cabin kind of stuff in mud. And we tell these stories because they bring us together as a

community and because they give us something ideological to hang onto. And if you don't have those two things in a group, you don't have a group. So what myth does is offers the social blue that holds communities together, right, And in that sense, myths are probably the most important thing in a society that doesn't get studied by scholars. Yeah, and especially because these I

understand it. Sometimes, you know, conflict and community can often happen because people are, whether explicitly or implicitly, they have different ideas of the myth, you know. I mean that's right now in the United States. One of the biggest social conflicts we have is over different interpretations of what does America mean? And was it great? Or was it not? Or what does all that mean? Or you know, just families arguing and things like that.

And again, I don't know how it quite with us in the academic terms, but it seems that like a lot of times, when a community argues over a shared mythology, that can either lead to a change in the community and the community kind of adopting something new, or a split in the community where one group breaks off, you know where, because they have a different idea of what the mythology is or what it means or what it should be. Yes, let's let's let's try Let's go back to star Trek and

try it that way. So there's an anthropologist named Conrad Philip Kotech. I'm just putting his name out there because he's worth picking up some of his stuff. And my wife knows him, and he has this book called Primetime Society that you would not believe what he says about Star Truck, but it's perfect. I mean, I think he's right. If you're of a certain generation like old, like me, you probably grew up with certain things happening around

Thanksgiving in your school. Maybe there was a Thanksgiving play, and some people were the Puritans Pilgrims, and some people were the Native Americans, the Indians, and one person was the jerky maybe, and we tell the Thanksgiving story over and over again, and we have since the Civil War and that story is about bringing separate communities together and showing how separate communities can work together. And so Conrad Philip Kotech said, and that is exactly what the Bridge of

the Enterprise does as well. It is a reformatting of America's Thanksgiving mythology. People of different backgrounds, who look different, who act different, who have different languages, can come together and be one unified thing, which is a central part of American mythology. Right, So the question isn't is that true for most Americans? The question is which people can't be part of it?

That's the thing Americans argue about, which is when I teach history, I always make people read this Ben Franklin thing where he's like, We're not going to be true Americans because there's too many Germans moving here. And he was like, really upset about the Germans. And it's Ben Franklin. And we've been doing that ever since. It's the Now it's this group, and now it's that group, and a generation later that group is very American and it's

fitty. So the myth works to affect a way for people to become part of the society. And it's funny because because again here, maybe this is the conflict over different ways of of of interpreting the myth because that assimilation that happens, which and that's a very loaded word, I mean in a varie of different ways that can be very much a part of the myth. But also that when the people object to those groups, it's almost always couched in

the language of they don't share our values, they're not like us. They will make America different. And at heart, isn't that basically just a they're going to change the myth. They're gonna they're gonna challenge the mythological understanding that we have. Yes, let me tell you a story I think. I think a podcast about myth in a general sense needs me to say a lot. Let me tell you a story in American history, it's a really big

deal that Ford offered his employees five dollars a day. It's a really big important thing. Henry Ford, the original founder of the Henry Henry Ford, founder the Ford Motor Company, at one point decided to essentially pay his employees twice what anybody else would pay them. People were getting two fifty a day

and he was paying them five bucks a day. But that's the story we tell, but the background to that story is different, because the background is Ford had people going to their employees houses to make sure they were living appropriately before they got the raise. And living appropriately was is English spoken in this home? Is are the children being reared in an American way, which at the time was a big deal. Our people behaving in a proper Christian fashion.

And there were certain kinds of wasps that were acceptable and others that were not. And it was not actually so much as like Ford was giving people five bucks a day so they could afford to buy a Ford product, it turned out for it was giving people five dollars a day so that they would change the way that they behave to be more American as he saw fit right, And that is that's how we do it right. And isn't that often the case? Is that the myth not always, but that myths are very

often a positive passing down of tradition. And so of course you leave out the bad stuff, you know, you leave out that great great Grandpa was terrible, the great great grandma, or that you know, the American nation was founded on slavery and genocide of the Native peoples and all these kind of things, and I'm seeing an interesting and I promise where you get to the superhero part. That's kind of the last thing I want to bring up on

this general point. Do you think this is fair to say that one of the things that we're seeing in our society today is that social media, and particularly the fact that we can learn so much more about the people who are often mythologized, is breaking down a lot of myths. And it's not just

social media, it's the press. Is the just closer connections and well, because I think, you know, we've had the myth of like the American entrepreneur who becomes very rich and makes the world a better place, and everything they did was smart, and maybe they were a little bit cutthroat, but they made the world a better place. When we can see Elon Musk's tweets

and have that direct access, that loses a lot. But it's also the same thing of you know, Babe Ruth was this mythological baseball figure because the writers didn't talk about his womanizing or his drinking or his drunkenness or all the kind of stuff that today is going to be all over the papers, and so it seems and I think the same way in Great Britain, where the royal family has become a lot less mythologized because the people now have so much

more access through the press and direct appearances and stuff like that. Do you think there's a fair commentary there that even just in the last hundred years and then especially in the last ten or twenty, that those myths are are being harnished a lot because we have so much more direct contact with the people who are making them or they're about. Like, I think that myths work best

when most people don't notice that they're myths. Yeah. Right, So once you start seeing something that used to be a story we told that you are now being exposed very directly. This is not true. It's hard to see it as a unifying story for a culture. But at the same time, that doesn't mean that there are no myths. It just means that you have to find the new myths. Yeah, and what are the new myths? And that's an interesting question that leads right to superheroes. What are the new

myths? Because yeah, no, I don't think if I were to say, in a history class, which I also teach history, if I were to give the whole like throwing a silver dollar across the comic story for Washington, or I cannot tell a lie. I cut down the cherry Tree Washington story. My students, at least when I was teaching in Manhattan, my students would have been like, you should probably be talking about how many slaves he owned. Yeah, because that myth no longer holds water for them.

It does not work. But so you that doesn't mean we have no myths. It means the myths are different. Yeah. In fact, one of the myths, one of the really important myths, is the myth of mythlessness, more than the myth that we the myth that we have no myths, the story that we've we've progressed, one of the great American myths is progressed. We've progressed so far that we don't need myths anymore. Well, especially

because I wonder if we talked about the new myth. I'm pulling us back to the real world for a second, and then I'm not even keep saying that you know, and because like you know again, just to do the one more real world example and about mythology and conflict. It feels to me like with someone like Elon Musk, but also someone like Carnegie. We've always

had two myths that are kind of running concurrently. One is of the nobleman who is very smart and very dedicated and hard working and pulls him up by his own bootstraps and thus makes the world a better place because he makes so much money and makes a product everyone wants and then starts Carnegie Mellon University or

whatever. And then the second myth, which is I think for the most part secondary but sometimes is more in ascendance, is the myth of the greedy millionaire that Americans have to unify to fight against, and that can even be a trip like and there's a way to make the revolution part of that, where King George and the English are that. And I think in our lifetimes

we've seen Elon Musk switch from one to the other. Like I remember ten years ago he was lauded as this absolute genius who could do no wrong and that he was going to save environmentalism and he was the future of everything. Stame with Steve Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs and all the rest, and now a lot of them have shifted into being. And I kind of wonder if now we're going to get the myth of the billionaire idiot, you know, who just doesn't know what they're doing, and that'll be a part of it.

It's not a myth. Most people in Silicon Valley got lucky ones and now think they're geniuses. I'm sorry, it's just it's the way it works. They're like I did in Facebook. Therefore, everything I say is going to be correct, and so it's a psychological problem. So let's actually now

go to But but let me let me go somewhere with that. Okay, So the obvious joke is I missed the days when the obscenely wealthy started new universities and built libraries all over America to prove their value as opposed to building rockets. I missed those days. I wish we had billionaires going. We should. We should have more scholarships to the universities as opposed to I need

to colonize Mars and those that would be great. But at the same time, it's important that I say that all a lot of our myths deal with the obscenely wealthy and what they can accomplish, as we will see shortly. Do you think that's a carryover from like, you know, Greek myths are about the demigods. They are about people who have powers that humans don't have. Hercules and Pericles and all these people. Is there a thread there between

like that? It's but that today the thing that gives you great power is not being born of a god, but is being born into or acquiring incredible wealth. Even people who are born into incredible wealth tend to say that they acquired it. Don't think, well that's true. But but you know my point? Can we draw that connection? Myths always tell the stories of somebody who is special in some way, and the culture determines what constitutes that specialness.

So when you were talking about Carnegie, the culture was like they worked hard and they became rich because they were smart, which is not a bad mythological structure to have if you want to build a nation. I guess the myths today are different than that when it comes to wealth. So how we choose to understand the shift between god. Imagine there's an Elon Muski University,

because you know Carnegie, Mellon and Hopkins and Stanford. I mean, the guy who found at Stanford was a racist, and if you go to Stanford, there's still a lot of racists there. All of them are from Ohio weirdly, but it's still Stanford. So I mean when those universities got founded, they were almost immediately good universities. If Elon Musk founded a university,

it would be Trump University for Internet dweebs. Yea very different So okay, so let's talk now about our actual heroes and capes and people like that. Where does super art? Where does superheroes fit into the conversation about mythology. I like to tell this story, and I know I've told you this before, Matthew, But so when we study myths, we tend to create stories that are more general and vague to catellect as many different kinds of myths together

and make them into something we can talk about. We tend to generalize, all right, So I'm going to give you a general story. And I'm stealing this general story, but it's a good one. The normal democratic ideals of a society have failed. The elected members who are supposed to govern the city or the nation are not doing their jobs effectively. There are people who are stepping outside of the law and getting away with murder or theft or whatever,

and the police are corrupt and can't deal with it. And the government is corrupt and is not fixing it, and even the government is now starting to ruin my life because of their incompetence. So what we need is an in scenely rich person who can ignore the accepted rules of democracy and step outside of them, and having stepped outside of them, fix the system from the outside so that it is more just for all of us. And that is a story. That is a mythological statement. That is a mythological story.

And when I say wizit, you say that I'm not going to call Jared Kushner Robin Yeah, because clearly it's both Bruce Wayne and it's Donald Trump. Yes, it's both of them. It's it's and iron Man Tony Stark. Right. We tell stories about people who are special, and people who are special don't have to follow the rules. That's kind of the general way it tends to work. There's very few times when those stories end with well, then they get punished for not following the rules vs. Jesus Rhich is what

makes the story so good. Mostly our mythological heroes don't follow the rules. But if those mythological heroes are essentially telling you that democracy is bad or democracy has failed, democracy does not work. That's a bad thing for a society that's trying to be a democratic republic. Right. So this The most recent, really important non Marvel group of films were the Nolan Batman films, and I have issues with Nolan, but they were incredibly important, and they were

incredibly popular, and they did incredibly well. And I would say I would make the argument that the Nolan Batman films set up the presidency of Donald Trump, that it created this like mythle It reinforced the mythological story of the billionaire who steps outside of the rules of democracy can fix the problems for me. So I don't have to get involved with my local city council, or I don't have to get involved by running for congress or helping my congressman new stuff.

And that is how myths lead into the real world stuff. They help us understand what normal people are doing. Yeah, well, the two response is there. One is just to give another example of that. There was a book called Waiting for Superman that was a book about trying to reform the education system, and it was all about this idea that we have to stop

waiting for the outside hero to come and fix it. Now the author winds up prescribing a bunch of changes to the education system that I don't know much about, but that most of the educators I know are very Again, so I'm not endorsing it from that perspective, but it's another version of this, and I think the Nolan one, I mean, I admit it cuts deep because it is some of my favorite well the first two or some of my favorite movies. The third I think is that it basically an attack on occupy

and really the most pro cop thing I've seen in a long time. So I'm pretty much agreement with you there, But I think that there's an extent to which and this kind of goes back to the point I was saying about people arguing of myths. It's that the superhero myths are great, and I've always said I like the superhero myths that raise questions more than they answer them. But the problem with that is that people can take them and use them

to interpret almost anything I want. You know, The Punisher is a character who's very much meant to be a critique of policing, a critique of vigilanteism, a critique of you know, Frank Castle is a hero, but Frank Castle is also very much supposed to be a warning, a like this is what we have to not let people become. And so the fact that uh, you know, people who are very much in favor of like, no, let the cops be the cops and do the Let trust us to do

the violence we need to do. You're a stupid civilian. You don't know what we're doing. Don't give us of any oversight. Trust us are often like adopting the Punisher into the Blue Lives Matter flag is to me really telling and you know, and this is like again and one of the folks in the Superheroes, which is to mean Another great example is Reagan using Born in the USA, which is a song all about anti Vietnam, using it about

how great America is. Or more recently, someone really upset that the Twisted Sister has all of a sudden because people the song we are not going to Take It was being made into this like Republican Maga anthem, and they're so upset that De Snyder of Twisted Sister, who appeared in full makeup in the eighties every time he performed that somehow he was suddenly against mega principles. I have to keep reminding myself to focus on the superheroes because there's so much in

the real world that I want to talk about. But yeah, I think that to me, I think it's part of why I love Civil War so much, because I think that my civil War. You mean the Marvel Marvel Civil War. Yeah, no, I am. I do not have children, but I grill, and I do tell dad jokes, and I have a dad bod, and I have a whole shelf of books about the history

of the Civil War. So I love that history. But no, I mean Marvel Civil War is fundamentally an argument about the myth of superheroes, because the fundamental conflict that the movie then pushes past pretty quickly in order to get to the fight scenes and the emotional stuff. But fundamentally it's about should superheroes have some level of accountability and to some extent work within the law, or should they not? And and is that basically just a struggle over the myth

of what these special people should or shouldn't be able to do. I think that's the important argument to have. So, Okay, I love Batman, but I think Batman is horrible. I just think Batman is horrible. I like Batman. I liked all of the Batman movies in one way or another. But for me, Batman is a very depressing commentary on American society. Yes, because of the way I presented the story earlier, because we need

a billionaire to fix it. And sometimes we make him more likable because his anti Democrats behavior is because he's really sad, as though that's his that's a reasonable justification for being a fascist. Well you you would have had to appleap to me. But but but but so Marvel Civil War. I haven't read the comics, but I've I've heard about them a lot, and you've seen the movie too much. And yes, I've watched the Captain American movies far

more often than anybody should. Thank you to my wife. The argument about whether or not your special powers mean your special is the argument to have. So I think Batman is horrible. But which which superhero do we have the most movies about Batman? Probably? No, it's actually spider Man. Oh interesting? Interesting? Yeah, and spider Man. Spider Man is better than

Batman because of the simple with great power comes great responsibility. Batman doesn't feel that kind of responsibility that spider Man feels that Peter Parker feels or Miles Morales feels that I have these special powers. I'm not trying to like operate outside of the system except in this tiniest little sliver that I can without being unjust. And then I'm going to give the bad guys to the cops, and we're going to like say, cops are great in this narrative structure. That's

a much more hopeful superhero mythology than the Batman mythology is. Well, so here I think there's something interesting, and here I'm going to wind up tying in I think a central question to all this, but also defending Batman a

bit. And I'll start with bigger picture. When we talk about mythology, often we are talking about stories that are hundreds, if not thousands of years old, And a lot of biblical scholarship is about going back and saying, with like Greek mythology scholarship or other things like that, is about trying to go back and find what are the stories that didn't become the dominant version of the myth And you know, you learned at the time there were like we

have the four Gospels, but there's something like thirty five gospels that we know of that were written, all of which were people arguing about what is the myth of Batman. I'm sorry of Jesus, but I just I just telegraphed

my point. I wonder if part of why it's hard to talk about them in the same way is that that's the time period where now we've only been talking about Batman for a hundred years, and we have these different versions of the myth, because, for example, I would say that while yes, there's a lot of cheesy fight scenes and jump in Jupiter, Batman, the Batman sixty six TV show is very much democratic. He's very much working hand

in hand with Commissioner Gordon. The dark night of video games, especially in comic runs go and I think the movies to some extent, You're right, go very deep into Batman as the end, as the but the police are all bad, so I have to do what the police won't do. And here's the larger mythological question. They're going to get to this because it speaks to what you're talking about, and I think this is the American mono myth.

We'll get into it a second. As you said, for a person, there's a fundamental contradiction in a person saying that because the democratic system of dealing with problems has failed, I am going to step And but what we mean is that part of the democratic system is that certain groups of people are

given the ability to use force to deal with problems. And you know, we can talk all about the problems of that itself and is that self democratic and the like, but that a person who no one has appointed, no one is elected, no one has chosen Batman is deciding what to happen to criminals or not. I know that there's a theory and the myth of the myth of the American the myth of the American superhero is a great illustration of this, and we start talking about it more. But I want to get

to this point first. That superheroes are fundamentally a contradiction to democratic values.

I think that, and I think often they are. I wonder though, if also there's another side of the story where the heroes are trying to be a Cincinnatis figure, where the goal is not to say I will always and forever live outside of this democratic world, but that things have fallen so much that I need to step outside them so that I can help get them back and to me, and we can say that that's completely a myth and it's

not possible. But I would argue that the two best examples of this are V for Vendetta, where the hero makes a very clear point of saying I want vengeance against the bad I want vengeance against the bad system, and I want to inspire other people to build the new system. But I shouldn't be

a part of that, and two things should be separate. But also the first and second of the Christopher Nolan Batman movies, and much like Last Jedi into Rise of Skywalker, I think that the Dark Knight is kind of betrayed by the Dark Knight Rises. But the fundamental thing that Batman is trying to do in that is to say I was here because the world couldn't when I

started. The world couldn't have a Harvey Dent, and my goal. The fact that a Harvey Dent could exist is a sign that the world's returning to a time when I won't be needed anymore. And of course Harvey net is turned and that whole thing is challenged. But this has been a very long monologue just to get to I guess this fundamental question of is a superhero fundamentally always anti democratic or can a superhero be recognizing that the democracy is broken and

stepping outside that in attempt to rebuild it. So what you're talking about is is the superhero temporary? Yeah? Okay, first off, I'm wondering if we should explain the Cincinnatis story. Sure, I'll go ahead. So it is a myth in Roman story that I think there's it's not a myth, he existed, Okay, they actually historical knowledge. Okay, it very much became I think mythological as the way were told again and again, but certainly

based in true fact. Where basically, at a time in Rome's history when it didn't have a strong executive central government focused on one person because it wanted, you know it, Rome started, I think a lot of us forget as a revolution against kings. That's why even when a the emperor, they were never kings, and so you had a kind of diffused system of power.

But then there were the literal enemies at the gates, and so the people all decided to take one of their one of the high ranking members, this guy named Cincinnatis, and to make him a dictator for the purpose of uniting the people during this difficult time of war there. And the important part of the myth is that once he was no longer needed, he stepped down, he handed back that power and it returned to a non dictatorship. Yes, I mean he was dictator twice, and he the first time he gave

up power, so they run to him the second time. This is early in the Roman Republic, right when it was a republic, before the republic failed and it became the empire, though it never called itself an empire ever, right and so like he's like five hundred BC probably so when Rome was still like making sure it controlled the Italian peninsula, and part of what Rome had to deal with was a warrior or tribal society called the Sabines cleue in

rebels right here, and and they were losing. They would have the way their government worked as they'd have the Senate, and the Senate would have two leaders in it, each that served a one year term. And both of the leaders in the Senate were failing. They had a former senator named Cincinnatis who was just a farmer, were retired farmer, and they went to him and they said, we need you to be the dictator an actual title. It's not like the word we use generally. It was a title to make

sure Rome doesn't fall. And so he was the dictator of Rome for I think forty days, something like barely a month. And he defeats the Sabines and he says, I did it, and I'm going home, and he goes home, and that that is the Cincinnatis story, which is, by the way, the way we started to talk about George Washington in the early Republic. He was very much Cincinnatis figure. They literally and it's a great

story. They literally said he went back to his farm after the war and then they called him to the president, calling a plantation owner of farmer the man never held a till in his life, or you know how the gardening could whatever. But yeah, exactly, so sorry interrupted, but yeah, you needed to throw that in. So this really really old story of Cincinnatis became a way for early Americans to talk about their now mythological figure of George

Washington, so that it made sense. And so the Cincinnatis thing works. But Cincinnatis got one sequel. He was dictator twice. He got one sequel and then he went home. So you know, how many Batman movies are there. We can't have Batman as Lucius Cincinnatis forever because he never seems to fricking go home and take the armor off and stop being Batman, which is

the whole point. So I am, I'm afraid I have to reject your defensive Batman because as long as we keep making new Batman movies, we have a problem what a society, because we keep because the story we want, the story we want is failed democracy that it's an outsider to fix it, and we keep wanting the story over and over again, which is which is the symptom that we have to be very wary of. Right well, And I guess to be clear, my point wasn't that therefore the entire Batman mythos

is better than you're making it out to be. It's that, I think, kind of going to my original point, is that we are at a point in time where many different people are interpreting the Batman mythos in different ways, and that I think what Christopher Nolan did in that second movie, which has been done a couple of times, there's some of it in Batman the animated series, and I think some of it also in the new Batman movie

that I really loved the with Robert Pattinson. They were trying to offer a different alternative of what if this is a Batman who was actively working to end the time that he's needed And I think you know, even those like decided they needed another movie, and so of course it didn't stick to that.

But that's my only point is that the Batman mythos is one that is being argued about, and that I think you're right, the dominant part of the story is the much more anti democratic version, but that I think that there are some some versions of the story that do challenge that a bit. I hope you're right. Yeah, So the purpose of a surgeon is to do their work so that you don't need a surgeon anymore. R right, If you continually need a surgeon, there you're circling the drain. There's a problem.

Batman can't be a surgeon for democracy, right, and none of the superheroes can clue in the uber mentioned, none of the superheroes can be the saviors of democracy, and I think that's a problem, that the fact that

we like superhero so much is a problem. Well, but let me push back there somewhat with kind of what I'm saying before, isn't there a myth of democracy that's part of the story you're telling, because, for example, if the idea is that, like, you know, what's the as I was saying, like, the problem with Batman is that he doesn't have the

government given legitimate use of violence. It's not like the governmental The people who do have the governmental use of violence that that Batman is challenging do great with that. You know, I think we would both agree that, like the American policing system has all sorts of problems. There aren't just things that a surgeon can fix. They're things that need to be torn out at the root.

And so so I definitely hear what you're saying, but I do wonder if that there's a danger there also of saying I guess to me that the superheroes that I'm most fond of are the ones that hold up the mirror, and Batman, in my favorite version of him, isn't trying to say I can be the one to save democracy. As you said, it's it's and I think the from Mandetta is the perfect endeavor of this, but I think other heroes are as well. Sometimes Batman, it's the I'm going to remind

people that they can save democracy. I'm going to remind people that this is not the democracy right now that they think it is. There's the two interpretations, right, the system is broken and we have to fix it, and the other side is the system was working exactly as intended and we have to get rid of it right right. The best meme of that I've seen recently was Barbie and Oppenheimer say more about that. Yeah, but is the system

broken and fixable or is the system working correctly and unjust? That is the question, right? And and do you think that there's pot like that there are some superheroes who are more on the second side, because I definitely think that some of them are. Yes, I'll go back to Spider Man. But probably the easy answer is Captain America. In the Civil War movie,

he's on the other side than he is in the Civil War comic. But but Captain America is very much the America part in the mythological sense, not in the shingoistic sense. And it's and Chris Evans did such a good job that Captain America does a really great version of the system can be fixed I will help you fix it, but I will not take it over, which is not a thing that iron Man would ever really do. Iron Man would be like, I don't even care about the system. I don't. Yeah.

The fact that Chris Evans Steve Rodgers is very quick to a bay Nic fury in a way that Tony is not. Yeah, Although, so the question is how do we feel about hierarchical authority? Right? Well, and Captain America's case, I actually feel like you have three different perspectives that he goes through. He starts out as the system is just fine, and I'm just kind of a supercop. I am a part of the democratic system. I've been created by the democratic system, and the democratic system gets to give

me orders and tell me what I should do. He becomes there's a problem in the democratic system. I have to cut it out. I have to change it, and I have to remind people to get back to the democratic system. And I to me, he goes from the supercop to the surgeon, to the wrecking ball to the hydra has penetrated all levels of this and it does have to just be completely torn down. I think that's a good

intropt. I just suddenly was reminded of. In the I guess the late forties through the fifties, Superman a lot talked about racism being bad, right. I mean, none of the people who love Superman were okay with that. And you know, the first the Christopher Reeve Superman, the first two Christopher Reeve Superman movies features a scene in one of them where he literally carries an American flag back to the White House and puts it back on top and

says he's here to help. And that's a much better superhero than I'm really sad and depressed and I have a gravelly voice. Yeah. And it's funny because I think from the political science standpoint, Superman is the victor there. From the interesting story point, I find Superman incredibly boring. You know, Jessica Plumber keep me I shouldn't, but but I get it. I think

that there are they're definitely dangers in it kind of goes I guess. The only thing that I would push back down is there as well, is I think there's a danger in saying because of how people interpret a story that that is the defining way we understand the story. And I'll one of my favorite examples of an American myth is you know, John Brown. John Brown is a person who the myth has dramatically changed in the last seventy five years or

so, or one hundred and fifty years. You know, at first he was seen as like the epitome of activism gone wrong, of activism becoming terrorism and the like. And now he's looked to as this incredible freedom fighter and incredible a superhero I think in some ways because literally he's doing all the things you're talking about. He's going the law is saying that slavery is legal. He knows that that is fundamentally wrong. He's going outside of the law and

using violence to try and end slavery. And one of the groups that looks to him as they're founding superhero because in their mind he's fighting to offend the rights of people that the rest of the world doesn't think are people is the hardcore bomb abortion clinics. People like That's they claim him as their founding father because they think that's the term of the myth. And again, like the Punisher and the Cops and so I just I definitely hear where you are going,

and we're kind of dancing around the myth American superheroes. We should get into that directly. But that's my pushback I think that I had with a lot of the book, but also with what you're saying, is that I

think a world in which superheroes become permanent is very problematic. You're completely right, and here I think there's a fundamental paradox in superhero media in that it's very hard to tell a story about someone who stops being the character when there are billions of dollars to be made by continuing to make the character again and

again and again. I just want to have some defense of the fact that I do think there are a lot of superheroes who, within their own stories are trying hard to either be the Surgeon or the Wrecking Ball but not. But they understand that a world in which is superhero needed shouldn't be the eternal. But it's kind of blayed by the fact that we then keep telling the story again and again and again. Yes, so let's let's be scholarly.

I have quotes. So we've been dancing around the fact that permanent superheroes is a problem. Recent movie grosses look like it's not as much of a problem as we thought, and So there's this thing called the American mono myth which was originally written in a book in the nineteen seventies by a philosopher and a theologian named Robert Jewett the theologian and John Shelton Lawrence the philosopher. And I know John Shelton Lawrence. I did a book with him, so I'm going

to be biased. I think he's a great guy. What they were interested in doing was showing how America had taken regular mythology and made it problematic, and at the time, or right at the moment and when Star Wars is coming out at the time, regular mythology was looked at as the Joseph Campbell

mythology. What Joseph Campbell called the mono myth and I'm just going to read you his description of what Joseph Campbell said is this is the basic myth of all humanity, which is this a hero ventures ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder. Fabulous forces are there encountered in a divisive victory is one The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man that's Joseph Campbell in nineteen forties,

and that is basically every Western hero myth. He was not nearly as universal as he hoped he was, but let's not let's not worry about that right now. That is that is a way of describing a mythological structure that captures a lot of different myth from from Jesus to oh, shoot, who's the guy who gave us fire? Prometheus? But he also he Prometheus. He pulls in a lot of Hindu myths, although I know a lot of Hindu

scholars have had great problems with how he interprets those myths. And yes, and so, uh, we're recording this because we don't want to talk about Star Wars during the strike. Joseph Campbell has a series of books after his most famous book called The Masks of God, which is a way saying that all of our myths are really about the same thing when it comes right down to it. And every time I see the intro to Star Wars now where they go through the masks, and those masks change depending on the show.

I think of the Masks of God, I think it's just beautifully done for me personally, And so the question for Campbell was do we have universal myths? And his answer was, yes, we do. But he had the same problem that all myth scholars have. Every time a myth scholar defines myth, there's a myth that gets left out because of the way they defined myth.

It's a virtually an impossible thing to define. So along come Jewett and Lawrence in the seventies and they propose something they called the American mono myth. And I'm going to read their description, and as I'm reading it, I hope the listeners will think of Batman and iron Man. And I don't know, has anybody seems Shane? Does anybody watch Western old Westerns anymore? John Wayne the Cowboy is very much an American math yet just as much as Superman

today. Yes, the riding off into the sunset is the important part there. So here's their definition. A community in a harmonious paradise is threatened by evil. Normal institutions fail to contend with this threat. A selfless superhero emerges to renounce temptations and carry out the redemptive task. Aided by Fate, his device. Decisive victory restores the community to its paradisical condition. The superhero then

recedes into obscurity. The recedes into rescurity is a really important part that sequels don't allow. And that is a really general myth structure for Americans, from our westerns to our superhero movies. It works really, really well. Sometimes the you know, into o security is death though, and that is part of our myth and for Americans as well. I'm always reminded when I read this of the death of Abraham Lincoln. Just Abraham Lincoln was probably the best

president we ever had because he saved the Union. Though how we define best is a silly thing, but it's important to remember how perfectly his death aligned with what it needed to align with so that he could become who he became after death. So he was shot in Ford's Theater on Good Friday, yep, and everybody found out about his death because of the way news worked in eighteen sixty five, the vast majority of Americans found out about that death in

church on Easter Sunday. Yeah, and you are not ever Ever, then I have a mythological structure works so perfectly. Again, if I wrote that as Alley would script, people would go it's unbelievable, right, but it's perfect. So what we, what we as Americans tend to do is look at at that exact thing. But the whole how Lincoln wins the war is the American mono myth. He totally does things that are illegal for presidents to do. Yeah, I mean because he he has to do them or or

else. To me, he's the Cincinnatis, he's. Yes. Part of why I argue sometimes with the best president is because he he's the closest I think America has had to a dictator, and for a very noble just cause. But but he suspends avieas corpus. He has all come to other uh, you know, he's the one who says, I'm going to step outside the bonds of power that I've been given in order to save the whole thing. Yep. I also think interesting is that because I saw a study once

of this is a pole like twenty thirty years ago. But it was they asked, you know, a whole bunch of people from all across the US, when did Lincoln free the slaves? And the most widely held belief is that he either had done it or announced he would do it when he became president, and that that's why the South seceded, and that the set they

did, they knew that he was more anti slavery than they are. The president should come along since then, But that the fact that Lincoln openly said he was willing to not free the slaves it could save the Union, and that he only did so much later into the war is totally forgotten. And

that's that's again, like the facts aren't fitting into the myth itself. Let's also remember what the Emancipation Proclamation actually proclaimed, which was, henceforth, all of the slaves in areas we do not control are free, right, I mean, it was very specific. It would be like me going all the robots of Mars are free, like I have any control over Mars and the robots there. Mars is a planet populated holy by robots, so they should

be free. And the Emancipation Proclamation never freed any slaves because it only existed as a propaganda tool during war. I'm freeing all of the slaves in places where I do not have control right now is not freeing the slaves. It's just not now. Juneteenth is a national holiday and I think it's just awesome. But we, yeah, we ascribe too much to Lincoln that he that he didn't do. But that's how myth works. We always ascribe the really

important things to some mythological figure. Right. So in the in the English language, in the English language, the most books in English written by a single about a single person. The winner is Jesus. Number two is Abraham Lincoln. That's hilarious and I think that I think that's significant one. So pulling that back to the mono myth idea, so, where do superheroes fit in this idea of the monomith or why shoul let me just pull it back

in further, So what is their take on the monomoth? Because it clearly sounds like I've read the book too, but I want to let you continue. What's the problem with the mono myth? Well, I can just like normal institutions fail to contend with this threat. Is the problem with the American mono myth. It starts with believing that democracy is built to fail. To

a certain extent, democracy is built to fail. That's why it's so good, right, And this notion, this notion of we need an outsider hero who then will ride off into the sunset one way or another, is a narrative structure that we as Americans have worked through all of the stuff we think

is important. We interpret a huge section of American Christians interpret the Bible in that way because there are some really great stories to talk about that, if you really think about them, are about a singular hero fixing the broken system from the outside, which is not which is not an emphasis that a Christian

in England would use. It's just not so. This way of thinking of heroism has changed the way we interpret our politics, and our Bible, and our popular culture and what constitutes a good story on television or at the movie theater, and it colors the way we interpret everything, which is why it's a myth, which is why it's a mythological structure that we have to contin and listen think about. Certainly, I think one of the best examples that

I read eighty five percent of the book. I did not get a chance to finish it. But I don't think that they talk about this in the book. But shameless plug here if you go way back into the archives of Star Wars Universe podcast, and I'll probably actually just link it in the in the show notes. I did a podcast with Becky Allen where we talked about a different myth, but one that I think is very wrapped up in the

mono myth, which is the one great man of history idea. And you know that and that part of the thing is that I think they're ascribing one reason to a sociological event is very difficult. But I think one of the reasons why things like labor unions and other man, you know, people look at France and are like, why can't we do mass organizing on that scale?

Why can't we have national strikes? And one of the things that Becky pointed out that I've since done more scholarship on and a lot of people have talked about, is that it is the problem with this American mono myth is that when you always are waiting for Superman, when you're waiting for that one great person to come along, it's a lot harder to get people to say, no, we are all Superman, we should all join the union,

we should all go out and protester, or whatever it is. And I they know a quite good they don't use that quite that language, but I think that's a point that is definitely implied through a lot of this book that are really appreciative yes, but and I don't even have to say anything after the blood. I don't think. No, I've no idea what direction you're going, so please we do. So there's this notion in American culture, much bigger than the American modern myth, that that sees the way in which

our progress works is through violence. And if there's if there's a thing that Americans share, truly share with Marxists in a broad sense, it's even the anti Marxist. Americans believe that history is progress. Right, And I'm an American. I have our time not thinking history is progress because I really like the new insulin on on. I see progress all the time, right, And Americans are are unique, right, maybe not unique, are relatively unique?

Just a horrible phrase. And that they think, they think that the progress comes through violence a whole. There's a trilogy of historical works that each one is like eighteen hundred pages, the first one of which is called Regeneration through Violence, which suggests that all the time we need to be good and and a better group always starts with violence. Violence is the thing that makes us new, as as a war scholar once said, war is the thing

that gives us meaning. Violence is the thing that makes America understand itself, and if for the regeneration through violence was the frontier line. As we moved into the frontier, we were violent and civilizing and violent and civilizing it as we went along. And that is an integral part to the way in which Americans think of their progress. Progress is not something that happens in committee meetings. Progress is something that happens on the streets with Molotov cocktails, or on

breeds and bunker hill or wherever progress requires violence. Not that progress doesn't sometimes, but for Americans, progress always seems to That's that's the mythological underpinning to be worried about. Well. And so here, I love that you're saying what you're saying at because this I you and I are not in the same place with that. And I think this is my fundamental disagreement with the book.

And I I'm trying to I don't just want to give a ten minute monologue about that, So I'm trying to think of how to break this down

in a couple of different plet parts. But the first thing I'll say is, first of all, I want to be clear that those mass movements that I was talking about are by no definition, you know, always violent, and I think that that there's a myth that is like the myth of blm, you know, riots and all sorts of stuff is a very important myth to challenge saying with the idea like and you know, one hundred years ago

they would always talk about like unions are terrible because union rallies always turn violent and it's no the Pinkerton's are attacking and it turns into self defense. But I know that's where you were going. But I just want to kind of clarify that, I think though to me, so let me back up and

just trying to talk about the book in general. There's so much I love about the book, and I think it's it is speaking to so much truth about a very true story in America, and the American monom myth is very

very real. And certainly I didn't get a chance to jump in with this about Campbell, but I think one of the problems that I see with Campbell is that while he has done some scholarship as an outsider to mythologies that are not from the culture he's a part of, he is doing the very western academic thing of taking his view and applying it to everybody, and I know that certainly to me, some of the best critiques of Campbell have come from

people from very different cultures, saying, you are fundamentally misunderstanding our myth because you're seeing it through your Western lens. And so I really love how they narrow it down to the American Mama myth and the stuff about the individual, the stuff about the person who arise and fade from history and all of that.

I think though that, and I am a person who bottomed out with a master's degree in a professional degree, I do not have the academic rigor that given you or the professors who wrote this book have, so I want

to be very aware of that. For me, though, I think there's another myth that I grew up with that is now being challenged, which is the myth of nonviolence, which is the Martin Luther King is the embodiment of all that is good and pure of modern American progress, and Malcolm X is the example of everything that is wrong and bad, and that if minority groups just and again I'm very clear, this is not actually Martin Luther King.

This is the myth of him that if minority groups just ask nicely for their rights and you know, let people be aware of their suffering, but then suffer for the viewing of everybody else. That eventually Americans will find it in their heart and will do the right thing. And I don't think either you are of the people who wrote this book are buying into that at all.

But I do think that as a part of that, the blurring that happened is the difference between aggressive violence and self defense and that people often would look at like the Malcolm X's of the world as as you know, they're so aggressive and not understand what he was talking about was violence is being done to my community constantly. I'm just advocating that we don't turn the other cheek,

and that even Mark Martin Luther King was not a pacifist like Gandhi. He was the first to say, like, yeah, give me armed troops to help get those little girls into the schools. It's just that he didn't want to use violence as a specific organizing tactic as a strategy. This is turning into the long model age and apologize and so please jump in anytime you want

to tell me how wrong I am. But I think therefore, as a part of that we equate any kind of violence as the same, and in superheroes we get this all the time, where someone will say I will not kill and I will not murder, as though they're the same thing, as though fighting back in self defense, and that causing a death of someone or even fighting against someone who is a threat to you is the same thing as

plotting their murder. And where I really and yes, it is because I love Star Wars that the Star Wars chapter is the one that I think I objected to the most, but because in the Star Wars chapter one of the things that he talks about is how you know it's not really he basically says

that Star Wars is fascist. I think they specifically say that because the idea being that the rebels are still using violence to fight for their republic, and he talks about how you know, they give a great speech about violence and then they just go up and blow up the Death Star. The authors, though, failed to mention that the Death Star was literally seconds away from obliterating a planet full of people and had already obliterated a planet full of literal billions

of people. And to me, especially when you tie it in specifically and say governmental fighting for a government through violence is inherently fascist. I have to ask, please tell me when Hitler was outvoted. He wasn't. Hitler was defeated through violence. Democracy was restored to Germany through violence and to most of

Europe, and the democracy it was restored is highly problematic. I mean, I think one thing we can say about all this is that is the problem that these heroes are challenging democracy, or that actual democracy has never really existed. It's always been oligarchy and cops and all these kind of problems. That's

the whole of the set of canon worms. So I guess that's just where I am defending superheroes a bit, because I think that the idea that the use of violence is inherently fascist, even when it is the use of violence to try to create a system of a more democratic government, I just can't believe that. And I'll close we just saying that. It's where again,

V for Vendetta is to me my perfect embodiment. It's why I love V for Vendetta so much, because what V does is he says, I will use violence to clear away the things that make everyone so afraid of non violence, of being non violent, and he does that, and then all the people who he inspired march on the troops who don't fire, and the actual democratic revolution that happens is completely non violent. It's just inspired by this man

of violence. Okay, we'll time it later or either seven minute monologue or even fifteen tell me all the ways I'm wrong. It's impossible to tell you all the ways you were wrong because it's not a it's not a monologue that needs to be picked. Apart that way, I will say in defensive Jewett and Lawrence that I think they're a big issue with blowing up the Death Star had more to do with how it was presented narratively to make the audience excited,

that that the violence itself was the exciting thing. And as it happens, So we were preparing for this, you read eighty five percent of the book. I've read the whole book, but not recently, but I like I have a cop an electronic copy, and so I went through it again on my iPad. But sitting down today I picked up the hard copy,

which had like a lot of notes. But one of the things that I kept, and I don't know why I kept it, but one of the things I kept was the note from the person who sent it to me, which was their publisher, a guy named render Ventil, and it's like, I'm sending you this complimentary copy from because the authors asked me to. I

hope, blah blah blah, you'll review it or something. And I think I wrote a review in some academic journal, but I had forgotten render vent Till Render vent Till It was worked at the publishing company that makes that published this book, which is Urdman's, which is in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which is perhaps one of the most conservative Christian places I've ever been. And

I'm from Michigan, so I've been there a few times. And he's also related somehow to a really important theologian named Cornelius Van Till, who was like the guy who makes calvin is important again. He's like a straight up neo Calvinist, you know these free will is problematic. And so this guy, who I would associate with a very specific kind of Christianity, was really excited by the myth of the American superheroes a book because it actually was not like

that. It's a it's a very open ended liberal argument to make. And so you had this long monologue. Here's my critique of your long monologue. I have no critique. The thing about long monologues is we're interpreting the myths when we do them, and the interpretations are the things that are worth talking about. And you don't discount to the interpretation. You just react to the interpretation. So I reacted to your little death star thing, but probably more

for me than from them. That's how. That's how societies work. Yeah, I'm both an anthropologist and a historian, and if you were to ask me how I could tell if a society was failing, I wouldn't say it had to do with economics or social units or anything. I would say, you know, a society is on its way out when it taught stops sharing the same stories together. Yeah, that's it. As soon as they're not sharing the same stories, you need to be worried. But I'm also,

by training as an anthropologist by one thing on that. Yes, And I think a great example of that is the X Men are one example where you have Magneto and Professor X at various points of the story either have fundamentally different ideas of what it means to be a mutant or they're more agreeing or they're

more disagreeing in our own world. You know, a lot of people today would say that, like the difference in like red state, blue state of US just fund we have such fundamentally different understandings of the American myth that it's almost becoming two different stories is to me the perfect illustration of what you're talking

about there. Yes, okay, but as an anthropologist, I was trained as a biological anthropologist, which means I taught human evolution and human genetics a lot when I first started teaching, and I'm pretty good at teaching them. Though I wouldn't call myself a evolutionary anthropologist anymore. But here's an evolutionary thing that I think is important that can be used as a metaphor. When you're looking at traits in a population from an evolutionary perspective, the less variability there

is in the trait, the better the traite is working. When you see a lot of variability, it means that that there's biological experiments going on to see what's going to work going forward. So, and you see a lot of variability in blood types, that is a statement about how we have not been dealing we have not been evolving those particular things in a way that led to a single conclusion. If you change a couple of genes for putting together

a heart, you don't have a person anymore. You have a dead thing. But you can change a couple of genes for eye color and still have a person, right, And the variability there tells us something about evolutionary experiments. I think the variability in American myth right now is exactly the same thing. I don't think it's as problematic as we think. I don't think.

I don't think the red stats are going to march into the Blue States because there are blue people in the Red States and red people in the Blue States. Very true, right, And the fact that we are experimenting with different interpretations of American mythology is just a statement that we are trying to figure out what progress is for us as a people right now, and the question is can we figure that out well? And I guess that's actually that is a

fantastic point. And I wonder if that's the perfect lead into the much more summarized version of my long monologue of my only critique, because I do think, like so much of this book is dead on. My only critique of what they and I think is something you were saying of superheroes being the reification of this myth is I feel like that is probably true for the majority of

superhero stories, and certainly for a lot of superhero stories. But I think I would argue that more recently, a lot of the writers of these stories, both on film but also in books and in comic books we're often you can probably stray a lot further, have very consciously been aware of that and actively been trying to make their version of a superhero story in argument, like

to put it in dialogue with a mono myth and change it. And so that's where you get the image of the like Batman being so sad and broken is not part of a lot of those original stories, and it's certainly the idea that maybe he's wrong is never a part today it is. Becky Allen, I talked about one thing what we got onto that talk about the myth of the rugged individual, which I think again is tied end but not exactly

the same. It was because of Rogue One where the writers had very consciously said, we want this to be an ensemble movie because we wanted to not be about that one great hero. We want it to be about a team of people. And I guess to me, what I what I would say is that instead of thinking that heroes are a product and a reification of the mono myth, that's problematic. That because the Motto myth is so strong, superheroes, like any part of our culture, are going to be in conversation

with the monto a myth. But that I think it's a great conversation because it opens us up to the critique and that a lot of them are engaging in critique of the Monto myth, some self awarely and some not, rather than it just being a repetition and a strengthening of it. Yes, I see exactly what you mean, I think, and yeah, that's kind of the point. And I will I will agree that there's a lot of credit to be given there. I think a lot of it goes to Tony Gilroy.

Right. So, I've been thinking about a term. I actually asked you about this on Facebook, Matthew. I've been thinking about a term a lot because I needed to use it for an introduction to a book I was writing. The term is eschithological hope and eschatological hope. Eschatology is the study of the end of the world. It tends to be part of Christian theology, but it works everywhere. And eschatology is, you know, what happens

at the ending of the world and immediately thereafter. And so I've just edited a book on the PlayStation game Horizon zero Dawn and its sequel, which takes place a thousand years after the end of the world exactly a thousand years, which was a weird number, has nothing to do with Jesus, nothing, And it reminded me of what the Myth of the American Superhero book says about eschatological hope, which is it's a thing in which people who are part of

the outside can, through their violence of the American mono myth, become part of the structure of the mythology. Again, that the end of things allows the outsiders to become part of things. That is the new thing. And I kind of I kind of think that that's where we're at. We're all questioning if we're part of this American system, and I think we should have

schizological hope. I think we should think that the parts of the American system that we can finally get to the point where we agree these are the things that need to be fixed, will allow us to expand who's included in it so that the exiles will feel as though they're part of it. Again, that's the hope part. I mean to quote Martin Luther King, you know, the idea of the arc of history bends towards justice. To me,

it's not. It is by no means coincidental that that is a Christian pastor saying that, because it's a very eschatological idea and it's so much about just the fundamental basis of how you think that it's kind of hard to get people who aren't who are raised in an eschatological world like we all are, because even a Christian and also has a lot of eschatology in Islam. It's just the idea that time is linear, that that that history is linear instead of

being cyclical like it is in a lot of other places. And so yeah, that idea that like we can have the hope that it's going to get better and better and better. I totally agree with the last you know, and well, we also all in the United States were raised in a world where there was a nuclear eschatology to deal with. Yeah, I mean, we all expected the end. We all expected the end to happen, probably

within our lifetimes. And there's still a huge group of Americans who would say that now they're talking about the return of Jesus, not you know, the Soviets nuking us. But we still talk about how the world is going to end a lot, which is why we have so many zombie stories. Yeah,

I think it's very true. The last thing that I will maybe it's cut pushed back, or maybe it's engaging further dialogue with both the authors and with you, is what you said about the problems of trying to tell the stories of our values or trying to raise these questions about like important questions about what is the nature of democracy and how do we deal with problems within the democracy and all those things, and problems being like problematic individuals or groups or

whatever it is, with the idea of who gets desired with being problematic being a very important question there. And then yeah, I can understand, like I'm a record as saying I want civil war where it's just Tony and Steve arguing, arguing for two hours about what should happen, But instead to make

the movie you got to have violence, you know. I have loved that these Star Wars TV shows and even more than novels, are giving us a lot more of the people sitting in rooms debating what should the nature of democracy be after the Republic? And I think, I credit some of the shows of I think are actually addressing some of the points that were brought up about what happens when you try to return a republic through warfare and what happens with

that. I definitely I think there are some good points there, even if I think they go too far. But here's the thing. Star Wars has taught me an incredible amount of values, and it's given me a place to think about my values and challenge my values, and they've changed over time. Star Wars has informed me to be, I think, a better person, a better citizen. But at five years old, I didn't watch Star Wars because of Luke and Yoda talking about the nature of anger. I watched because

the X Wings were cool. And when I was a kid, you know, if there were vitamins I needed to eat, my mother would sometimes you know, stir them into something I wanted to eat. And I guess I wonder like, yes, violence is probably too much a part of the American

character, and I'd like to see more stories about non violence. And honestly, I think the return of American unions and the fact that we're starting to pay more attention to the protests in other places like to me, BLM was a great movement forward against that kind of story, because again, BLM is not inherently violent by any means. It's when the cops attacked that. Don't

use the past tense. Okay, thank you, my apologies, because yeah, you're right, it's very much still a current thing, to be sure, But at the point of story, if you're saying that we want stories that will pass along values or give chance for people to talk about ideologies and

values, you have to get them to pay attention to the story. And so I guess that would be my pushback of like, I think the way capitalism makes us tell stories is really problematic, and like there always has to be a love story, or there's never a love story, and that's just as probably all of that I agree with, I guess, I just I don't see it as quite a much of a problem because I know people white

people who didn't really understand subtle racism until I've gotten great listener feedback from people who said, look, I never really understood what people were talking about by like microaggressions and subtle racism until I watched Falcon walk into a bank and try to get a loan and saw the way the loan officer treated him of like assuming he was an athlete, or you know, not not thinking of him

and treating him very differently than they would have a white person. And so I guess that's kind of my final pushback because I I overall think superhero stories are fundamentally good, because I do think that they well, let me put it this way, actually, I would say I don't think superhero stories are good or bad. I think there are a tool, and I think there're a tool that can be used to recreate the American modern myth and all its

problematicness, or the a tool used to challenge it. So, in other words, you're saying superhero narratives are good because they can help us change. I'm saying they have to. I'm saying that's there too. Yeah. Yeah. Then what you're saying, which goes all the way back to the beginning, is superheroes are good because they're mythological, because it's through myth that we figure out how to change. Yeah, which is a perfect conclusion to have,

and I cannot argue with your point. I agree with your point completely. I'm just less optimistic about it. That's fair, That's certainly fair. But yeah, I think that makes real sense. And I definitely think, honestly the strike is giving me a little hope as well, because I think it's very hard for myths to challenge the underpinnings of society when the people who benefit most from the current society as it is are profiting are the ones deciding

what myths get told and not told on screen. And I do think that a lot of the things that are pushing the furthest are things like Beef Vendetta or the TV show Shira, or a lot of the independent comic books or novel or things like that, where it's it's further from the hands of the profit centers, and there's don't be able to make a book, to be sure, but there's more chance to you know, really challenge these things without

you know, somewhere from Warner Brothers or Disney going like that's a little too radical for our air. So the reason Star Trek is better than Star Wars is because they have better meetings. The best episodes of Star Trek always take place in one room, and they're always a meeting, and the discussion of what's going to be important is told through myths. It just is. So. If we use superheroes to do that good. If we use heavily fictionalized biopics to do it good, if we if we use comic books good,

if we use speeches from the president good. It's the stories. And yeah, you're right about the strike. Its myths are stories and the storytellers are on strike. That that that's that's scary because the writers are the most important people in that. I think. Great, we have one more big question I want to ask you, but we've gone way over time, so I'm

gonna save that for the members. So h the question is going to be about what it is when we know that the myths are when when we know the people writing the myths as opposed to myths that are passed down and all the like. And uh, it is a great time to become a member. All members you only pay five dollars a month or fifty five dollars a

year. It's basically the same thing as Patreon, but we're now I have joined the True Story FM family of podcasts, so it's not a member, it's now a membership there, but you get access all this great stuff, add free content, bonus content, access to there's a great True Story FM discord was a great way to talk to me. That's in the show notes. But there are some member only channels. We're going to start doing some

member only live feeds, so great time to become a member. And right now during the strike, twenty five percent of everything that comes in from membership, and this is therefore at this point it's a donation both from me and the True Story Family of podcasts. Twenty five percent of that goes directly to the strikers, the funds to help the people are on strike and all the

other people who are affected by that strike. But if you're not a member, of course, there's all still lots of great ways to get in touch with us. You know, if you go to the Ethical Panda dot com or go and find this show on True Story the note, the links to

all of that will be in the show notes. You can find all the ways to contact me on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, email, etc. At some point we'll probably jump the ship of Twitter, but I'm waiting for like a solid ship to pull up next to it, because right now I have invites for eight different platforms that and I can't keep track of that.

But you know, always contact me on social media. Are there, would love to hear you, And of course, if you have feedback about this, Matthew is definitely gonna be back at some point talking about mythology and we'll probably do your feedback then. So but if you want to talk to you directly, Matthew, what should they know about you and how to follow your

cool stuff? Well, I'm anthropologist and historian, as I've said more and more more times than I should have, So I'm basically an academic and I'm one hundred and seven years old. So I got rid of my Twitter account a long time ago. Death threats are horrible. I have a Facebook account and nothing, and you know, a static web page that is about my scholarship. But right now I edit a book series on video games and tabletop games called Studies in Gaming. And if you wanted to find out about how

we can talk about the stories told in games. That's the thing I would look at. It's about fifty books now. So if you were to just google Capel kap elll because everybody mis smells it and studies in gaming, you'd find a bunch of books on things as diverse as dungeons and dragons. And we just have a new Magic the Gathering book that just came out to you know, Call of Duty, so and everything. And I just turned in a manuscript on the Horizon games, as I said, so look at that.

And if you really wanted to talk to me, you can find me on Facebook by my name. But also as I said, I will I will foward on any emails and get Matthew's comment as well, or just read your feedback when Matthew comes back on the air, which hopefully will be soon, because it turns out there's a lot more in mythology that we haven't covered. In the future, will try to cover it. In about ninety minutes, I apologist went on so long, but there were monologues that needed to

be had and points that needed to be made. So to everyone who's been listening, thank you so much for being a part of all this. To our members, just hold on for one more moment. We'll get to your Patreon section, but to everyone else, thank you so much. We have spoken