For the last couple days, I’ve posted a lot of content. These have all been essays I wrote for Pacifica that belong in my Writing Portfolio. You can visit these essays by going to the Essay section of the Portfolio page. Enjoy!… Continue reading
Archive for the ‘ Essays ’ Category
“The Dude Abides”: The Big Lebowski and America’s Path to Enlightenment
Author: PriscillaJul 29
“Way out west there was this fella–Fella I wanna tell you about. Fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. Least that was the handle that his lovin’ parents gave him. But he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude–That’s a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then there was a lot about the Dude that didn’t… Continue reading
Filed under: Essays, Religion | Tagged as: Alan Watts, Buddhism, Duddhism, The Big Lebowski, The Dude, Zen
Persephone versus Anti-Persephone in MirrorMask
Author: PriscillaJul 29
The film is the 2005 collaboration, MirrorMask, between fantasy writer Neil Gaiman and artist Dave McKean. The story follows Helena, a teenager and daughter of circus performers, who, after her mother falls ill, journeys into the world she has unintentionally created in her drawings to find that the Queen of the Light has fallen into a deep sleep and cannot be awoken without the charm. Helena volunteers to find the… Continue reading
Filed under: Essays, mythology, Popular Culture | Tagged as: archetype, Demeter, MirrorMask, Persephone
The Great Debate: Myth Versus Fairy Tale in Joseph Campbell’s The Flight of the Wild Gander
Author: PriscillaJul 29
When I was writing my Master’s thesis, I was asked to do the impossible: to define "myth." I had read enough of Joseph Campbell’s works to understand that "myth" in his use of the word is not definable. Further, to define it would destroy the very nature of mythology. Faced with this dilemma, I nonetheless set out to dream up a definition of "myth." My working definition came to me… Continue reading
Filed under: Essays, Fairy Tales, Joseph Campbell, mythology | Tagged as: fairy tales, Joseph Campbell, mythology
Commercial Mythology: Aesthetics, Pornography and Andy Warhol
Author: PriscillaJul 29
The Pop Art movement that was made famous by Andy Warhol places common, everyday objects into a new perspective. Famous are Warhol’s large paintings of Campbell’s Soup cans and his repeated screen prints that include figures such as Marilyn Monroe, Chairman Mao, and Coca-Cola bottles. At one point, his studio was known as The Factory and was always full of people operating in Warhol’s shadow seeking their “fifteen minutes of… Continue reading
Re-Visioning the Mother and Father with the Help of Harry Potter
Author: PriscillaJul 29
James and Lily Potter represent for their orphaned son, Harry, the ideal Father and Mother. They died in a surprise attack protecting Harry from Lord Voldemort when he was only one year old. Throughout J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Harry learns about his parents, facts that threaten to abolish his ideal, while having to learn to identify the Mother and Father as archetypes in his life. In her book, The… Continue reading
Towards a New Mythology
Author: PriscillaJul 28
When the sun has set over Disneyland, Anaheim, California, and the lights are turned down, one can see the expectation for something about to happen on the face of every person looking at Sleeping Beauty’s castle as the nightly, seasonal fireworks begin. The day has been long. Everyone is tired, children and adults alike. Many are grumpy because of the various annoyances and complications that are involved in securing the… Continue reading
Prefabricated Mythologies: Dungeons & Dragons and Myth-Making
Author: PriscillaJul 28
It would be very easy to say that role-playing games are popular because of the apparent lack of myth in the society. In fact, from initial observation this would be the case. People flock to role-playing games, or RPGs, in order to interact with fantasy stories, not just read about them. A little further probing reveals that the games are essentially outlets for mythmaking. By assuming another identity, a person… Continue reading
Filed under: Essays, Fairy Tales, Popular Culture | Tagged as: Dungeons & Dragons, fairy tales, mythopoesis
The Genres of the Monomyth: Beloved, Moby-Dick and the American Epics of Transformation
Author: PriscillaJul 28
Just as there are different types of literature, there are also different approaches to understanding and interpreting them. One method is the Monomyth as outlined by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which has become a dominant model in recent years. A possible reason for this lies in the importance of the hero in social mythology: during the current major paradigm shift in the Western world. Many… Continue reading
Filed under: American Myth, Essays, Literature | Tagged as: American Myth, Beloved, Moby-Dick, monomyth
Unbreakable Chains and Immoveable Beds: Marriage in Homer’s The Odyssey
Author: PriscillaJul 28
The Odyssey is taught as an early example of epic poetry, recounting the courageous deeds of the hero, Odysseus, who has to find his way home after the Trojan War, but is distracted because he angered the gods. Odysseus is brave, strong and intelligent, appropriate attributes for a noble’s son, but he is also a liar and a cheat that resorts to trickery to get his way, tasks in which… Continue reading