Prove me wrong

[bluegargantua]

Hey,

American folklore focuses primarily on The Heroic Individual. We've got the lone guy out on the frontier making it safe for civilized society.

But we never really have A Heroic Group. We've got a lot of Hercules and Gilgamesh type stories, but we don't have an Argonautica or Kalevala. Every now and again we get a "Team-Up" episode where Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill get together or Davy Crockett and Mink Fink face off, but we don't really have a well-known story where a whole bunch of larger than life characters get together and go do stuff for awhile.

Can anyone think of some counter-examples?

[EDIT: I'm not counting comic books/TV/Movies/Mass Media. Not that those aren't necessarily valid, just not within the perview of my question. I'm thinking here of oral storytelling. If it's not something you can use freely without the threat of copywright infringement, then it probably isn't what I'm trying to get at.

SIDE NOTE: But considering comic books for a minute, the interesting thing about them is that they've really only got one story -- the origin story. Everyone knows how Superman, Batman, Spiderman, et. al. got their start. And they can usually describe their primary villian, but actual events beyond the creation of the hero become much more muddy. You might remember specific issues, but it almost never translates into a larger consciousness. The common man knows that Spider-man loves Mary Jane but only comic geeks know that before MJ, Spidey let a certain Gwen Stacy fall to her death.]

later
Tom

Comments

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Brian and I beat this to death over lunch. We concluded that you have two schools of group heroic storytelling: Trapped on a Boat, and Not Trapped on a Boat. Trapped on a Boat storytelling covers those stories where Our Heroes are forced to stick together by circumstance, resulting in an ensemble story, from the Argonauts to WWII to Star Trek to X-Men. Not Trapped on a Boat storytelling is that in which the characters all do their own thing, and periodically get together at the Round Table Smoking Club to discuss their exploits, like Arthurian tales, the Founding Fathers, the great pulp crossovers, etc.

[bluegargantua]

I declare this metaphor to be the winner.

And since America is a landlocked country, there's no boat to get trapped in. Explaining the high frequency of Not In A Boat stories in American folklore.

Tom