Prove me wrong
Mar. 17th, 2006 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHey,
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
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
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Date: 2006-03-17 07:51 pm (UTC)"From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli" - Marines have made their own legends. I also seem to remember "The Ballad of the Green Berets" playing on a jukebox for set assembly in Alden.
Granted, these are all "Stuck on a Boat" style stories, but the difference is soldiers are all doing a job they =expected= to do and were =trained= to do rather than being ripped out of their normal experience and screwed by fate. I don't think the Founding Fathers woke up one morning and said, "Today we're gonna make a nation." They were pushed too far for years and didn't see any other options from their colonial "boat". In fact, we'd probably be speaking the Queen's English today if George had backed off on the taxes a bit.