What's the significance of ancient mythology in literature?
Whenever I see a movie critic praise Ridley Scott's Prometheus, they seem to be drooling over all the mythological references, although most don't necessarily complement gaps in the story or enrich itself.
I see the same pattern repeated over and over in Hollywood. Take The Matrix for one, where mythological and religious references are regarded significant and are valuable additions to the storytelling. I am at the brink of coming to the conclusion that any screenplay can be improved a lot by adding sufficient amount of mythology.
I don't understand how mythological references make a story better. Because:
Mythology is the oldest form of storytelling, so it's been around the longest, hence it's the most common and the most primitive. It even predates philosophical texts so the most intricate theme you can bump into is "self-sacrifice".
It's been referenced so many times. Every new pantheon, new mythology and new religion, inherited complete volumes of previous mythology. It didn't stop there either, non-religious storytelling was also influenced by mythology for a very long time.
So referencing mythology today feels like referencing a dictionary, or lyrics to Old McDonald's Farm. I cannot simply grasp how people feel awe when faced with a mythological reference in a movie called "Prometheus" in the first place. Since everybody seems to be ok with those I probably don't know something?
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Myths and religions are "stories we already know." Adding references to known mythology in a contemporary story both grounds it to reality and connects it to our larger culture.
Think about modern myths. If you have an ensemble action piece in a movie or a TV episode, for example, there's often a moment just before the climactic battle where five or six heroes walk towards the camera grimly, in slow motion. That's been picked up from a hundred Westerns, which in turn was probably taken from Seven Samurai. Does that make the SloMo Charge of the Light Brigade any less moving? As a watcher, doesn't your heart swell to see the heroes march towards their potential doom?
It's the same thing with referencing ancient mythology. These are tropes. They're well-honed narrative devices. The stories have been told before and told well, and by calling back to them or repeating them, we are trying to borrow some of the emotional impact the original had and echo it in our own work. And if the fictional characters in your story reference myths from an actual culture, it makes them more realistic (in the sense that the story is happening in "the real world" or "our timeline").
Additionally, when do you something as blunt as call your movie Prometheus, you are by definition inviting your audience to make the comparison between your story and the myth. If the movie had been called Ripley Believes It or Not or Float Like a Butterfly or ...On Little Cat Feet, you'd be invited to compare it to something else.
ETA Writer L.B. Gale just posted a discussion of this on her blog this morning.
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Maybe you are seeing it from the wrong point of view. More than mythology, movies like Matrix and Prometheus deal with our current social values and believes.
Neo, the technological messiah, is ready to die to save humanity but under a very actual agnostic - almost atheistic - point of view since he is more than human but not divine. He is machine made flesh. A lot of people can't see the Christianity here, and even more won't notice the detail of the agnostic point of view but it's all there. It's all very actual. We are an agnostic and new age society.
In the same proportion it's agnostic, Matrix has a great deal of New Age "spirituality," mixing everything in a way that, in the end, all is possible if somebody chooses to believe in it. That's too actual and everybody will recognize their daily lives concepts in that movie.
I'm not counting all the other small details - from occultism to role-playing games - the Wachowskis use to link the "mythology" in the movie to our current days and lives.
Prometheus was the titan that gave fire to the mortals, what also can be understood as the secret knowledge. The myth is related also to bible since, fire and the forbidden fruit symbolize knowledge that human kind should not have and divorced men from god.
That is esoteric and occult doctrines. Concepts known by everyone, and felt in the everyday, but not immediately recognized.
It's not the use of mythology that makes the difference, but the ability to use mythology to tweak with the subconscious creating recognizable concepts and images in the movies. The ability to make them believable.
Just, as example, I'll use the Vikings TV Series and Clash of Titans. Both are mythological and historical but they can't achieve the same effect because they stay in the mythological real and can't connect to our modern day reality. On the other hand, in a somewhat different perspective and degree, A Knight's Tale reaches that mythology that connects to us.
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The other answers are good, but there's a whole dimension that hasn't been addressed (except by @FBRogers who got his darn post in before I had a chance to write this ;) ).
Myths were (and, to a large extent, still are) mankind's way of coming to terms with the nature of reality - especially the parts that deal with emotions, our inner nature, and things that aren't always amenable to the rational mind. Without going all C.G. Jung on you, archetypes and myths resonate deeply and powerfully with us on many levels. They are usually what gives a story juice. It's what the readers or watchers identify with - often unconsciously. It's almost impossible to write anything good without them.
So, the myths and archetypes will (almost) always be there. The only issue is whether making the connections explicit makes a difference. In some cases this is a genre thing with comics (graphic novels, to be politically correct) about demigods and superheros.
In other cases, maybe the target audience can be assumed to be lacking in a classical education (getting more rare by the day, from what I hear about the current state of education) and may need a push in the intended direction so as to have a clue as to what the story is really about.
Barring these (and undoubtedly, more legitimate uses I haven't thought of), such references may just be blatant grabs for association with memes that sell. That's where to draw the line. Don't use them to disingenuously trick your reader or to insult their intelligence.
But, don't be afraid to use them appropriately. Joseph Campbell (the demigod of mythology and archetypes) did a lot of consulting for George Lucas when he was developing Star Wars and (without knowing any of the specifics) I'm sure that made a very positive contribution to the work (at least to the first three movies, Episodes 4, 5, and 6 ;( ).
As for critics, they can point out how well (or poorly) a myth/archetype was employed. I know I don't always analyse everything I see/read and sometimes having things like this pointed out to me is very helpful.
As an aside, I remember seeing Zabriskey Point (an unremarkable movie) in an art theater (back when that didn't mean x rated). At the end as we were getting up to go, someone in the theater called out, "Boy meets girl in dessert." and got everybody in the theater laughing. That pretty much summarized the whole movie.
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