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Why do people queue up and break the bank to watch fantasy movies? Why do some fictional characters and mythical creatures strangely arrest our mind and senses? Why do some images and tales affect us so deeply? From mystical heroic journeys to uncanny images and invincible goddesses, ‘Symbols and Myth-Making in Modernity’ investigates the metaphoric power of symbols in human imagination today and in the past. The book traces how ever-present symbols in cultures and rituals across the world, as well as in masterpieces of Renaissance, Sufi poetry and Finnish ‘Kalevala’ myths, erupt in popular culture today, including in cinema, books, visual art, music and politics. The authors develop a phenomenological theory of deep culture that nourishes human perception of reality through multivalent symbols and myths, in which art and rituals occur as liminal spaces of symbol-making. Drawing on examples from the Hobbit and Avengers, street art, politics, and work of acclaimed modern artists, the book describes how deep culture can be seen as a symbolic map of modern mythology. Dismantling literalism and disturbing our view of the world, at each step the book unpacks how symbols play out in the modern world and the work they do in transforming the self.
“In this refreshingly innovative work, the authors incisively relate the mythical themes in popular films such as Matrix, Moana, and Pirates of the Caribbean, among others, to ancient mythemes. They reveal the link between ancient myths and the themes foregrounded in this type of film. More importantly and revealingly, they show how modernity’s aversion to ambiguity, multivalence, and especially to interior transformation leads to a situation that has produced fragmentation. Fragmentation modernity generates both at the level of the individual and at the societal level. This situation has given rise to epidemic levels of mental illness and drug addiction in modernity as well as to a deepening of political fragmentation and ecological destruction.” —Dr. Frederique Apffel-Marglin,Professor Emerita of Anthropology,Smith College, USA.
Acknowledgments; Introduction: Culture Is Deep; Complex Transformations of the Self: The Hero as a Symbol; The Uncanny: Monsters, Blood, and Other 3: A.M. Horrors; The Feminine: Citadel of Metaphors; Introduction; The Veil: Politics, Poetics, and Play of Religious Symbols; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index