Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Cinderella ~ A Classic Story Gone Pop Culture

When you think of Cinderella, what comes to mind? The most popular and classic tale written by Charles Perrault? The Disney version in which mice and birds sing and dance, and the Cinderella that has become an icon for Disney and an idol for young girls everywhere? Or the more modern twists like A Cinderella Story or Another Cinderella Story featuring well known actresses and actors like Hillary Duff, Chad Michael Murray, and Selena Gomez? There are over 45 different film adaptations and many more novels, short stories, plays, songs and poems all revolving around that idea of unlikely romance between people from different worlds. All of this leads to the question - why is Cinderella's story so popular in pop culture?

My opinion on this question is that Cinderella, like so many other classic stories that end in true love and perfect happiness, is inspiring to people of all ages, for it is an archetype that encourages one to follow their dreams and take risks. Young children (especially girls) make a role model of Cinderella because she is a strong, beautiful, young woman who finds her prince charming and lives "happily ever after"; the dream of almost all little girls. Tweens and teens also are inspired by Cinderella's sense of knowing who she is and what she wants in life, and her strength in pursuing those dreams even with the risk of her life crashing down on her once again. Adults, young and old, see Cinderella as someone they once were: lost without direction and confused about life in general. This older audience appreciates her struggle and finally her success, because even if they have or haven't found their "prince charming" (symbolizes not just true love, but also success and goals achieved), they know that they will and when they do, it will be every bit as perfect as it is in the story. Cinderella, in this way, truly makes life a little more hopeful and a little more romantic, because even though it is slightly unrealistic (the magic and singing mice and such) the story really portrays a happiness that everyone dreams of. This is why, I believe, Cinderella is such a big pop culture phenomenon: people want to believe the happiness and true love in the story, and everyone loves a happy ending - and big media companies love it when people love things because those things sell well!

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Stardust and the Human Condition

Stardust, as my dad said, "is the perfect movie. A bit of drama, a lot of action, a good amount of humour, some mystery, some magic and some romance.". It is one of those movies that you can watch over and over and over again without ever getting tired of it. Stardust (surprise, surprise!) is also a very good example of the hero's journey and transformation. It begins with a quote that really gets me thinking though, and this quote is truly the essence of what I am getting at on this blog : "Are we human because we gaze at the stars or do we gaze at the stars because we are human?". In all of the archetypes that I am exploring, I ask the question: is this idea formed by human nature or is it an idea that has just been taken and re-modeled again and again? After watching this movie (again), I realized that perhaps this question, too, is unanswerable because there is too much evidence on both sides. I mean, on one hand, many great writers have had ideas come to them in dreams or spontaneously, but that general idea, whether they know it or not, may have been explored thousands of years prior to their existance. The argument for this is that sometimes humans absorb things without knowing that they are doing so, and therefore an idea in a dream may have come from something present in the world already, being passed down this way throughout time. It almost hurts your head to think about, doesn't it? Anyways, I certainly will continue to explore this idea of the human condition impacting ideas and stories, but perhaps not as narrowmindedly as previous.

What are your thoughts on the question "Are we human because we gaze at the stars or do we gaze at the stars because we are human?"? What makes us human? Is it what we do and how we think, or is it simply a scientific classification based on physical things? Is there a difference between belonging to the homo sapien species and belonging to the human race?

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Hawaiian Creation Story ~ More Mythology in Other Cultures

When I was in Hawaii, I went on a dolphin adventure boat tour to a little island just East of Maui, and on the way over, as the informational part of the tour, one of the guides told us a Hawaiian creation legend. I found that there are many parallels in terms of mythological content to that of the Ancient Greeks or Romans, simply in the sense that there are gods/godesses who control a certain aspect/element of the world and who aided in the creation of the world as we know it today.

The myth itself is explaining how the Hawaiian islands came to exist even though, as science has proved, it is known that the moving of tectonic plates and underwater lava flows created the land. It begins with Pele (Pronounced pay-lay), the Hawaiian godess of lava. Pele was born into what was, at her time, a relatively large family, consisting of 6-7 hundred brothers and sisters. As a young woman, Pele fell in love with the same man as one of her sisters, Akua (pronounced ah-cooh-ah), the Hawaiian godess of the ocean. Pele ended up winning the man's affections, which angered Akua to the point of flooding Pele's home. Pele fled, creating a new land with her magic lava stick, Paoa (pronounced pay-oh-ah), which later became known as the first and most Northeastern of the hawaiian islands, Ni'ihau. Akua came to Pele's new home very shortly after and flooded it as well, leaving only a small island in its place. Once again, Pele fled and created a new home for herself, and once again Akua destroyed it. This occured many more times until Pele reached the big island of Hawaii, where she currently resides. Legend is that she will once again be flooded out and create a new land to call her home (explains why there are still active volcanoes on Hawaii and why they become dormant or extinct like the other islands as well as the new Hawaiian island currently forming from a lava flow that will surface in a few million years)



As you can see, many cultures have their own legends and mythology explaining how everything came to exist, but many of those legends and myths follow a similar pattern in various cultures alike. For example, there are good gods and godesses and bad gods and godesses, gods and godesses who are in control of a specific element or force, and sacred items, lands and people in all cultural archetypes. In a way, I believe, these stories were a way for ancient people to make sense of the world and its happenings, and many of these myths are actually on the right track - just like the Hawaiian creation story which explains everything that science proves at a later date. Maybe the explainations are not as realistic as the science that  humans are now capable of, but they certainly are much simpler to understand and remember.

What do you think is significant about these stories and legends other than cultural meaning? Are there others that you have heard/seen that really make sense and have parallels to other legends in different cultures? Is it human nature to come up with a semi-logical explaination when there seems to be no answer?