The effects of myth on society

[Medusa]

So my friend Beth is doing a paper on the urban legend La llorona. This isn't specifically about that lore. She wants to know from the peanut gallery the following:

What affects do myths such as la llorona have on society? I guess if you can discuss why we have those myths. The purpose they hold now. If maybe that's the same as the original telling of the stories etc.

Thanks!

[B. de Corbin]

Re: The effects of myth on society

There's probably an infinite number of answers to a question like this, depending on the angle you want to look at it from. Here's one point of view -

First off, people enjoy stories, particularly stories which rouse emotions - anything from funny to terrifying. Stories which are "believed" to be true are even more effective at rousing emotions, so they bring even more pleasure to the one who hears them.

When people tell stories, they are providing their listeners with a pleasurable experience (the pleasure comes from the emotional response). So... both the teller and the listener are engaging in a pleasurable social activity which forms a bond between them. A good story teller also gains status because of his/her ability to tell a good story.


Here's another point of view -

Any group, in order to exist as a group, must share something in common. Sometimes it's an activity (like a work-based group), sometimes it's a shared belief (like a religious group). It can be other things as well, but activities and beliefs are most common (or mixtures of the two).

Myths - stories which are believed to be true and which hold a place of importance for a particular group - are one way of spreading common beliefs through a group. The more beliefs a group has in common, the stronger the bond is between members of the group. So... a shared set of myths strengthens group cohesiveness, and leads each member of the group to identify more strongly with the group whose myths he/she shares.

[Dez]

Re: The effects of myth on society

Medusa, what is the legend of La Llorona?

[Medusa]

Re: The effects of myth on society

[quote author=Deseret link=topic=1160.msg21216#msg21216 date=1291938825]
Medusa, what is the legend of La Llorona?
[/quote]

She's a Mexican folk lore told from usually mothers to daughters mostly.
It means the weeping woman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Llorona

[Dez]

Re: The effects of myth on society

Oh, wow....talk about a loaded story.

It seems to me as though there's a lot that a story like that has to do with woman's role in a given society(especially if, like you said, it's usually told mother-daughter). It would serve as a warning, especially given the focus in Latin culture on keeping women virtuous. I'd say there's also an element of betrayal, though...she's the one being punished, when the event that drove her to desperation was the husband/boyfriend's actions. He doesn't get punished in any way.

There's a Japanese legend this reminds me of...Beth might be interested: The Kuchisake-onna. If I remember right, the original tale was that a powerful lord or samurai had a beautiful, but vain concubine. He suspected her of infidelity, and whether it was true or not, punished her by slitting her mouth open wide. She's said to be drawn to children, in particular (never having had any), and will steal them away.

In more modern times, the old story has turned into an urban legend, where the practice of wearing surgical masks in public(common in Japan during the flu season) hides her nature until it's too late.

I'm rather suspicious that whoever wrote The Dark Knight was influenced by the idea.

[Ophidia]

Re: The effects of myth on society

[quote author=Medusa link=topic=1160.msg20842#msg20842 date=1291846148]What affects do myths such as la llorona have on society? I guess if you can discuss why we have those myths. The purpose they hold now. If maybe that's the same as the original telling of the stories etc.[/quote]

I've been watching a series of Joseph Campbell lectures on Netflix called Mythos I/II. The one I watched today was an episode called The Spirit Land & he talked about the Native American myth cycles, and how all tribes had a creation myth of some sort, and how many of them were 'emergence myths', where the first people created would be forced to leave their place of origin & move into another homeland. Each tribe would mark the place where the people emerged from the old land and came into the new land, as well as things like a 'world mountain' or 'world tree' - but they recognized the difference between 'local' landmarks and 'universal/archetypal' landmarks. Yes, Mt. McKinley may have been a 'world mountain' for that tribe, but it was also a symbol of THE World Mountain.

Mythic figures like La Llorona are probably much the same thing. They are both a local figure or place of danger and symbolic of a larger universal archetypal fear. Every woman is afraid of losing her child to strangers and dangerous places. La Llorona is usually associated with waterways, like rivers and canals. When I was a kid in southern California, she haunted the L.A. river basin. Here in Vegas, she's in the washes and flash flood channels.

Fear is easier to deal with and communicate if we can project it onto something tangible instead of just having this amorphous disembodied anxiety floating around. Makes it seem more logical and rational, What better way to conceptualize a fear like a child drowning than by imagining it as a child-killing boogeywoman? If my mother told me not to do something because she was afraid I would be hurt or killed if I did it, I'd probably laugh it off, "oh mom, nothing's going to happen". If she told me "la llorona will eat you" and described this scary, vengeful ghost woman to me, I wouldn't want to run into it and would probably stay far from the local watery dangers.

La llorona and similar stories are meaningful on the 'local' level to people who come from a culture where women may have been subject to a man's whim, and where women had a difficult time protecting their children. It may seem like a silly superstition to a modern white woman living in a relatively affluent suburb where there are few dangers and she has empowerment through the protection of the legal system and decent education and employment, but the underlying theme of a woman being afraid of losing her children would be understood at the 'universal' level, maybe even expressed in the modern concept of 'stranger danger' or 'online stalker'.

[gwynwas]

Re: The effects of myth on society

[quote author=perzephone link=topic=1160.msg21271#msg21271 date=1291951703]
Fear is easier to deal with and communicate if we can project it onto something tangible instead of just having this amorphous disembodied anxiety floating around.
[/quote]

This rings true for me. I think this is true of many myths and says something about the animistic nature of the human mind in seeing sentience in all things. This is especially true for children.

I would say it is a form of innate human intelligence actually. By seeing a personality/intelligence in something that we don't fully understand, it helps us to see a pattern and deal with it whether that be flash floods, or the life cycle, or influenza, or whathaveyou. [not to say there isn't an actual sentience in those things, but, well, who knows]

Anyway, thank you for your post, perzephone, i found it to be very interesting and informative.

[Bjorn]

Re: The effects of myth on society

Myths are very important to society seeing as how they unite the masses. They explain how things came to be, thusly answering the fundamental humans questions: why are we here, how did we get here, why are things the way that they are, etc. These myths generally become the basis of some sort of established religion and religion is the cornerstone of culture.

As for their affect, its infinite, really, depending on what the myth is. If you have a whole culture of people who believe that a woman's role is to be a certain way then you've boxed in every single female for the duration of that culture's existence. Myths can be leashes to keep the people in line (the whip cracked by the religious elders, since myth and religion I think are very closely tied), but they can also be inspiring as well. I know I would feel hopeful knowing that, even though Demeter visits her daughter ever winter and that is why the world stops being fruitful in that season, that I know she will return, and therefore inspiring in me faith that this too shall pass.

[Simon Slade]

Re: The effects of myth on society

Myths have much the same effect on society as any story. Some of them catch on and society learns from them, others just fade away into obscurity.