11 Do Hollywood stars bring myth back to the world?

Nineteenth-century and twentieth-century approaches to myth and science

There have been two main responses to the challenge of science to myth. The response of the nineteenth century has been surrender. It is classically represented by the pioneering English anthropologist E. B. Tylor, whose chief work, Primitive Culture, first appeared in 1871, and the Scottish classicist and anthropologist J. G. Frazer, the first edition of whose main opus, The Golden Bough, was published in 1890. Myth is taken to be doing the same thing as science: explaining or controlling the operation of the physical world. But they operate incompatibly. Myth attributes events in the world to the direct action of gods, who operate not behind impersonal laws of nature but in place of them. Myth and science cannot coexist, the way horses and cars can.

Where nineteenth-century theories of myth pitted myth against science, twentieth-century theories have sought to reconcile myth with science. One can therefore have both. Yet twentieth-century theories have not done so by challenging science as the reigning explanation of the physical world. No less uncompromisingly than their nineteenth-century counterparts have they accepted science. Rather, they have recharacterized myth as other than a literal explanation of the physical world.

Twentieth-century theories of myth can be divided into three groups. First are those theories which maintain that myth, while still about the physical world, is not an explanation, in which case its function diverges from that of science. The pre-eminent theorists here are Bronislaw Malinowski (1926) and Mircea Eliade (1968 [1959]). Second are those theories which maintain that myth is not to be read literally, in which case its content does not even refer to the physical world. The leading theorists here are Rudolf Bultmann (1953) and Hans Jonas (1963). Third and most radical are those theories which maintain both that myth is not an explanation and that myth is not to be read literally. Here fall above all Freud (1953) and Jung (1968), for both of whom myth is as far removed from the physical world as can be.

The divide between nineteenth-century theories and twentieth-century theories is not over whether “primitives” have myth. That they do is taken for granted by both sides. The divide is over whether moderns, who again by definition have science, can also have myth. Twentieth-century theorists have argued that they can and do. Only at the end of the century, with the emergence of postmodernism, has the deference to science assumed by both sides been questioned.

Insofar as twentieth-century theories have not challenged the supremacy of science, why should they even seek to reconcile myth with science? Why should they not simply accept the incompatibility of myth with science and dispense with myth? Their answer is that nineteenth-century theories, by restricting myth to a literal explanation of physical events, fail to account for the array of other functions and meanings that myth harbors. Myth appears to operate as more or even other than the primitive counterpart to natural science. The telltale evidence is that myth survives. If Tylor and Frazer were right, myth would be dead.

Winnicott and Hollywood stars

The question for the twenty-first century is whether there is a way of bringing myth back to the world without rejecting science. There may be. One possible way is through the approach of the child psychiatrist and analyst D. W. Winnicott (1982, 1987). Winnicott does not discuss myth, but his analysis of play and of its continuation in adult make-believe may provide one road back to the world.

Hollywood stars are the top kinds of celebrities. They are like gods, and their fans are like believers. Unlike other kinds of celebrities, such as sports stars and rock stars, Hollywood stars, like gods, are rarely seen in person. Also unlike other kinds of celebrities, they, like gods, take on disguises—their roles. In film they, like gods, can do all kinds of things that celebrities who perform in person cannot. And in a movie theater they are gargantuan in size. In all of these ways film stars fit the popular conception of gods, a conception found not only in, say, Homer but also, when read with open eyes, in the Bible. The difference for sophisticated theologians between humans and God may be one of kind—for example, God’s having no body. But the popular difference between humans and gods is one of degree: a god’s body is bigger. Certainly the biblical God has a body. Otherwise, to cite a single instance, Moses at the burning bush would not have to look away to avoid seeing God and would not have to stop at the perimeter to avoid stepping on the ground where God has walked. Onscreen, stars are not only bigger than ordinary humans but also stronger and sexier. Like gods, they are greater than ordinary folks in degree, not kind.

It is a cliché that contemporary film stars, like contemporary heroes generally, are drawn from a far wider array of types and that contemporary stars are as much anti-heroes as heroes. But the biggest box office draws still look the part onscreen, and it is looks, not acting ability, that puts them there. Onscreen, merely human virtues becomes superhuman ones: bravery becomes fearlessness, kindliness becomes saintliness, strength becomes omnipotence, wisdom becomes omniscience. Humans becomes gods.

It is commonly assumed that there is at least one difference of kind, not merely of degree, between humans and gods: gods live forever. But so do film stars—in their films. Here, too, film stars are more god-like than sports stars and rock stars. There may be films of the performances of sports stars and rock stars, and with MTV the make-or-break performances of some rock stars are ever more done on the “small screen.” But TV, film, and video are still copies of live performances. The “live” performances of film stars are on film. At the same time some gods, like humans, do die. The difference is that gods are reborn. But then so are some humans. The difference is that gods are reborn again and again. Here, too, film stars are like gods, born anew with each film. New roles amount to reincarnation.

Should one ever encounter a god in person, it would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The same holds for encountering film stars. Fans want to get as close as possible to stars. Fans want to touch stars. Getting a piece of clothing is like holding the Shroud of Turin. A fan fortunate enough to shake the hand of a film star at a premiere will think twice before washing away the contact. Tours of stars’ homes are standard fare. The terms used of fans’ admiration for their heroes say it all: Hollywood stars are “worshiped.”

It might be said that where gods are born, film stars are made—by directors and producers. And it is well known how capricious becoming a star can be. But surely most fans believe that stars are born, not made. When Lana Turner was spotted innocently drinking a milkshake at Schwab’s drug store on Hollywood Boulevard, she was discovered, not invented.

It might well be said that where gods are gods in private as well as in public, film stars are stars only onscreen and offscreen are mere mortals. But surely most fans make no distinction. The onscreen qualities are expected to be the offscreen ones as well. Film stars are assumed to be playing themselves onscreen, and it is not the ability to act but ironically the opportunity to, apparently, be oneself that is mesmerizing. Thus it comes as a shock to learn that in person Mel Gibson is not very tall. Robert Mitchum had to caution his fans against expecting military strategy from him.

It might understandably be argued that even if film stars are god-like in their attributes, the worship of them still does not restore divinity to the physical world. After all, film stars cannot quite cause the rain to fall, as even the most prima donnish of them would concede. Still, is it only coincidental that, ever more, it is film, if also rock, stars who presume to take responsibility for accomplishing things in the social and even the physical world that whole nations have failed to achieve: ending pollution, saving species, eliminating poverty, cancelling developing world debt? Some years ago Michael Douglas came to the United Kingdom to get things going on nuclear disarmament. Leonardo DiCaprio has assigned himself the role of saving the Amazon. Film stars and other celebrities are assumed to have power greater than that of heads of states or traditional religious leaders. The Pope can pray for an end to misery, but stars can actually do something about it.

Against my argument that film stars are the modern, secular version of gods, it might sensibly be observed that these days nobody believes the hype. No one believes that Hollywood stars are really different from you and me. They may have more discretionary income, but they face the same obstacles and tribulations as the rest of us. Think of the attempts by film stars to get their children admitted to top universities. What sells better than an “unauthorized” biography of a star—a biography that brings a star down to earth? What is juicier than an exposé? If nothing else, the revelation of the disparity, put mildly, between the onscreen Rock Hudson, the quintessential heterosexual hunk, and the offscreen Rock Hudson, withering away from AIDS, surely drove home the difference between onscreen persona and offscreen reality. It even proved that Rock was a better actor than had been assumed.

But this hard-nosed view of present-day fans is the naive one. Fans continue to “idolize” and “worship” stars not in ignorance of their flaws but in defiance of them. The devotion of fans is not mindless. It is done knowingly. The cult of heroes in every walk of life demands make-believe. It requires, to use a mildly quaint phrase, the voluntary suspension of disbelief.

Onscreen, stars, like gods, are greater than ordinary folks in degree. To begin with, they are gargantuan in size. Merely human virtues are magnified into superhuman ones. Again, bravery becomes fearlessness and so on. But there are also differences of kind. Like gods, film stars are rarely seen in person. When beheld on screen, film stars, like gods, can do anything and can take on disguises—their roles. And of course, stars are immortalized in their films. Conversely, new roles amount to reincarnation. In all of these ways film stars far surpass sports and rock celebrities, whose prime appearances are live and are thereby limited to what talent and special effects can concoct. Compare Michael Jackson’s moonwalk with the mobility of Spider-Man.

Till recently, few gay movie actors dared come out, lest naive fans refuse to accept them in straight roles. And surely most still do not. The English actor Dirk Bogarde, a matinee idol who was himself a closeted gay man, was warned that if he accepted the role of a gay barrister in the trailblazing movie “Victim” (1961), he would never be offered mainstream leading man roles. He still accepted the role, but the warning proved accurate. Harry Hamlin, who had previously played macho roles and who himself is straight, recently declared bitterly that his career had been hurt by his having played a gay, and an aggressive gay, character decades ago in the pioneering film Making Love. Things have changed, and the careers of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal were hardly stymied by their celebrated appearance in Brokeback Mountain. But suppose either of them were now to come out as gay and then to seek to resume playing straight roles—admittedly a logistical complication for Ledger. Things have not changed that much since the days of Rock Hudson and of Tab Hunter, who only long into retirement dared to come out in his autobiography, Confidential. Tom Cruise is professionally required to sue anybody who calls him gay—even if for sophisticated followers his refusal to be defined by others becomes part of his stardom.

Just as gods can, typically, do as they please, so too, it is assumed, can film stars. Fans are shocked to discover that stars are subject to arrest and even imprisonment for offenses to which the rest of us would scarcely be immune, such as drug taking (Robert Downey, Jr.) and shoplifting (Winona Rider). The sexual escapades of stars are taken for granted. The most spectacular example here is, admittedly, not that of a film star but rather Michael Jackson. His most devoted fans refused to accept the charges of pedophilia, which, admittedly, means that he was still loved only insofar as he was not deemed guilty rather than allowed to get away with offenses that would be tolerated in no one else.

But this hard-nosed view of present-day fans applies only to naive ones. Sophisticated fans continue to “worship” stars in full knowledge of their flaws. The flaws are either denied or discounted. It is not that fans don’t know. It is that they don’t want to know or else don’t care. But the devotion of sophisticated fans is not mindless. It is done knowingly. It is, following Winnicott, make-believe, not credulity.

The cult of heroes in every walk of life, not just in films, demands make-believe. To take the obvious example, treating Princess Diana as a wholly selfless, almost saintly person does not require the refusal to acknowledge any evidence to the contrary. Following Winnicott, it requires the refusal to let the evidence get in the way.

Moviegoing abets the deification of film stars. The cinema blocks out the outside world and substitutes a world of its own. The more effective the movie, the more the audience forgets where it is and imagines itself in the time and place of the movie. That is why moviegoers get scared at horror movies. Things are permitted in movies that never happen in the proverbial “real world.” In the movies, as in heaven, anything is possible. The phrase “only in the movies” is telling. To go to the movies is to suspend disbelief. It is to agree to “play along.” The ultimate payoff of moviegoing is encountering the actors themselves, even if only on the screen. Going to the movies is like going to church—to a set-off, self-contained place where god is likeliest to be found. As make-believe, moviegoing combines myth with ritual and brings gods, hence myths, back to the world—and does so without spurning science.

To view a myth as make-believe is not to dismiss it as a delusion. To do so would be to revert to the present either/or option, according to which myth, to be acceptable, either must be true about the external world or, if false about the external world, must retreat from the external world to concern instead the mind or to society. To view myth as make-believe is to allow for a third way of characterizing it. The choice is not just delusion or reality—or, in Winnicott’s terms, illusion or disillusionment. Taken as make-believe, myth can still be true about the world once it has been demarcated as make-believe. The myths of film stars are their authorized, idealized biographies—and even more, their films. Taking their films as make-believe reconnects myth to gods, therefore to religion, and therefore to the world. (On Winnicott, see chapter 2 of this book.)

Bibliography

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Winnicott, D. W. 1987 [1964]. The Child, the Family, and the Outside World. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.