Myth and author: "Seventh Seal," "Star Trek"

It was an unlikely combination, to say the least.

On Thursday night, there was the hockey playoffs, which I figured my sports-mad son would want to watch. But he scanned the listings and said Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" was on TCM. I don't know how or why he sniffed his way to this ultra-classic Swedish meditation on faith, death, and life, but we watched it, pretty much from beginning to end, and he posted about it on his Facebook page.

Photos found here and here.

Then last night, sister was babysitting and we had a window of a few hours, and we decided to see the new "Star Trek," which I had heard was good.

After that flick, I asked son what he thought. "Lots of explosions," he said.

We obviously have to serve this boy up some more foreign fare.

"Star Trek" is what the doctor ordered for this continuing miserable economy. It is equal parts explosions, violence, nostalgia, special effects, impossible science fiction absurdity, and goofball scripting. I don't often consider movies an escape-- most of the time I think of them as returns, to the comfort of the ideal community.

This one was an escape: just plain fun.

The idea is that once upon a time, the classic characters of the original "Star Trek" television show-- Captain Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Scotty, Chekhov, and Doctor McCoy-- were youngsters, and that there must be a story behind how they got to be in their positions in the legendary starship "Enterprise."

The Greeks had stories like this, such as when Heracles strangled snakes in his bed as a baby, or killed his music teacher Linus when a teenager.

It is the staple of myth to tell certain stories over and over again, in various versions and with various emphases.

As long as a community loves a story and the world-view and values the story offers, the story will never die. "Star Trek" offers good old American can-do spirit with humor and chutzpah. Irresistible to many.

My son was having none of it. He didn't grow up with Kirk and Spock, and knows the original show mostly through the gut-busting lens of Berke Breathed's "Bloom County," the newspaper comic strip that skewered "Star Trek" with images of a "Starship Enterpoop" that consisted of a wheelchair and helium ballons, the handicapped physician Cutter John in outrageous sunglasses, and Opus the penguin playing the pointy-eared Spock role. I plead guilty there, too. I was his "Bloom County" anthology pusher.

In general, son is not taken in by myth. He is a pretty hard-headed literalist who came out of the first Harry Potter movie at age nine and agreed with his buddy that the movie was terrible because it left out so much stuff from the book.

"The Seventh Seal" was much more up his alley. Set in medieval Sweden during the great plague that halved Europe's population, it is about a disillusioned knight on his way back from the Crusades, pursued by a pasty-faced guy in a cowled, black robe who calls himself Death.

I like this movie a lot, and not just because of the extremely beautiful Swedish actresses in it. It deals with an important philosophical, religious question, whether God exists or not, and if God does exist, where is God in the unimaginable suffering of God's people?

This type of story is not myth. It is a stand-alone creation of one author who is not offering up values and a world-view, but attempting to make an audience aware of the human dilemma, using his creativity to speak the truth of our existence in as unvarnished a way as possible. There is no allegiance to a group of people or a tradition, though it might use some of the characters and situations of a traditional story.

When I teach literature as such, I like to ask my students how much of a story can be considered "myth," and how much "author." Many of the best Greek myths are told by some of the greatest authors in the world: Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles. I call this myth-and-author.

So much for the academic content of this post.

Two things these movies had going for them: the knight character in "The Seventh Seal" resembles quite a bit a beloved teacher I know, and in "Star Trek" the Spock character looks and sounds quite a bit like a certain bass in our choir.

Good stories always have something recognizable in them.

Comments

[Bob Mustin]

Is it possible that a series such as the Star Trek movie and TV one mimics the multiple tellings that led to what we now call myth in cultures such as that of the Greeks?

[DF]

Yes, absolutely, Bob. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.