Jewett, Robert and John Shelton Lawrence. The American Monomyth. Garden City, USA: Anchor Press/Doubleday. 1977.
For my one-hundredth post on this here blog, I present my concluding thoughts on Jewett and Lawrence's The American Monomyth: they can�t seem to get a grip on sexuality in media at all, and their insistence on individualism means that they render their own stated problem insoluble.
The insistence that American heroes renounce sex seems like an idea they struck upon and felt they needed to conclude, despite scant evidence of it. There is a long commentary on Playboy that makes the insightful observation that in it, and other porn, the women are aggressively sexual while the men seem uninterested in sex at all. J&L take this tendency as a kind of sexual renunciation, transforming male sexual desire into a service men grant to women, thus creating another kind of rescuer/redeemer figure. �Men appear to be doing women a favor, giving them something they desperately need, rather than acting upon their own freely expressed impulses. It is puzzling that the quest for honest male pleasure should go so bafflingly astray in an era that has unshackled itself from the archaic notion that sex is sinful� (66). �If Playboy males have no sexual desires and no aggressive traits, this proves they have angelic purity� (69).
The desire to bend over backwards to demonstrate sexual renunciation is palpable in these pages. The aggression on the part of women in porn is, as they tentatively admit, part of the fantasy, a role-reversed world in which men don�t have to constantly chase women and convince them to have sex. Within that fantasy is a perceived power reversal, as well. If men have the responsibility to do the chasing and the convincing, then women have the power to refuse the attempt. In a world where women are the chasers, men have the power. Now, this model that attributes sexual power to women may not be realistically accurate, but that�s not the point. It�s a very common perception amongst young men who don�t get the sexual attention that they want; therefore it�s presented in Playboy and porn in general. It�s an inherently sexual fantasy of a world of women who desperately want a man, any man (meaning the viewer qualifies) to satisfy them. Jewett and Lawrence testify to all of these things, and yet still insist that it is a form of sexual renunciation, which, to use their word, is baffling.
That said, the last two chapters of the book are much clearer, and must more convincing than any others. The important detail, as in so many cases, is their implied belief in the power of the equality of individuals, through democratic political structures, rather than an �litism of powerful hero/saviour/redeemers. They even lament, accurately, that the element missing from the American monomyth, which by the end of the book is a force of ignorance and indoctrination, is the ability of the hero to be reintegrated into the community, as in Campbell�s monomyth.
They don�t seem to make the elemental connection, though, that Campbell�s argument is that the monomyth doesn�t argue for individualism, despite the presence of the one, true hero. He credits the mythic audience with the ability, indeed the propensity, to not read the stories literally. Jewett and Lawrence seem convinced that the American audience can�t help but read the American monomyth in terms so literal that they will either directly emulate the hero, the so-called �Werther effect,� or emulate the powerless �innocent bystanders� who have no ability, or responsibility, to solve the problems of their communities themselves, and instead wait passively for the arrival of a redeemer figure.
They give far too little credit to the intelligence of the audience to read/watch myths subversively and to interpret it abstractly, so I don�t buy their basic argument, but I find it curious that they miss the solution to their very own problem: how do we get people to see through the American monomyth and act to protect their own communities and solve the problems that arise from within them? They provide the answer but seem blissfully unaware of it: �Democracy has its own necessary myths concerning [�] the efficacy of individual reason� (225). Jewett and Lawrence consistently take for granted their belief that individualism is vitally important to their crusade (a mode of argument that they deride!) against the tendencies of the American monomyth to argue for heroic �litism. They never seem to consider what Campbell argues for over 400 pages, that individualism is part of the cause of �litism. Acting for the good of the community is difficult in an ideological space in which I value myself above all else. They seem to have become convinced by their own construction. They build up democracy as the ultimate counter-force to �litism, but load their version of democracy with �litism from the start. The result is that they build their own inescapable conundrum.
Posted by orion at May 12, 2006 4:58 PM