This is such a culturally illiterate comparison that it's hard to say where to start, aside from that Achilles, while "overpowered" is clearly not a Mary Sue. He was wildly unstable and occasionally blasphemous to the point that when he spent days dragging Hector's corpse to desecrate it, the gods intervened to preserve it.
People do make their own myths, probably the clearest example (awful as it is) is Roko's Basilisk. These designed-by-commitee entertainment products do not have the social origin of myths, nor really any of the functions of them.
You would need to do more to distinguish myth from symbolism in general. I agree that the internet things you talk about (not sure about the last one and frankly I don't really want to know) are a type of folk tradition, but we should likewise recognize that a corporate Slenderman movie is not the same thing as the folk tradition of Slenderman.
The fundamental problem with capeshit movies even compared to comics is that it's so overwhelmingly corporate, it's entirely centralized and top-down in terms of who is telling the story, rather than emerging from grassroots storytelling like even to some small extent comics historically have (both from the many conflicting stories from countless authors, major and minor, and the fact that it's much more viable to just be some dude and make a comic than it is to be some dude and make a capeshit movie).
People don't necessarily need to literally believe it for it to be a myth, but part of the central point of them that separates them from a more general type of fiction is that they are made to explain things in a way that at least resonates with people and how they relate to the world. Power fantasies, flashy effects, and obtuse "mysteries" in the "lore" are overwhelmingly what is in capeshit and these do not contribute to what myths are (though they can be present, well at least the first two). Capeshit movies are generally too up their own ass in realities totally divorced from ours that don't even incidentally intersect with human experience beyond the most generic tropes.
If that garbage Wandavision series wasn't such an ARG, I'd say that it is one of the closer examples in how it (poorly attempts to) connect with people and had some success.
As an aside, another reason I dislike the comparison is that there's a need to have an eternal status quo that myths generally don't. Yes, a good portion of the gods never die in any story, but the humans sure as hell do, because they aren't some Neverending Story to be milked forever with sequels. The stories of Achilles live on and get reinterpreted and people sometimes place him in silly new situations, but it's a fundamental part of his character that Paris shoots him in the heel and he fucking dies and, from then on, exists only as a shade in the afterlife along with all of the other Heroes in Greek mythology other than Hercules (depending on the version).
Remember, the Heroic Age ended when Telegonus killed Odysseus, the last great Hero, with a poison spear. What followed was the Iron Age, which was the Age identified as being the "modern day" when Homer was around.
Now compare that to Bane iconically "breaking the bat" and now, from DC, what we get are habitual rehashings of the same anemic gestures emulating that moment as Batman lives forever in his time-agnostic sequels like an edgy Ash Ketchum.
This is such a culturally illiterate comparison that it's hard to say where to start, aside from that Achilles, while "overpowered" is clearly not a Mary Sue. He was wildly unstable and occasionally blasphemous to the point that when he spent days dragging Hector's corpse to desecrate it, the gods intervened to preserve it.
People do make their own myths, probably the clearest example (awful as it is) is Roko's Basilisk. These designed-by-commitee entertainment products do not have the social origin of myths, nor really any of the functions of them.
I believe you are responding to a shitpost.
People say that shit unironically, so idc
The part that made me think it's ironic is this:
Like 50-50. I think the role of myths in our society had been absorbed into liberal instutions but I was kinda being glib about it
I have seen too many super man tattoos to belive that. In at least some real way those are our modern myths.
We are just now getting some back with creepy pasta. Like slenderman, the backrooms, skibbidy might go that way.
You would need to do more to distinguish myth from symbolism in general. I agree that the internet things you talk about (not sure about the last one and frankly I don't really want to know) are a type of folk tradition, but we should likewise recognize that a corporate Slenderman movie is not the same thing as the folk tradition of Slenderman.
The fundamental problem with capeshit movies even compared to comics is that it's so overwhelmingly corporate, it's entirely centralized and top-down in terms of who is telling the story, rather than emerging from grassroots storytelling like even to some small extent comics historically have (both from the many conflicting stories from countless authors, major and minor, and the fact that it's much more viable to just be some dude and make a comic than it is to be some dude and make a capeshit movie).
People don't necessarily need to literally believe it for it to be a myth, but part of the central point of them that separates them from a more general type of fiction is that they are made to explain things in a way that at least resonates with people and how they relate to the world. Power fantasies, flashy effects, and obtuse "mysteries" in the "lore" are overwhelmingly what is in capeshit and these do not contribute to what myths are (though they can be present, well at least the first two). Capeshit movies are generally too up their own ass in realities totally divorced from ours that don't even incidentally intersect with human experience beyond the most generic tropes.
If that garbage Wandavision series wasn't such an ARG, I'd say that it is one of the closer examples in how it (poorly attempts to) connect with people and had some success.
As an aside, another reason I dislike the comparison is that there's a need to have an eternal status quo that myths generally don't. Yes, a good portion of the gods never die in any story, but the humans sure as hell do, because they aren't some Neverending Story to be milked forever with sequels. The stories of Achilles live on and get reinterpreted and people sometimes place him in silly new situations, but it's a fundamental part of his character that Paris shoots him in the heel and he fucking dies and, from then on, exists only as a shade in the afterlife along with all of the other Heroes in Greek mythology other than Hercules (depending on the version).
Remember, the Heroic Age ended when Telegonus killed Odysseus, the last great Hero, with a poison spear. What followed was the Iron Age, which was the Age identified as being the "modern day" when Homer was around.
Now compare that to Bane iconically "breaking the bat" and now, from DC, what we get are habitual rehashings of the same anemic gestures emulating that moment as Batman lives forever in his time-agnostic sequels like an edgy Ash Ketchum.
You can’t truly understand until you see Skibbidy Toilet
The closest thing we got to modern mythology is the SCP Foundation, in terms of both form, breath, scope and content