Structuralism and Myth

In previous posts, video essays, and just general work I’ve done on pop culture and myth, my actual form of analysis has always been structuralism. So I decided to take some time here to explain a little about what structuralism is, so if you get into the other stuff you understand a little more about where I’m coming from.

Structural anthropology was founded by Claude Levi-Strauss. Levi-Strauss was inspired by linguistics, particularly the work of Ferdinand de Saussure. Sassure argued that linguistics should spend less time focused on speech acts, and more on the context the speech is happening. Saussure was the one who established a differentiation between “the signifier” (the word) and “the signified” (the thing).

There was an idea that there was an inherent connection between the word “dog” and the thing that we call a dog. In other words, there is something doggy about the word dog. Saussure, on the other hand, thought differently. He believed that the word “dog” did not necessarily relate to “dog” as a thing, but as a concept.

For anthropology, Levi-Strauss understood that the ways we think about the world is more based on concept and organisation of thought than the things themselves. The way we categorise and think about the things we interact with are not inherent in the things themselves, but are socially and culturally based. As we grow in this world, society tells us what things are and how we should think about them. We look at a dog and are told its a dog. But later we see something that’s way bigger than that original dog but it’s still a dog.

This is something taught to us, rather than something we feel inherently.

Dogs are obviously an example here, but we can apply this to more complicated conceptions. Instead of dogs, let’s think about people. We have people who are “like us” and people who are not, and this is also something which is taught. Some people are categorised in different boxes, and some humans are not categorised into the people category at all, depending on the social world you grow up in.

In Structural anthropology, we understand these social categories are embedded in a lot of what we do. If this is what our worldview is based on, then the things we produce are going to also reflect this. This means that a society’s mythology also reflects these categories, and by analysing mythology we can get a detailed view of what this categorisation looks like.

So, by analysing our popular culture, we can understand the society that made that media’s form of categorisation.

So the way we actually do this analysis is by partaking in what appears to be like an archeological excavation. The structural method starts with finding mythemes, which are the smallest units that make up a myth, inspired by the phoneme in linguistics. Mythemes are the smallest element of a myth, and one that cannot be broken down any further. Each mytheme functions based on relations. Mythemes don’t live in isolation, but are directly related to other mythemes, and through this relationship builds the foundation of the myth.

We do this by starting at the narrative level, the actual story as presented to us. This is the most contextually situated. We got all the fancy words, the fluff around the presentation, all of that.

Under that is what we call the S3 level, one step removed from the narrative. This level uses the mythemes and element of the myth while understanding their context, and we begin to categorise and understand the relations between them.

And then we get to the S2 level, which is the next step abstract. The S2 level is as deep as I typically go, even though Levi-Strauss believes there to be an S1 level which he thinks is biologically based. I disagree with this, along with a few other structuralists who have come after him, but that’s probably a whole ‘nother conversation for a whole ‘nother time.

The key elements, the mythemes we are looking for, are found in narratively significant roles and relationships, which can be found through both action and inaction. For example, silence and noise are both possible mythemes. These can often be represented in a key character, a theme, or location. Once we find a few mythemes, we can look at how they relate to one another, and see how they are categorised through their relationships with each other.

Essentially, structuralism can be seen as somewhat similar to a textual anlaysis. The narrative is relegated as a text, and analysed as one. The point of a structural study, like the one we will be doing on Stranger Things, is not to assess the text as text, but as a cultural artefact that reflects cultural categories.

And that’s the structural study of myth! I hope it wasn’t too boring, but I think it shows one of the ways that myths can be analysed. It tends to be my method, though it’s not the only one, and perhaps not even my only one. I see method as a tool, not a doctrine.