The Ineffable Quality of Mythology

There’s an inherent problem with studying mythology and pop culture narratives in the way that I do. I focus so much on he structure of it all. I think about how things are constructed, how they are then experienced, and how this then comes out the other end. Essentially, everything is looking at the science of it all. I’m consumed with thinking about things in ways that can be repeated and make sense.

Essentially, I look for the same patterns. I look for elements that are repeated from story to story, that can capture the essence of what makes something work more than something else. This is also a fundamental part of literary studies - we look for the structure of a narrative, how characters are constructed and read. We look at how dialogue is written, or how a sentence is structured. This is the science behind it, the construction of everything that can be equated to looking at how bricks are placed together. If all the bricks are there, and in their right place, then the buildings will all be just as good.

But the other problem with studying people is that there are elements of difference that goes without explanation. This is an important reason why the method of participant-observation is so important - it’s not just about seeing what’s happening and fitting into a category. It’s about experiencing it directly, feeling what it feels like. It’s the difference between looking at the building’s blueprint, and living in the building and feeling the protection it gives from the storm outside.

Let’s take a second to look outside of pop culture narratives to provide more examples. At the university I used to teach at, we used to have students practice fieldwork by going to a local place of religious practice and then writing a little fieldwork report on it. A lot of students ended up going to the local Spiritualist Church - a church which specialises in contacting the dead. Students picked this often because they thought it was silly and would be a good laugh. However, one of the reasons we had to stop doing this practice was several students had existential breakdowns when they experienced things they couldn’t explain.

A picture of my desk on a research day - coffee and notebooks.

There’s a wonderful article by Edith Turner, one of the early female anthropologists, called “The Reality of Spirits”. In this article, Turner reflects on the problem of anthropology with its need to find reasons and explanations for everything and every experience. Turner discusses that, during fieldwork with spiritual healers, she witnessed spirits in such a way that she couldn’t explain. But she felt she couldn't report on this because it didn’t fit into the dynamics of structural or categorical explanations that anthropology likes.

I do realise that these examples are much more firmly in the religion/spiritual dynamics of life, which is a little more complicated than discussions of popular culture, but I think there are still important elements of popular culture that can be immensely important. I mean, that’s the entire basis of this website and of my work more generally. But I think these more extreme examples can point at an important aspect of pop culture narratives: the ineffable quality of mythology.

There’s always something extra to myths, especially the really good ones. There’s something in them that’s hard to explain, hard to pin down. We can see something else making all the same structural moves, but it doesn’t quite read the same way.

I’ve been reading a lot of mystery novels recently. I think I’ve ready roughly seventeen mystery novels this year, give or take a few depending on how you would qualify some of the books. After struggling through one that was one of the worst books I’ve read in a long time, not even finishing another, and then absolutely loving a few, I started trying to figure out what made some books work more than others.

Part of this exegesis was the basis of my video essay on the Detective as a character, which came out in November. I still think everything in that essay stands, but I was missing a discussion about this ineffable quality. Sometimes, a detective works just because they do. That’s it. You can see two detective characters, both look the same on paper, the structure of them is the same, the way they flow is the same, but one of them is just way more compelling and interesting. It may not have to do with the writing quality, or the mysteries themselves, or anything else. It’s just something you can’t put your finger on, something that makes something just work.

Which means that there’s also this other element to these mystery novels. There’s one author in particular whose work I always struggle with (I won’t name because I don’t want to upset anyone). The author is actually very good at their mystery structure. Their characters are interesting, and fit the way I think detectives or other characters in a mystery should work. The mystery itself is paced well, and interesting. I’m always continuing to read the book because I want to know the answer - a mark of a good mystery. But when I finish the book, there’s always something that keeps me from feeling like I loved the book. I vary from three to four stars on them. I’ve been struggling to figure out what it is that keeps me from giving them more, and I think it comes down to the fact that I’ve also read Agatha Christie.

The lady herself: Agatha Christie.

Christie has her problems, but I often overlook the problems in the writing, or chalk some of it up to a different time, and still love every single one of them. Meanwhile, this newer author I struggle to give five stars to, despite not having the same problems. Why? Because there’s just something about Christie. There’s something about her writing that makes it more. It’s that ineffable quality that pushes it from a good book to a part of contemporary mythology.

I’m sorry I don’t have some deep insight on the structural element or the social relationship that reveals exactly how to tap into this. But I think that’s the point of this - there’s no such thing. There’s nothing that can be pointed at and replicated from Christie, because it’s not in the way the story is constructed or the way the characters are formed. It’s not even about the mystery and the way it draws the reader in and makes us question everything and everyone we encounter. It’s something else, something inexplicable.

Engaging with a pop culture myth that has this quality is like trying to explain the spirit Edith Turner saw, or experiencing what those previous students experienced. It’s something you can’t explain in these ways, or you can’t find anything to grasp onto in something that’s more firmly set. It’s just something that you feel in your chest. And its what makes a myth a myth.