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191 afterword Sports and the Iron Fist of Myth —JaCk lule intRoDuCtion The stories seem to come from the same dark place. Kirby Puckett goes from Minnesota’s cuddly and beloved sports hero to a half-blind, bloated womanizer ,despised and dead at forty-five.Jim Brown goes from one of professional football’s most respected players to a brooding, dangerous figure who beats women.Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa go from brawny and beloved home run heroes to disgraced drug users. And O. J. Simpson goes from football, cinema, and advertising star to wife killer, a man who got away with murder. Even with their distinct, violent edges, these stories are eerily familiar and ominously similar. They tell an oft-told tale, the story of gifted ones who fall from grace. The narratives, as we have seen repeatedly in this volume, call forth Greek tragedy,and it is tempting to read the newspaper accounts and the learned academic analyses of those accounts and nod knowingly over their putative lessons. Hubris and tragic flaws have brought down the heroes. However, that reading by itself is incomplete. The tragic structure and literary lessons of these stories are only a small piece of their significance and should not distract us from their larger purpose—the invocation of the iron fist of myth. These are not simple, tragic tales. They are myths of admonishment and disapprobation. They sanction and scourge. They punish and cast out. Myth was never made simply to teach or entertain. Myth has one main purpose—the construction, maintenance, and surveillance of social order. It is deadly serious. the meanings oF myth Myth today has come to mean many things. For some, myth can mean a false belief or untrue story and often is offered in bland contrast—“myth or reality”? For others, myth refers to ancient tales, the stories of the Greeks or Romans, hoary tales of Zeus, Jupiter, Apollo, and Pluto. Others see myths as the superstitious beliefs of earlier,primitive societies and believe that modern Jack Lule 192 society has “outgrown” myth, that it has replaced those credulous stories and rituals of old with enlightenment, science, and technology. For many modern scholars, however, myth is never false, never ancient, and never to be outgrown. In this context, myths are understood as stories that express a society’s prevailing ideals, ideologies, values, and beliefs. Myths thus are essential social narratives,present in every society,rich and enduring aspects of human existence that draw from archetypal figures and forms to offer exemplary models for social life.1 Myth, in this view, is indispensable for human understanding of the world. Philosopher and historian of religion Mircea Eliade studied myths in hundreds of societies,arguing that“certain aspects and functions of mythical thought are constituents of the human being.”2 Moreover,“it seems unlikely that any society could completely dispense with myths, for, of what is essential in mythical behaviour—the exemplary pattern, the repetition, the break with profane duration and integration into primordial time—the first two at least are consubstantial with every human condition.”3 Carl Jung, too, saw myth as a fundamental part of human life, asking,“Has mankind ever really got away from myths?” He answered his own question: “One could almost say that if all the world’s traditions were cut off at a single blow, the whole of mythology and the whole history of religion would start all over again with the next generation.”4 Joseph Campbell, a popular chronicler of myth, agreed:“No human society has yet been found in which such mythological motifs have not been rehearsed in liturgies; interpreted by seers, poets, theologians, or philosophers ; presented in art; magnified in song; and ecstatically experienced in life-empowering visions.”5 myth anD soCial oRDeR Seen in this way, the stories of myth are necessary to human lives and the societies they construct.6 But how does that work? What is the relationship between myth and society? A simple but classic definition, offered by scholar Bronislaw Malinowski, states that myth is a social charter. That is, myths dramatize and support preferred ways of thinking and acting in society. Myths express beliefs and assumptions, offer rules and norms. Malinowski made clear the crucial relationship between a society and its myths.An anthropologist,Malinowski approached myth differently from Eliade , Jung, and others I have considered, emphasizing the functions of myth in “primitive” cultures. Many scholars have found fault with Malinowski’s [18.119.111.9] Project...

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