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Anthropologists like myself love to collect the myths of the societies they study. As a student of contemporary American society, I have found one myth that dominates all others in American society.
Like the myths of other peoples, ours depicts a world that is in some ways like our everyday reality and in other ways quite different. Like Mount Olympus or Valhalla or Heaven, our utopia is located at some nearby but vaguely inaccessible location. In this close but hidden world, our wishes are fulfilled, and the troubles that confront human beings in this vale of tears are unknown.
Do you want to see this myth of perfection? Turn on your TV and take a look at the advertisements. You might see, for example, a group of friends sitting around a table at a restaurant. This group is comprised of spectacularly good- looking people, and they are throwing their heads back and laughing and having more fun in a few seconds than you have in a month. The food they are eating is like the food you eat, but it's brighter and juicier; it sizzles sensuously as it is sliced, revealing its irresistible interior.
You know, of course, that this is an ad and that the food doesn't really look that good in the actual restaurant, and you know your friends don't look that good either. Nor are they (or you, for that matter) that much fun. But, still, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that you could go to a restaurant and enjoy the food and have a great time. You just don't ever quite reach the level of ecstasy you observe in the advertisement. That's what makes this ad a myth rather than a reality, although it's a myth that describes a world very similar to the world you live in.
Our great American myth has a thousand faces. It appears not only in many different forms of advertising, but in our ideas about diets and makeovers, in theme parks and celebrities. It is everywhere you look. All of these ideas share some similar characteristics; above all they point to the possibility of a world that is much like this one but a little better (the world the celebrity dwells in, the world you would dwell in if you could just lose 15 pounds). Ultimately most of the stories we tell in entertainments like movies and TV shows and novels are forms of this myth. They are fantasies that are similar to everyday life, but with all the boredom edited out and the fun-adventure, suspense, sex, humor--turned way up.
When we see and hear and read this myth over and over and over, it is no wonder that it starts to take hold. You begin to believe, at least in the back of your mind, that there really is a much more satisfying life out there if you could just go to the right restaurants, drive the right car, get the right stuff. Like the people of other places and ages, we begin to believe our myth, even though it may look somewhat absurd to outsiders. And because we believe it, we are prone to reflect on our own less-than-perfect lives and try to understand what it is that we are doing wrong. What is keeping us from the world of perfection that we see all around us?
That question keeps a lot of folks in business. In my next post I will address the way in which many self-help books are constructed on the foundation of this myth.
Peter Stromberg is the author of Caught in Play: How Entertainment Works on You.
