There’s this article about the spirituality of rock concerts, or some kind of hippu crap to that effect. I don’t know because I didn’t read the whole thing. What I did read however was an excerpt of it on somebody else’s blog, which talks about Joseph Campbell, his distaste for pop culture and his love of the Grateful Dead:

Fittingly, renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell found something there too. Despite his extreme distaste for popular culture (he only ever saw two movies, didn’t read the newspaper, and hadn’t attended a pop concert in decades), he went to see the Grateful Dead and felt “in immediate accord” with them. “I just didn’t know anything like that existed,” he said—anything like “25,000 people tied at the heart” in a truly contemporary mythic ritual. It was, he felt, the “antidote for the atom bomb.”

Really, what gets my goat here is to find out that Joseph Campbell didn’t like pop culture. IS THIS TRUE? How can it be true? I don’t understand even a little bit. This really drops him down so many notches in my estimation. First, obviously, because it’s so ironic, since he and his ideas became such a pop cultural icon. But more important than that, he was all about drawing new inspiration for modern life from ancient myths and archetypal energies. In the way my mind works, the best place to see the effects of that played out is in pop culture, which is our contemporary living and breathing version of ancient mythology.

Actually, I see this same problem come up again and again in “professional” study of folklore & mythology. Actually, I have writted about this academic obsession with the past before.

Anyway, it really gets me all in an uproar when these people spend all their time running around looking at Zeus & Athena, and never spend any time watching the Simpsons or shitty sci-fi movies that come out. Or if they do, they never write about it, except in a stupid, culturally irrelevant way which only highlights how much they have missed the boat. They might understand some symbolism and references in it intellectually, but they seem to be lacking the emotional connection to the material. I don’t know, I just think you have to have both. These stories still exist, they just morph, and you gotta chase after them in all their forms, not just their ancient academic ones.

[via Homeland Absurdity]