Thursday Theory: April 2

Hello fair readers! It's Thursday and that means two things: thinking about how it was originally named "Thorday" (true story, Thursday was named after everyone's favorite schizophrenic Avenger) and theory!!

Since this is the first post for this weekly segment, let's start at the beginning, let's say... page 1.

One big name that kinda gets nuzzled in the crowded word bubble of the last panel is Calude Levi-Strauss. Keep in mind, we're not professors, we are not sneakily instigating a structuralist revolution, we just want to put the Talented story into a set of ideas, so when we bring up Levi-Strauss we're mainly pulling from his theories regarding myth and convention.

To really boil it down (I mean REALLY boil down), we understand from Levi-Strauss that the reason myths exist so similarly from culture to culture is because they are a form of language, or a big fluffy story with a very "human" core. Each myth can be trimmed down to its mytheme or main body of the myth. These mythemes compose a myth by way of binary opposition (Vladimir Propp was a big big guy in this). Man vs. woman, rich vs. poor, and everyone's favorite, good vs. bad. This means that each myth is about the butting of heads. Now you might be thinking three things: a- I am never reading this post ever again, b- I know this already because I study modern philosophy, jackass or c- okay... how does this apply to comics.

Person c, I am so glad you asked!! It goes without saying that comics are contemporary myths but graphic literature THRIVES off of these binary battles. You want a few examples? Sure! Order vs. chaos, sounds an awful lot like Batman vs. Joker. Selflessness vs. selfishness, Superman vs. Lex Luthor, anyone? Let's go for a weird one: humanity vs. "animal" desire. Wolverine, baby. Okay, that one wasn't that weird, weird would be breaking down a web comic but you see what I'm getting at.

Now all of these ideological/symbolic fist-jabs happen in a sort of harmonious fashion, even in real life. This is where Talented starts to get involved. Society relies on this "balance" (it's really an ongoing battle) between binaries. Cook vs. starvation, doctor vs. illness, leader vs. anarchy. These are how careers develop. It can even be as easy as blacksmith vs. lack of horseshoes. Society forms around struggle. Nature provides a force and society pushes back.

Talented considers how our world has changed the balance. It's like a hunter depleting too much of its prey, you disrupt the harmony and harmony kicks you back in the gut. In our current environment, we can even see the disbalance of life vs. death. You could argue that the surge of life over death (medicine, suburbs, etc) leads to overpopulation, which leads to super viruses and war and (depending on what political fence you stare from) natural disaster.

Sage wants to put the world back to the simple harmony, back to the simplified struggle between binaries where everyone fought only one force. That's the basis for this myth.

Next week: We got two opposing forces down, A vs. B, but what about Guy A vs. Guy B makes... Guy C?! And then Guy C and Guy D make Guy E?! What?! Who came up with that?!?

Oh... Hegel...

See you all next week!