"The new mythology gets into the old mythology, as if classic literature had faded into the mind's background and images encountered on the screen had become one's first frame of cultural reference."
— James, Clive (b. 1939)
Author
Work Title
Date
April 18, 2016
Metaphor
"The new mythology gets into the old mythology, as if classic literature had faded into the mind's background and images encountered on the screen had become one's first frame of cultural reference."
Metaphor in Context
A TV habit on this scale starts to permeate every corner of your mind. The new mythology gets into the old mythology, as if classic literature had faded into the mind's background and images encountered on the screen had become one's first frame of cultural reference. In view of this possibility, it becomes a positive likelihood that for the next generation they will be the only frame of reference. It's a new, pervasive, and irresistible vocabulary of the imagination. Familiar with it, one gets caught up in conversations in which properties of screen stories have the common currency once held by stories from the page. In Renaissance times, the bright young people knew what they were talking about when they made glancing references to Ovid's Metamorphoses. Now the bright young people, although they are perhaps already turning into bright early-middle-aged people, know what they are talking about when they say that two of their friends are like Josh Lyman and Donna Moss, or that another friend is a Zoe Barnes in the making, and could end up getting pushed under a train.
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Clive James, "Thrones of Blood," The New Yorker (April 18, 2016). <Link to newyorker.com>
Date of Entry
04/22/2016
