Originally posted on mythicramblings.com on Mar 7, 2015.

Hello again! Sorry for the long break – I’ve been busy with life stuff and my mom visiting. Yes, I’m blaming my mother. I am not above that.

I’m all about the myths over here at Mythic Ramblings. (For that matter, I’m also all about the rambling.) I’m fascinated by what our American, western culture takes to be myths and mythological figures. So much of our relatively short history is cataloged and recorded. We don’t have much ambiguity for a mythic narrative to play around in. You might think then that we as Americans don’t have a mythology, not in the same sense that other cultures did and do.

I would argue against that, obvi. I think the Marvel and DC characters are a mythology. I think that even corporate entities like Disney and Lego, which base a lot of their products and narratives off of the mythologies or materials of previous manufacturers, have created their own mythologies. Universal Films has its own mythology. To get really meta, our economy even has its own mythology, that of Capitalism. (Hint: if it’s capitalized, it’s important.) However, we have a very strong and historically embedded mythology in the form of … the Founding Fathers. But I’ve noticed a trend in the mythos surrounding them. Lately we’ve been seeing a lot of movies and shows that are attempting to revisit and update the myths about these men. I’d like to look at what exactly these changes are, and offer a few of my ideas about what’s started the change. More after the jump:

Let’s start at the beginning. Well, not the true beginning. More like a few months ago. I was at the movies and had made the unfortunate decision to get to the theater and settle in my seat during the First Look barrage of lengthy commercials. One of these was for Sons of Liberty. While the title is the actual name name of the organization of rebellious patriots in the Thirteen Colonies, the title also brings to mind the roughness of the Sons of Anarchy. I was intrigued with this heist-film, explosive, sexy, rock ‘n’ roll trailer. The cast of attractive, young men like Ben Barnes, Rafe Spall, Marton Csokas, and Michael Raymond-James had a rugged charm you don’t typically associate with the stodgy, wig wearing Founding Fathers.

It then made me think back to Sleepy Hollow. This is a show I’ve already admitted to liking on this site. Part of the humor of Sleepy Hollow is that Ichabod Crane, a character who has been asleep for 200+ years, knew many of our nation’s founding historical figures personally and adds cute anecdotes about their true personalities. Benedict Arnold was actually a nice guy and became traitorous only after getting a demonic Roman coin that amplified his resentment. Benjamin Franklin was arrogant and a show off. Thomas Jefferson was Crane’s hero and BFF until they had a friend break up. Crane is still torn up about it.

Essentially what’s happening is that Sleepy Hollow (and I imagine Sons of Liberty, though I haven’t seen it yet) are reinventing the Founding Fathers – and the concept of this nation’s noble origins – as rebellious and cool. It hasn’t just been with these two shows, though. For a fun interpretation of George Washington, head over to tumblr user ladyhistory for Sassy George Washington. Imposing hysterical Comic Sans font dialogue over historic oil paintings, she’s solidified George Washington as the greatest president we’ll ever have in the great Captioned Adventures of George Washington.

Then there was the twin humanizing (or satirizing) of Lincoln in 2012, with Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. It really came full circle when the craze itself needed a revisit, in the form of 2014’s Lincoln’s origin story The Better Angels. Before that we had the National Treasure franchise, with National Treasure in 2004 and National Treasure: Book of Secrets in 2007. For the life of me I can’t remember what the conflicts in these films were, but they made American history fun and adventurous. They were full of spy culture, with hidden compartments, hacking, and coded maps. What’s not to love?

Really, my personal theory is that kids shows started all this. And of course they did! A great way to make history accessible – a key tactic in teaching children – is to humanize the key figures. Educational shows like Liberty’s Kids in 2002 and even Schoolhouse Rock! back in 1973 reworked history through cartoons and songs. Liberty’s Kids really works with my theme here by having three kids be everywhere during the American Revolution. And I mean everywhere. They were the Forrest Gump of the 18th century.

But in Liberty’s Kids, the historical figures were still depicted as above reproach. The stuffy, powdered wig, authoritative, and dignified image of the Founding Fathers was never touched. As I’ve illustrated above, that perception has been changing as of late. I’d like to look into why.

Part of this changing perception is a desire to revisit and apologize for the past. The Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal,” yet slavery wasn’t abolished until 1865. And let’s not ignore the language of the text that excludes any women, who couldn’t vote until 1920. We could probably also include a debate on non-binary gender rights.

Other easy complaints about our nation’s past are Thomas Jefferson’s interesting relationship with slavery and Benjamin Franklin’s flirtatious and abundant relationships with European women. This information has entered the casual discourse about the Founding Fathers, but they’re usually just trivia for cocktail parties. Take, for example, this little girl who entertained Ellen DeGeneres with her presidential trivia knowledge.

Not to bash on little Macey, but there are some disturbing parts of historical trivia, like the lack of dental hygiene. The bigger reason why the more problematic aspects of the Founding Fathers gets brushed under the rug is due to historical context. Certain ideologies and beliefs just weren’t part of their world view. And that’s fine…for back then. But we are certainly allowed to revisit and revise these men as slightly more progressive or slightly more interesting. The image of the Founding Fathers as austere men bent on an new ideal for a country is great and lofty, but it is one that has been cultivated over a period of 200+ years. We are simply witnessing its next iteration.

Another element to changing our cultural concept of the Founding Fathers is overall dissatisfaction with our government. We are, as a nation, reeling from the Snowden revelations about the NSA operations, dealing with partisan conflicts on Capitol Hill, and dividing ourselves on a number of domestic and international affairs, most notably Obamacare and the Middle East, respectively. The partisan conflicts have gotten so bad that our government shut down for a little bit back in 2013 over a budget dispute. Yeah, remember how that was a thing? The last time that happened, back in 1995, it lasted five days longer, for a whopping 21 days. The situations, however, were very different and can explored more technically in a short article here. Suffice it to say, Americans are not all that confident in their leaders today.

And why should they be? The political partisanship going on right now is disheartening, to say the least. And let’s not forget the easy access we now have to the true nature of politicians. Before social media sites like Facebook and Twitter (pretty much just those two), it was much harder to get insight to politicians’ opinions, or even for them to make a public gaffe. It had to be a pretty big scandal for a politician to be on the national news circuit (we’re going to ignore any discussion about the evolution of the news circuit itself, but that conversation is definitely there). Now though, we can get instantaneous, national coverage of such exposures. Even if the tweets or posts are deleted, there are wonderful sites like Politwoops that capture and immortalize these sometimes embarrassing, always entertaining revelations. For the most part, Politwoops seems to get typos or accidental tweets of game scores, but hey, that score was embarrassingly low.

Social media is a great way for a less known politician to gain traction. Look at President Obama’s first presidential campaign. He came from relative obscurity and, by appealing to the younger and minority voting demographic, really blew up on internet sphere. He, and his wife Michelle Obama, have cultivated a strong and powerful, not to mention funny, online presence. I mean, how many presidents do you think would be on Between Two Ferns or Billy on the Street? We’ll have to ask little Macey for that piece of trivia.

Technology is not also a way for us to find out about our beloved politician’s scandals through social media, but it’s also a great way for us to see them in the act! From former Congressman Anthony Weiner’s d*ck pics to former-Toronto mayor Rob Ford using crack-cocaine, recording devices coupled with the fast transmission of information through the internet have allowed us to see so much more of our politicians than we saw of their predecessors. (And don’t worry, the links are to Wikipedia articles, not actual pictures or footage.)

Everyone knows that politicians are humans (or are they – dun dun duuuuuun). It’s just so much easier to see that now. And it’s something of a let down when we have the aforementioned distinguished images of the O.G.’s, a.k.a. the Founding Fathers. The politicians today do not necessarily measure up to the mythic standard of the nobility behind the faces on our bills. That is a hard pill to swallow.

And so we’re coping. We’re revisiting our Founding Fathers and reinventing them. We’re making them more modern, more attractive, but more importantly, more human. Benjamin Franklin in Sons of Liberty may be a brilliant inventor and philosopher, but he’s also a womanizer. We are simply creating a more complete perception of these figures.

A third, somewhat tenuous albeit intriguing hypothesis for this need to reinterpret the Founding Fathers is due to the social injustice awareness currently spreading throughout our country (and world!) concerning the privilege white men have. Two examples that quickly come to mind, Ferguson and Gamergate, show how violent the reaction can be from those who benefit from systematic prejudice and racism. It makes sense, on a subconscious level, that when your position is questioned, you get defensive. I suggest that the intention of becoming reacquainted with American history through these shows is to reaffirm the position white men have enjoyed.

This now brings me to my little mythic ramble.

Whenever I say I studied mythology, people first say, “Ooooh, like Greek mythology?!” Sigh. Yeah, like Greek mythology. Let’s forget the whole world and history of humankind and only focus on Greek mythology. Fun. So I try really hard to learn about other cultural mythologies and then spread that awareness. That’s why it pains to me say that the immediate mythological correlation that came to my mind was, of course, Greek mythology. The Greek deities were awful! They were adulterous, they were petty and jealous, they raped, and they murdered. They were not wholly altruistic or virtuous beings. And yet they were worshiped. Why?

Besides some myths telling the Greeks that they’d be punished if they didn’t worship, the Greeks understood their gods and goddesses to be more than magical, physical beings who lived atop a mountain. Their deities were representations of human personalities and responsibilities. This is not to say that Hestia exclusively represented one emotion, while Athena only represented another. Rather, the deities each favored a social role, while still exhibiting a multitude of personality traits. Greek myths served, in a small way, to establish social order, but they also explored how human nature can play out in a series of circumstances. Therefore, the deities had to have had negative attributes. The story gets boring when all the characters are always good.

The Greek gods and goddesses also changed function based on where they move. They started as conflations of local, smaller deities with foreign ones. This happened commonly with Phrygian deities. For example, we see mentions of Demeter (Greek origin) and Cybele (Phrygian origin) in the Eleusinian Mysteries. They’re similar enough to each other as mother earth deities, but not direct translations. In addition, Persephone is sometimes called Kore, invoking the memory of a lesser local chthonic goddess.

Another famous example of deity transformation is the process the Greek gods underwent in their transference to Rome. They became much more focused on their duties, rigidifying their human impulses, explaining Ares’ metamorphosis into Mars and how Jupiter is a much more restrained version of Zeus. This is common in mythology. The transition of people and ideas within and without a culture create an interesting study of deity transformation. Really, much of Greek mythology is based on Egyptian mythology. And Phoenician. And…you know what, the Mediterranean region is just a weird, mythologically incestuous pool.

My point is that we are, through shows like Sleepy Hollow and Sons of Liberty, “Greekifying” our own deities, the Founding Fathers. We are making them more accessible by humanizing them, while simultaneously ushering their entry into a new age of social liberalism. We are adapting them. In return, they will adapt the next generation’s perception of American history, hopefully for the better.

Let me know in the comments below how/if you think our interpretation of the Founding Fathers is changing.

This is one of my longer entries, which meant that I spent a bit more time organizing and typing it.  That being said, I did enjoy the path this one took. I feel like it was very applicable to a lot of contemporary events. That was fun for me. I’m rereading the Popol Vuh now, so I’m sure my next few posts will include bloody Mayan mythology.

For you viewing pleasure, here’s President Obama’s clip:

In addition, for a much longer view, check out Mrs. Obama’s hilarious promo for healthy eating with the wonderful Elena!