Vivian Asimos's Blog: Incidental Mythology, page 8

Death and Storytelling in Cult of the Lamb

Death is an interesting topic when it comes to video games because Death is often an inherent part of the gameplay experience. It’s the result of something going bad, or a poor strategy, or even a way the game shows you as the player that you need to level up before attempting another go at it. Death is handled in video games in a few different ways. In games like Breath of the Wild, for instance, death is a consequence which restarts the story. The story doesn’t involve the death, it’s almost like a narrator messing up the story. Which, of course, is another way video games deal with death as part of storytelling.

The experience of dying in video games and then being brought back to try again is an almost endless cycle - only broken when the player finally succeeds. So for some games, this process is built into the story itself. Dark Souls and Eldin Ring, for example, take the idea of the endless cycle of death and rebirth to be a core element of their game’s world, and through the process of death and rebirth, the story of Dark Souls is told. The player’s experiences are written into the script of the game. Cult of the Lamb takes a similar approach. So today, let’s talk a bit about Cult of the Lamb, and the way the process and considerations of death is both experienced by the player and written into the story and world of the game itself.

In Cult of the Lamb, you play as, well, a lamb, who after being sacrificed by the four Bishops of the Old Faith, is brought back to life by the One Who Waits under one condition: you start a cult in his honour. The game is essentially divided into two sections: the first a rogue-like dungeon crawler, where the player does runs through various combat rooms or discovery rooms; and the second a cult management game that feels kinda like a darker Stardew Valley.

So, one quick word here. There’s a lot of religious language and commentary about religion going on in this game, from the Bishops of the Old Faith, to commentary about sacrifice both monetarily and bodily for religions. Haro, our storyteller character the player occasionally runs into, has commented on how it is the fate of Gods to be forgotten. There’s a lot here, and while I may draw occasionally on this commentary in this particular essay, I think there’s a lot more than can be said on this front. So, maybe another day. Because today, we’re focusing on death.

Death is a constant theme in the game, not just because of your character’s constant death and rebirth, but also through the purposes and the process of the story itself. To free your benefactor, the One Who Waits, you must kill each of the four Bishops, who hold one of the chains that’s keeping him locked up. Your lamb’s purpose, therefore, is death. As you progress through the game, death is all around. Not only in the combat arenas, which are typical of any video game that utilises combat, but also when entering boss arenas where we see the followers of the Bishop sacrifice themselves to give each of the Bishops extreme power to fight us. We also gain followers for our cult by saving woodland creatures who are bound for death - whether because they are being readied for sacrifice by one of the Bishops, or because of Helobe (yes, Helobe) selling us creatures he’s readying for food.

We also have the cult management part of the game. While in some respects, it is managing aspects of our cult, like the amount of faith our adherents have and their hunger levels, we’re also, in many aspects, managing death. We can bring death to our adherents by sacrificing them - or murdering them if you’ve unlocked that. You can also make more subtle sacrifices, like not caring which of them, or how many, get ill - which could risk their life. You also manage them when they die naturally of old age - needing to care for bodies and gravesites. There’s a lot of death in the game, both brought about by you, the player, but also by the nature of life. And there’s an important reason for this.

The One Who Waits, our benefactor, the one so controlled and feared by his siblings he’s chained to his place in some other realm between life and death, is death himself. As our storyteller Haro tells us: “He was unalike the rest of his kin. While others dealt with flux; chaos, famine, pestilence, war. Things in which their constancy must transpose. And yet he was the inevitable; the obstinate and irresistible. The one who waits.”

The other elements Haro describes - chaos, famine, pestilence, war - are the areas of life associated with the four Bishops, and the four primary bosses. The youngest, Leshy, is in charge of chaos; Hecket famine; Kallamar pestilence and Shamura both knowledge and war. They each also have various parts of them bandaged and bloody, and references are made at several points to the fact that these wounds were caused by the One Who Waits. Leshy had his eyes removed, Hecekt’s throat was slashed, Kallamar’s ears removed, and Shamura’s skull split. See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil, think no evil.

Each Bishop is a figurehead of a particular domain, and only a figurehead rather than the personification of them. The death of Hecket does not mean that your cult is now magically unable to starve - the death of the figurehead of famine doesn’t mean that famine doesn’t exist anymore. There is simply no one in charge to control these elements and inflict them on others.

The One Who Waits is associated with death from the very beginning of the game. When the lamb very first appears before the One Who Waits, he directly says that the Bishops sent he lamb to his “domain” - in other words, by killing the lamb, the lamb was sent right to him. You know, because he’s death. He instructs the lamb on death and aspects of death. He gives the lamb the ability to sacrifice followers, for example. He lends his power over death to the lamb, and this is important.

Throughout the game, there is a complicated relationship with death. No matter how many times you do a run through the dungeon, or fail to a boss, your character returns from the dead. The inability for the lamb to die is scripted into the game. It’s not a failed narrative thread that has a dead-end and so we have to re-adjust and try again. The fact that we failed is built into the story, it’s as much a part of the narrative as the other parts of our action as a player. In other words, death is not a major consequence. Gameplay mechanic-wise, the player loses a percentage of the supplies they gathered on the run when they die, but other than that there’s not a large consequence. Death doesn’t really touch the lamb despite it constantly touching them - they die constantly but also are always back. Time is passing but they never age. They are a constant and consistent presence. Other run-based games have to have some kind of reason for the ability to dive back into the dungeon despite a failure. For a game like Moonlighter, for example, a “death” is simply injury that kicks you out of the dungeon, rather than being scripted as a death. Other games like Hades has the character being god-like in order to explain their ability to die and come back. It also helps that they’re in, you know, the Underworld. A similar thing to Hades is happening in Cult of the Lamb - the lamb is in some way godlike and has control over aspects of death, being granted the ability to come back over and over again.

That being said, the game also puts the lamb in control of death in other respects. The cult management side of the game is not just managing people, but also managing death. The various forest creatures you save throughout your runs are now working and living in your cult. You put them to work, they worship you, and you take care of their various needs. Over time, they grow old and die. Or they are sacrificed and die. You see cult members making friends, sometimes taking lovers. They grieve at the graves of their fallen friends. Despite death not touching the lamb and their body, it touches on the bodies surrounding them, and it is an important part of the management of the game itself. You control how much death is happening, and how it’s happening, and how people grieve the dead.

Death - the One Who Waits for us all - is chained by his siblings after an attempted coup, not because they didn’t want to kill him but because they couldn't. As Haro puts it in one of his stories: how does one kill death? In fact, if the player chooses to also fight the One Who Waits, their success doesn’t end in his death. Instead, he gets transformed into one of the woodland creatures and he can join your cult as one of the followers. Even at the end he’s not able to die.

There’s an interesting dynamic to the role of death in the game, embodied in the story of Narinder - the other name for the One Who Waits. When you face the Bishop Shamura, they tell you about their history with the One Who Waits. They inform you that it was them who gave the One Who Waits knowledge about change, which began to cause issues between the siblings. Death is a forever constant, an immutable force. It is the One Who Waits. And yet it’s Death that was most interested in change out of the siblings. He began to think of new and novel ideas. What these ideas are exactly is somewhat unclear, though The One Who Waits does present us with some options. He’s the one who teaches the lamb about sacrifice. He pushes the idea of selling items for money. He pushes the lamb to be more exploitative of his flock. These may, potentially, be some of the ideas he was considering, but we can’t be sure.

Change does, however, happen in one of the options to the ending of the game. The player lamb may choose to kneel and bow before the One Who Waits, or they may choose to not. This particular choice is echoed in many of the other choices scattered throughout the game. At several points when in their domain, each Bishop demands the lamb kneel. There are consequences when you refuse, as there is for the One Who Waits. But here we see another running theme, which is parallel to the theme of death: the theme of not cowering to any other power than your own.

Obviously, this has some statement on religion and how the developers may or may not view religion. Bowing to any power is, in the way the game plays out, is revealed as a negative. Perhaps the most interesting ending comes from a refusal to kneel for anyone. The whole game has a more negative view of religion generally, but maybe a fuller discussion of this should be tabled once more.

But what is clear is that the refusal to kneel is an important choice for the lamb. And with the refusal comes another fundamental change - one that can touch on the unwavering world of death. The figure head changes from the black veiled chained figure that towers over those who come to his domain, to the lamb whose powers to choose who lives and who dies echoes the power over death.

Ultimately, however, the choice to not kneel is what triggers this change. The rest of the lamb’s power comes from the symbol of the role of the figurehead - the red hat. Each of the bishops have their own hat to demonstrate their power, and the One Who Waits gives his hat to the lamb. It’s through this power that the lamb continues to live despite both time and combat. But the power to refuse to kneel has nothing to do with the hat’s power. Where the lamb thrives is in strength in the face of death - not because of a crown but because of a strength of will. This strength of will has the power to transform the world around us, and gives us a new sense of what death is and can be.

Taylor Swift at Midnight

So, Taylor Swift’s new album Midnights dropped. I don’t know why I don’t spend more time delving into music on this. With the exception of a Taylor Swift’s folklore and Orville Peck, I haven’t really spent much time talking about music. I don’t stay away intentionally, but if I’m going to hazard a guess it’s that I feel I have to say a lot more about music theory type stuff. But I don’t think you actually have to. There’s a lot surrounding music that helps us talk about stories and how stories impact us without needing to start talking about the way certain chords lead into other chords.

Maybe Midnights is the best place to return to music because we’ve already talked briefly about Swift when folklore dropped. I won’t lie - folklore really re-captured my attention when it came to Swift’s music. I think a lot of what I saw in folklore has continued in Midnights, so let’s talk about it.

In folklore, Swift talked openly about how the album was comprised of songs about fictional characters. There were three stories on the album, each song either from a different person’s perspective or at a different time period for a story. After a few listens, it was easy to string the connected songs together. Swift has tried to say she writes about fictional people before, trying to pretend that Blank Space was about a fictional character, but I think that song had a lot more to do with Swift than she would probably care to admit. Her album folklore really helped to demonstrate that she could do fiction, but despite her open discussion and the clear depiction of the fictional stories she was painting, people still tried to find hints of Swift’s true experience somewhere within.

But we needn’t of bothered. Because Midnights is exactly what we were wanting.

Midnights does the perfect combination of fictional and personal stories, all mixed together and blurry. The joint theme of the album are all songs written quite late at night, during sleepless nights. The production on the album (I know I said I wasn’t going to get into music stuff, but bare with me) is that kind of strange techno-lo-fi type music people tend to put on while reading or studying or trying to focus in general. It has a kind of floating feel to it, and it seems the perfect music to put on late at night when you can’t sleep but am trying desperately to try and shut up your anxious brain.

When first announcing the album, Swift said that it was the “stories of thirteen sleepless nights throughout my life”. More than that it was the “collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams”. The reference to dreams, whether they be nice dreams or terrible dreams, is a nice way to fit into the lyrics of the album, which touch on aspects of life with vivid depictions that slip into the world of dreams. In “You’re On Your Own, Kid”, Swift writes that “I looked around in a blood-soaked gown / And I saw something they can’t take away”, for example.

Midnights directly plays with the blurred boundary between fiction and reality in the way that it truly happens to us in our everyday lived reality, especially late at night when our own demons and night terrors trawl through our thoughts. I’ve talked a lot on this blog about how fiction and reality are not as directly distinct as we typically like to think about, and I think Midnights really paints how this works in particular times in our lives. There are definitely parts of these songs that we could pull out and talk about in relation to Swift directly and her life, especially the song “Karma” which is entirely about her cats while also simultaneously touching on her past song “Look What You Made Me Do”. She talks openly about her relationship, in the way Swift has always done in the past.

Her shifting with the fiction from the way Swift has been known to talk about her self has only helped to solidify the way her music mythologises both herself and her life. In the past, the storytelling of her life helped others to connect the stories to their own lives and experiences, but now it extends to the question of which version of the Swift story you want to listen to as the “valid” one for you. In other words, she has her own different variations in the way that myths have different variations, all because it’s based on which elements you consider to be fictional and dreams vs those that connect directly. But things are not always that clear cut of what fits into one section, because the dreams Swift discusses are just as real as other elements of her life through her own experience. She blurs the worlds on purpose in order to demonstrate how we are made up of all these different parts of ourselves, regardless of which ones are considered “real” by those outside of ourselves.

Cosplay’s Photo Performance

There are a few themes and topics about cosplay and my cosplay research that have cropped up a few times already on the blog: the connections between cosplay and storytelling, cosplay’s performance, cosplay’s subversive quality. But I wanted to talk about one of them again - I want to talk about cosplay’s performance but a specific type of performance. I find the way cosplay performs in photographs fascinating, and a different way to compare and contrast to the way cosplay performs in front of people, either at conventions or on stage at masquerades. So let’s talk about it a little: what it means to have photographic performance.

Most of the time, photographic performance actually happens at events like conventions. Fans will see their favourite characters and ask for a photo of the cosplayer. Cosplayers will typically suddenly adjust - dropping bags of personal belongings, adjusting any props to be within frame, and striking a pose that’s reminiscent of their character. When at a con, I noticed how different poses could be between characters. A cosplayer who was emulating anime character Violet Evergarden - a character struggling with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder - simply stared blank-eyed at the camera, body stiff and holding a bag. Their pose was very reminiscent of the blank, empty of emotion look the character would often have in the show. In comparison, a cosplayer from the video game Bloodborne, wearing a large black overcoat and wielding a giant weapon, posed as if getting ready to swing their weapon at the camera - which also happened to show off the fake blood splatters on their coat.

Because the cosplayers initial inspiration point is from an existing piece of popular culture, their poses and experiences in front of the camera are always referential to the original piece or character. Even when cosplayers change the character in some way to fit their own conceptions, the poses help to point the viewer toward the original character conception. When posing as a female version of the urban fantasy book character Harry Dresden, a cosplayer still posed similarly to the front cover of the books despite the shift in gender, for example. Like aspects of the costume the players pick up on as quintessentially that character, the poses and ways of styling a photograph also have to be quintessentially that character. It’s what cues the viewer into knowing what they cosplayer is referencing. Everything else about the character can change, but these small subtle cues allows the viewer to know exactly what they’re looking at.

As the famous phrase “a picture says a thousand words” indicates, photography is a form of storytelling. We can hear a full story in a photo. According to folklorist Jay Mechling, photography, particularly non-professional photography, can be understood as a type of folk performance. This seems fairly on point. Looking back at old photographs, we can see how cultural understandings of photography has shifted over the years - for example the different ways people would pose for photographs or even the growth of the unposed picture. Mechling, though, also sees an individual photograph as more than just the moment in time that it was taken. In a study on hunting photos, Mechling demonstrated how various aspects of the social world the hunters live in are reflected in the photos they take with their prey - it showed the dynamics between various genders, and how they each approach hunting itself a bit differently, and particularly the relationship triad between human, dog and prey.

Similarly, Richard Chalfen discussed how photographs function as a form of visual communication and a mark of social activity. He’s commented on how photography, particularly family photographs, are almost like statements, rather than simply pictures. They communicate so much, and can function as both a report of what was happening as well as an interpretative understanding.

Cosplayers use photographs to tell their story, whether they are posing quickly at a con or spending time setting up shots with a professional photographer. A cosplay photograph must not only communicate the costume itself, but also the multiple stories which lie behind the costume - the narrative of the original piece of popular culture and the narrative of the cosplayer’s own interpretation of that character. One of my favourite gender-shifted cosplays is one by Ely Renae, who did a feminine version of Ganondorf. Despite the fact that the character has shifted genders, and in the feminised portrayal also shifted the costume. Despite the alterations to the costume, hair and makeup, the character of Ganondorf still comes through. How that happens through costume can be reserved for another blog post, but for this one, we can see how the combination of Ely Renae’s posing and the photographer, Emily Smith, conveys the power inherent in Ganondorf, an important aspect of his character. I can recognise it as Ganondorf immediately upon seeing the image. But it’s not just the original Ganondorf I see. I also see Ely’s interpretation of Ganondorf simultaneously. In one image, the cosplayer is able to portray the original character and their interpretation, including the specific contexts of both.

Cosplay is so fascinating because of how intricate the storytelling is, and exactly how individuals put together the stories they’re telling. They have to build it into their costume, yes, but they also portray them in the way they hold their body, or the way they look at the camera. They tell the story with their whole body - and that’s pretty amazing.

The One Who Waits - Cult of the Lamb

A new video game, Cult of the Lamb, was released just a few months ago by Massive Monster Games. Cult of the Lamb is a rogue-like game, with dungeon crawling aspects, but mixed with a management simulator for taking care of your ever-growing cult. Loads on the part of my religious studies side could be said about loads of this game. But we’re going to focus today on the main reason for the game’s story - the One Who Waits.

The player plays as a lamb who was being used as a sacrifice to keep the revival of the One Who Waits at bay. At their death, the lamb is brought before a large figure in chains. This figure gives the lamb the gift of life again, but in return the lamb must create a cult in the figure’s name, and defeat the four bishops of the Old Faith that each keep the figure bound. Thus begins the game. As the player explores more of the lands of the Old Faith and defeats the four bishops, they learn more about the figure at the heart of it all - the One Who Waits.

I love the figure of the One Who Waits. It’s such a wonderful and typical mythical tale, and yet one which is still artfully told. The One Who Waits is also such a wonderful name, connoting something strange and mystical at its heart. Today, I want to chip away a little at that mystery, and spend some time with the One Who Waits.

For most of the game, The One Who Waits is shrouded in a black veil, and remaining chained somewhere away from the typical lands of the game. Only occasionally is the lamb brought before them - mostly at pivotal points in the story of the game. The One Who Waits is deeply connected to the story of the bishops of the Old Faith, which is gradually revealed to the player the further they continue.

The four bishops have various parts of them bandaged and bloody, and references are made at several points to the fact that these wounds were caused by the One Who Waits. The youngest, Leshy, has his eyes removed, Hecket’s throat is slashed, Kallamar’s ears are removed, and Shamura’s skull has been split. Each of the four refer to the One Who Waits as their brother, and each reveals something a little more about their brother and their situations as the player progresses in killing each one.

Each bishop is a figurehead of a particular domain of life. Leshy is of chaos, Hecket of feast and famine, Kallamar of sickness and health, and Shamura of knowledge and war. These figures are not the personification of these aspects, but the figureheads. They run the domain of chaos, or famine, or knowledge - they are not chaos and knowledge themselves.

This is important, because the death of Heket does not mean that your cult is magically unable to starve. The figureheads are not in direct control of these aspects of life and the world, and therefore are stand ins for the reality.

So if the siblings of the One Who Waits are all figureheads of a particular arena - what is the arena of the One Who Waits? As is made obvious from the very beginning, the One Who Waits is death. In the very beginning of the game, the lamb is sacrificed. They are actually killed. But this death brings the lamb directly to the realm of the One Who Waits - the realm of death.

Throughout the game, there is a complicated relationship with death. Despite the ability to die on a dungeon run, there is little consequence of this death. The lamb still comes back to the cult and lives to try again. From a personal perspective, death means very little to the lamb. At the same time, this is combined with the second part of the game’s structure - the cult management part. On your dungeon crawl, you encounter various forest creatures who are being sacrificed to the various bishops. You can save them, and in doing so bring them into your cult. There, you can put them to work for the cult, they worship you, and you take care of their needs. Over time, they grow old and die. Or they are sacrificed and die. Or they go on a mission to get things for the cult and die in the process. Death surrounds the cult, and sometimes your favourite cult member dies. You see other cult members making friends, finding lovers, and grieving at the graves of their fallen friends. Despite death not touching the lamb specifically, it still has a detailed and complicated role in the game and for the player.

When you face the bishop Shamura, they tell you about their history with the One Who Waits. They inform you that it was them who gave the One Who Waits knowledge about change, which began to cause issues between the siblings. The One Who Waits started to have new ideas and push for change in the Old Faith, which the others did not feel. There is an interesting nature to the idea of change being connected with death - the immovable and constant nature of life. There is no change in death, only the constant presence of it’s inevitably. It is what waits for us all (you know, like the One Who Waits).

But change does happen in one of the possible endings to the game. The player lamb may choose to kneel and bow before the One Who Waits, or they may choose to not. Strength in the face of death, not because of the power of a magical crown but because of a strength of will, is what does change aspects of the world around us, and gives us a new sense of what death is and can be.

Hopelessness and Change in Over the Garden Wall

Seasonal shows or movies are definitely a thing, but mostly are references to Christmas stuff. But autumnal shows and movies are definitely a thing, and this is the perfect season to curl up with a pumpkin spice latte and watch some autumnal classics. And for me, the perfect autumnal classic, is Over the Garden Wall.

Over the Garden Wall initially came out in 2014, and despite that it has a feel of something that’s been around for many years. Partly this is due to its aesthetics - it has a hand drawn, hand painted, style that makes it feel like it’s a bit older than it is, while having a lot of the modernisations that would be off putting if they weren’t present. The show is a quick ten episodes, each only about ten minutes a piece. It’s really a segmented movie rather than a lengthy television show. It’s creator, Patrick McHale, also had a hand in Adventure Time and Gravity Falls. Gravity Falls feels like it’s also begging for a video essay, but I’ll leave it for now.

The story of Over the Garden Wall is that two brothers, Wirt and Greg, are lost in some woods and a place referred to as the Unknown. The humour is sweet and innocent, while also relaying complex conceptions of different levels of understanding and knowledge.

It’s a simple concept that feels so typically familiar, and even the circumstances they find themselves in feels like the types of stories we’ve heard time and time again. But Over the Garden Wall keeps things fresh by providing small alterations to the archetypes. For example, one of the first encounters the brothers have is with creepy pumpkins all dancing. It becomes apparent that the pumpkin people are dead people who are keeping Wirt and Greg from leaving until they dig what seems like graves. The assumption is that they are going to try and kill the brothers, but it’s revealed, actually, the brothers were helping to dig up new skeletons to join the party. The pumpkin people so offer to let the boys stay with them for safety. Similarly, when the boys encounter Auntie Whispers, the true villain is the small sweet female child, and not the scary looking Auntie Whispers.

The ninth episode of the series is a flashback, which helps to explain how the brothers found themselves in the Unknown. This episode has set up many different theories in the fanbase to try and explain what the Unknown is. Theories range from the Unknown as purgatory, to it all just being a dream. Like every other fan, I have my own theories, but mine is built on metaphorical readings of structural elements based on my experiences studying myths, and a bit less on deep readings of the text itself. So let’s talk about how the Unknown is adaptability.

The Unknown is full of strange events, people, and interactions that requires the brothers to have an extreme creativity of thought. The two brothers approach this requirement in two very different ways. Wirt is rather stubborn and resistant in his approach to the Unknown, which is reflective of his approach in life. We get glimpses of this resistance to change throughout the show, even how it relates to his relationship with his brother. Because Greg is Wirt’s half brother; Wirt sings about the changes in his family when at the tavern - about his mother’s new partner which also brought a new brother. This meant that Wirt’s core family unit added two new people in a relatively short time period, which he had to re-dress, though in the song it seems he’s still struggling with these changes. In the flashbacks, we also see his resistance to change the status quo that’s set up between him and his peers. Wirt’s hesitancy in giving Sara his mixtape, for example, is partly due to normal crush butterflies, but also due to his fear of changing the dynamics of his friend group. Wirt is crippled with a fear of change.

This is reflected in the way he navigates the Unknown. He is stubborn and consistent. He tries to follow the directions with no deviation. He’s not willing to trust where he already didn’t have trust - he doesn’t allow himself to be wrong in an original thought, and adapt to the new position. He remains still and stubborn and constant, which is often to his detriment.

Greg, however, is the epitome of adaptability. He’s constantly altering and shifting, allowing his creativity of thought to take control of the moment. Even the names for his frog constantly changes, from Wirt (yes, the same name as his brother) to George Washington to finally Jason Funderburker, with many more in between. His position and understanding of his relationship with Wirt is also constantly changing. In the flashback episode, he asks Wirt to go frog hunting with him, which Wirt never does. However, Greg has referred to going frog hunting with him, including finding the frog friend while going frog hunting. Greg is constantly adjusting his perspective on the people around him and his environment.

What happens to children who get lost in the woods is a result of the Beast. The Beast is the ever looming threat in the show, despite only actually appearing in four of the ten episodes. He’s still a constant presence, whispered about from other inhabitants of the Unknown. His threat is presented to us immediately in the first episode, when the Woodsmen warns the boys of the Beast who may haunt them in the forest.

The Beast appears to be part of the forest, even though we only see him in shadowed silhouette. His body is tall and thin like the trunks of the trees in the forest, and his antlers are shaped more like tree branches than traditional antlers. His form is like that of the Leshy, a forest deity from Slavic mythology. Like the Leshy, the Beast seems to rule the forest like a deity, spoken in hushed tones as if his power is somehow beyond what the other individuals know. I do stress the Leshy here, and not a Wendigo because the idea of the wendigo being antlered isn’t actually the indigenous understanding. I’ll link a blog post I wrote on the topic for anyone interested.

The Beast in Over the Garden Wall feeds on lost souls. He waits for those who have lost their way in the forest. But from what we see of the Beast, he doesn’t seem like he simply grabs those who are lost, rather he has to wait until the right and perfect time. When Greg decides to go with the Beast, the Beast doesn’t just grab him and take him. He has to coax Greg to the point of feeling unable to keep going.

In other words, the Beast requires hopelessness. Before Greg leaves with the Beast, we see Wirt slowly lose hope in finding their way home, and from that some branches of a tree start growing up and around him. As the branches grow into him, he would eventually become what they refer to as an Edlewood tree - a type of tree that looks like a gnarled oak with a face. Always gotta love the spooky faces in trees thing.

While Wirt began to falter simply through the lengthy time spent searching for home, Greg holds out far longer due to his incredibly skill at adapting to a situation and providing strong creativity of thought. The Beast constantly gives him what seem like impossible tasks which Greg accomplishes easily. For example, when asked to put the sun in a tea cup, Greg puts the tea cup on a tree stump and says we just have to wait for the sun to set, which will happen in the tea cup from a particular angle. It takes many of these particular tasks over what seemed like an indeterminate amount of time before it started to get to Greg.

For the Beast to have to wait until the lost souls grow into trees demonstrates an important facet of the Beast - it’s not lost souls, but a particular type of lost soul. It has to rely on souls who have truly lost their way, not just in an inability to find home but in an inability to continue to go. Hopelessness is what comes to those unable to adapt to the new situations presented to them. It’s hopelessness that truly loses the way in the Unknown’s need to adapt, not just an struggle to find home.

The Unknown’s function as needing adaptability is an important reflection on aspects of life. As we see in Wirt, a discomfort with change and an inability to change to accommodate situations outside of your control can result in hopelessness to continue onward. The brother’s being lost in the woods is representative of their movements through life. Greg’s always looking to Wirt, simply wanting to be around him and spend time with him, while Wirt is unable to adapt to accommodate the brother he suddenly has. The Beast feeds on hopelessness in the face of continuing forward.

In fact, the Beast is in physical embodiment of hopelessness. When fighting with the Woodsmen and Wirt at the end of the show, the lantern falters and shows the Beast for a quick second. His body looks exactly like one of the Edlewood trees. The tree grains look like faces which paint his tree-like body. It’s not that he is one of the trees, but rather his control over the trees is like the control an Ent has over the forest - he is the embodiment of what it is he shepherds.

The Beast sometimes lets hopelessness sink in, as it did for Wirt. But he also can bring it on through lying and manipulating people around him. We see aspects of this in his interactions with the Woodsmen, who he convinced to bear his lantern by lying and saying that the lantern held his daughter’s soul. Wirt, however, figures out that the lantern houses the Beast’s soul, not the daughter’s.

The Unknown as adaptability may not fully make sense in the same narrative way as theories like purgatory. It doesn’t explain where it is, or how the brother’s got there. But I think the core thought behind Over the Garden Wall is like other aspects of mythology and folklore. As I mentioned in the episode of Buffy’s Hush, there’s not really ever a need or reason for a myth. Often small details like where something is or how the individuals got there isn’t really dealt with. What matters is the story, the connections it makes to those listening, reading or watching it.

Over the Garden Wall is an interesting contemporary myth. It builds on similar archetypes of narratives, but presenting it with enough of a twist to give it a place in our contemporary society. It teaches us something really important about our current world - the need to adapt and alter our approaches to the people and environments around us. It may seem hopeless, and it may be tiring, but there’s always a reason to keep going and keep figuring out a new solution to the problems around us.

The Beast - Over the Garden Wall

A new seasonal re-watch for me is Over the Garden Wall. Over the Garden Wall is perfect autumnal vibes, and a great way to bring in the fall every year. Despite it’s fairly recent creation, it has a timeless feel. It’s art style is reminiscent of old-school hand drawn and hand painted animation. Even though it was only first broadcast in 2014, and I only first saw it a few years ago, it has become a fast classic in my home.

The story of Over the Garden Wall is that two brothers, Wirt and Greg, are lost in some woods known as The Unknown. They encounter many strange interactions and interesting characters on their search for their way home. The show is also littered with beautiful original music and unique jokes that never punch down. It’s a beautiful show.

That being said, it’s spooky season, and just a few days before Halloween. So let’s talk about the primary antagonist of the show - the Beast.

Despite the beast being the main antagonist, he only actually appears in four of the ten episodes. But he’s a constant presence, and a threat that is also whispered about by other characters. When we do see him, he’s always silhouetted, a figure of shadow with only two glowing eyes. He stands tall as a tree trunk, with antlers also twisted like that of a tree. He fades into the forest, in a way, easily able to be a part of the forest while also standing away from it when needed. Aesthetically, he recalls a Leshee, with glowing eyes like Will o the Wisps.

The Beast roams the forest - he believes he owns the forest - and is said to eat children who lose their way. When we do see him, he’s manipulating the Woodsman, a quietly threatening force who sings in the woods and hunts the two brothers who have lost their way.

But we can’t really talk about the Beast without talking about the other primary force in the show: the Unknown. The world the brothers find themselves in is also its own force in the show. It’s a strange place, one that seems to have its own force and will. The brothers always seem pulled in the wrong directions.

There are many theories regarding the Unknown. Due to the ambiguous end of the show, it could have been all a dream. Or maybe it’s a purgatory - a place between life and death that the brothers are trying to navigate. I think an argument could be made for the purgatory far more than the dream aspect, but I have my own theory. For me, the Unknown represents an important aspect of life: adaptation. The brothers must always adapt - find new ways to navigate and new ways of understanding the world around them. Constant adaptation can be difficult, though, and the constant need to adapt gradually gets to the oldest brother Wirt.

And this is where the Beast roams. The Beast seeks the souls in the woods, those who wander and grew too tired of the constant need to change and adapt. And when these souls are no longer able to adapt, they slow and become trees.

The Beast is the hopelessness of the woods - the feeder on the desperate and those who have become too lost to even attempt to keep finding their way. When fighting with Wirt and the woodsmen in the final episode, a light flashes on the Beast and - for just a flash - we see what he truly looks like when not an imperceptible shadow. He looks like the trees that become the souls, with faces of the lost and hopeless covering his body. He’s not just someone who feeds on the lost souls in the woods, but someone who is the embodiment of the forlorn.

When people are not hopeless by their own design, as Wirt became, then the Beast makes them hopeless by striking bargains, lying and manipulating those around him. He convinced the Woodsmen to carry his lantern by making the woodsmen believe that his daughter’s soul was kept alive by the lantern. He works to keep those around him hopeless, feeding on the excitement and energy of those around him until they become too tired and too demoralised to keep going on. We see this happen to Greg, who starts his time with the Beast with energy and the ability to construct and work around the impossible tasks the Beast gives him. But over time, it becomes more and more difficult for Greg to continuously adapt, and think creatively, around the Beasts requests. The Beast drew out the hopelessness in his desire to create more lost souls to feed upon.

The point of Over the Garden Wall is to teach us about the importance of adaptability, and to never lose hope. Change is not impossible, even in the face of those who drain it out of us, and make us feel desolate and lost.

Communication and Storytelling in Buffy’s Hush

The tenth episode of season four of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Hush” is probably still one of the most well-remembered episodes of the series. Initially airing in 1999, writer Joss Whedon wrote the episode as a response to criticisms of the show which said it’s only successful due to the witty dialogue between characters. In repsonse, Joss wrote an episode which stripped almost all dialogue from the show.

In this episode of Buffy, the monster of the week - known as the Gentlemen - strip a whole town of people’s voices in order to extract seven hearts without the victims screaming. Definitely creepy. Most of the episode focuses on themes of communication and language. The speaking beginning of the episode starts with Buffy’s professor directly addressing this theme, stating that “communication” and “language” are not the same thing. From a myth studies perspective, this episode gives us a lot of material to discuss communication, storytelling and the construction of fairy tales.

During the beginning talking portion of the episode, Hush sets us up with several arguments that involve aspects of miscommunication between the characters. Buffy and Riley’s newly budding relationship struggles when it comes to aspects of talking. For two people whose success has always been based on their ability to fight, their ability to speak and communicate emotions constantly fell flat. In Buffy’s words, every time they started to speak it would turn into a babblefest.

Willow has a problem of too much talk as well, but in terms of her Wicca group at the school. Her and Tara, though unaware of each other’s issues, are struggling to find a place in a Wicca group that is “all talk” according to Willow. Anya and Xander are also at odds. Anya wants to know from Xander’s mouth how he cares for her, but Xander seems to find it difficult to communicate the same sentiment in words.

Language has always played an important role in Buffy. Saving Sunnydale frequently involves precise language of spells, for example. In fact, multiple levels and types of communication share a particular relationship throughout most of the show. There is an intertextuality to Buffy, an interaction that exists between the various forms of communication. The writing and reading aspects of texts are often interpreted via verbal communication. The research which Giles and the rest of the Scooby-gang put into figuring out who the monster of the week is and how to defeat them is often found in books - written forms of knowledge and communication that has been passed down. The discovery of the solutions, however, are communicated through verbal communication to the rest of the Scooby-gang. In essence, written/read communication is interpreted to the audience and the characters through verbal communication.

In Hush, this gets turned around. Several of the characters pick up small whiteboards in order to write what they would normally speak. Riley at the military compound is seen writing his notes on a yellow legal pad. Buffy and Willow show up at Giles’ house with whiteboards around their necks to communicate their thoughts in some other way than verbal speech. In other words, in Hush, the verbal communication is now being interpreted through written and read communication.

But these various forms of communication - verbal, written, read - are all text based. These are words which are simply given a variety of different forms. But words are not the only form of communication which exists. The body, too, can be interpreted. The body can communicate stories, intentions, emotions and even the story of the self through the way its dressed, the way its modified, and the way it moves. However, this type of social communication is something that does not take much time to learn how to read, but does take time to effectively create. These are social cues which are inherent in the way we think and move, and yet takes time to learn how to translate to your own bodily being.

This is also seen in Hush. The vocal removal the Gentlemen enact a forced change in the way the community of Sunnydale communicates: the original practices of vocal communication was removed and therefore everyone had to suddenly learn to communicate through bodily movements, or through writing and reading. Some characters had a much easier time communicating with the body than the others. The first instance is a silly moment between Xander and Spike. When waking up not being able to talk, Xander immediately blames Spike, and after Spike’s attempts to explain in other ways, simply gives a gesture which effectively explains the situation to Xander.

Less humorously, we see the diference in how this communication works when Willow and Buffy come to Giles. Buffy and Willow are clearly unable to figure out how to communicate effectively with Giles with the new change, and struggle to communicate their fears, as well as their relief with seeing Giles okay. Giles, on the other hand, is able to easily communicate many emotions all in one gesture. His hand on Buffy’s shoulder is a simple gesture which communicates understanding of Buffy’s emotions, a motion of comfort to demonstrate “I’m here for you” while also recognising that this means Buffy is about to have a lot of work on her hands. It’s a small gesture, and even though Buffy struggles at communicate these things herself, she easily reads the gesture in this way. It’s also read by the audience.

Willow also struggles to communicate everything she means. Unlike Buffy, Willow tries to write her thoughts, but it turns only into “Hi Giles”. This is a phrase which can carry a lot of weight when spoken, with different tones and even speed able to convey different feelings. When written, however, it falls a little flat. Giles, however, can easily seen into the more nuance of what Willow is struggling with, and gives her a comforting hug. This is the precise reaction Willow needed, and what she failed to communicate with words.

There is a field of study called “bodylore” - a subfield of folklore studies which focuses on the nature of the communication of the body. The idea is that folklore - like stories of other sorts, as I’ve mentioned on this channel many times before - is not limited to text. It’s not just the written story, or the read story, that is folklore. Folklore is also lived out in the body, through the way we dress, the way we move, and even the way we eat. Buffy’s Hush helps to communicate stories through this concerted effort of bodily storytelling - relying on movements, facial expressions and other forms of bodily performance to tell the story.

So let’s talk about the monster of the week themselves: the Gentlemen.

The Gentlemen are perhaps one of the scarier monsters in Buffy. In appearance, they are tall, male-facing creatures who wear suits and have a big fake smile plastered on their face. The do not walk, but float when moving through the world. Their helpers actually move on the ground, crouched, always low to the ground. Their wearing of straight jackets definitly provides a certain stigma to mental health which is probably not the best.

The most interesting aspect of the Gentlemen is their own lack of spoken language. Like the rest of the town, the Gentlemen are silent. I don’t think this is because their spell also affected them, but rather that they as creatures are simply without speech. Like the rest of the town, they must instead rely on bodily movements to convey their intentions. Often, this is down with quite a lot of flourish - primarily to make a point about their communciation but more so because it’s just plan ol’ creepy. But regardless, the group’s effective way to communicate through their body is a scary juxtaposition to the Scooby-gang suddenly unable to figure out how to cope.

And it’s not just the Scooby-gang that struggles. When Buffy and Willow are first walking to Giles, they see how much the community is beginning to break down. One of my favourite little snippets from this is the religious group calling about the endtimes on the street, specifically because their placard reads Revelation 15:1. This specific verse is describing seven angels with seven plagues, which is a nice subtle reference to the Gentlemen needing to take seven hearts.

The whole episode explores the notion of a disruption in language and what this means for a community and individuals. Despite the kids’ struggles with verbal communication at the beginning, there is still an intense need for them to speak - to fill the void and commuicate in the only real way they know how. The arrival of the Gentlemen provides a disruption to language - removing the language entirely to force the characters and the town to communicate differently. Meanwhile, this different form of communicate is where the Gentlemen excel. The bodily movements and the subtle ways of communicating without speech is the type of language the Gentlemen utilise regularly.

We learn about the Gentlemen’s connection to Fairy Tales through reading, rather than listening as we typically would in a Buffy episode. First we see it on the title of a book pulled by Giles. Second, we read it when Giles shows his, well report, for lack of a better word. According to Giles, the Gentlemen are Fairy Tale creatures who appear in a town and steal the ability to speak from all in the town for the purpose of removing seven hearts without hearing the screams. The way the Gentlemen were defeated was that the princess screamed, and therefore destroyed the creatures.

What’s interesting about this episode, is there are many elements to the Gentlemen’s existence in Sunnydale that goes unaddressed. The where, why and when of the Gentlemen’s appearance isn’t addressed. We don’t know where they came from, other than the vague idea of “fairy tales”. We don’t know why they show up at all, or why they want the seven hearts. And we don’t know when the Gentlemen could show up at any given town. The only thing that matters is that the Gentlemen showed up, and now Buffy has to deal with them.

I kinda like this aspect of the villains of the piece, but mostly because this is kinda how fairy tales work. Most fairy tales don’t spend time on reasons for things happening, or why certain towns or people are chosen as victims over others. It just kinda happens, and then soemthing else happens to either solve the monster problem or not, and then the story ends. And that’s all we get. Like fairy tales, the Gentlemen are not given detailed back stories or explanations. Their reasons aren’t explored because, most liekly, there is little reason to begin with. What reason is there to simply tell as story?

The destruction of the Gentlemen is served through another disruption of language. The language of silence, the language of the body, is being disrupted by the sudden appearance of the voice. The elegant as well as over the top way the Gentlemens’ bodies communicates is suddenly disrupted by the clumsy way the Scooby-gang talks. The language that they initially disrupted has disrupted them back in turn.

When Joss Whedon wrote Hush, he initially intended it to be a challenge to the critique that Buffy relies too heavily on the dialogue. To strip dialogue from the episode and rely on storytelling through body and visuals, he proved he was able to write without dialogue. However, I think he also proved a point about the spoken word and the power it holds for the communities which speak. The show’s depiction of Sunnydale falling apart is not because of some inaccurate view of how a community may face issues, but rather as a demonstration that the spoken word is a reflection of the community. Without it, the sense of community begins to falter.

While some characters, like Xander and Anya, solved their problem without the need for speech, others required some level of speech to fulfill their community. Perhaps Xander and Anya’s difference could be explained through Anya not being fully human, and therefore still not yet being a full member of the community whose language has been disrupted. But the other members of the Sunnydale community still require speech. Despite Tara and Willow working together to create magic without speech, they needed speech to communicate their history and experiences both with magic and with each other in order to fully move forward. Buffy and Riley’s relationship was put to the true communication test. They both struggle to communicate in speech, but also failed to communicate properly with the body. While fighting with the Gentlemen, Buffy attempts to communicate which object to break to Riley, who mis-understands and destroys the wrong object. They’re failure to communicate is present both in the bodily communication and in the spoken. In fact, the episode ends with the two saying they should talk, and then nothing but silence exists between them.

While Hush is an episode of silence, it’s also an episode which says something very loud about speech and communication, the power it has for our society, and the importance of bodily communication as being a social pairing with our words. But sometimes, ineffective communication means our community and social bonding completely break down into silence of every form.

Cosplay as Sympathetic Magic

Ever since I started researching cosplay, I’ve had this one idea bungling around in my brain which has helped me approach certain topics with an open mind: cosplay is a form of sympathetic magic.

Now, before I get too into it, two primary things should be addressed: (1) this is not to trivialise sympathetic magic, nor is it assuming sympathetic magic is not used directly by participants on a regular occasion; and (2) I do not think cosplayers are actively partaking in sympathetic magic through the act of cosplay, rather the connection between the two is metaphoric. Essentially what I want to talk about today is how we can learn a lot about how cosplay functions by seeing it’s similarities with sympathetic magical practice.

Sympathetic magic is a magical system which understands the ability to affect a person or thing through a representational object. One of the more common images of this found in popular culture is the voodoo doll - an object which represents a person, and the pin pricks into the doll are copied over to the person you want to affect. But voodoo dolls are not the only place sympathetic magic pops up.

Some rain dances are sympathetic magic - mimicking the sound of rain in small places, and in some cases actually sprinkling a bit of water on the ground. This asks for the gods to understand the smaller act and bring it into the wider world. The entire idea of this magical system is the idea of using one aspect of the world to represent another.

To understand the connection of cosplay to sympathetic magic, I should talk about one of the people who were nice enough to chat with me about their experiences. For the purposes of the research, I’m calling them Sam. When chatting about character choice, Sam mentioned they’re choice to play Tohru Honda, one of the primary characters in the anime Fruits Basket, was intimately tied to a shared loss.

“I felt so moved to become her,” they said, “because all the things she had ben through in her life. She had lost her mom, I had lost my mom, like… all these things that happen. I was, like, I wish that I could still go out there with a smile on my face at that point in my life. And so I did that, and I did everything I could to be like her when I was in cosplay.”

Jessica Nigri as Ranni from Elden Ring.

Sam’s experience is not unique either. In a documentary about her cosplays, professional cosplayer Jessica Nigiri commented that she chooses characters who have some aspect of their personality she wishes to embody. Several cosplayers I spoke to mentioned something similar - commenting on the wish to find elements of fictional characters to take on and embody within themselves through the act of cosplaying.

There are a few things happening here, but for the time being let’s focus on the relationship between fiction and cosplayer, and in particular how that relationship is affected in a way that is vaguely similar to sympathetic magic. Obviously, the core of what’s happening is an attempt at transformation: Sam wished to transform their experience of grief, Jessica wishes to transform aspects of her personality. The avenue of choice for this transformation is cosplay.

The individual cosplayer is the object to be changed, and the representation chosen is the piece of fiction. The act of cosplay could be seen as the ritual action of transformation in which one wishes the transformation to be brought onto the person in question.

Let’s use Sam’s cosplay as our example case. Sam is the one Sam wished to change - it was themselves, rather than someone else. Instead of using a doll, Sam chooses, instead, a fictional representation, a character they see connection to but that there’s still a separation from. But the connection needs to be actualised through the ritual action of the consecration of the doll - or, in the case of cosplay, an act of performance.

Unlike the traditional doll example, the individual in cosplay puts on the representation in order to transform. The point of cosplay is to bring the fictional into the physical. For cosplayers like Sam, the goal is to bring particular aspects of that fictional into the physical manifestation of self. Sam wants to, at least temporarily, be like that fictional. So they transform the fictional actively by bringing into the physical. By bringing the character, and embodying that character, they are transforming the representational object in hopes that it also transforms the object of the activity - themselves.

I think cosplay is an interesting element of this transformation - it also allows us to see cosplay as something that can be transformational. Because it is transformational - it transforms people like Sam in a way that lasts far longer after the removal of the costume.

Mythology as Exoticized Plot

When we talk about the intersections of mythology and popular culture, there are two ways we can approach it. The first is looking at how mythology is represented in popular culture, and the second the way popular culture is mythology. On this website - on this blog - we talk a lot about the second. The entire name of Incidental Mythology is based on this understanding of popular culture - our popular culture is our mythology incidentally. Pop culture narratives that draw on mythology directly is purposeful. We have, of course, covered some elements of this. I talked previously about the Wild Hunt in both folklore and the Witcher, and we also explored the different presentation of the Wendigo in popular culture in comparison to how it’s understood in Native American folklore.

Today, I want to return briefly to the first approach rather than the second. I don’t spend a lot of time here, but I think it’s important to return to every so often. One of the things I see the most when it comes to the representation of mythology in popular culture is a kind of exoticisation - a romanticised form of the original. So let’s talk about mythology as an exoticized plot device.

Particularly, I’m thinking of a few mythologies here. Norse mythology has more recently had it’s role as a central focus on the plot in contemporary popular culture narratives, including video games like God of War. Individual characters from Native American mythology, like the Wendigo, are brought out in pieces, often disconnected from their original contexts, and brought to white Western audiences as something exotic and scary.

God of War’s Norse Mythology

In his book Orientalism, Edward Said talked about the exoticisation of the East, and particularly of Arab cultures which he dubbed as ‘Orientalism’. Orientalism is the exaggeration of difference between cultures, and is based on the presumption of a Western superiority. While Said’s specific references and discussions are using representations of Eastern cultures, and particularly Arab cultures, it’s not limited to these representations.

An important part of Said’s argument is the way culture is communicated and understood by the culture doing the exoticisation. Said points out that often the sources people would draw on when picturing these other cultures would be literature or sources that were written by Westerns, and continuing to draw on these sources rather than those from the culture themselves helps to paint the exoticized culture as one which is unable to defend itself or paint their own narrative.

From a mythological perspective, this is fairly true for some of the myths we see being talked about or experienced on popular culture. Let’s use Norse mythology as an example. Our contemporary knowledge of Norse mythology is primarily drawn from the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda, which was written by Snorri Sturluson, a Christian missionary. In other words, the stories of a religion and culture was being written down by someone who was not an adherent. One of the things that I always pressed on students when teaching mythology was that the background of the myth was when the source we are reading is from, not anytime before or after that point. Snorri’s own views and background are deeply affecting the presentation of the pieces.

The difference in the way these mythological characters were - or I should stress are - understood is seen as inherently different and antithetical to contemporary Western, and typically Christian, views. The narratives, then, are highly dependent on these more biased accounts, as well as becoming romanticised and altered in order to be presented in the piece of popular culture.

The Fawn, and fairy representation in Pan’s Labyrinth.

Mythology, particularly older mythology like Norse, are often seen as unproblematic to borrow from, especially in comparison to indigenous cultures and their narratives. Mostly, this is because it’s assumed that no one is left to potentially offend. Even though this has not necessarily always stopped people from using indigenous narratives, there have at least been some people coming forward to try and stop. Norse mythology, or Egyptian, or Greek mythology are all assumed to be long dead and old stories which are up for grabs. This, however, ignores contemporary adherents of pagan traditions. These people do exist, and they still adhere to these religions, however they are typically ignored or looked over.

The other important aspect here is also the fact that these mythologies are presented with the over reliance on difference that Said describes in Orientalism. The stories of old gods are presented as old, different, and strange - something special and unique that cannot be present in our world. Essentially, it paints the Christian or Atheistic West as the true conception of the world, and these stories and the cultures that they came from as not fitting into our current world. They are too different, too special, too other-worldly.

Mythological narratives are often romanticised and exoticized for the purposes of furthering popular culture narratives. Perhaps, through time, I will try to dissect these as we go, as I did with the antlered wendigo. But for now, I wanted to take some time to talk about the role of mythology and the way the mythology is used in popular culture narratives.

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Orville Peck’s Mask and the Myth of the Gay Cowboy

We sometimes think of the word “story” as being something full of words. A story is something we read. Maybe we watch it, but a script is involved - words that we can read or hear or see being performed. Words are stories we can hear and listen to. But there are other stories we tell. In our previous video, we talked about how fashion, for example, tells the story of ourselves to the people viewing us. Clothes and fashion choices communicate who we are, what are communities are like, and even things like our morality through choices like modest fashion. A tattoo brands our skin with our stories. Jewellery like wedding rings tell the story of our personal lives, or rings like the black asexual ring communicates our identities and our community groups.

Image, then, tells a story. A presentation of self tells a story just as much and as any book. Today, I want to talk about image, and how the presentation of a particular person’s self is a magical amazing mythology: the image of Orville Peck.

Orville Peck is a country musician who came on the scene in 2019 with his debut album Pony. He’s South African born, currently based in Canada, and openly gay. Orville Peck is a new kind of country, while also drawing entirely on old country. His voice, and his music, recalls sonorous country greats, like Roy Orbison, Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash. Less bro-country, more old-country. But Orville Peck is also a look. Always dressed in typical cowboy attire, but never without the fringe mask.

Country music is all about authenticity, telling the authentic story of the self. It may seem antithetical to country music, then, for Orville Peck to always wear a mask and to hide his non-Orville identity. However, when we study the mask a bit more in depth, and in particular the story that Orville is telling, we may see just how authentic that mask truly is.

Masks have been a part of storytelling and particularly mythic storytelling for a long time. Myths have always been performed, and in some performances, people donned masks of the figures in the stories. While wearing the mask, the performers were temporarily seen as those characters themselves, and they danced or acted out the narratives rather than simply telling them. Orville’s mask is an important part of the story he’s singing, it helps to illustrate the story through performance of look and dance as much as it is in the words he’s singing. For Orville, his whole performance - the look, the songs, the style he’s singing - is all about telling the myth of the gay cowboy.

Now, when I use the word “myth” here, I don’t mean myth in the way the word is sometimes used as a “falsehood”. The myth of the gay cowboy is not a myth because it didn’t exist - gay cowboys did exist and continue to exist. I use the word myth more in the shorthand for mythology - an important cultural narrative that means something substantially important to the identity of people who tell the story and listen to the story.

In order to tell the story of the gay cowboy, we have to first look at the way cowboy mythology has been told for at least the last hundred years or so. Cowboys and cowboy mythology came to represent the story of the hetero white American, able to subjugate cows and Natives alike. The cowboy represented the rugged man, and by nature of heter-normative culture, that ruggedness necessitated straightness. Of course, this also necessitates the cowboy to be a man.

The point of this essay is not to delve into the history vs mythology of the cowboy, but I do want to take a moment here to mention that part of why this mythology is able to exist in the way it does in popular culture is due to the lack of extensive knowledge we have on the history of the time. But we do have some history of the time, and the historical cowboy is rather different than this mythical assertation. Cowboys did fight on the edges of society, but typically not for the white-hetero American mythology. The cowboys were not always hetero-white rugged men. There were black cowboys, gay cowboys, and, of course, women cowboys.

Myths as they are present help to define and guide a culture, and the cowboy myth came to be through its need to help to present and define what the United States culture meant. The cowboy became the American version of the old English knight - a figure which fights for the freedom of the country, against those who risk the destruction of the culture they represent. In this case, the fight against Natives came to demonstrate the dominion of the white man, and the chivalry which cowboys came to be understood as having as a way that white men should be behaving throughout the country. It was a way of preserving and sharing elements of the ethos and culture of white America. It was about freedom and guns. The cowboy represented defenders of a specific type of society - one born through hard work in isolation, pushing the frontiers of where this culture belongs.

Actor Gene Autry explained once the “cowboy code” as the cowboy came to be represented in American pop culture. The cowboy code described the cowboy as someone who “never takes unfair advantage even of an enemy”, someone who is “kind to small children, to old folks, and to animals”. A cowboy is a “good worker” and is “clean about his person, and in thought, word and deed. A cowboy respects womanhood, his parents, and the laws of his country. A cowboy is a patriot.”

The figure of the cowboy came to represent a certain type of American so strongly, that John Wayne once tried to attack a native woman for speaking about racism in the cowboy myth. The urge was because the story of the cowboy was the story of white hetero-America, and that comes with a strong sense of social preservation. We still see how strong some people fight for this particular view of the United States, not caring about those whose mere presence demonstrates how faulty this social view is.

The myth of Orville Peck is derived in part from this white-hetero cowboy mythology, but it is slightly transformed. Orville sees the cowboy as someone who is on the outskirts of society, not fighting to preserve a society but rather fighting simply to survive another day. While it does rely partly on the hetero-white myth, it transforms the original consideration to make it also fit easily into the LGBT+ experience.

Mythic transformation happens often for many reasons. Alteration in mythology and story was once chalked up to the difficulty to remember elements of story orally when writing was not present. But this isn’t actually accurate. Storytellers change myths for many reasons, but most often it is because the story needs to change to fit the changes to the social order. If myths are present to help to define and communicate a society or culture, than when aspects of that society or culture changes over time, then the stories also need to change to reflect this. The old stories would no longer represent what the story needs. Sometimes, the change in the story precedes the social change - demonstrating that storytellers were leveraging their social influence in order to try and make the changes they wished to see in the culture.

We still have myths, like the cowboy myth. And because of that, we also still have mythic transformations. Orville Peck tells a different version of the cowboy myth, transforming the narrative in order to also demonstrate changes in the social experience. The cowboy is so central to the experience of the white-United States culture, that altering it to give space to South African/Canadian gay men demonstrates a longing for a shift in the culture - one open to immigration and the LGBT+ community.

Orville takes on the cowboy myth in a few different ways. The style of old-school country music also harkens to folkloric conceptions of a “true” patriotic America. His classic “look” plays directly with the visual nature of the cowboy myth. He dresses as a cowboy, from the style of shirt, to the types of jeans and boots he wears. But they always have a slight different edge to them. They’re a little more bedazzled than a John Wayne version may have been. And, of course, he’s got the long fringed mask, both covering his identity and yet also making him so unmistakably Orville Peck.

But it is not just his look that transforms the cowboy mythology. As a musician, Orville Peck tells a story. That story also touches his appearance, but it is so much more than that. His debut album Pony, released in 2019, laid out his intentions for the cowboy and country mythology. While singing with a smooth voice echoing the likes of Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash, Orville sang the pain and experience of many gay men throughout the world.

In “Dead of Night”, Orville plays with the cowboy/gay boundary by purposefully writing lyrics which could be horse riding or could be sexual.

“You wake me up, you say it’s time to ride / In the dead of night / Strange canyon road, strange look in your eyes / You shut them as we fly”

Here, Orville purposefully blurs the typically imagery of cowboys into one that can be read through different experiences of a gay relationship, with the “strange canyon road” alluding to the experience of the homosexual relationship as still somewhat new to the singer.

“Nothing Fades Like the Light”, the album closer for Pony, plays with the depression, pressure, and fear that feeds into being closeted, espcially when you see someone else who is also clearly closeted as well.

“April showers, June is the same in your eyes / Something tells me, you know why I lie”

This line, in particular, explores the understanding of seeing someone else. June being the same, referring to the experience of Pride month, while having an unspoken understanding of why lying about your sexuality is very important, and sometimes a matter of safety.

The frank authenticity of country music plays into the raw experience of the LGBT community in a way that works so beautifully together. A transformed myth that works, and reflects a different kind of society - one that is of the queer experience. Despite his mask, Orville often writes and sings of some of the most personal experiences. For Pony, it was directly about his experience as a gay man. For Bronco, his follow up album in 2022, it was a mixture of the gay experience with the suffering of depression. It’s hard to see him sing “Let Me Drown” without feeling every single piece of that song personally.

Orville works to purposefully blur the boundaries that once stood as start contrasts to one another. The movie Brokeback Mountain once attempted to blur these boundaries as well, but Orville’s lyrics bring the spirit of the gay cowboy to the country stage. And all the while, he’s doing it while fully embodying the authenticity of country music, and the transformation of the cowboy mythology.

His fringe mask helps to illustrate this point. Unlike the masked performances I discussed earlier, Orville’s mask is not a cowboy mask that he dons when he pretends to - temporarily - be the mythic cowboy figure. For Orville, the gay experience is the cowboy experience - living on the fringes of society and fighting for your mere survival. Orville’s fringed mask is not the identity of a different figure, but rather the identity of Orville Peck - the true experience of who he is as the myth of a different kind of cowboy - the myth of the gay cowboy.

John Emigh understands the mask as laying on the boundary between self and other. The presence of the mask marks a type of play that exists between self and other - a type of ambiguous play that can be both serious and fun at the same time. In theatre, as that is what Emigh was studying, the mask is a type of otherness that the actor both should overcome and also be aiming for. A good performance for an actor is full belief in the existence of the other brought to life, and so the otherness of the mask is what the actor is aiming for.

For Orville, his mask is himself, but also comes to represent the sense of the other. Orville Peck is not the man’s birth and legal name. The figure of Orville Peck is, himself, a type of identity performance, where the once punk-musician enacts the story of the gay country star. But I think Orville Peck comes to show us just how real mythic narratives and mythic figures can be. Orville does not stop when his guitar gets put down and the mask comes off. The mask of Orville is the demonstration of the life of the gay experience being recognised. It’s a story and mythic figure that exists just as much as the mythology of the hetero-white cowboy.

Masks make the mythology more convincing, sure, but it has a double function. The mask helps to illustrate how the boundaries between categories are broken down. In the literal experience of the mask, it’s the boundary between object and person. For the performance of the mask, it’s the boundary between figure being embodied and the performer.

For Orville, the mask is how the other - here meaning the mythic figure of the gay cowboy - and the performance of self - meaning the figure behind the mask putting it on to become Orville Peck - is a simultaneous performance. This is also not a performance limited to the tattooed South African Canadian, but is one that everyone listening to the music, experiencing the same experiences, and connecting to the mythology of the songs can also grab onto and perform.

Orville’s fringed mask does not hide his identity, it provides a cultural identity that everyone can see even in silhouette. In many ways, the mask of Orville Peck is one of the most authentic pieces to the mythology of Orville peck and the establishment of the myth of the gay cowboy. Like other myths, it allows for a replication of story, and an embodiment of the mythic narrative. It allows the myth to be performed and re-performed as a furtherance of the mythological narrative. It provides us with a mythic figure to tell the story about. It’s not just that gay cowboys potentially existed in the past, but it is a figure of a true contemporary gay cowboy that we can grab onto and paint our own experiences on to. We can share this new mythology, this LGBT inclusive understanding of the gay cowboy, as the mythology of our new social world.