A Tale of Two Myths

WHY ARE MURDER MYSTERY SHOWS ON TV SO CAPTIVATING? Why am I hooked on The Closer, Major Crimes, Midsomer Murders, Death in Paradise, and the like?

It’s because they tell archetypal stories that re-affirm the truth of one of humanity’s two most powerful meta-myths. The “Myth of Redemptive Violence” is probably the dominant myth of civilization, but television murder mysteries, for the most part, are expressions of the “Myth of Redemptive Knowledge.”

According to the myth of redemptive violence, which is already well developed in the earliest literature at the dawn of civilization, the world and humanity are saved when the evil forces of chaos are destroyed in battle. This is the basic plot of the ancient Babylonian myth in which the hero, Marduk, kills the primordial goddess, Tiamat, and then establishes cosmic order by forming the earth and the heavens from her dismembered body. The same violent plot appears in many ancient origin stories, including the Greek stories of the Olympian gods triumphing over the Titans, and the biblical tales of the Israelites conquering the Canaanites, to name just a few. With a little effort, I’m sure you’ll think of many other examples, throughout history.

Redemptive violence is not a thing of the past, however. It also provides the dominant framework of meaning in contemporary storytelling. Look carefully. You’ll find it in many of the popular myths we live by. It drives the plots in Westerns, for example, and in action movies of all sorts, in war movies, in cop dramas, in horror films and monster movies. Anytime a story on TV or in the movies ends with the hero killing (or even “banishing”) the evil villain, that story is a version of the myth of redemptive violence — and we all know how good it feels when the hero wins. (Walter Wink has published extensively on the myth of redemptive violence.)

Now, for something completely different (to misappropriate the line from Monty Python). The myth of redemptive knowledge is at least as ancient and fundamental as the myth of redemptive violence. Here, however, the world and humanity are saved, and the perceived forces of evil and chaos are transformed, when an individual seeker gains enough knowledge. Tribal initiations and the yogic paths to enlightenment are ancient examples. So, too, are the ancient schools of philosophy and the classical Greek mystery cults. The gospel accounts of the early Jesus movement, in their essence, also re-tell the myth of redemptive knowledge. As do the heretical stories of gnostic salvation and the orthodox accounts of mystic realization.

Even though the myth of redemptive knowledge is not the dominant myth in our global civilization, it might be gaining popularity in our contemporary storytelling media. That’s one way to explain the perennial popularity on cable television of Law and Order, in which the heroes almost never resort to violence. You’ll find similar themes of salvation through knowledge in all sorts of courtroom dramas, in stories of discovery or invention or scientific advance, in relationship dramas, in love stories (because love is a type of knowledge) — and of course, in murder mysteries.

Now, when you watch a murder mystery, you’ll understand why it’s so compelling.