The American Epic

Happy weekend after the Fourth of July! Remember, if you can’t find fireworks, you can always stuff some aluminum foil into a microwave to have a cool light/explosion show!

I am continuing to watch Once Upon a Time, and I think that maybe I’ll write a Note about it somewhere down the line? I suspect that’ll be when I finish the season. The one season. The only season. Shame no more happened after that, you know.

Also! I’m having a blast playing Assassin’s Creed: Mirage. Jumping around medieval Baghdad and stabbing people is great fun! Al-Rabisu, you better watch your back!

The American Epic

I am fascinated by the idea of the American Epic. 

This is separate (but related!) to the idea of the Great American Novel. The epic–and I want to be clear in that I don’t necessarily mean an epic poem, or even of print literature–is meant to be more than a work of fiction, it’s meant to be a massive, sweeping story of heroes going through larger-than-life journeys and struggles. It’s not necessarily for the fate of the world or something, but the stakes are high and have meaning to the reader’s world.

The notion of a National Epic goes back pretty far–many European countries take a story of their medieval past, or earlier, and declare it as the National Epic because they feel it is a representation of their history and identity. Your Mileage May Vary on whether or not that’s a good idea or not, as the people in a medieval epic probably don’t have the same values or priorities as you do today. 

[We don’t have a history that goes that far back. Well, we do, but the country as it exists now has been very persistent about eliminating Native American cultural heritage. These people weren’t all nomadic, we have ruins and remains of cities.]

And frankly, defining a country’s people is always going to be a tricky dilemma. I flashback sometimes to this video from Brows Held High on Yeelan, a film that tries to be the Malian Epic, and the discussion in that video of building national identity. When you build a story, mythical or otherwise, that’s trying to define who a people are, you’re often going to find that those stories will exclude a lot of people. Which isn’t always intentional, it’s just how it shakes out. Not an epic, but the video uses the play Our Town as an example, which lays out a small American town to be an example of what life was like at the time–but small town America is apparently all white and Protestant. There are no Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, pagans, Hispanic, black, Asian, or indigenous people written into the play. Which isn’t because the playwright didn’t think these people deserved to be there–at least, I don’t think so, I don’t know what Thorton Wilder was like–it just didn’t occur to him while writing the story.

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but one time at YALLFest, author Mark Oshiro mentioned finding a response to a novel that protested about how their personal  experience of a LGBT person of color wasn’t reflected in Oshiro’s novel. Oshiro’s response was, “Okay, but it reflects my experience, not every experience is universal, and this novel isn’t about you specifically.” You cannot have every single person represented in a piece of fiction to reflect everyone’s experience, and still write a compelling narrative. That’s not because they don’t deserve to be there, it’s just… you know, reality.

That being said, if you’re trying to tell a story about the United States of America, a country that bills itself on the idea of being a melting pot, you should at least make gestures towards the idea of inclusion. This country is happy to tell people that we can accept all types, and then you come in and find that there are plenty of people in the country who insist that we can’t take That Kind of People. I still vividly recall one of my high school teachers having a freakout in Study Hall about the idea of a Muslim in the White House (because she was certain that Obama was Muslim).

Heck, even if we’re not talking about immigrants, how much mainstream American fiction wants to talk about America and then not talk at all about the people who lived here first? There’s a lot of ink, virtual and otherwise, spilled on how well the Western, as a genre, represents the American ideals, history, or culture, and I think that’s all worthwhile. I also think it’s worth noting that the Western is one of the contenders for the American Epic that at least acknowledges that there were people living in this country before there were white people, though one can also admit that not every Western does it well.

One of the infuriating things about season two of American Gods is that it introduces a Native American figure, new to the story, not in the book… and then cast a white actor to play him. Hurm.

The game plan I’ve noticed many people go with, though, is to try to take a key moment in history and make it into a larger-than-life story. The American Revolution is a popular one, as is the American Civil War (I think Gone With the Wind is attempting to be the American Epic, which is a shame because I hate it). As I said above, Westward Expansion is another one–Kevin Costner’s trying to do that with Horizon: An American Saga. These are moments that had lasting influence, and also huge battles, so I understand wanting to set the American Epic in those. 

Sometimes you see someone branch out with something different. Captain from Castile is, from its rousing speeches about the New World, trying to be something of the American Epic, despite the fact that it’s in Mexico. Which is in America, sure, just not the country the makers are really aiming their message at when they have characters speak on building a world free from the class constraints and religious extremism of the Old World. And, uh… yeah, that clearly didn’t always work, though I give that movie a lot of credit for being much more complex than you’d think for a movie of that time.

There’s also the notion of myths? Stories that want to explicitly do mythology in the United States are kind of odd in that they rarely feature the mythology of the people that lived here before colonization. Greek, Norse, and Celtic mythologies are popular, representing the classical education, as well as the Germanic and Irish people who came to our shores. Cryptids and aliens, of course, add something of a local flavor. And some people go full-on Lovecraftian, like Lovecraft, and other stories like the podcast Old Gods of Appalachia. Christianity is another popular one, which makes sense given how much of the US is historically Christian, but you never really see other faiths that are well represented. I’d like to see a stab at Americana but heavily featuring Islamic or Jewish theology. Or heck, Hinduism and Shinto. Those kind of exist, but I imagine they’re from the Rick Riordan Presents imprint rather than a more serious thing, and I’ve grown a bit disillusioned with the books from that imprint.

[They’re not bad, they just all run together in my head after a while.]

I like the idea of the American Epic, and I like seeing different attempts at it. I started making a list of notable attempts, but I think that someone will probably get miffed that I didn’t include this-or-that example, so I’ll leave it off the Note. Also, I don’t have strict parameters, so seemed arbitrary.

 The American Epic should be something to strive towards! I’m not saying we’ll end up with One True Epic; I doubt we’d all agree on what it is. I would love to see different attempts at it though, because in this day and age, we kind of need an Epic. A good one. One that shows the country as it could be, without being blind to its faults or its history. One that doesn’t feel like it’s pushing people out, but bringing them in and building them up.

And also, you know, have some big battles and cool mythology stuff. I’d like that, too.

—