Oct 28, 2016 | 10:45 AM - 12:15 PM | Loft 1

Dr. Riven Barton, PhD

Don't Enter the Fairy Ring! Trauma and the Distortion of Time in the Magical Realm

Far from the whimsical world of Tinkerbells and children’s stories, ancient folklore warns of the dangers of entering into the fairy realm. The fairy realm is an intermediary space, where time and reality are distorted. A place of madness and disconnection, the malleability of “fairy time” in stories echoes the perception of time and space experienced by those overwhelmed by grief or suffering from trauma. In the stories, when one is captured by a fairy ring, he is danced round and round in maddening circles until finally he emerges old and bedraggled, or falls dead to the ground. The experience of endless repetition refers to what Mircea Eliade calls calls “mythic” or “cyclical time” which stands in sharp contrast from the “modern” or “finite time” which we normally experience.

“Mythic” time is a-historical and defies set, chronological progression. Instead, it exists simultaneously with real or finite time. Similarly, in the event of a deeply traumatic experience, chronological, finite, time can become conflated with remembered time and events. Though a trauma may have occurred in the past, the affected individual can experience as repeatedly happening in the present; thus conflating past and present time. Like an individual spun round and round in a fairy ring, a person who has experienced a trauma will keep returning to the same, offending point until the issue is resolved psychologically. In this paper I will compare the “fairy story” and “magical time,” with the perceived experience of time through the process of aging and trauma. Drawing from classical folk tales, psychological research, and philosophy, I will compare fairy stories with the lived experience of psychological time, and what these stories can illuminate for us about our relationships with temporality and the repetition of memory.

Dr. Carla Ionescu, Doctorate

Modern Hercules in Film: The Most Heroic Lie

There is great disconnect between the Hercules of Greek myth and the modern world. Popular films and literature present us with heroes that must be morally pure. So-called “anti-heroes” are occasionally tolerated in marginal media, but even here their transgressions are typically mitigated somehow. The heroes of Greek legend often existed solely because they were transgressors. Tantalus, Oedipus, Orestes: their stories are of broken taboos, stories of cannibalism, incest, kin-slaying. Later authors may have complicated their stories, but violation is at the core of their being.

While the common people of ancient Greece benefited from Hercules’s actions as a slayer of monsters, none of his actions were motivated by altruism. Rather, it was shame at best that moved him: in most tellings, his famous twelve labors were penance for the death of his family at his own hands. Many of his other deeds were motivated by hunger, lust, or just boredom.

This paper will discuss how Hollywood has continually represented Hercules as the ultimate alpha male, by providing audiences with only a simplistic analysis of his myth and traditions, and ignoring the controversies and complex meanings of his story. Drawing on evidence from ancient myth and ritual symbolism, as well as modern film and graphic art, this paper will reconstruct the traditional framework from which the myth of Hercules is told.

Biographies

Dr. Riven Barton

I am a mythologist and depth psychologist. I have lectured and written primarily on the topic of collective psychology looking at larger, overarching themes being played out culturally from a psychological and mythic perspective. I teach writing at Santa Barbara City College and have a private psychotherapy practice. I have recently collaborated on two collections: The Age of Dystopia, by Cambridge Scholar Publishing and the soon to be released Functions of Evil Across Disciplines, by Lexington Press. I have also written several articles and was a columnist for a newspaper.

Dr. Carla Ionescu

Carla Ionescu is a Professor of Liberal Arts and Science at Humber College. Her area of expertise is embedded in Greco-Roman culture with special focus on the city of Ephesus (modern day Turkey) at the turn of the century. Her recent research revolves around the ritual worship of the goddess Artemis, particularly as it pertains to the use of bee symbolism and meaning.