Movies, Movies, Movies... and, erm, Wrestling.
"The cultural work done in the past by gods and epic sagas is now done by laundry detergent commercials and comic-strip characters." Roland Barthes, "Mythologies". The other day, watching a film entitled "The Take", an action thriller starring Idris Elba, I was reminded of some of the work I'd done as an MA student of literary theory. The film was concerned with a plot hatched by an elite team within the police force (who were disgruntled at their apparent lack of financial reward for their dangerous work), which was designed to create havoc within the city of Paris in order to distract the public from the fact that they were, in truth, carrying out an audacious heist. It wasn't the plot which grabbed my attention, though, but rather the way in which, at the end of the film, all the bad guys were either killed or brought to book and justice was seen to be served. It struck me that lots of movies, certainly of the mainstream variety anyway...