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/lit/ - Literature

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517251 No.517251 [Reply] [Original]

Now I posted this on /tv/, and they told me that If I wanted to get a well reasoned response I should talk to you guys.

" The Doctor is Dionysus without the wine, Hermes without the wings, and Hephaestus without the forge.

In short, he's a modern god, in the later roman sense. Many romans didn't believe in the gods in a literal sense, but believed in the metaphors that their stories contained.

The doctor teaches the value of nonviolence, the importance of cunning, as well as the importance of friends and the value of a human life. What has the doctor taught you?"


That was my /tv/ post. But I ask this to you in a legitimate way. Does our fiction fill the same place that the gods did for the ancients? If so, what characters have stayed with you for a while? Which characters fill the "god" archetype?

Picard is an Odysseus and Kirk is a Jason.

>> No.517260
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517260

John Galt.

>> No.517262
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517262

You suck a lot.

>> No.517259

>What has the doctor taught you?

To rent a movie on saturday nights.

>> No.517267

No, we told you not to come shit up /lit/, actually.

Yet, you did it anyway.

>> No.517269
File: 51 KB, 1227x412, atlas.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
517269

>>517260
oh u

>> No.517287

I'll take it down if you guys are adamantly opposed to it, but I'll just rewrite it with Dumbledore or Jonathan Strange or Peter Pan in the place of the Doctor. Does it REALLY Matter that much?

Also, there are doctor who books so fuck you.

>> No.517300

>>517260
Sauce on pic? Did some sicko make a cartoon Atlas Shrugged?

>> No.517303

It is definitely an interesting way of looking at it, but all cultures have had their gods and have had their entertainment, too. I guess the stories of the gods played a was as much about entertainment as they were morality and worship, especially in cultures where the gods are inherent in their poetry, plays, stories etc.

In terms of them getting their morality from those tales, and us getting ours from these; the genre is too swamped for that to really be possible, when there are equal amounts of people like The Punisher as there are people like The Doctor. Maybe that is why morality in modern culture isn't as black and white.

Who knows, maybe in thousands of years future societies will uncover our primitive dwellings and they'll write books about our worship for The Batman and other slightly absurd characterizations.

I guess it is a matter of personal perception OP, you get from fiction whatever you want.

>> No.517309

The Romans had plenty of stories that didn't involve gods.

>> No.517310

That's an interesting idea, OP.

>> No.517314

>>517303
The reason I wanted to discuss this is because I wanted to know where you draw your morality from fiction from. I was raised on Harry Potter and Batman, so as far as I'm concerned killing is WROOOONG. Recently I got into Doctor Who, and that changed my perception of thing a bit.

What characters have influenced the way you view the world?

>> No.517318

>>517314
Surely you jest? Tell me you troll?

Batman and Harry Potter = killing is bad
Doctor Who = killing might be ok sometimes

Nothing else in your life, like maybe your conscience and thought process, could have informed you of this?

>> No.517326

>>517314
As I previously stated you get from fiction whatever you want, but I don't think it is safe to just draw your morality so blindly. Batman and Harry Potter are fine, but often they don't present legitimate arguments as to why killing is wrong, and when they do they are incredibly stunted, emotional responses which falls down completely under scrutiny.

If a work of fiction presents a story about morality and explores that theme in an a new, interesting way that can change your perception with logic, then that is perfectly justified; a lot of Dostoevsky has influenced my own sense of morality, but you shouldn't be so easily swayed; fiction should make you think about your morality, not completely influence it.

>> No.517333

If you boil down stories into archetypes, you could make a strong case for The Doctor as a trickster figure. Dionysus or Hermes specifically... not so much.

Oh, and the Picard as Odysseus thing makes it evident that while you've heard of Odysseus, you aren't that familiar with the story, because that shit is weak.

>> No.517335

>>517318
I'm just saying that if I'd been raised on a strict diet of BLOOD'N'GORE I don't think I would have as much respect for life as I do now.

It's not just death, it's ideas on justice and morality, good and evil. Do they exist?

>> No.517344

>>517326
I'm not saying I'm a drone that conforms to whatever media tells me. Before I watched Doctor Who, I was content to stay in my little American town. Since then I've sailed around the world, and helped people build a well in Africa.

>> No.517348
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517348

>>517344

>> No.517349

>>517333
You've got a point there. I was merely saying it for the poetic ring to it.

And you're totally right about the Picard thing.

>> No.517359

>>517348
True story. Sure, being in college definitely helped me have the opportunities to do that, but the impetus was the good Doctor.

>> No.517664

>The doctor teaches the value of nonviolence
>Doctor commits genocide every other episode