Goddess Myth in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture

Goddess characters are revered as feminist heroes in the popular media of many cultures. However these goddess characters often prove to be less promising and more regressive than most people initially perceive. Goddesses in film television and fiction project worldviews and messages that reflect mostly patriarchal culture (included essentialized gender assumptions) in contrast to the feminist empowering levels many fans and critics observe. <p/> Building on critiques of other skeptical scholars this feminist folkloristic approach deepens how our remythologizing of the ancient past reflects a contemporary worldview and rhetoric. Structures of contemporary goddess myths often fit typical extremes as either vilified destructive dark and chaotic (typical in film or television); or romanticized positive even utopian (typical in women's speculative fiction). This goddess spectrum persistently essentializes gender stereotyping women as emotional intuitive sexual motherly beings (good or bad) precluded from complex potential and fuller natures. Within apparent good-over-evil pop-culture narrative frames these goddesses all <i>suffer</i> significantly. <p/>However a few recent intersectional writers like N. K. Jemisin break through these dark reflections of contemporary power dynamics to offer complex characters who evince hopepunk. They resist typical simplified reductionist absolutes to offer messages that resonate with potential for today's world. Mythic narratives featuring goddesses often do but need not serve merely as ideological mirrors of our culture's still problematically reductionist approach to women and all humanity.