What Did My Bedtime Story Really Meme?

Once upon a time there was a parent who told their child a story. Only, it wasn’t once, and it wasn’t a single parent to a single child. It’s been happening for as long as humans have spoken to each other.

Today we tend to use the word meme in describing a fad word, phrase, picture, or gif - something which flashes like a meteor and disappears. When Richard Dawkins created the term in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene he intended the word meme to be used as a noun that “conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission…”. The stories, fables, myths, and fairy tales we read or recite to children certainly fall within these parameters.

They tend to be simple in form and nature, though more complex in terms of theme and moral.

Let's consider the tale of King Midas as an example of this.

King Midas loves money. He’s granted the wish of turning all he touches to gold. This power soon turns out to be disastrous when he turns his daughter to gold. He asks the wish to be overturned, and it is.

With such a simple tale there are easy lessons to be learnt about appreciating what we have, what is really important in life, and not to be avaricious.

There are various retellings of the story. One has a wizard, another a god, and a third a satyr, who appear from nowhere to provide King Midas a wish for no apparent reason, or for his hospitality depending on the version. In 1852 Nathanial Hawthorne added a daughter to the tale to ramp up the emotional impact. The granted power is reversed by bathing in a river.

While not having a daughter in them older tellings do provide more reason for Midas being granted a wish. In one Midas is King of Phrygia (part of modern day Turkey) and provides hospitality for the satyr Silenus who entertains his host with stories and songs. For the hospitality shown to his foster-father the god Dionysus grants Midas a reward. Midas chooses the Golden Touch.

He soon regrets his decision. Food and drink turn to gold at his touch. Understanding the plight he has bought on himself Midas, in desperation, prays to Dionysus. The god instructs he must travel to, and bathe in, the river Pactolus. After he does, his ill chosen gift has gone.

These additional details add to the story. We are given the impression of Midas being a good person, offering extensive hospitality, but one fixated on wealth. This teaches us we can be mostly good, but blind to flaws which makes us unable to foresee consequences others would find obvious. Our inherent biases will affect us in ways we have difficulty comprehending.

The reversal of his condition also requires effort on Midas’ part. The journey from his palace, in the Phrygian capital of Gordium, to a suitable bathing site on the river Pactolus- say, near ancient Sardis - may take a modern archaeologist four or five hours to drive, it would have taken King Midas considerable longer to travel. This well illustrates how considerable time and effort are required for us to repair the damage done when, without thought to consequences, we allow base desires to drive our actions.

Storytelling is a multifaceted tool. It creates a bond between those who tell and those who listen. Beyond that it helps to create an understanding of the holistic nature of society by tying it to characters or events, and thus demonstrating the invisible links which create a culture.

Stories also create physical pathways in the brain that fail to appear when the same information is delivered as a straightforward set of facts. This allows for better retention of the overall information, its core meaning, while the actual individual words and phrases used fade from memory.

The love of storytelling has flourished and proliferates in a huge variety of ways. We may read, listen to, or watch our favourite stories. Possibly we stream a podcast, download the next chapter of a web-novel, or binge-watch a new series. Maybe we’re more old school and listen to a radio play, prefer turning physical pages in a book, or watch weekly episodes of a show. Probably it’s somewhere in between. But the ever growing production of tales in whatever format speaks of the almost insatiable delight we have in partaking of them.

But not all stories are created equal. As stated earlier the stories we tell children tend to be simpler in form, and even the words we use to describe them conjure simplicity to the mind of most: Fairy tale; myth; fable; story.

For some reason a similar response is often elicited by the term SF, whether used for traditional Science Fiction, or the more modern and expansive Speculative Fiction. On BBC Radio 4 a while ago, in a show dedicated to the discussion of books, the host stated she doesn’t look to read SF and the surrounding conversation carried the suggestion of it being a form of literature that is light and simplistic, unworthy of adult consideration. That being said, the host probably doesn’t admit to reading the odd John Grisham or Jilly Cooper. It’s as if reading for entertainment, for the story, is in some way degrading, or that these authors or genres are incapable of teaching the reader.

However, the superficial similarity of being sneered at by more ‘adult’ readers is not the only tie many old tales have with Speculative Fiction0. Many traditional tales are intrinsically speculative. In the telling they require acceptance of spirit beings, otherworldly creatures, cryptozoology, manipulation of time or materials, translocation, instantaneous communication over vast distances, alternative dimensions, mind control and the like.

Looking at the story of Midas we are faced with a being of power unexplainable to humans (either the wizard, or Dionysus, according to the preferred story version), a human/goat hybrid in traditional versions (Silenus the satyr), and the concept of differing matter being transmuted to gold.

Considering these in reverse we first see the concept of one material being transformed into another - an idea which links directly from the philosophers stone of alchemy right through to food replicators as used on Star Fleet ships, and many other places in Science Fiction.

There's also the theme of perceived advancement having unintended and disastrous consequences and this permeates Speculative Fiction like the coloured threads which make the pattern an tartan.

Also, hybrid, or manipulated, or merely imaginary creatures have been part of Science Fiction since Mary Shelly first created Dr Frankenstein’s creature. A satyr sits well in this range. And, finally, many Speculative Fiction stories introduce us to beings of powers or capabilities beyond human understanding - this is especially so where the tale is of aliens visiting earth, but deities and wizards fulfill the role nicely.

In these similarities we see the word meme in its originally intended meaning. Not as fleeting flashes across the societal firmament which disappear and are forgotten, but as the hidden star factories of our cultural universe, where the raw material of human expectation and experience is recycled and passed along for new generations to grapple with, using whatever tools of understanding have most recently been designed.

There’s a reason we tell stories which start ‘once upon a time’. It’s a device to pass on the message that whatever unfathomable situation is overloading our senses right now, sometime, somewhen, something similar has been survived.

text by stuartcturnbull, art by LunarSeaArt via Pixabay