Frye: The Recovery of Myth

Frye also discusses the lack of depth in modern stories.  He states, "The soap operas of radio and television are addressed primarily to a female audience, and feature a heroine plunged into the woes typical of so may forms of romance.  But while she continually struggles against a swarm of complications, the decisive polarizing of romance does not take place.  She never quite reaches what I have been calling the night world, a life so intolerable that it must end either in tragedy or in a permanent escape.  This is particularly so that the story, along with the financial support of sponsors, can last indefinitely, but there is another social dimension involved" (165).  It seems to me that the other dimension is transformation and that we are no longer using stories for spiritual understanding.  Karen Armstrong says that because of this "We are facing something unprecedented.  Other societies saw death as a transition to other modes of being.  They did not nurture simplistic and vulgar ideas of an afterlife, but devised rites and myths that helped people to face the unspeakable (134).  You can see where I'm going with this...