Myths in our Life - стр. 8
The mythologemes enumerated above can be affixed to the life of everyone, influencing the destiny of the person. Mythologemes can be intruded in the handling of the information about a person with the help of mass media (it would be shown in the paragraph 3.3). It occurs because the mythologemes live in the culturally informational field of the society, influencing the separate person with the help of the actualization in mass media.
Usually the influence of the mythologemes on the human life happens spontaneously. But in the description of the biographies mythologemes are introduced artificially (see the same paragraph).
As it was earlier mentioned in the introduction the subject of the research in the given work is the study of the tree mythologemes called so on probation (mythologemes about Cinderella, Ugly Duckling and John-the-Fool) in the non-fictional popularization of the biographies of Johny Depp, Madonna and A. Pugacheva. The given mythologemes are dominated by the personal names (or the nominal names in this role) of the main heroes of the literary (1, 2) and folk (3) fairy-tales.
1.3. Myths in Russian and American cultures
The USA culture comprising with the Russian one is more structured and more homogenious. The Americans live by their own, special myth – myth about "an American dream" by which are understood "the ideals of freedom and open responsibilities for everyone, built on the belief in the boundless responsibilities of the USA and its unique place in the worldby which went, according to the official political mythology, "founding fathers"… of the United States of America. In the wide understanding the American values are from the highest ones to the most simple dream of an American about his own home" [Americana 1996:29].
"An American dream" is sort of deformation of the myth about John-the-Fool (see the paragraph 3. 2). Though, if to understand this term in the wide sense it can be allowed that all three myths are united in it (about Cinderella, Ugly Duckling and John-the-Fool). These myths are re-fused in the hearth of the American social relationships and are created in the unified fusion which got the name "the American dream".
To confirm this thought I would like to cite an opinion of the American historian Leon Duncan who considered that "an American dream" has its attractive strength while it is not attained… People who grown up without it are told: if you work long and hard then there, ahead, on that side of the rainbow you will find a little pot of gold. But when you already have this little pot the dream loses its attractive strength. Then appears the necessity in some alternative which can import significance in your life…" [The Dream 1986: 280].