"I believe in mythology. I guess I share Joseph Campbell's notion that a culture or society without mythology would die, and we're close to that"
About this Quote
Redford isn’t talking about Zeus-and-thunderbolts nostalgia; he’s defending the oxygen supply of a culture that’s forgotten how to breathe. By invoking Joseph Campbell, he borrows the authority of the hero’s-journey framework while quietly reframing mythology as civic infrastructure, not decorative folklore. The line lands because it’s both humble and alarmist: “I guess” softens the claim, then “we’re close to that” tightens the screws. He’s an actor, not a theologian, but that’s the point. He’s speaking from the factory floor of American myth-making, where movies don’t just entertain; they manufacture the stories people use to justify sacrifice, explain failure, and imagine a next chapter.
The subtext is a critique of a culture that’s become hyper-literal, transactional, and suspicious of shared narratives. Redford’s career - from the lone moralist in All the President’s Men to the frontier-romance machinery of A River Runs Through It - sits inside a late-20th-century America that still believed in grand archetypes. His “close to that” reads like a warning about what replaces myth when it collapses: branding, conspiracy, algorithmic identity, tribal content feeds. Those systems also tell stories, but they’re optimized for attention and affiliation, not meaning.
Intent-wise, this is also Redford’s quiet case for art as public service. In a moment when institutions feel brittle and irony feels safer than sincerity, he’s arguing that a society needs narratives bigger than the self - or it starts living like it doesn’t have a future.
The subtext is a critique of a culture that’s become hyper-literal, transactional, and suspicious of shared narratives. Redford’s career - from the lone moralist in All the President’s Men to the frontier-romance machinery of A River Runs Through It - sits inside a late-20th-century America that still believed in grand archetypes. His “close to that” reads like a warning about what replaces myth when it collapses: branding, conspiracy, algorithmic identity, tribal content feeds. Those systems also tell stories, but they’re optimized for attention and affiliation, not meaning.
Intent-wise, this is also Redford’s quiet case for art as public service. In a moment when institutions feel brittle and irony feels safer than sincerity, he’s arguing that a society needs narratives bigger than the self - or it starts living like it doesn’t have a future.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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