But that can also be a wonderful thing to happen.
The novel and movie for this week, Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys and M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water are all about reinventing the myth and, in my opinion, they do it beautifully.
I'll be honest and say that I've never really read a whole lot of Anansi stories but I did a bit of research after finishing Anansi Boys and was pleasantly surprised at how much Anansi was kept the same as well as how he was changed. Since he dies in the very first pages of the novel, we only get to really see who his character was through the eyes of his son, Charlie, and everybody else who'd ever known him (the old ladies, and the animal spirits in the other world). We know, through Charlie, that Anansi embarrasses him (like a total dad) and has a way of getting people to like him through almost doing no work at all.
We find out through Mrs. Higgler, that Charlie's dad is actually a god and that Charlie has a brother who inherited all of Anansi's tricksiness. Though this is completely new information to him, Charlie accepts it pretty quickly and is suddenly rocked out of his mundane, everyday life into the world of the gods when his brother, Spider, shows up and messes up his life (though not in a cruel-hearted way).
Lady in the Water completely creates an entirely new legend (at least I haven't heard anything about it, nor can I find much about the Narf legend online) and ties it in with man. In ancient times, we lived in harmony with sea nymphs and coexisted with the magic that was in the world, but eventually (like man must do in all creation myths) we turned away from the old ones to form a new path and we've ended up forgetting the old ways. The "old gods", as it were, do their best to turn us back to the light but we refuse to see and refuse to believe.
Cleveland Heep is a maintenance man for a building complex who has a pretty intense stutter and whose family were murdered. He knows he must keep on keeping on, but he doesn't feel like there's much to it day in and day out. That is, until he meets Story a Narf (water nymph like character) who's very presence eliminates his stutter and awakes a strange sense of hope within him, and he finds that he is able to bring people together and inspire others to do good. Cleveland Heep is your ordinary person who has something out of the ordinary happen to him, and he takes to it bravely and sees his promise to help Story get home all the way to the end.
The retelling and reinvention of a myth is a great thing. In both of these stories, the new twist on the "old" myth allows ordinary people (or in Fat Charlie's case, people who think they're ordinary) have a pretty grand adventure to find out who they are. Today, we are all about finding out who we are and feeling like we need to go through long trips (eg: backpacking through Europe) in order to discover what makes us tick, and these stories reflect that I think. It's a nice thought that ordinary people can do extraordinary things and still be able to help people in great need when they may feel they've nothing left to live for (lookin' at your Mr. Heep) and I think that's why updating and placing old myths into contemporary culture is important. Even though there may be magic involved, the lessons are still the same; individuals can do great and amazing things.
"You're no help," he told the lime. This was unfair. It was only a lime; there was nothing special about it all all. It was doing the best it could.
"...There are myth-places. They exist, each in their own way... They are inhabited still..." - Anansi Boys
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