| An Interdisciplinary Studies (hereafter IDS) integral model of cultural critique is situated as late modern. An individual's worldview (here mine as critic's) is focused through the model as presented to perform an integral critique with rational and intuitive dynamics. As original and creative liberal arts scholarship, with an IDS methodology and a hermeneutics of mediation and convergence, this model does not totalize a grand cultural theory. Four stages of critique are demonstrated---the argumentative, methodological, interpretive, and integrative---which utilize the respective IDS techniques of pre-, pluri- and multi-, cross-, and trans-disciplinarity. A worldview labeled "cosmic humanism" is set in argumentative focus upon global and mythico-epic mass entertainment franchises, and serves to structure the rational critique in Stage 1. The phenomenological analysis is moved through the model along a spine running parallel to the horizontal ("individual") axis toward a Stage 2, where a heuristic analysis is conceptually performed along an intersecting vertical ("collective cultural") axis. Here an explication is made of a social-scientific hypothesis on the mass-mediated cinematic franchises. The core mythoi of the first order of these franchises are shown in Stage 3 to be comparable to the collective mythoi of traditional world religions. An integral, humanistic context for evaluation within the critique conclusion is measured in Stage 4 against ethical issues and implications bearing upon the realized thesis. |
