10/10/2026
"From Platoâs Cave to the TVA: Loki and the Afterlife of Platonic Myth in Contemporary Streaming Culture "
Speaker: Dr Ioannis Tzortzakakis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)
STARR
đ 15 October,â°6pm
In person:đRm S11, Swallowgate
Online:đ»Teams (email [email protected] for link)
**Abstract**
This paper examines Disney+âs Loki as a contemporary case study in the reception of ancient philosophical myth within American popular culture. Rather than treating the series simply as an adaptation of Norse mythology or as an extension of Marvelâs comic-book universe, the paper asks how Loki reactivates Platonic narrative structures concerned with illusion, authority, self-knowledge, choice, and cosmic order. Its central claim is that the series stages a modern Nachleben of Platonic myth: ancient philosophical patterns survive through mediated, hybrid, and commercially popular forms, passing through Scandinavian mythology, Marvel comics, cinematic world-building, and serial streaming culture.
The paper focuses especially on the Allegory of the Cave, the Ring of Gyges, the noble lie, and the Myth of Er from Platoâs Republic. The Time Variance Authority may be read as a cave-like institution that organises perception, suppresses alternative realities, and presents its own constructed order as metaphysical necessity. The false Time-Keepers and He Who Remains raise questions about political theology, narrative control, and the fabrication of legitimising myths. Lokiâs encounter with his variants, and especially with Sylvie, reframe the trickster as a figure of philosophical awakening: a character forced to move from theatrical self-invention toward ethical self-recognition.
Methodologically, the paper combines classical reception studies, Warburgian ideas of survival, and analysis of contemporary transmedia storytelling. It argues that Loki is valuable for reception studies because it shows how antiquity can persist without direct quotation or explicit adaptation. Platonic myth here functions as a deep narrative grammar: a structure through which modern mass culture thinks about freedom, determinism, identity, memory, and the politics of storytelling. In this sense, Loki offers a productive example of how classical philosophical myths continue to operate within popular visual culture, not as static inheritances, but as dynamic forms repeatedly reassembled for new media, audiences, and ideological contexts.
