Beyond Intellectual Property: Story Archtypes That Have Developed A Life Of Their Own

The creation of any story is the combination of several influences.  Life.  Imagination.  And, quite often, other stories.  So it comes as no surprise that we often read about rapscallions very much in the mold of Huckleberry Finn, and watch the serialized television adventures of lawyers who could be kith and kin to Perry Mason.

But there are certain imaginary worlds which have made such an impact, that they've been wrestled from the grasp of their makers.  The creators, or often creator, of these concepts can no longer hold sole claim to them.  They have, due to their resonance, become part of the creative lexicon.

I present an admittedly incomplete listing of the complex story types that no longer require the slightest degree of exposition, despite having no tangible connection to the real world.

THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

There certainly exists folklore about zombies, originating from Caribbean Voodoo practices, and there have been legends and stories about the walking dead feasting on the living, in novels such as Dracula and I Am Legend.  But the public perception of what a zombie is in the 21st century is completely the creation of one man:  George A. Romero.  With his films Night Of The Living Dead (1968), and later Dawn Of The Dead (1978), Romero created an entire post-apocalyptic landscape, and a terrifying monster complete with it's own set of "rules".  Ask any random Grandmother that you run into, one who's never seen a horror film in her life, and she'd be able to tell you that you have to kill a zombie with a headshot.

TOLKIENIAN FANTASY

The name practically explains itself:  Any fantasy novel, movie, comic book; etc, that has directly, or indirectly, been heavily influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien's masterpiece, The Lord Of The Rings (1954).  A story itself inspired by ancient legends, such as the stories of Gilgamesh and Beowulf, and certainly following the works of other writers, such as Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian) and George MacDonald (The Princess and the Goblin), but it solidified the concept of a somewhat-medieval, rich-in-history, and filled with magical races fantasy world.  Some concepts became standard and expected as genre conventions:  Elves are noble and wise, usually divided into "woodland" and "high" classes.  Dwarves hearty, and obsessed with mining.  The race of man being flawed, but somehow central and important (You see that theme in modern science fiction quite a bit, as well).  From Dungeons & Dragons to World Of Warcraft, Tolkien's legacy is unmistakeable.

THE INTERGALACTIC EMPIRE/REPUBLIC

This one is more difficult to cite a direct source for:  It's a combination of the traditions of Planetary Romance (A sci-fi adventure story in the "lost world" style, ala the John Carter Of Mars novels), and Space Operas (Similar in style, but focusing more on interplanetary travel).  It's a short-hand, widely-accepted concept that in the far future (or far-flung, distant past, in some cases), the known galaxy will be populated by a coalition of several different kinds of space-faring races, all working together (to some degree or another).  Often, as in Tolkienian Fantasy, the human race is given some special trait, such as the ability to have more than one type of personality amongst the entirety of their species.  Pulp characters such as Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon laid the foundation for this, which was further solidified in Frank Herbert's epic novel Dune (1965).  Dune itself actually features very few non-humans, but it grafted the concept of a Galactic Civilization into the public consciousness.  The television show Star Trek (1966-1969) and the film Star Wars (1977), expanded the concept to a much larger audience than ever before.

A WORLD OF SUPERHEROES

In the beginning, there was Superman.  Then came Batman, The Flash, and Green Lantern, all entertaining children with their separate comic adventures.  In All-Star Comics # 3 (1940), DC Comics came up with the idea of a team of superheroes, sharing the same universe.  From that point forward, and more-so following the superhero Silver Age of the 1960's, it became standard practice for superheroes to inhabit an entire world filled with thousands of different superheroes, supervillains, and other sci-fi concepts.  Not only are the X-Men living in a world that fears and hates their fellow mutantkind, but also in a world that has Gamma-irradiated monsters, shield-wielding unfrozen soldiers, and flying-surfboard riding aliens.  This is perhaps the most bizarre shared concept of them all, since it relies on several different kinds of characters all coincidentally gaining superhuman powers from a statistically improbable amount of separate, unrelated sources.

IN CONCLUSION

This list could go on and on (and I might be inclined to sequelize it), but I just wanted to give you a taste of how we take certain conventions for granted.  These worlds, these concepts, don't actually exist, so it's interesting to see how we almost subconsciously react to them as if they had.