Happy Thoughts Travel Fast (HTTF): Funny Super Mario Comic

I ♥ SUPER MARIO

Growing up would have never been the same without you...

Super Mario has never been a central concern for either anthropologists or folklorists, but thanks to this post, anthropologists are forced to confront Super Mario and his brother, Luigi, because they are embedded in certain social and religious practices whose significance they can no longer ignore.

Super Mario-themed Wedding Cake

Folklorists should confront Super Mario because a number of the traditions they study - tales, songs, proverbs - are now SuperMarious.

Indeed, Super Mario and other characters from Super Mario Bros. could come to be recognized as the preeminent forms of folkloric expression in contemporary urban society.

Although anthropologists might largely remain concerned with exotic hybrids like Mario-Chu while folklorists focus on their own, theoretical developments might bring them closer together.

At one time or another, both disciplines would employ evolutionary, historic-geographic, functional, structural, interpretive, and postmodern theoretical frameworks - although the time and energy invested in this would be spent playing Super Mario games while only thinking about these things.

Ultimately, the concord between these disciplines and their perspective toward Super Mario might arise from their mutual concern with obtaining several power-ups, such as the Ice Flower, the Fire Flower, and the Starman, to help them complete their quest to rescue Princess Peach.

Just kidding... lol

Both should be committed to fieldwork - the first-hand observation of Mario in his battlefield - and the documentation of each level for analysis, interpretation, and cheat codes - which they'd naturally share with the rest of us.

Anthropologists and folklorists will soon recognize that Super Mario expressions occur in a wide variety of forms, in a diversity of cultures, and under a great range of circumstances:

Minecraft Super Mario

We're not worthy!

While neither discipline has yet attempted to articulate a single theory to be tested against a range of Super Mario stimuli and expressions, anthropologists and folklorists do encounter Super Mario in day-to-day interaction, and their job should be to document and explain Super Mario produced and downloaded in those circumstances - so get with it, why don't ya!

The single question in that these disciplines would repeatedly engage is why do we love Super Mario so much? This question, however, entails two subsidiary questions: What about Luigi and Princess Peach? Are they merely characters in Mario's reality?

Anthropologists and folklorists have contributed to a range of discussions in linguistics, sociology, and psychology and not all of these can be characterized in this or future post. Only the signal concerns of anthropologists and folklorists, as they relate to Super Mario, have been discussed: Super Mario relationships, Super Mario moves, Super Mario merchandising, Super Mario levels and cheat codes, the consols upon which one can play Super Mario, and Super Mario art.

Play again?