at the risk of sinking up to my neck into the "what is folk?" quagmire...

it has often struck me that the closest thing we have to a folkloric "shared song culture" today is that provided by Glee and X Factor.

After an episode of Glee, there will suddenly and instantaneously be hundreds of thousands of people who know the song "First Time Ever I Saw your Face" or "Hallelujah", or whichever song from the last 50 years of recorded popular music the programme's producers have decided to recuperate.

The next day, children in school playgrounds know the song, and share it on their phones.

One might say something analagous about the function that superhero movies plays in terms of narrative and myth: today's equivalents of folktales and mythical archetypes are Batman, Spiderman et al. The speed at which the film companies decide to "reboot" the franchise with different actors is in its own way testament to the mythic potency of Iron Man, Hulk and co.