Hercules: Meta-myth and Mockery

I took yesterday evening to watch Hercules, the latest installment in this decade's Greek mythology blockbuster rampage. And it was alright, as a film. It was corny as hell, packed with oiled musculature, two-dimensional characters, and over-the-top, predominantly bloodless violence. It was pretty, that's for sure. It was also an immense disappointment. I watched this film to experience a legend that has existed in the Western consciousness for thousands of years, a core part of the mythology of the ancient Greeks. Even as a modern, Canadian kid the story of Hercules and his twelve labours was one of the first I knew. The Nemean Lion, the Hydra, this son of the gods and the monsters he defeated by his supernatural strength. I could go on, but you know the stories, right? They're with you, too. Those are the stories I expected to see on screen, as I suspect you will as well. The trouble is, those stories aren't there.

What the film offers us is a flimsy frame-narrative-esque structure, introduced and concluded by the voice of a storyteller (Amphiaraus) who is also a character in the main story (a seer laden with stoner references), but including a second storyteller character (Iolaus) whose role is essentially to propagate exaggerated stories about the feats of Hercules. He's the hapless spin doctor for this party of adventurers, all of whom are well aware that they're riding on the legendary reputation of...a man, and nothing more. The movie runs through the Twelve Labours of Hercules in its first five minutes, short, epic bursts of battles with The Nemean Lion, The Lernaean Hydra, The Erymanthian Boar, before cutting to Iolaus who is clearly telling these stories with the intent of putting the fear of the gods into the crew of pirates who have him prepped for a gravity-assisted castration. As the film progresses it becomes apparent that not one of those deeds was what the stories made it out to be. Iolaus only role here as a character, despite his place in Grek mythology as a great hero, is to provide comic relief while making a mockery of the cultural role of Storyteller. That reverential position, this movie says, was actually occupied by hacks and opportunistic frauds. It even mocks the viewer, offering glimpses of real wonder before revealing them for optical illusions or plain old craziness. How silly you were to believe in that! The lion and the boar were nothing but monstrous wild animals. The visions of Cerberus that haunt Hercules are, in the end, flashbacks to a drug-induced hallucination during an attack by three wolves. A scene which has Hercules returning to court bearing the heads of the Hydra in a sack takes a turn for the mundane when he pulls King Eurystheus aside and reveals the severed heads of men wearing snake masks. No wonder, he says, the people thought it was a many-headed monster terrorizing the villages. By the time the film is finished with the Labours of Hercules, the story resembles nothing so much as an episode of Scooby Doo.

It's a wonder that the lion skin doesn't have a zipper on it

The result of all this is that the story isn't offering us true mythology, but rather "meta mythology". This term may already exist in academic discourse, but I can't seem to find a concrete definition of it so I'll adopt it for this article. Rather than tell us the stories that the Greeks were telling the filmmakers have opted to tell us their "what actually happened" version, a behind-the-scenes to Greek mythology. What actually happened, they would have us believe, is that a couple of storytellers pulled the wool over the eyes of a whole culture of suckers, and that the stories those poor saps believed went on to become the most enduring narrative tradition in the Western world. This does the storytellers of old a great disservice; it takes Homer, Apollonius of Rhodes, Hesiod and the rest for utter fools. It waters down their tales into propagandist drivel while preaching a modern, individualist message of "the strength within" that has no bearing on the stories it claims to adapt. The film closes with Amphiaraus narrating; he asks rhetorically, "Was Hercules the son of Zeus? I don't think it really matters."

Doesn't it, though?

In the latter half of the 1930s, Joe Schuster and Jerry Siegel were working their arses off in Cleveland to work the kinks out of a character they were calling "Superman". The premise of the character was that he was part adventure hero, part science fiction wonder, part biblical figure, part sideshow strongman. He was Charles Atlas, Doc Savage, Moses, and Flash Gordon rolled into one. Nobody has ever come along and proposed that these two Jewish kids were delusional and actually believed in the character they were writing, nor that the millions of fans who have grown to love the stories of Superman over the years are all hapless saps who are falling for some elaborate farce. It is well recognized and widely accepted that Superman is two things. First, he is fictional. Second, he embodies the cultural values of his creators and reflects the context within which he was made. Why we can so easily accept this about superheroes and be utterly clueless about ancient myth is beyond me.

Now, imagine a Superman movie that takes the Hercules route. Imagine DC making a movie that starts out as Superman, but slowly reveals that he's not bulletproof, he just wears Kevlar all the time. He's performed some crazy staged stunts in Metropolis to win the favour of the people, making sure nobody gets hurt. As a newspaper reporter he's spinning his own image, expanding his own feats in print to cultivate a legendary persona. He's even hired stunt doubles so he can be reported "saving" people at impossibly separate location around the city. "Was Superman actually Kryptonian? I don't think it really matters." Remember, viewer! Because he believes he's a hero, he really is. Oh, and DC announces at Comicon that this version of the character is now official canon.

People would hate that movie.

At this point, go read this article about the nature of mythology by Joshua Unruh. It's great, which is why I'm going to quote him heavily. Josh focuses on the point that this movie deliberately circumvented, that the power of mythology comes from the values that the stories communicate through their figures.

Mythology’s primary purpose was never to explain how but instead to explain why. To give a meaning to the world outside the window that had absolutely nothing to do with the mechanics of how things worked. 

As I’ve said too many times, mythology is the stories a culture tells about itself. Nobody who does any scholarship about myths sees them as serious attempts to explain the natural world except in the broadest, most philosophical sense. They are educational tools meant to tell someone within the culture how to behave within the culture, how to excel in the culture, and what to beware about the culture...  

To assume that these stories so full of profound cultural relevance and revelation (and constantly refilled and re-revealed for each new culture that discovers them) are just what the poor simpleton ancient people used as “science” is to miss utterly the point of them. It also makes you a bigot against everybody who lived on this world before you.

There is no self-reflexivity in Greek myth. Homer didn't write The Odyssey with quantifying statements of, "or so it is said". It is simply written as though it happened, and when the audience willingly suspends their disbelief the stories become a window onto the world. So, what drives a writer to want to suck the power out of a cultural narrative? Maybe pride, the "Anachronistic Elitism" Unruh proposes (We modern folk can have our heroes, but damned if we'll let you primitive savages keep yours!). Or maybe it's some postmodern need to refresh a story by deconstructing it.  I don't know for sure, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

In the end the film loses any power it could have had by slipping into ambiguity. By this point we all know the monsters were fake, the stories were lies, there are no gods, and Hercules is just a man...but damn is he strong. Like, mythically strong, to the point where he topples a monumental statue of Hera and brings down the temple, just by putting his back into it (remember, he was able to do this because he believed in himself). This is the one moment in the film when you feel like you might actually be witnessing a mythic feat, even if collapsing the temple on top of your wrongdoers with strength granted by the gods feels more like Samson than Hercules. At the same time, it's mundane. The wrath of the patron goddess upon her city is reduced to the sheer ballistic energy of her massive marble head as it careens down the temple stairs and obliterates the corrupt king. The movie ends up being about a war, a people who believe in a bunch of crazy fairy tales, and one really buff guy with a great motivation speaker. The result is nothing short of insulting to one of the richest narrative traditions in human history.

What Went Wrong?: A Woeful Wonder Woman Washout

Start this critique off by watching this little gem: 

This is another one of those things that I've been following obsessively for a few months now. I have Nathan Fillion to thank for that, after he tweeted the first promo image of cosplayer Rileah's costume for this project. I was pumped. Being something of a medieval history buff, especially in the area of arms and armour, I was excited to see some thought being put into interpreting Wonder Woman's garb via her Greek mythical background. The costume looked practical for once, something that could actually serve a hero in battle instead of something that she might be caught in walking sidewalks at midnight on East Hastings. I checked out the studio that was making this happen, Rainfall TV, and was suitably impressed. I decided to keep an eye on this endeavour, and two as often as I could spare them.

Rainfall's promotional images

Rainfall released the video this morning, and I'm still crying a little inside. 

Here's my rant constructive criticism on Comic Vine: 

It looks like we're all agreed (mostly, at least) that they did a solid job with the costume design. We finally get to see a practical Wonder Woman outfit that still holds true to the original aesthetics. I think that's really cool. But let's not kid ourselves about this being some off-the-cuff fan-made video. No, it's not a licensed DC product (you can tell, because it hasn't caused open war on the internet yet). But the production studio, Rainfall TV out of Los Angeles, can do better than this. They have done better. This project's been hyped on Twitter and their site for months at this point and the promo shots they release were superb. But in the end they churned out a poorly rendered FX demo reel with no story. It's a bit of a letdown. Nah...it's a massive letdown. I thought we had something here.
On the upside, we now know it can be done: it's possible to put Wonder Woman on the screen without her looking like a hooker. There's just enough Greek armour in that costume and enough badass in those Amazons to make Themyscira believable. All that's lacking is writing...so for those of you who haven't already, check out Scott Lynch's proposed shot-breakdown for the opening scene of a Wonder Woman film (http://scottlynch.us/blog/2013/06/26/in-the-wake-of-man-of-steel-a-timely-proposal/). Read it, and visualize Rainfall's aesthetic (minus that godawful flight scene...), and then join us in kicking DC's tires until they wake up and realize that this is something that's both doable and desired by superhero enthusiasts at large.

Scott Lynch, my disappointment is on your shoulders. If your written vision for a Wonder Woman film wasn't so mind-blowingly beautiful, I might have been perfectly happy with the computer generated plot-less schlock I sat down to this morning. Alas, you set the bar too high. All that remains is for us perform whatever superstitious ritual involving lumber or intertwined digits you choose to put stock in and wait until such time as Grant Morrison releases his graphic novel. With luck we can sit down with a soothing beverage and immerse ourselves in the master's work, eventually emerging content in the knowledge that someone still gets this character. I won't pretend that I understand Wonder Woman, but I like to think I can tell when such an iconic female hero is being done justice (pardon the pun, if you can), and this recent video isn't it.

It's likely Morrison will publish another socially-conscious masterpiece, as is his wont. He will raise the bar yet again, and DC will cower a little lower at the prospect of having to portray a woman with any sort of substance on the screen. Voices will be raised in a cry to have Joss Whedon write the movie, not understanding that he is contracted to Marvel until 2015 and will likely never work for DC. The cycle will go on, and I'll find myself blogging sorrowfully about this every eight months or so.

I apologize in advance.

Polyphemus' Gaze - Burqas, Superheroes, and the Postmodern Identity

Burqas.

Not my usual choice of topic, but I just walked out of a fourth-year Art History dealing with gender roles and representation in the Islamic world, and I'm a little fired up. Not in a controversial, I'm-gonna-make-a-big-deal-out-of-this sort of way. Don't worry. I just made a superhero-greek-mythology-CBC-radio-burqa connection, and I am going to share it with you. This post has been in the works in my head for a month or two, and it all clicked today. Bear with me.

Niqab

So, the burqa. And the hijab, niqab, and various other forms of traditional Islamic head covering. The wearing of these items in public has been a hot topic in European and North American countries for years. The governments of France, Belgium, Quebec, and other regions have been in talks over the last decade discussing the legal banning of head coverings. Some say they are a symbol of oppression, and that it is the country's duty to liberate these women. Other parties claim they are a security risk, and that no individual should be able to look at someone without the other being able to see them. No matter whose platform you're looking at, the issue is a matter of gaze. It's a matter of the power afforded to people both when they look at someone and when they are looked at. The Western world, we in Canada and the States and our close cultural counterparts in Europe, has a balance. We have an established visual culture, and our status quo is upset by the relatively new integration of Eastern modes of dress into that culture. I read the intro to Katherine Bullock's book Rethinking Muslim Women and the Veil in which she asserts that, far from being a tool of oppression, the burqa can be liberating. It shields the wearer from the gaze of those around her, and in Western culture that affords a woman a measure of protection from the societal pressure on self-image and vanity. It is, Bullock assures the reader, a welcome relief. That in itself upsets the North American balance. A woman is no longer available to be gazed upon, but can gaze at you. The status is no longer quo.

Allow me to jump backwards a couple of months. I was working for the summer mowing lawns and pulling weeds, and my best friend through long, hot work days was an iPod loaded with CBC radio podcasts. I was listening to a past episode of Writers and Company from Sunday, May 5th of this year. The featured writer was Gazmend Kapllani, an Albanian-Greek immigrant who was talking about how growing up under a totalitarian regime affected his worldview and his career as a writer. He speaks at length about the importance of media, television and radio shows that could be pulled from the airwaves with hidden aerials. There was always a double aerial system; there was the antenna on the roof that the authorities could see and restrict, and then there was the hidden aerial, channeling truth in from the outside world. The gaze of the regime promoted the development of such duality, even in one's own identity. There was a face that you showed in the public spaces, your face for the regime to know and accept you by, and another self that challenged the regime in private, struggling to escape "the lie of the regime, which sometimes looks very much like the eye of the cyclops Polyphemus." (found at 23 min 5 sec in the cited interview) 

That reference struck me. I had listened to Homer's The Odyssey just the past semester as an audiobook read by Sir Ian McKellen, so I was more familiar with Polyphemus than I might have been otherwise. This is the gist of the story, for those of you unfamiliar with it:

Polyphemus is a cyclops who traps Odysseus and his men inside an island cave with a herd of sheep and proceeds to eat them two at a time. Odysseus tricks the monster into drinking wine later that evening, and when prompted to give his name he tells the cyclops that his name is "Nobody", thus creating for himself a dual identity. Tired and drunk, Polyphemus falls asleep. Odysseus is ready with a fire-hardened wooden spear that he spent the day preparing, and he leaps upon the sleeping giant and plunges the spear into its single eye. Polyphemus cries out for help, drawing his kinsmen to the scene and trying to persuade them that "Nobody" has grievously harmed him. They take this for a joke, and leave. In the morning, the blind cyclops opens the cave to let his herd out to graze, feeling the hide of each animal that passes to ensure that his prisoners are not escaping. Odysseus and his remaining men, however, have tied themselves to the undersides of the sheep and thus escape unnoticed...until Odysseus calls out from their departing boat to taunt the giant and reveal his true name.

As I listened to Gazmend Kapllani talk about oppressive regimes in terms of the Polyphemus, everything seemed to fall into place. I began to think of superheroes in terms of Odysseus. Take Batman as an example. When he first appeared around Gotham City, people scoffed at the description of "a guy dressed like a bat" or "dressed like Dracula", an incredulity shared by the other cyclops listening to Polyphemus' claims that "Nobody did this to me." A second identity was created to guard against the gaze of the authority, and then a physical disguise. Odysseus hides under a sheep the way Bruce Wayne dons the cowl. In that guise, the oppressed can pass under the probing inspection of the regime. The individual has split; a duality has been born while a perceived singularity is maintained, and thus the authority's balance is disrupted. The status is no longer quo.

Duality of identity is generally identified as a symptom of Postmodernism. Ask a student of critical studies to identify whether or not a given text is postmodern, and dual identity is one of the first identifiers they will look for. It is a theme that serves as the very foundation of the superhero genre, and has for some 75 years since the creation of Superman and his alter-ego, Clark Kent, in 1938. Always (with a few exceptions) the hero wears a mask and a suit that conceal and change their outward appearance. Sometimes the concealment is so great that another person altogether can use the disguise and pass as the hero (example: Tony Stark is Iron Man; but his friend Jim Rhodes wearing the Iron Man armour is still Iron Man to those who encounter him without the knowledge that it isn't Tony in the suit). Another common theme is the idea that this public heroic identity is a shield. If an enemy were to learn that Spider-man was actually Peter Parker, then Peter's personal life would become exposed to that villain. That personal life is every hero's weak point; destroy his family, his loved ones, his homes, and you effectively kill the hero from the inside. The mask is all that stands between the destructive powers of the outside world and the delicate internals of the individual's life. 

Oppression...or Liberation?

Let's return to Katherine Bullock. She writes in her book that she finds covering, even in a lesser degree like the hijab (headscarf), liberating. Digging into some of the history of veiling and the East-West clash over the matter, she writes this:

"Colonialists, missionaries, Orientalists and secular feminists attacked veiling as a backward tradition, but it is now known that veiling became more widespread in the Middle East after Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, and increased during European occupation of the Middle East (1830–1956). Cole writes:
In an Orientalist corollary to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the intrusive presence of Westerners appears to have helped produce the phenomenon [widespread veiling] that they observed. In short, thenotion of tradition as a stable foil for the dynamism of modernity has been demolished, as the diversity and volatility of premodern extra-European societies has come to be better appreciated." (pg. XXI)

I find this fascinating. Every time the Western imposes itself as an authority figure over the Middle-East, people start covering their faces. They start putting up shields between their true lives and the regime. They suit up, and create alter-egos. And this, perhaps, is why we are so inherently nervous when we see Islamic people walking about in what we have decided are our countries with their faces obscured. We understand what it means to put on the mask, because we understand superheroes (perhaps now more than ever, thanks to Hollywood's activity in the last decade). This idea exists in our popular culture, and it has been there since the battle of Troy, so at some primal level we think we know why these people want to be veiled. It disturbs us, then (and I'll not pretend to be making absolute statements here, this is all sweeping hypothesis), because we know a) what masked people who move under the radar can do within a society, and b) because it means we are the regime.

I think that terrifies us a little, and maybe it makes us hate ourselves for what our culture at large has been responsible for through history. Either way, it remains something we must come to terms with. Either we let Islamic people among us wear their veils until they decide, on their own terms, that the coverings are no longer necessary, or we forcibly strip them of their cultural armour and force them out into the open, exposing them to all the inherent oppression of the Western world. At that point, we will know for certain what role we play.

We will have become Polyphemus.