Theodore Fan, Period 7, 2/7/2023

My thoughts about the Norse mythology we have covered in class: (Literacy and Learning)
I was originally thrilled to be learning about Norse Mythology as all I knew about it was from the Marvel Universe. Big golden palace of Asgard and Thor with his mighty hammer. The recent Loki show on Disney + also made me thrilled about Loki but then we actually started learning about Norse mythology. To hear that life was depressing wasn’t too great. The golden palace didn’t actually exist and giants weren’t actually giant. AND THOR DOESN’T HAVE BEAUTIFUL FLOWING LOCKS! 

The Norse culture that was developed was all about trying to coerce its people to keep striving even if there was no sign of hope in sight. That dying in battle was glorious and honorful so that you would continue to fight on. That you would want to fight on. It sounds really righteous at first but as I thought about it more and more it was just a control tactic used so that the people didn’t dissolve into mayhem. It’s honestly depressing in my eyes.
Which leads to a troubling issue we have in modern times with Marvel.

While Marvel did resurrect/give a resurgence to Norse Mythology popularity, it also came with a bunch of inaccuracies. But it’s a tradeoff right? Norse mythology gets a spike in popularity but also gets more inaccurate the more popular it gets. Part of me wanting to join this class was the fact I heard it covered Norse mythology. Which also leads to while the majority of people take it as inaccurate, there would be a larger population of people who go further than what Marvel covers and learns the real truth of Norse culture. More so than if Marvel never made those movies in the first place. 

The new information I have learned makes me a lot more annoyed at Marvel but as I’ve discussed in the earlier paragraphs, I can’t completely hate it for the influence it has spread. It influences my critical perception because just how many other movies in today's society have given false information? It brings thoughts back to the Fairy Tale unit and all the different versions of Cinderella that we read. They are all different versions of Cinderella yet they are still Cinderella. So then what makes a good transformation?

From what I’ve perceived in Mythology class, a good transformation sticks to the original. It doesn’t remove/wipe any old information with new but rather builds on the old information, giving it a different perspective. For example, in the Musical my group performed as a final project, we decided to take a transformation that looked at Loki’s point of view in the story “The Death of Balder.” In the end, the events still played out as the original but for the reasons why Loki did what he did was completely original/transformative from my group’s creation. 

Now there is still the trade off between originality and popularity but does that mean Marvel should’ve been completely original? I don’t think they should besmirch the original but certain parts of Norse mythology should be avoided if Marvel's goal was trying to invigorate today's society with passion for Norse mythology. But that’s probably not their goal. Their goal is probably just to make a ton of money. While I’ll still continue to be a fan of Marvel movies (probably), with the knowledge of transformations and cultures that I’ve learned about in myth class I can be more aware of what I take to be for the truth in a culture from any media I consume today.