Songen Tang Period 6 10/17/2023

 Songen Tang

Period 6

10/17/2023

Modern Mythology 2024

Literacy & Learning

“Clash of the Titans” (1981) is a great retelling of a Greek myth in my mind because it keeps with the theme of having gods meddle in human affairs until everyone is absolutely miserable except the hero. Zeus, as usual, has impregnated a mortal woman, and when her father tries to kill her, Zues destroys a whole city because punishing one man isn’t enough. Zeus then turns Calibos, son of Thetis, into a monster as punishment for killing his flying horses, so Thetis puts Zeus’ son, Perseus, in her city because it's easier to pit your children against each other than to get revenge by yourself. Perseus being a hero, falls in love with a princess and saves her. Another city is almost destroyed (Thetis’ son was threatened this time) but Perseus defeats the monster in time. 

One of the most important concepts we have worked on in class so far is literary theory so I want to use some literary theories to criticize some parts of the movie even though I like it overall. In the first paragraph, I talked about how even though the movie takes place on earth with a mortal protagonist, much of the plot is caused by the decisions of the gods. We can look at this through the new historicism lens. In most modern societies, we value hard work above all else, which is why we love stories of heroes who started with nothing but get a happy ending through their own efforts. Perseus did do a lot by himself, but he also is given a lot of advantages by the gods. He receives a helmet that turns him invisible, a sword that cuts stone, and an invincible shield without any work. Thetis isn’t allowed to hurt him and Athena gives him a mechanical owl to guide him. Modern heroes would never get all of that without at least two movies that explain the lengths they went to to deserve those gifts. I think this shows the different values ancient Greek society held from our own. The blessing of the gods might have been treated as similar to traits like wisdom and bravery. Perseus is not the only example of this as most Greek heroes were described as unnaturally tall and strong, if not outright the sons of gods. The fact that the myths were originally religious texts would have contributed to this since they would not have wanted to portray human heroes for the fear that they would anger the gods by comparing them to humans. 

Another way this movie could be criticized is through feminist literary theory. The movie is a story about a man, directed by a man, and based on poems written by men. Because of this, there might have not been a lot of thought put into how women might view aspects of the story. For example, two of the villains of the story are women who have been outcast from society and are not considered attractive. The blind witches are old and wearing rags and Medusa was cursed to be deformed. Even after Ammon explains how Medusa was originally a human woman who was unjustly cursed by Athena, Perseus doesn’t even reconsider his plan to behead her. The people turned to stone that we see in the movie are around her lair, implying that she only kills people who have come to kill her yet she is still portrayed as a monster while Perseus is a hero for slaying her. If I were to be harsh on this movie I could argue that it puts women into two boxes: beautiful and innocent or ugly and evil. The only exception to this is Thetis who is a villain despite being beautiful but she’s a goddess so she has to be attractive by default. 

Literary criticism is so important because examining the source of a piece of media can help us understand it better. We are able to see the reasoning behind why it was made the way it was. It also helps us to catch biases that permeate the media through the beliefs of the creators so that we can question them instead of accepting them as fact. Even in history class we are taught to think about the time period something was written in, so literary criticism is important not just for fiction but for real life too.