Mythology Expert Reviews Greek & Roman Mythology in Movies (Part 1) | Vanity Fair

Hi, my name is Peter Meineck, I'm a professor of modern world classics at New York University, and today we're going to look at Greek and Roman

mythology

in television and film. This is a scene from the movie 300. S

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an, yes. Madam, come back with your shield or on it, yes, ah, the 300. Where to start a compelling film and also a deeply problematic film, a

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from the famous line, come back with your shield or lying on it, which seems quite harsh for your wife. tell you when you're about to go fight a battle and you know you're not coming home, i think it's porzanius who actually documents this, he said spartan mothers actually told it to their sons, which is maybe even harsher, It's not just a Spartan sentiment the Athenians had a term of insult called shield dropper, anyone who dropped their shield in battle meant they were retreating from the hoplite phalanx, the hot plate phalanx was you would deploy your infantry, maybe between six and nine thousand of them and He carries a large round shield called a hoplite, we see it in the movie and it would cover half of your body, but it would also cover half of the body of the man on your left, so you were totally dependent on the one of the other in battle if you dropped your shield it meant that not only were you a coward because you were running away but you were also letting him lie down he doesn't say it there is no room for softness no in sparta there is no room for weakness only the tough ones and strong can be called Spartans only the tough only the strong I think the interesting thing about Spartan culture is that we are fascinated by it, because it seems to promote this idea of ​​masculine toughness, but in reality it is a bit of a very repressive state to live in, where everything is about the army at that time this happens in Spartan history the 76th century BC.

C. all Spartan art stops all Spartan poetry stops and we just have this Spartan army the Spartan culture itself died out because they just didn't produce enough children even though you were married They stayed living in barracks until they were 30 years old. Men and women were quite separated in that society, their marriage system just didn't work and they were also a very, very exclusive society. You could only be a Spartan if you were born in the five villages of Sparta in the 4th century, Sparta exhausted itself as a power, so historically the Spartan system was not successful at all, so it's probably not something we should emulate.

I mean, I was very surprised to see people on January 6th attacking the capital. They would dress up as Spartans and run around, and what you should think is that this was perhaps the largest gay army that ever existed on the planet, famous for their bisexuality, since many people in ancient times had very different ideas about sexuality, they lived together as men in trouble and the Spartans were very close to each other, a big bisexual army in many ways, that's another way in which they've been misunderstood, that they somehow convey this kind of idea of, you know , a certain masculinity that is not attested at all in ancient sources, but Having said that, I think they do certain things well, there is no doubt that the Spartan warriors all the Greek warriors were very interested in physical fitness, they were very Interested in the male body, they were often depicted naked in Greek art and women also had to undergo physical exercise.

To give strong babies to the Spartan army, they wore red cloaks as a way to absorb blood on the battlefield, but also to designate themselves as Spartans and it was considered manly to have a very long beard. What I really don't like about this movie, 300, is the way the Persians are presented, they are almost non-human, twisted and kind of vile, and to me it is quite racist and in some ways promotes white supremacy. versus this horrible kind of invasion of people of color and it's completely inaccurate. I mean, one of the things about the Persian Empire that even the Greeks talk about is how multi-ethnic it was and how he had people from all over the world in his army and the great king's battle tactics were that he literally showed up with his army of a million. of men and you just gave up because how can you possibly face an army like that?

But you don't see this type of racist and xenophobic attitudes in the Greeks. texts by aseglis who fought in the battle of marathon and lost a brother there, he was a playwright and also served in the army, in fact he wrote a play called The Persians and we really feel sympathy for the Persians in their defeat and we feel their pain and we feel the losses that have happened to them and I think this is what really bothers you about this movie there is such a good root king just after that western ridge it's an old goat track the Persians could use it to outflank us not one step closer to the monster, there are actually accounts of a character like that and a sort of rejected Spartan character who actually approaches the enemy; he's certainly not as deformed as this character and, again, that's also very problematic, right?

There is a connection. between physical perfection, beauty, loyalty and truth, because this character does not fit that ideal, he has to be deceptive, he is actually the opposite of what is found in Greek

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. lived as a man and a woman and who is blind, characters like Oedipus, who is depicted with a deformity in one leg, characters who we would perhaps label as disabled and who are actually considered to be of high status in Greek society, so Again, this is something I think the movie gets wrong a lot. The following clip is from the clash of the titans.

This is a very powerful myth for the ancient Greeks, which is the myth of Medusa, the Gorgon who could turn you to stone, and Perseus here, one of her kind. Right as you step, your step to adulthood is to go and bring back the Medusa head and get rid of this horrible Catholic symbol. What I mean by catholic is a symbol of the earth, so the Greeks divided their universe in terms of Olympian, which was heaven which was predominantly controlled by zeus and male gods and the earth which was predominantly female gaia hera ria and one of the clues to that is that every time we see snakes we are dealing with a Catholic image and we see it in Medusa's hairstyle, right, who has these Catholic images of the snake and why did the Greeks consider snakes to be Catholics?

Because I think if you go to Greece and see a snake, they seem to come out of the ground and disappear back into the ground. They are also pretty scary snakes, so that image is still with us today. If any of you ever enter a medical facility or ride in an ambulance, you will see a snake wrapped around a staff, and that is literally the Catholic symbol of death, the snake raised from the ground of the earth often these are myths of gender wars between male and female figures, so here's Perseus, you know, he's 17 or 18, to become a man he has to go and literally cut himself off from the world of women, so this is very much a story of a young warrior's right of passage.

The lead mirror we are used to seeing today was not invented until perhaps the 15th century in Europe, so they never saw true reflections. of themselves they had to look at themselves on polished surfaces, bronze shields maybe in water, so the shield, the climactic moment of him looking in the mirror at Medusa, I also think is a kind of reflection on this idea of ​​identity , TRUE? who you are and that allows him to have the power to deliver the fatal blow and cut off the head, we get a lot of these stories of young men having to conquer their sexuality, so the idea that a beautiful woman can petrify you obviously has sexual consequences. . connotations and you have to overcome that by not looking at it and focusing on what your mission is to conquer your sexuality and resist the charms of women, that's definitely something we find in a lot of Greek mythology. and that may also be playing with the jellyfish myth.

This scene is from the movie Black Panther. Millions of years ago, a meteorite converted into vibranium, the strongest substance in the universe, hit the African continent and affected the plant life around it and when the time came for men, five tribes came and settled on it and called it Wakanda. First thing to say is that the Mediterranean world does not exist in isolation and one of the things that has happened is that Greek and Roman mythology have somehow become disconnected mainly in the 19th century. by the Europeans and you know, to a certain extent, whitened, removed from its Mediterranean roots and you know half of the Mediterranean is Africa, right, and we forget, and the Greeks had a very different attitude towards Africa and that was they saw Ethiopia, Egypt, Kush Kurma. as very ancient and very advanced cultures and civilizations and we see this reflected here in the black panther, so, for example, in book one of the Iliad, the gods are not an Olympus, they have actually gone to the only humans to whom They consider themselves worthy of their company. for dinner and it's the Ethiopians and secondly, much of what we call Greek mythology is heavily influenced by stories from Africa through Egypt and Kush.

I don't think there would be Greek and Roman mythology without these ancient African stories, the tribes. They lived in constant war with each other until a warrior shaman received a vision of the bust of the panther goddess that led him to the heart-shaped grass, a plant that gave him superhuman strength, speed and instincts, the warrior became king and the first black panther in the protector of wakanda. So the idea of ​​the panther god and then having a mortal turn into a panther at certain times to protect his community relates directly if you think about it with Heracles, because I should say that Heracles is a lion warrior and we call this therianthropy, where a human transforms into an animal to do something superhuman and you harness the power of that animal to protect your community, so we should place Heracles in the same world where the Wakandans used vibranium to develop technology more advanced than any another nation, but As Wakanda prospered, the world around them descended further into chaos.

To keep the vibranium safe, the Wakandans vowed to hide in plain sight while maintaining the truth of their power from the outside world. One thing I love about this movie is the idea that Wakanda is hidden. this incredibly developed ancient culture and a lot of people responded to that with this movie because that's the truth, just like wakanda is hidden, a lot of african mythology and ancient history has been hidden from us because what happened is that through slavery and colonization we have a vision of the African continent that is completely false, particularly its history and its rich culture, we cannot simply look at the Greeks and Romans in isolation, they are people of the Mediterranean who trade, they speak to interact with the Africans as the Africans with them, so we have to wonder why we call this just Greek and Roman mythology.

It has much broader connotations in the networks of that entire region in the film. There is this idea of ​​the astral plane, which is that you can communicate with your ancestors. They will give you the wisdom you need to carry on throughout your life, especially in times of trouble, and you know that ancestor worship is a huge part of Greek and Roman culture. The ancients had a very high status in ancient societies because they were the source of I know that the Romans actually took death masks from their ancestors, clay versions of them and then at certain festivals, they wore the masks of their ancestors and They paraded through the streets with them.

Good morning, how can I help you? I'm just checking. these artifacts tell me you are the

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, you might say, where is this one from the Bobo Ashanti tribe of present-day 19th century Ghana? Taking that mask and putting it in a display case in a museum is the worst thing you can do. to that mask that is supposed to be worn by an artist who has been imbued with a whole culture of dancing and acting and telling those stories for centuries and now it has become an aesthetic object with a price and I think this film really shows that. alright, now tell me about this one too from the 7th century Fola tribe of Benin.

I think not, I apologize, it was taken by British soldiers in Benin, but it is from Wakanda and it is made of vibranium. Don't trip, I'll carry him. Take your hands off these items are not for sale how do you think your ancestors obtained them? You think they paid a

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price or took it like they took everything else. Here's a character from that culture who you're not really allowed to interact with. material from his own culture and is actually being scored by someone who is not from that culture. It's about right of access and I think one of the things that this does is it shows us how if an object is removed from the stories that are told. and the way it is done is that the object continues to function in the same way.

I love that at the end he takes a mask and that becomes his character and although he uses it in a negative way for him, itempowers and that is your connection. with their ancestors, you know, I think we often see these objects in museums, but we don't think about them in their actual cultural context. The movie Black Panther makes people think the following clip is from the movie oh brother where's the name? pete's in many ways is an american odyssey although i remember the cohen brothers said they never read the odyssey and weren't aware of it, you know, maybe there's an argument that some of these stories entered our collective unconscious, many people who have never read the odyssey knowing the story of the sirens is one of the tasks that odysseus faces on his way home he is told not to listen to the sirens and yet he is forced to listen to them because of what he tells the members of his crew to tie him to the mast and everyone has to put wax in their ears on the odyssey, the siren's song actually offers fame, you know, we'll sing about you, we'll sing your stories, so I think it's less sexual on the odyssey and more about friendly. of the hero's fame and the hero's identity, so you understand the story of the mermaids, but also the story of the lotus eaters, who are offered corn alcohol and you know that there is a feeling that they are going to be given oblivion and That is another story in the odyssey, the crew lands in the land of the lotus eaters and if they eat the lotus they forget.

This is often what many warriors who come home from war do: they want to erase their traumatic memories, any substance that can somehow erase the pain, so I think there are a number of references here and then finally the kind of medieval trope of, you know, being turned into a toad. I think Great Depression America is difficult for us now. understanding what a catastrophic event World War I was, this idea of ​​a kind of total industrialized war as a global event and then the knock-on effect that that war caused, which is analogous perhaps to the Trojan War, which in Greek mythology is the war bigger than the Greeks Have you ever fought and you have the feeling that in the odyssey of a new society in reconstruction, Odysseus cannot return home and remain an aristocrat.

His success depends on Eumayus, the swineherd, on his wife Penelope, on his father, on his son. he's no longer the singular aristocratic hero, so yes, you definitely get the sense of a changing and uncertain world in the odyssey reflected in this time period. I almost prefer to see the myths appear in something more contemporary because you are absorbed by the real story. that's told by the actors and then you say, oh well, it's the mermaids, right, but it doesn't take you away from the story, that's how the myth works, so I would say that this is an example of mythical material that really works and being compelling and helping to tell a new story this scene is from the movie Wonder Woman long ago when time was new the gods ruled the earth zeus king among them zeus created beings over whom the gods would rule the beings born in his image he He called his creation man, there is some fun in this story, nowhere in Greek mythology does the usage have anything to do with the creation of humanity, in fact the gods really have nothing to do with the creation of humanity. humanity, just the first woman we hear is the titan.

Prometheus, whose name means advanced thinker, creates Pandora, the first woman out of clay, and the reason we are told Pandora was created is basically to be a distraction for humanity because Prometheus just gave them fire and this begins to make humanity divine, so we. It is said in these quite misogynistic myths that to distract humanity they invent women to take them in a different direction, but that is the only myth we have about the origins of any type of human being, but Seuss's son was envious of humanity and he sought to corrupt his father's creation this was ares the god of war ares in this is actually reinforced to be equal to zeus the

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s didn't actually call ares the god of war they called him the god of violence which i think It's a pretty profound way to think about a god associated with war.

The Greeks saw Ares as a negative force, so they are right, but Ares is portrayed in Greek art and mythology as a coward, who gets beaten up by heroes on the battlefield. In Homer, he runs to his father asking for help, so the kind of idea that Ares could overthrow Zeus is certainly nothing an ancient Greek would understand. The gods created us, the Amazons, to influence the hearts of men with love and restore peace to the land, I believe. This idea that Amazon brings peace and harmony to men is a

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ly modern idea and is perhaps more tied to modern ideas about gender entitlement that this is what women are supposed to provide in society in particular. and in the men of the warriors, so it's actually the opposite.

They are very, very bellicose, they don't want men around, it certainly wasn't about peace. You know, there were women warriors, particularly in the passes region and in what the Greeks called Thrace, to the north, we have definitely found tombs with wind warriors. There were women warriors in the Celtic, if something like the Amazons really existed, they would probably have been very skilled nomadic tribes, especially with the bow and arrow. Amazons were seen in ancient times living around the Black Sea coast or in the southern Black Sea. Seed or north of the Black Sea, sometimes in Ethiopia, in Africa, sometimes in Libya, never on an island, but I actually think there is some validity to doing it, in terms of ancient mythology, the idea of ​​mystical islands and Strange things happening on the islands is something we find. in homer's odyssey it's a fun idea and it's a good resource for the movie we give thanks to the gods for giving us this paradise and to the murderous god the murderous god the weapon that is strong enough to kill a god what makes me laughing is the whole godkiller idea because you can't really kill a god for the sole purpose of the Greek gods existing is that they're immortal so wonder woman of course you know I think she's very influenced by the Amazon queen Hippolyta, who is associated with Greek heroes like Hercules and Theseus and I think they absolutely tapped into that idea of ​​the female warrior.

I think what's interesting about this particular scene is that it captures the heart of the mythology, you know, Young Wonder Woman has it. her mother telling him this origin story and we, as an audience, also receive that interpreted origin story. Myth is what we call an ideology, it is there to explain why something is the way it is and I think that is what makes myth so fascinating: we can analyze it. and say well why these stories are told and what they communicate. That story is really about us today, it's less about the ancient Greeks and more about maybe what's happening in our world and I think that's what made that first movie quite successful. the next clip is from Hercules Hercules behave look at this look how cute it is the movie is aimed at children and therefore avoids some of the most interesting parts of the myth of Heracles the Greek called him Heracles means famous of hera and not in a good way it is hera the wife of zeus hates heracles and is constantly trying to destroy him here keep them away from the baby oh he won't get hurt as a baby uh that scene would never have happened heracles would never have existed welcome to olympus as a child in fact the hero sent snakes to kill the infant Heracles, but Heracles was already very strong and fought against the snakes and killed them.

What about our gift? Dear hmm, yes, a little cirrus and um, his name is Pegasus and that's it. your son Heracles and Pegasus are not really connected in any Greek mythical material. Pegasus appears in the myth of Perseus and other myths related to the house of Perseus and although Heracles is from that region, we don't see him associated with Pegasus, so there's that. something that the movie bought panic has a little riddle for you how do you kill a god? I don't, you can't, they're immortal, bingo, they're immortal, so first you have to spin the little sunspot, the other thing is that Hercules doesn't really have this kind of hate relationship with Hades, except you could argue that the movie is based on this idea of ​​whether a character born as a mortal can become immortal and Heracles is one of the only mortal characters to become a god now that Hades was actually called. the invisible one and we have very few representations of him, so he was seen as something invisible or someone you didn't want to see, but we certainly don't associate Hades with necessarily being a hot place, I mean, that's kind of the thing. an image of hell the

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s believed that there were certain entry points to the underworld and there were these kind of underground rivers that you had to have Kyron the boatman ferry you across, they would bury you with money so they could pay the boatman for that journey.

If you were not buried, of course, you wandered along the banks of the river and never made it across. I've actually visited several of these sites that are associated with being the entrance to the underworld and they're actually really compelling and pretty scary stuff. I think they did a good job of summarizing that I actually resist something we call the fidelity talk that there is an original version and that we should be faithful to that life-killing version behind a myth. One myth is about performance. it's about being talked about, told, represented and received by an audience, that's what it means to be human, to share our stories with each other, we want news, we want something new and also culture changes and culture is influenced by different cultures, so the stories have also changed.

To say that there is an original version of a story is actually going against the very idea of ​​myths, right? Which is a traditional story, a story that is passed down from generation to generation. I'm Peter Meineck, professor of classics in the modern world at New York University, thanks for watching.