More Therapeutic Letter Writing

[badstar]

Dear People Who Are In Charge Of Disseminating Information On Mythology,

Greek and Roman mythology may have many similarities and parallels and stuff but they are not mirror images with a name change! Go do your research! It's not like there aren't plenty of original sources available.

Love,

Fuego



Dear Disney,

Hercules was Roman. Herakles was Greek. WTF is wrong with you?

Cordially,

Fuego

Comments

[forexample.livejournal.com]

But seriously, Hercules and Heracles are the same guy. The Romans were so in love with Greek culture that they appropriated much of it (they won so it isn't stealing).

As for using the culturally appropriate form, my friend Denis changed it to Dennis since Americans expected two n's. He also changed the pronunciate when he moved from the Soviet Union from what we'd pronounce as Denice because of the expected male/female names. There is a lot of value in altering certain things to the audience's expectations so important ideas can get through.

[fuego.livejournal.com]

but they used the rest of the greek names. if they're going to call it "hercules" why notset it in rome?

oh, and they realy didnt get the important ideas through because they didn't really stick much to the myths. i mean...they had Zeus and Hera as this loving, happy twosome just tickled to have a kid. Heracles wasn't the son of zeus and hera. Hera hated heracles. apollo told him to go and do the hero stuff, not Zeus and hoever the chick was that he fel in lve with in the Disney movie...she didn't exist in the myths....i could go on.

i can see watering things down...but that's not what disney did. ok...s it's a kids movie and an ancient myth....and what can you really expect from Disney anyway...but stil...ya know?

[forexample.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Disney has always made changes to myths (I include fairy tales in myth for this purpose) when making movies. Sometimes they make a good story, sometimes they don't.

As for Heracles being Zeus' and Hera's son, it's a whitewash. They may have decided the bastard son of the top god was too much for their target audience's parents to accept, or that the MPAA would have kicked the rating up if they told that part of the story along Greek lines. Kevin Sorbo's Hercules kept it, so some segments of the American audience can accept it.

In the end all stories are adaptable. The story of Heracles was first told millenia ago. Imagine what would happen if people tried to keep the telling of a tale from 2000 years ago the same, especially if it involved diefic themes. Holding modern practices to an interpretation of an ancient legend could cause all kinds of problems for society.

[delphinastar.livejournal.com]

No, Hercules fell in love with Megara- that's correct to the myth. (Well, her name is anyway) But that was the wife that he killed. Of course, this is the Roman Hercules's wife (Not Heracles- I don't know what the Greek name of the first wife was)

But wasn't it Hera that drove him mad and made him kill his wife to begin with? Oh yeah- loving "Mom" indeed!!!

Of course, if my husband was having kids with everything that moved, I Suspect that I'd be awfully pissed off at all of his bastard kids too...

[fuego.livejournal.com]

hrm. i read through a couple of versions ot eh herculaes/herakles/whatever story before i posted that and didn't see any mention of Megara...then again, i was probably getting the Greek version..arg...

*sigh* methinks I'll just stick to the Greeks :-P

[delphinastar.livejournal.com]

www.Pantheon.org is a decent resource. I use them for a wlot of stuff. GENERALLY the seperate pretty well, just be aware of the usual pitfalls...