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

[saratoga80.livejournal.com]

Dear Fuego,

Ever since the Romans conquered Greece approximately 2300 years ago, Hercules has been the commonly accepted term for the Greek legend in all Roman descended-languages, including your own English. Calling him "Heracles" while technically more accurate, would elicit a good deal of confusion from our primary target audience of the child to preteen family market which is our goal. Our goal is not total truth to history, after all, this is Hollywood. Our goal is to market a product that then spawns sales of albums, toys, lunchboxes and fast food meals you and your children should avoid. Such easy name recognition drives our market position and advertising.

Sincerely,

Saratoga80, VP of Marketing, Sales, and General Fleecing of the Public
Di$ney Corp.
1 Cha-Ching Way
Orlando, Florida

[fuego.livejournal.com]

Mouseschwitz!

[needa.livejournal.com]

Bah. The movie should have been in ancient greek, complete with locative case.

[fuego.livejournal.com]

but how would they have written the elton john songs?

[fuego.livejournal.com]

oh wait, i don't think elton john did the songs for that one

[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?

[seaya.livejournal.com]

Um. What are you insinuing with this comment?

[seaya.livejournal.com]

Greek and Roman mythology are actually damn near the same with mere name changes, in the parts the Romans took anyhow.

For one, Greek mythology wasn't all taken to Roman mythology, only the ones Romans liked or came across. Greek mythology came out of people's organic experiences, Roman was mostly appropriated.

I imagine there were also some gods in Rome that were local, but who knows what happened to their worship.

[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...

[ranger-hotsauce.livejournal.com]

I headbutt my kid because of that movie. Just a little dose of perspective.

[fuego.livejournal.com]

eh, sorry, that was really vague and ...well, vague. Disney has been called that by employees of their theme parks due to various policies that they have. That post just reminded me of that.

[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...

[fuego.livejournal.com]

just looked it up. i was right. michael bolton sang the Cheezee Theme Song(TM).

Eww.

[fuego.livejournal.com]

they are very close...but they're not identical.

i know more about Greek than Roman, but I recently read some interesting bits on Roman mythology...like the Romans had specific gods for *parts* of their doors...there's a god of door hinges, and a god of door frames