And All That Stuff

Hercules First Labor: wrestling the Lion of Nemea
Athenian red figure stamnos, ca. 490 B.C.

Smart review of Hollywood's latest take on the HERCULES myth from writer Spencer Klavan at a cool new blog, The Forum. He concludes:

"We’ve forgotten how to tell these stories — we drain the life out of them. We did it when we erased the gods out of the Iliad in Troy, and we’re even doing it to Superman, who now fights for “truth, justice, and all that stuff” because the American Way is too bourgeois. And that’s at the heart of it all: we’re afraid of valor, patriotism, heroism, because they feel unsophisticated and gauche. They’re not “realistic.” But obviously hero myths were never about what really happened, not to the Greeks. They’re metaphors for what it feels like, when the glory of fighting evil becomes so much larger than life that it’s as if you could fly, or see through walls, or wrestle a lion. If you don’t believe in that story, why tell it? Why not just talk about some big strong guy — why tell the legend of Hercules at all?"

Read the whole piece HERE.