Breakfast with Pandora

Heroization and micromythology: a counter-riff on Moomin Light

Over at the always thoughtful MoominLight blog, a "riff" on my post about what I call the heroization of America through micromythology. The following post started out as a comment on Moom's riff, but it got too big, so it has become a counter-riff, maybe the 2nd half of the fugue, so to speak.

Photo: ye olde pork shoulder dinner.

In my original post, I argued that America is becoming heroized in the Greek sense through reality shows, blogs, Facebook, and other social networking and keeping-in-touch sites. An ancient Greek hero, I explained, is one who lives a life that is outstanding, talked about, and whose stories are recounted by poets. I contended that, through publication on the Internet, we are calling attention to our own lives as outstanding, worthy of being talked about, and that mostly we ourselves are becoming our own mythologists, telling our own stories.

I also argued that our stories are being told in snippets, and are "micromyths." I did not argue that everyone wants to be as famous (and as troubled) as, for example, John and Kate Gosselin, Sarah Palin or Michael Jackson. It's a matter of degree.

Anyway, I think Moom handsomely illustrated my thesis, especially in the matter of degree of wanting to be known.

Not that I don't like having people read my blog.  I definitely enjoy it when more people read (and comment), but that's not my major goal, and it certainly wasn't the goal I started with* (although, if you want to make me happier, you could go check out our new blog, (grin)). 

Her asterisked footnote reads, "Actually, the reason I started my blog was to give myself a reason to practice writing.  I'm really amazed (and quite happy) that you guys read it (grin)."

The key here is "reason." The reason why Moom didn't want to practice writing on her own, anonymously-- it seems to me, at least-- is precisely because no one would read it. The pleasure of blogging (two grins' worth here) comes from knowing and being known, of telling your story and having it be validated and enjoyed by others. This impulse to share is the same (though not as outsized, perhaps) as that which motivated ancient Greek heroes.

Consider the hero Odysseus and his famous encounter with Polyphemus, the Cyclops. He gets into a terrible scrape with this monster, and only escapes-- after blinding his opponent with a hot, pointed stick-- because he is smart enough to call himself "No-one" when Polyphemus asks him his name. When Polyphemus calls on his brother Cyclopes for help, they ask him what is going on. "No-one is killing me by trickery and guile!" He roars, and they all shrug their shoulders. "Well, if no one is killing you," they conclude, "then we can't give you any help, can we?"

So far, so good. But when Odysseus gets to his ship and thinks he is safe, he can't resist publishing his name, occupation and pedigree, boasting that he is the main character in the story Polyphemus will tell about his misfortunes:

Cyclops, if anyone, any mortal man,
Asks you how you got your eye put out,
Tell him that Odysseus the marauder did it,
Son of Laertes, whose home is on Ithaca.

(translation Lombardo)

Odysseus' desire to be known gets him in trouble, as Polyphemus now has someone specific to curse, and he prays to his father Poseidon to give Odysseus terrible troubles. Poseidon is glad to oblige.

The impulse to publish (large or small) is a hero's impulse, whether the publication is a reality TV show, a blog, or a 140-character post on Twitter saying you love the bison burger at Rocky Mountain Grill.

Seems to me that Homer may have also been putting a lesson into that encounter: that the impulse to be known is irresistible, and potentially dangerous. The more people know your story, the more likely you are going to come across someone who isn't going to like it, for whatever reason.

Online, there are monsters out there called "trolls" who take the place of Polyphemus. "Trolls" tend to spend their time cursing, criticizing and belittling bloggers, posters, and other online heroes who don't agree with them. In extreme situations, a troll can cause quite a bit of trouble for someone who has decided to go the route of Internet notoriety.

Moom has a lot of other really good stuff in this post, but I will close now and let you go back to perusing the myriad micromyths that are coming out of Facebook etc. at a thousand a second. In fact, I think I'll go on FB and continue my saga. I had a lovely pork shoulder sandwich and peach for lunch.

On Palin and the American myth machine

I haven't been commenting on the recent spectacular celebrity downfalls-- John and Kate, Susan Boyle, Michael Jackson. I haven't had the stomach.

Photo from here.

I'm still not going to, but now that Sarah Palin has announced her resignation as governor of Alaska, I can't resist a few words on her.

I think all these folks, Palin included, have something in common: that the world has consumed them. I myself feel like a little black crow on the side of the road, picking over bones with which larger meat-eaters have already had their way.

The Internet has accelerated and added larger fangs to our ability to predate on our celebrities, regardless of what they have done to deserve or not deserve that treatment. I wonder if we had such an appetite for consuming celebrities in 1809, or 1909, or even 1979. Somehow I don't think so, though this post suggests we aren't so different from the 1950's.

Jackson, the Gosselins, and Boyle have in common that they are or were entertainers, and are in their own category.

Palin is a politician, and it makes sense to examine her story based on her potential ability to change the lives of Americans for better or worse.

I have written about her before, even comparing her to Aphrodite. She is an example of what can happen to people in the new twenty-first century paradigm of mythology, communication, and the mythology and communication of politics. She was chosen because of the shock value of her story and the big splash her physical beauty made. Candidate John McCain gambled that she could hold her own in rhetoric. He lost that gamble.

We're told that Palin remains popular among Republicans nationwide, and that by resigning as governor she may be positioning herself for a run at the presidency in 2012.

I don't think so. I think she's done, thrown in the towel, said sayonara. Mainly because no politician in an executive position who is aiming for the presidency would quit in the middle of her term. That's like a college football player quitting in the middle of a season because he's looking towards a career in the pros. You don't want "quit" on your resume, unless you are going on to something bigger and better from that "quit." And right now, Palin's just going back to regroup-- advance in another direction, in her words.

Some people have painted Palin as some kind of megalomaniac who will do anything to win, but I've never seen her that way. She is a very conservative Christian with a very large ego, someone who was too big to be contained within the walls of her church building or her kitchen. But she is also a human being who apparently has a limit on the amount of scrutiny and abuse she is willing to take from the media and the Internet predation machine.

She has also probably recognized that her rhetorical skills aren't good enough to match that machine blow for blow. We're talking a very large stage here, with a lot of smart, angry, committed people.

It's tough to admit you're overmatched, and she didn't admit it. She wouldn't. She has never apologized for what she is.

Maybe she will come back, but I don't think so. She's a mama bear with a big set of cubs and I think she's just decided to retreat into the underbrush with them, so she can stop being shot at. It's tough being the bear sometimes.

Summer daze: on the definition of hero

It's that moment of the summer where, if you're on the right corner at the right time of the day, you can imagine you're the last person on earth.

Photo: What some people do during the summer.

There are no cars, no people walking. The stoplight turn green, yellow and red and back again. You feel as if, like St. Francis, you could tear off your clothes and stand in the middle of the intersection, and unlike St. Francis, no one would rush to cover you with a blanket.

It is an illusion, of course. Soon enough, it will be hot and busy-- and perhaps more busy on BwP, but we'll see.

In the meantime, I figure it's safe to do a geek post, which will please me and preserve a record of a momentary thought, and with luck please my geek fans, all two of them.

My last post on heroization was the second draft of a post I did on Open Salon, where I maintain a presence still but almost never post original stuff, since the owners of the site own whatever you post there.

I did, however, get a comment from that post that pertains to the definition of the hero, and that motivated a little thought and research (thanks, Ashlie). The commenter was confused by my definition of heroes in ancient Greece as anyone who stands out from the crowd, anyone talked about.

The commenter was trying to get a handle on my poor, rough draft post, and quoted from Wikipedia's entry on "hero:"

According to Eric Partridge in Origins, the Greek word Hērōs "is akin to" the Latin seruāre, meaning to safeguard. Partridge concludes, "The basic sense of both Hera and hero would therefore be 'protector'.

This has always fascinated me-- the idea that you can detect the original meaning of a word in the history of it, especially by comparison to similar words in other, related languages.

Some words have plenty of cognates in other languages, and the meaning isn't contested. In the Indo-European language family, the word for "father" is similar in bunches of sister languages.

No one agrees about where "hero" comes from.

Eric Partridge, an educated layperson, is quoting a Classics scholar who has spent a long time studying the word "hero." But Deborah Lyons, in her book Gender and Immortality: Heroines in Greek Myth and Cult (Princeton, 1996), reports that this theory is called into question by a single Bronze Age usage of the word found on a clay tablet, a usage that does not include the "w" sound that you get in the Latin verb servare (pronounced sehr-WAH-reh).

Ouch.

Lyons then goes on to list other possibilities, including that "hero" originally meant "the young, divine consort of the goddess... ripe for marriage." Also that it meant one who "belongs to the goddess of the seasons."

Who knows?

But back to the commenter, who hung on and tried to comprehend my foolishness:

...you're using the word the same way i would use "celebrity".

Exactly.

I believe there isn't much difference, functionally, between our celebrities and the heroes of ancient Greek mythology.

Both groups are talked about endlessly. Both stand out from the crowd. Both are involved in engaging, popular stories. The Greek hero sometimes has a more explicit religious function. But there are plenty of people who "worship" celebrities today and maintain their shrines.

Think about Graceland.

So regardless of what the word "hero" meant originally in Greece or in some misty Indo-European prehistoric past, I use "hero" to mean someone who matters to human beings, regardless of his or her time, place, gender, or status as "demigod."

Thus endeth the geek post for this summer day. Where's my pool membership card?

Facebook and the Greek heroization of America

I have not completely abandoned this blog. I wrote most of two posts recently and discarded both. I figured if I was bored of the topic, then my readers would be, too.

Plus, I've been seriously jonesing on fantasy baseball lately, and writing book reviews. I have four assignments in the next two months, which counts as busy for me.

Etwart says: "Cursive is still important in the digital age!"

But maybe you'd like to hear about Facebook and the Greek heroization of America.

Longtime readers of the blog recognize that I have an unconventional definition of a hero in stories, and a simple one: anyone outstanding. Anyone, that is, who stands out from the crowd and gets talked about.

Heroes in Greek Mythology have many different qualities, but all heroes have in common that they are talked about, and in ancient Greek society, a hero's hallmark is his or her doxa, or reputation. A big part of being a hero is having immortality through retelling of the hero's story.

I'm seeing a similar phenomenon in 21st century America, but with a 21st century twist.

Time was, pretty much all of us where anonymous to the larger world, and it was a big deal to get your picture in the paper.

Then came the Internet and blogs, and many of us-- though not nearly all*-- figured we could get famous publishing our wit and wisdom online.

But now, with the reality show culture, video blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and the rest, potentially all of us are now in a global competition for eyeballs, as we consider the most ordinary details of our everyday lives worthy of being published to at least our larger set of friends and acquaintances.

We are becoming the poets of our own myths, in 140 character plus segments.

We are becoming micromythologists.

In the world of micromythology, there is not 15 minutes or 15 seconds of fame, but rotating bursts of 2 to 3 second fame continually.

And when I say fame, I don't mean like John and Kate Gosselin of "John and Kate Plus Eight" fame. They announced their divorce on prime time TV Monday night after the paparazzi and the tabloids exposed their Jason and Medea behavior to the nation. That's approaching megamyth territory. They are reinforcers of this glut of microburst micromythology.

Here's the bottom line: in America's Facebook/Twitter/reality show culture, where everything, every situation, every tiny activity, now becomes fodder for storytellling, every time more than one person reads about a chapter in someone else's life, a popular and exciting piece of entertainment has happened.

A micromyth.

Don't get me wrong. Part of this is an age-old phenomenon. We have always told each other our stories over the back fence or on the telephone or-- yes, Virginia-- through letters. 

The difference now is publication, which is a crucial part of myth. The Internet can change our back-fence conversations into glossy, good-looking copy on a screen, and can beam it to billions. A handwritten letter, most of the time, had an audience of one.

Mass consumption of massive levels of individual, raw details creates a kind of global doxa where everyone is continually getting little bursts of Greek hero-like immortality, and, once in a while, 15 seconds or 15 minutes of it.

What does this all mean? I am a big-picture junkie. I will speculate.

First, it means that my high school crush, Gretchen, is now on Facebook. Should I friend her? Do I want to hear her story? Do I want to fill my heart with the adrenaline and catharsis of a satisfying tale, along with a big, endorphin-filled dose of nostalgia? That would be much better than the latest episode of "Desperate Housewives."

Second, it means trouble for those of us who craft careful, fictional stories, especially of the written variety. I just finished reading a novel by an up-and-coming writer who won a prize for his short story collection and was given carte blanche for his first novel. In many ways, it was dreadful. 300 pages of his romp through his fertile imagination. And I used a lot of time reading it.

What's more, I just finished teaching a short course on telling one's story through the five senses (one of my deleted blog posts; boy was it boring!) and I was astonished at the difference in beauty, skill, and authenticity of the writers' voices when they spoke from their experience rather than trying to fictionalize it.

Video's in trouble, too. I have not watched a conventional dramatic one-hour television show such as "CSI" in years and years. Admittedly I do not have HBO. Apparently "The Wire" was amazing. And I did love "The Sopranos" when I saw it on DVD.

Movies? Upping the ante on loud, fast, and strange. I can hardly go now. It's sensory overload for me.

Maybe we will get tired of hearing each other's stories, and loading up on those microbursts of pleasure and satisfaction from hearing about someone's trip to the DMV with Junior ("They grow up so fast!") or that someone else had papaya for breakfast (I read it, Beth. Brava!).

But as long as really mass media continues to expose and destroy lives via reality shows (hello, Susan Boyle), we'll also have an irresistible urge to follow suit, in our small, micro-adventurous fashion.

Like Greek heroes, we all want immortality and are afraid of death. Maybe if we just continue to post, the echo of our voice will go on forever.

Footnotes

*This Sunday I remarked to one of my Facebook friends that her status updates were getting long. "You'll have to start a blog," I said. "I don't think so," she said. "I don't want the responsibility of regular posting." I hear that, sister.

Doin' what you love at the Museum (spoilers)

I think I may have identified an emerging theme in American mythology last night. But in order to share that with you, I'm going to have to spoil "Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian." Therefore, if you intend to see the movie and are under the age of 12, either mentally or physically, you might want to stop reading. The rest of you are good to go.

Photo: Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart.

This movie is geared to the crowd that likes it when monkeys slap people. Also, who like Hank Azaria doing a side-splitting rendition of Boris Karloff-- or, for the younger among us, Stewie from Family Guy. Also, who like lead figurines of Roman generals come-to-life and riding on squirrels. Or sticky, affectionate giant squids.

In the theater where I saw "Night at the Museum," the average age was about 11.8 years, and during the movie I could hear nothing but maniacal giggling all around me.

It was sort of glorious. I thought that kids were unflappable these days, glutted with entertainment, heavy-lidded human slugs.

I guess there's a little goofiness left in America's youth after all.

All of which goes along with the theme, a theme slotted in for the adults in the audience-- just as Amy Adams' tight aviator pants were slotted in for the long-suffering dads in the audience.

The theme which is: despite the lumps we've taken over the past eight years, we are still America, the land of opportunity.

In the first "Night," Ben Stiller was the "night guard" who saved New York's Museum of Natural History from the mayhem caused when an ancient Egyptian plaque brought the exhibits in the museum to life.

In this one, Ben, single father of a resourceful, computer-literate boy, has left the museum and started a successful Ronco-style business.

But all is not well. Ben yearns for the sweet times when he was managing chaos in the museum, and for some reason he comes back one day to discover the place is downsizing and digitizing, shipping out most of the beloved figurines and waxworks for storage in the Federal Archives under the Smithsonian Museums in Washington, DC.

This is all that needs to be said about the plot. The rest of the complications and salvations are pure wackiness geared towards the 10-year old wonder boy seated to my right, who bounced up and down in his chair and chortled his way through it.

The theme of the movie aimed at parents relates to the color of Stiller's (and America's) parachute.

About halfway through the movie, Miss Adams bursts into the movie as the spunky Amelia Earhart wax figure come to life: cheerful, ur-feminist, and wielder of slang from the thirties ("We're jimmyjacked!").

She correctly identifies that though Stiller is rich, he is not happy.

You can see where this is going. Stiller is on his way back to being a night guard, and at the end of the movie he rams home the point to Robin Williams as Theodore Roosevelt.

"You know what you were saying before, about the key to happiness?" Stiller says. "I know what it is now. It's doing what you love with people you love."

"I was going to say physical exercise," Williams deadpans. "But that works, too."

The financial crisis of 2008, and the crumbling of the Bush mythology with it, left our nation mythologically fragile. But it seems there is a powerful new message out there.

Given high unemployment and economic misery, this is, we might say, prime time for reinventing oneself, changing careers, getting in touch with one's inner heart's desire.

Changing a negative, in other words, into a positive.

Because America is the land of opportunity, and even if there are no jobs out there, yet there have to be, because we are the original can-do nation.

Speaking as one who spent this year pursuing his heart's desire (writing), and having gotten into deep debt fallen into deeper debt because of it, I am very grateful to be going back to teaching in the fall, with a greater appreciation of this profession as my heart's desire, too, after some time away.

The point is that American mythology is malleable, and nimble. We are going through a transformative time in our history, with the job market morphing into something unrecognizable. Will the American dream survive? A legitimate question.

Yet "Night at the Museum" seems to be saying that despite all the questions-- and the change-- America remains the same.

A friend of mine took a step closer to his heart's desire this week. Good for you, Sean. I hope you hit this opportunity out of the ballpark. I do believe that smart and dedicated people can succeed in this nation. It just makes for a large number of 3 AM worry sessions.

Photo: Amelia Earhart, the original can-do American.

Myth and author: "Seventh Seal," "Star Trek"

It was an unlikely combination, to say the least.

On Thursday night, there was the hockey playoffs, which I figured my sports-mad son would want to watch. But he scanned the listings and said Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" was on TCM. I don't know how or why he sniffed his way to this ultra-classic Swedish meditation on faith, death, and life, but we watched it, pretty much from beginning to end, and he posted about it on his Facebook page.

Photos found here and here.

Then last night, sister was babysitting and we had a window of a few hours, and we decided to see the new "Star Trek," which I had heard was good.

After that flick, I asked son what he thought. "Lots of explosions," he said.

We obviously have to serve this boy up some more foreign fare.

"Star Trek" is what the doctor ordered for this continuing miserable economy. It is equal parts explosions, violence, nostalgia, special effects, impossible science fiction absurdity, and goofball scripting. I don't often consider movies an escape-- most of the time I think of them as returns, to the comfort of the ideal community.

This one was an escape: just plain fun.

The idea is that once upon a time, the classic characters of the original "Star Trek" television show-- Captain Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Scotty, Chekhov, and Doctor McCoy-- were youngsters, and that there must be a story behind how they got to be in their positions in the legendary starship "Enterprise."

The Greeks had stories like this, such as when Heracles strangled snakes in his bed as a baby, or killed his music teacher Linus when a teenager.

It is the staple of myth to tell certain stories over and over again, in various versions and with various emphases.

As long as a community loves a story and the world-view and values the story offers, the story will never die. "Star Trek" offers good old American can-do spirit with humor and chutzpah. Irresistible to many.

My son was having none of it. He didn't grow up with Kirk and Spock, and knows the original show mostly through the gut-busting lens of Berke Breathed's "Bloom County," the newspaper comic strip that skewered "Star Trek" with images of a "Starship Enterpoop" that consisted of a wheelchair and helium ballons, the handicapped physician Cutter John in outrageous sunglasses, and Opus the penguin playing the pointy-eared Spock role. I plead guilty there, too. I was his "Bloom County" anthology pusher.

In general, son is not taken in by myth. He is a pretty hard-headed literalist who came out of the first Harry Potter movie at age nine and agreed with his buddy that the movie was terrible because it left out so much stuff from the book.

"The Seventh Seal" was much more up his alley. Set in medieval Sweden during the great plague that halved Europe's population, it is about a disillusioned knight on his way back from the Crusades, pursued by a pasty-faced guy in a cowled, black robe who calls himself Death.

I like this movie a lot, and not just because of the extremely beautiful Swedish actresses in it. It deals with an important philosophical, religious question, whether God exists or not, and if God does exist, where is God in the unimaginable suffering of God's people?

This type of story is not myth. It is a stand-alone creation of one author who is not offering up values and a world-view, but attempting to make an audience aware of the human dilemma, using his creativity to speak the truth of our existence in as unvarnished a way as possible. There is no allegiance to a group of people or a tradition, though it might use some of the characters and situations of a traditional story.

When I teach literature as such, I like to ask my students how much of a story can be considered "myth," and how much "author." Many of the best Greek myths are told by some of the greatest authors in the world: Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles. I call this myth-and-author.

So much for the academic content of this post.

Two things these movies had going for them: the knight character in "The Seventh Seal" resembles quite a bit a beloved teacher I know, and in "Star Trek" the Spock character looks and sounds quite a bit like a certain bass in our choir.

Good stories always have something recognizable in them.

Growing up Heroic: a "maius" opus

A "magnum opus" is literally "a large piece of work."

Tucker: A piece of work on his own.

A lot of us work on a magnum opus, whether it's a book, a piece of art, or other labor-intensive project. Sometimes the magnum opus becomes the defining product of our lives, the thing that helps others understand who we were-- like J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, or J.R. Rowling's Harry Potter series.

I don't consider my online learn-on-your-own course, Growing Up Heroic: Adventures in Greek Mythology my own single and culminating magnum opus, but as I click through its many lessons housed within the Duke University Talent Identification Program website, I have a fresh appreciation that it is a maius opus.

A maius opus is literally a "rather large piece of work," perhaps even a "too large piece of work."

I first began thinking about writing a mythology book for young readers in 1997, when I was growing disenchanted with the limitations of scholarly research and publishing. I wanted my writing to be read with interest by more than the graduate student assigned to write the book review, and the book review by more than 2 of my colleagues who already know me anyway.

Accordingly, I spent a long time writing hundreds of thousands of words and many drafts of several angles on a book on Greek mythology for young readers ages 9-12, 9-13, 10-12, and/or 10-14. I even sent out a couple of dozen submissions, none of which ever had any chance of being accepted.

This was magnum opus behavior, I grant you. But I also had many other projects for which I was writing hundreds of thousands of words, so I didn't put my whole identity into the mythology book.

Then early last year, an editor at Duke TIP approached me about writing a learn-on-your-own course. She was thinking I'd write one on Latin, which is my most visible professional competence. I countered with Greek Mythology, and we signed a contract.

Now I worked long and hard on this, and so did my editor, and so did a bunch of other people, and what came out was a project that was much greater (maius) than I thought it would be.

This is not just a retelling of some stories along with a study guide, a couple of enrichment activities, and a few broken Internet links.

If I do say so myself, it's kind of a revolution.

My editor, Lyn, is mostly responsible for the revolution. She encouraged me to write the course in a unique way: age-appropriate, and yet challenging. Her assumption is that the target audience of the course, gifted students from the 5th to the 7th grade, can handle advanced content if that content is delivered in an attractive and respectful manner.

(This is, by the way, an approach advocated by one of my most beloved authors, Madeleine L'Engle, whose Walking on Water contains the germ of this approach and the inspiration for it.)

And because of the nature of the material-- foundational stories of western culture-- big, important, multi-disciplinary questions naturally pop up and plead to be explored.

Plus, the guiding theme of the course is adolescents coming of age, which Lyn and I both thought would appeal to pre- and young teens, and which theme brims with fundamental life lessons, messages, and conundrums.

So, unlike most myth textbooks that present mostly the stories (and there are dozens of those), this self-contained course presents the stories PLUS explanations, discussions, and challenging assignments that naturally flow from an examination of the stories.

Among the big-picture questions this course asks and seeks to help students answer:

• What is a hero? Does the idea of a hero change according to one's culture and time period?
• What do stories do for us and to us?
• What does it mean to grow up? Why is an adolescent a kind of hero?
• How do we know what we know? How does our culture affect how we see other people, stories, and cultures?
• What is divinity? What is religion? How do we use religion to cope with and understand our lives?
• How important is community?
• What is right and wrong?

Which is why this thing is maius-- rather large, even too large. Sometimes I think, "For the sake of the kids, maybe we should have dumbed this down a little." And laugh nervously, and hope I'm very wrong.

You can access this course for yourself, for your students, or for your children by paying Duke TIP a $55 one-time fee. I consider this dirt cheap, and we have the leaders of Duke University to thank for it, who value education for young people enough to subsidize the cost of so many professionals who busted their rears to make this the best thing it could be.

Growing up Heroic: at least as difficult to write as walking up to Palamidi Castle in Nafplion, Greece.

Sure, I'm telling you to buy it, but not so I'll get rich. I was paid up front. Basta.

I don't know. Maybe this thing will catch on and Duke will make a profit. If so, wonderful. They took the chance that there is an audience out there that wants to be enriched by the riches of Greek Mythology.

I will continue to write concerning this course as the Spirit moves, and as students and other readers give me feedback. And if you do decide to take the plunge, drop me a line. The course isn't anything I can autograph, but at least I can send you back an email.

Thumbs "Up" (probably no spoilers)

First, a recommendation: it's good. I liked it. Go see it. It's possible even your 13-year old daughter, who has sworn off "kid" movies, will like it.

Image (here): Dug, the dog, who is the best part of the movie.

Second, a technical note: It wasn't until after the movie that my companion, who paid for the tickets (thanks, C.!), let me know that if you want to see "Up" in 3-D, you have to pay $2 extra. "And you don't even get to keep the glasses," she pointed out.

I don't see any reason to spend the extra $2. For me, it made the film literally darker, as if I was watching it wearing sunglasses (the lenses of the 3-D glasses are tinted). I much preferred the parts I could see clearly without the glasses.

Third, the movie itself: it's both the same and very different from every Pixar film you've ever seen. The wife character, Ellie, looks like Mrs. Incredible. The boy, Russell, looks like the humans in "Wall-E." There is an emotionally-affecting montage of shots with beautiful, understated music, like the "When She Loved Me" segment of "Toy Story 2."

So much for the similarities. "Up" has a very different feel to it from other Pixar films. First, there are only two main characters and one villain, plus three supporting characters: the dog, the bird, and the floating house (and the last two don't have any lines). There is no real plot. The first half of the movie is very dark emotionally, colored with loss, regret, frustration, even rage. Much of the movie is spent with the main character, Carl, trudging along with a garden hose tied around his torso. Yet the entire theater was constantly engrossed.

I won't give much away, because you should go see it. The idea is that Carl and Ellie, the perfect couple from childhood, make plans to go to South America and have an adventure. Through many circumstances, they are not able to go, until late in life the widowed Carl decides to have an adventure. An adventure he gets, but not as planned.

It seems to me a gamble to make an old man the protagonist of a children's film, even though the irrepressible Russell, the archetypal motormouth third-grader, allows young kids a feathery edge to hold on to. Carl's affect is beyond curmudgeonly-- it's downright scary. He is angry at the world that things can't just go on forever as they always have, and he is not beyond braining someone in the forehead (and drawing blood) with his cane when that someone has disarranged a little piece of his carefully kept world.

When Carl is forced by outside circumstances finally to stop dwelling on the past and do something about his life, the movie begins to "take off," so to speak (you'll see). Russell, a canary yellow-clad boy scout type, moves in, and we're in business. Yet there is plenty more before anything really happens.

There is plenty more to this film in general. My favorite was Dug, the "talking" dog, who is a born scene-stealer. He is worth the price of admission by himself. I hope someone does a movie with cats who talk by the same technological device that enables Dug's thoughts to be vocalized. It will be very revealing of cats.

So much for the movie. I don't feel as if I can say any more until more folks have seen it. Definitely an experience for the big screen.

Pixar sets its bar so high and has to top itself so thoroughly every time a new one of its kind comes out, that the movie can become overwhelming: too fast (as with "The Incredibles"), or too detailed visually, as with this movie. There were times when I was going cross-eyed with all the detail, especially when they had 50 dogs on screen. Even though this somewhat qualifies as slow-paced, there was too much to see. It was like eating a triple-chocolate cake with a chocolate milkshake and a Hershey bar on the side. All good, but maybe too much.

Same with the message of the film. There was a lot to think about, a lot going on emotionally, for me at least. I guess the young kids will not worry too much about the process of aging, the dynamics of love and marriage, or the dilemma of parenting and loving children. But all that got me right here.

The message about getting out of your self-imposed emotional paralysis and going for it also shot me in the heart. Did it ever.

And, if you are nostalgic for the twentieth century, "Up" will make you pine for it, for all the trappings of that time when movies were black and white, houses had gingerbread facades and yards had white picket fences, we had time to lie face up on a blanket and imagine the shapes of clouds, and the rainforest in South America was exotic and far away, instead of fragile and endangered.

I guess that's one other place where "Up" is like other Pixar films. Pixar makes its money on nostalgia. And this time, what Pixar made me do was feel nostalgic for old Pixar movies. I think I'll go out and get a copy of "Toy Story 2." It's not as software-enriched as "Up," but it makes my heart sing.

Odysseus' death and the one true story

A little myth geeking today, if you don't mind.

Since I have over 500 posts on this blog, many of them date-non-sensitive, I now and then get a stray comment on an old post.

This morning I checked my comments to find two extensive ones on this post about Odysseus' death.

Image: Klimt, The Kiss

The commenter, who apparently is a Greek national, wanted to correct me on my details. He began his first comment this way:

You are wrong my friend.

He then goes on to retell what he considers to be the actual version, and supports his comment thusly:

I don't know where you heard that but I'm Greek and I study Odysseus from a little child.

He also added another comment with more story details that began this way:

This as far mythology counts. Historical facts are that Odysseus had advisers that explained him a dream he saw. They told him that he would be killed by his own son... 

Two things interested me about these comments. First, Greeks are famous for claiming to know the real scoop about Greek Mythology. Scott Huler, who wrote this book about retracing the path of Odysseus in the modern day, encountered a Greek woman who was absolutely sure that Odysseus existed the same way that George Washington existed. My commenter, likewise, makes sure that we know that there are "historical facts" involved with Odysseus' life.

Second, as I looked back at my sources of this story, I realized I had included or created a mystery version which I now can't find.

Originally I said that Telegonus, the son of Odysseus by Circe, killed Odysseus, then took his corpse, along with his wife Penelope and son Telemachus, back to Circe, who made all three immortal.

I now don't know where I got this story.

There are lots of versions of Odysseus' death, but the closest to the one above are, first, from Pseudo-Apollodorus: Telegonus takes the corpse of Odysseus and Penelope to Circe, who marries Telegonus and Penelope together and sends them to the Isles of the Blessed, a kind of Greek heaven. That version is here. 

The other is from a scholar's note appended to a text of the poet Lycophron. In that version, Circe brings Odysseus back to life with a potion and marries Telegonus to Penelope and Telemachus to a woman named Kassiphone. That quartet goes to the Isles of the Blessed, and the implication is that Odysseus stays with Circe. Fun times for Circe.

So, I probably should change that post of mine on Odysseus' death, but I don't know how yet. There are other versions besides the ones quoted, and if you want to read them, look (for example) in Timothy Gantz' Early Greek Myth (Volume 2), pages 711-713.

And thanks to my Greek commenter for loving Greek Mythology.

Is the muse ever male?

Via Genie and Facebook, this link to a WSJ article on the Muse. A friend of Genie's on Facebook asked the question whether there were any male muses. It reminded me of a brilliant poem, "Apollo Takes Charge of His Muses," by A.E. Stallings, who loves to re-envision ancient stories.

An excerpt: 

They sat there, nine women, much the same age,

The same poppy-red hair, and similar complexions

Freckling much the same in the summer glare...

All nine of them very quiet, and the one who spoke

Said, softly:

"Of course he was very charming, and he smiled,

Introduced himself and said he'd heard good things,

Shook hands all round, greeted us by name,

Assured us it would all be much the same,

Explained his policies, his few minor suggestions

Which we would please observe...

"None of us spoke or raised her hand, and questions

There were none; what has poetry to do with reason

Or the sun?"

The subtext of the poem is at least double. Stallings is thinking of the notion that at one time, Greek religion was matriarchal, and was co-opted into a later patriarchal system by younger male gods such as Apollo, with Zeus as #1 patriarch.

There is also the contemporary idea of someone-- such as a (male) corporate bean-counter-- coming into an enterprise, such as publishing, and deciding for a (female) group of editors who and what needs to be accepted for publication, without regard for real inspiration.

Apollo is a musician for sure, but Stallings is right that he is not an inspirer. He treats music more as an expression of sound harmony rather than as a medium of stories.

The mother of the Muses is Mnemosyne, or memory, and I don't think it's a coincidence she's female or that the Muses' father, Zeus, has nothing to do with inspiration and plays no role in it. Memory is a property of civilization-- a means by which civilized folk cherish human endeavors and learn from them-- and women are on the whole civilizers.

Of all the gods, maybe Dionysus comes close to being a male muse, as he is the sponsor of tragic drama and the facilitator of transformations of all kinds.