Since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated by mythology. At first, it was because of the usual reasons – you know, “Wow, Hercules just strangled to death a lion with invulnerable skin! Cool!”, or “Wow, Odin and his brothers just built the world out of a giant’s corpse! Cool!”. As I grew up and learned more about other mythologies, especially once I got into college, I also learned to appreciate not only the intrinsic entertainment value of those stories, but also their deeper meanings – even if, speaking from a purely personal viewpoint (as opposed to an academic one), I didn’t agree with or accept those meanings.
However, fascinating as the subject would be, I’m not going to talk about the myths themselves; rather, I’d like to talk about their reception and discuss how those ancient stories are reinterpreted and reimagined in modern times, especially in popular culture.
One issue that’s common with modern reimaginings of ancient mythologies is an effect similar to what happened to Tolkien and R. E. Howard’s works: both creators and the public tend to focus so much on the surface of the stories that it dilutes their original themes. For instance, Zeus brought Order to the cosmos by defeating the Titans and was thus acknowledged and worshipped as the patron god of Law and Civilization (just look at some of his roles: keeper of oaths, patron of the sacred rules of hospitality and watcher over commercial transactions), but nowadays, we tend to remember him only as the jerk who kept metamorphosising into various animal shapes to have his way with a variety of women (or even as an outright villainous being, like in the God of War videogame series; which is especially weird, since it’s not as if we’re given any reason to consider Kratos morally superior to his father, and one could easily argue Kratos is in fact a lot worse than the Olympians, including Ares).
This is partly a natural result of Western culture changing over time. We simply don’t have the appropriate cultural background to fully appreciate ancient myths; to us, they’re just stories, and so we look to them mostly for entertainment (and the craziest stories tend to also be the most entertaing ones); but to their peoples, they were factual accounts of their gods. Atheism already existed even back in those times, but the average Greek knew earthquakes were caused by Poseidon, just like the average Norsemen knew thunder and lightning was caused by Thor.
To be fair, though, it’s not as if the ancients simply thought everything about their gods was hunky-dory – it’s not for nothing that Plato’s Republic talks about how, in an ideal society, the myths would have to be censored in order to not portray the gods in a negative light. But they were aware of certain moral nuances which are now lost to the average modern person. For instance, two important concepts in Greek culture were arete (loosely translated, “excellency”) and hybris (“excessive pride”): it’s important that you pursue excellency in your endeavours (and thus, it’s only proper you take pride in your skills and accomplishments; Aristotle talks about this in his Nichomachean Ethics), but it’s also important that you do not let yourself be blinded by pride. So, when modern readers learn about the legend of Athena and Arachne (Arachne bragged about being a better weaver than Athena, and was punished by being transformed into a spider), they tend to see only an example of pointless cruelty by a jealous and spiteful goddess, but an average Ancient Greek would probably see a cautionary tale about not acting in an insulting manner to the superbeings responsible for keeping the world working (after all, Arachne could have just been proud of her weaving skills without dragging Athena into it).
One somewhat recent example of this was the portrayal of Achilles in the movie Troy (2004, I think?). I’ve noticed that, when people read The Illiad, they often consider Achilles a bully who goes crying to mommy so she can deliberately screw over his own side; while the movie didn’t show him specifically as a whiner, it did play up his arrogance and general jerkishness (at least, up until the point he’s redeemed by a vagina – sorry, by Briseis). However, what they don’t consider is the following:
1) The notion that “men don’t cry, ever, they should just stoically face any and all hardships without ever complaining about them” is more Roman than Greek. It’s not as if Greek warriors were given free rein to cry about whatever they liked, but it wasn’t improper for them to display their emotions, as long as it wasn’t excessive.
2) Honour was the highest virtue for a nobleman, and it wasn’t a personal notion; rather, it was strongly tied to how others perceived him. Achilles had been dealt a very harsh, very unjust blow to his honour by Agamemnon; essentially, he had been shamed in front of everyone, and thus his worth (including self-worth) was diminished. It’s also important to note that, even though the other heroes present agreed that Agamemnon was being a dick, no one stood up for Achilles – and he called them on that.
3) In spite of the above, he was perfectly courteous to the two people who came to take Briseis from him (I forget who were they, but I think one of them was Odysseus), exactly as expected from a hero of his stature.
So, not an arrogant bully, but a noble (in terms of behaviour, not only social rank) hero who had been fighting valiantly and was rewarded with public shaming. (That said, remember what I said about nuances: Achilles’ anger at the way he was treated goes too far when he refuses to make peace with Agamemnon, which not only harms his countrymen further but directly leads to the death of his cousin, best friend and possible lover Patroclus.)
Related to the above point about cultural nuances, even when ancient myths aren’t specifically portrayed negatively, they’re usually presented in a very simplified manner. For instance, genies (originally, djinn) are nearly always depicted as spirits stuck in bottles or lamps who grant 3 wishes to the person who releases them; but originally, there actually weren’t that many stories where the genies were imprisoned (which makes sense – only very powerful sorcerers, like King Solomon, were even capable of such a feat), and once freed, they were just as likely to kill the person who released them as pay them back for the favour (and besides, they were very powerful, but not borderline omnipotent as the versions with the three wishes tend to be). Similarly, the orishas from Yoruba and Afro-Brazilian religions are usually described as gods, but in truth, while many of them were “born” as divine spirits, several of them (perhaps most?) were once humans who ascended into a sort of godhood; so, basically, they were more like local and tribal deities than gods in a Greco-Roman sense (also, do note that Yoruba religion has a “proper” capital-G God, creator and ruler of Heaven and Earth).
Another reason for that dilution is, partly, a demonization of older religions by newer ones, usually (but not always) Christianity. For instance, the popular image of the Devil in medieval times – horns, cloven hoofs, the whole thing – was directly inspired by depictions of the god Pan specifically and satyrs in general. Likewise, Freyja, the Norse goddess of fertility (both for women and for the land), whose worship was very widespread (she was one of the more popular Norse deities, in fact), was often depicted in extremely negative ways in some Christian accounts; just compare the original version of the legend of Kings Hedin and Hogni (Hedin kidnaps Hild, daughter of Hogni, and the kings and their warriors fight, but every night, Hild uses her magic to bring the dead back to life, and thus the battle forever goes on) with the one found in the 14th-century compilation Flateyjarbók, where the whole thing was a set-up by Freyja (who isn’t a goddess in this version, merely a powerful sorceress worshipped as one), who had been forced to do it by Odin as punishment for being sexually promiscuous.
Like I said above, this sort of thing wasn’t done solely by Christianity, though. When looking at Egyptian mythology, for example, one sees that in older mythological cycles Set was actually an important and well-regarded deity and Apep was the enemy of the gods; Set’s portrayal as a craven, villainous god was comparatively newer, and possibly came about because of political reasons (it seems he had been a popular deity with the Hyksos, who invaded and conquered Egypt at one point). Nowadays, Set (and his various pastiches, like the serpent-gods so popular in heroic fantasy stories) is probably the #1 choice for “Egyptian Satan” in popular culture, even more than “god of jackals and mummies” Anubis; by contrast, while Greek mythology’s Ares was often portrayed as a malicious and destructive deity, it’s his uncle Hades who tends to fill the position of “Evil Greek God” in modern media just because he was the ruler of the underworld.
Finally, there is an additional factor which shouldn’t be underestimated: sometimes, our sources for those myths are inaccurate, and by the time we learn more, the older version has become so famous it’s not easy to displace it out of the public’s mind. For instance, the Norse conception of the afterlife is relatively well-known, right? People who died in battle went to Valhalla (Heaven), those who died of sickness or old age went to Hel (Hell). That paints the Norse in a certain light; after all, a culture where only the warriors go to Heaven must be pretty bellicose, even savage, right? Except our main source about the criteria for ending up in Hel, Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, is inconsistent about that: we know the god Baldr goes to Hel after dying (and other sources confirm this), but he died by being shot with an arrow, not of sickness or old age! Plus, there are other sources which mention other sorts of “Heavens”: there’s Aegir’s “Heaven” for those who drowned, Freyr’s “Heaven” for farmers… But damned if Valhalla isn’t the only thing that stuck in the minds of creators and the public!
Now, some of those adaptations are understandable. I mean, I imagine no one expects Disney to show a husband (Zeus) cheating on his wife (Hera), and then said wife relentlessly trying to kill the result of that affair (Hercules). That said, why even call it “Hercules” in the first place? Let’s look at the essential points of that movie: a super-powered person feels out of place in the world because of those powers, starts acting as a hero because they think it will help them find their place, and then learns there’s more to being a hero than what they thought at first. Does any of that actually require that person to be Hercules, or for the story to take place in mythical Greece? They might as well have set it in the modern day and just make it a traditional super-hero story!… …except then it wouldn’t have the “brand recognition”, so to speak, of Hercules and his twelve labours. Come to think of it, I’d bet bad money (no, that’s not wrong; as if I had good money to bet! Pshaw!) “mythological brand recognition” explains most creative decisions regarding reimaginings of ancient myths.
Certainly, it’s not feasible to expect all myths to resonate with modern audiences (and remember that all creators were part of an audience first) without any adaptations; our cultures have changed, after all. And certainly, some legends have been adapted so many times, any creator would like to put their own spin on it (see, for instance, the Arthurian mythos; at this point, I think adaptations that fit the classical Thomas Mallory mold are in the minority). But we’re also losing out on a wealth of gripping plots, characters, themes and discussions just because we often take the lazy route (“This is a story about Man facing the gods… …and winning? Eh, just slap Hades there as the villain and call it a day”), instead of thinking about the myths’ deeper themes. For instance, when adapting Bewoulf, one might be tempted to simply remove the sword Hrunting from the story; after all, it seems entirely pointless to the plot, considering it can’t harm Grendel’s mother despite all the build-up it received. But consider that maybe that wouldn’t have been pointless to the poem’s original audience – scholars have proposed a few different theories regarding Hrunting’s significance, but one of the most popular ones is that Unferth (who had given the sword to Beowuf) had deliberately set up his rival to fail and die. (Or possibly the poem’s author was an Anglo-Saxon ancestor of Nasu. “This sword is the sharpest sword of all, it can’t fail! But Grendel’s mother’s skin is the strongest of all, it can’t be hurt!”)
Anyway, this is getting long, so let me end with a few more thoughts. Stories have always been important to humanity; I don’t think there’s ever been any culture with no form of storytelling at all. Stories continue to be extremely important to us even in the 21st century, but it seems we don’t give them any weight anymore – now we think of them only as entertainment. But should even entertainment only be “only”? And should we not try and learn from the stories of our past, instead of using them willy-nilly and disregarding what doesn’t fit our worldview?