Sword and Sandal, Neo-Mythology, and Percy Jackson, Part 1

English: The Jules Verne Festival launch in
Los Angeles, October 2006.
L-R: Ray Harryhausen, Harrison Ford,
 Malcolm McDowell, Jane Goodall,
James Cameron, George Lucas.
Front: Jules Verne Festival founders
Jean-Christophe Jeauffre and Frédéric
Dieudonné. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I've been thinking so much about my project that I completely forgot to post last week, but I should be making up for that in the next few days; in fact, I have to split my entry for today into two posts (it's just too long).  It all started with a talk I had with my dad.  He asked what I was working on, and for a minute, it was like I was back in the third grade -- what he really wanted to know was if I needed help with my homework.  And, just like back in the day, he came through for me.  He reminded me of when he took my sister Rebbie and me to see Jason and the Argonauts at some really weird theater when we were kids.  It was part of some film group's -- I don't know what to call it; not a festival, but like a special program or something.  Anyway, he said that Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (from now on, I'm gonna abbreviate that to PJI) made him think of Ray Harryhausen (and I'm not going to get into who he is/was, so if you don't know, follow the link), who is apparently a favorite of his, which is why he took us to see Jason and the Argonauts. 
What I remembered about the movie was the fight with the skeletons and the scene with the harpies-- and I think the harpies are what made Dad see a connection.  In PJI, there is a scene near the beginning where a fury attacks Percy in a museum, kind of like the harpies in JATA.  So, I asked him what genre he thought JATA was, and he said that he thinks it's called "sword and sandal."  Based on that, I started doing some web searching (mainly to get terms to use for searching later in scholarly databases), and that's where I'll leave it for now.   

Related articles

• Jason and the Argonauts: The five films it inspired (telegraph.co.uk)
• Percy Jackson Series Review (negaublog.wordpress.com)
• Percy Jackson was framed and the fandom was not pleased. (bookingawesome.wordpress.com)
• More episodes of @AdAbPodcast have been uploaded (onlythesangfroid.wordpress.com)