Proposing a Hero!

I was just thinking I had all my homework done for tomorrow when I reread the critical analysis project assignment and realized that the proposal is due tomorrow, too.  Waah.  Here goes:

My critical analysis paper will be on Guardians of the Galaxy, and I will be applying a myth criticism approach.  I am interested in Peter Quill/Star Lord as a hero and how he measures up against the many hero archetypes.  He's not exactly what might be expected as a hero:  he's sarcastic, self-absorbed, and prone to bragging, and he is a criminal, on top of all that.  The scene I have chosen to focus on is the prologue, which gives information about the birth stage of his hero's journey.  My concerns about these choices center around material.  At this point, I'm not sure that there will be enough.

It only needed to be 100 words, so I hope this will work. 

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In Which I Am Totally Confused by a Book

So you liked The Power of Myth?  You're gonna hate this guy's book. (Photo credit: jay mann)

This week, I am supposed to be describing one of the sources I found, and I'm not sure that I can.  Here's the MLA citation for it (sorry, I can't figure out how to do the hanging indent here):

Manganaro, Marc.  Myth, Rhetoric, and the Voice of Authority:  A Critique of Frazer, Eliot, Frye, & Campbell.  New Haven:  Yale UP, 1996.  Print.

And, here's the problem:  I really, really, really don't understand what this guy is saying, partly because of his writing and partly because he's talking about some ideas I never heard of  before (and when I looked them up, I had trouble understanding the definitions.  Semiotics?  Hermaneutics?  Huh?).  Mostly, it seems to me that he is saying that considering myth when you read literature is pointless.  I don't get it, especially since he seems to think that it's okay for T.S. Eliot and James Joyce to do it -- but not Frazer, Frye, or Campbell (he seems to really dislike Campbell).

Finally, here's the kicker:  he doesn't give me anything to work with for my project.  As far as I can see, he is so against this approach that he doesn't try to apply it to see if he gets anything out of it.

I thought that I must be reading this wrong, so I showed it to Dr. Toffee.  She skimmed the introduction, then went to the afterword, and she started laughing.  It appears that I actually read it correctly and he is just trying to convince people that there is no value in myth criticism.  This baffled me even more, and she could tell that I was really messed up.  She asked me, "When you are thinking about your film from the standpoint of myth, are you finding things in the film that you didn't see before?  And, are you enjoying it?"

After a moment's thinking, I said yes and yes.  She said, "then he's wrong, and there is value in it because it makes your experience of this work of art more meaningful for you."

I feel better, but I'm not sure why.

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Elrond's Council and the Heroes

The eponymous Fellowship from left to right: (Top row) Aragorn, Gandalf, Legolas, Boromir, (bottom row) Sam, Frodo, Merry, Pippin, Gimli. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This week, I'm supposed to be answering the question, "What have you found in a scene (using the model)?"  The scene that made me choose The Fellowship of the Ring for my research project is the council scene at Rivendell where representatives of the various groups of Middle Earthers (there has to be a better way of putting that!) are trying to decide what to do about the ring.  What I thought from the beginning is that all of the men arriving for the meeting look like heroes.  The way that they each have their own moment onscreen seems to be saying, "pay attention!  This guy is important."  And the rest of the scene bears that out.  Each of them is on his own quest, with his own priorities and agenda, which leads me to what I think is the biggest discovery I made:  they all volunteer for those reasons, not because of the reason Elrond and Gandalf see as overwhelming, that the ring must be destroyed.

And just now, writing this, it occurs to me that their individual reasons (I'm just guessing at this point) determine the outcomes each of them will experience.  Does that make sense?  We'll see. 

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A Whole Bunch o' Heroes

Cover of Jason and the Argonauts

When I was reading the first page in the assignment packet about our research options, I got an idea from the very short explanation of myth criticism:  "Films and other works of art draw on patterns established in cultural myths."  I read down to the list of films we can use, and the one I was thinking of (The Fellowship of the Ring) was there.  My idea was that one of the myth patterns in this film is (and this is really hard to state clearly, so bear with me) a group of heroes goes on a quest together.  This came to me because when I read the statement about myth crit, I immediately thought of a few myths, one of which was the story of Jason and the Argonauts (I saw a movie of that when I was little, and it stuck with me because the army of skeletons gave me nightmares for a long time).  I also remember an episode of Hercules (the tv show), where he went to see Jason and the rest of the Argonauts.   

I want to talk to the prof about this some, just in case I'm totally on the wrong track, so I guess I'm getting up early tomorrow to make it to her office hours.

Myth Crit-- I Think I Get It

Hero's Journey (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I just read the handout on myth criticism (it's on our Blackboard page now, guys), and so I thought this would be a good time to do my next posting, which is supposed to be me explaining my critical model.  Here goes nothing.

Myth criticism is centered around patterns of elements in stories (or poetry, or any kind of art) that are also found in myths.  After reading through the quest structure, it seems pretty obvious to me that this model makes a lot of sense, in that you really can see the quest turning up everywhere.  And, the quest is the hero's journey, right?  So, it's also easy to see how the hero archetype works.  And right there I'm thinking that I now have enough to go on to another posting, because it looks like my first thoughts about LOTR might work okay for this approach.

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New Year, New Semester, New Research Project

 Copyright 2001, New Line Cinema
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For once, I'm getting a jump on my homework-- English 102 doesn't start until tomorrow, but yesterday I checked to see if the instructor (a Dr. Toffee; I don't know her) had anything on Blackboard.  She did.  I read the syllabus and the assignment sheets, and this blog is Project 1.  Since it is now set up and working, I guess I've made a good start. 

According to the assignment sheet for Project 1 (I put a copy in the pages block to the left of this posting so you can see it), this first post of the semester is supposed to be discussing my "initial thoughts on [my] film and approach."  What that is referring to is the topic for our research project (I also put up a copy of the topic sheet in the pages block).  I have some initial thoughts, but they'll probably change when I have more details about what's involved.  So far, I've selected a film, The Fellowship of the Ring, and my critical approach/model is myth criticism (I've sort of got an idea there, but I'll save that for a later post, mainly because I don't know much about myth criticism yet and I don't want to look like an idiot).  I thought about using The Avengers, but (thanks to my family) I'm so much more familiar with LOTR that it should make it easier to analyze.  I hope. 

And, I just realized that I'm way over the 100 words I needed to write.  It's not a problem, at least I don't think it is, but I'll check tomorrow.

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Face to Face on my Horrible Draft

English: South facade of the Temple of Artemis seen from the South Theatre in Jerash, Jordan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A couple of days after the peer review on my critical analysis draft, I read it again.  Suddenly, it was horrible.  I don't know how this happened.  So, I went to my conference with Dr. Toffee last week under a cloud of angst.  It wasn't too bad.  She suggested a few tweaks for my thesis statement, and -- for once -- I saw what was wasn't working in the way I had put it.  She liked my explanation of my critical model, especially the parts about Artemis and Atalanta; I was kind of nervous about that, so it was a relief for me.  The analysis has to be reorganized some.  I need to put in a few references to other scenes from The Hunger Games to show that it's not just in the scene I'm focusing on that Katniss is following the archetypes.

All in all, it went okay.  I guess the draft wasn't as horrible as I thought.

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Prewriting the Critical Analysis Paper

Rue pointing at the trackerjacker
nest.

I'm supposed to write about the prewriting for my paper on the scene from The Hunger Games.  As I understand it, I need to prewrite two sections:  the explanation of my critical approach (myth criticism), and the analysis of the scene (the one where Rue dies).  I started with the explanation, because I thought that would be the tougher part, and I was right.  When I got to the analysis, I had to keep going back to the explanation because I remembered something I left out.

When I prewrite, I usually just brainstorm, but sometimes I'll start writing a paragraph or two because I have an idea how to handle it, which means that it looks pretty strange.  This is what works for me, though, so I'm going to keep on doing it that way.  The things I came up with for the explanation were:  Road of Trials, death of the mentor (yes, Rue is a mentor, if only for a short time, and this is one of the things that came to me when I was working on the analysis), hero archetypes, the goddess Artemis, Atalanta, virgins in Greek mythology, tricks in mythology, monsters (I think Cato is a monster in a way, kind of like the Minotaur).  There was more that I got rid of.

With the analysis, I had the following, plus a couple paragraphs in the middle that I'm leaving out here:  explain plan to destroy food, Katniss as hero, Katniss as Artemis/Atalanta, Rue as mentor (signals with mockingjays), shooting the apples (Atalanta?), attack/instant retribution, Rue dies - last words, song, flowers, salute (I really want to mention the explanation of this from the book, but I guess I can't), grieving.

I'll bet a lot of that doesn't make sense to anybody but me, but that's what I've got for now, and I may have a thesis already.  On to the draft.

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Hit or Myth?

Atalanta and Maleagar
(Jacob Jordaens)

Dr. Toffee has The Hunger Games in the Women's Studies category, but I've decided to use a myth criticism approach.  The way I understand it, I can discuss the characters and setting as archetypes and the scene I select as to where it fits into the pattern of the hero's journey.  What's interesting to me about this has to do with there being few archetypes of female heroes, which means I'm going to have to figure out which one of the male archetypes she fits.  And, since I have to talk about that male to female transformation (for lack of a better word), I'll be generating material for the paper right there!  It's a win-win choice.

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