What's in a Title?

Old bottles of wine aging by candle light
 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The mouse is dead!  A good thing, too, because I was starting to think that Rebbie needed her eyes (or maybe her mind) examined.  Anyway, I'm still revising my research paper, and I finally came up with a title that I like.  Dr. Toffee wants us to try to use what she calls a "double-barrelled" title, which just means a title with a subtitle, divided by a colon.  And, I guess she's right, because all of the articles I've looked at for my project have that kind of title. 

I was home for dinner last night, for once, and the 'rents were asking me about how my classes were going.  I never know how to answer that in a way that won't have them giving me advice or a lecture (you know what I mean!).  I didn't even mention geology, because that would have brought on the lecture for sure, but I talked about my PJ1 paper to distract them, since that seems to be going okay.  When I explained what it was about, they were both interested, and we talked about neo-mythology until we were done eating.  One of the things my dad said gave me an idea.  He said, "so, it's like new wine in old bottles, isn't it?"  I'd never heard that expression before, but in a way, he's right.  The filmmakers aren't using their old bottles (existing mythology/folklore) to trick the audience, but it is kind of a selling point just the same. 

And, that's why I've decided to call my paper "New Wine in Old Bottles:  Neo-Mythology and Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief."  I like it.    

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The Last Neo-Mythology Characteristics

English: This image outlines the basic path of the monomyth, or "Hero's Journey". (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I've been so busy (and grossed out over the mouse, which is still missing) that I almost forgot to finish my model explanation.  So, the third characteristic is that the story using existing mythology is new:  new plot, new hero(es).  This is sort of self-explanatory, isn't it?  Some films that fit into this category have more new aspects than others, but I'm not going to rule any out on this basis. 
The fourth requirement is that the setting must be at least partly in the current reality.  Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief  has Mt. Olympus at the top of the Empire State Building and the entrance to Hades via the Hollywood sign, both of which are instantly recognizable to most people on the planet, I would guess.  Of course, this definitely rules out Tolkein, but I think that's very reasonable.  Yes, it's a new (20th century) mythology, but as for genre, it's traditional fantasy.
And lastly, number 5 is that it must be a quest.  I'd almost have to say that this would rule out the Twilight movies, since I can't see anything like a hero's journey (I can't even see a hero!) in them, but I don't want to argue about it, so if anybody wants to take it on, they're getting a free pass from me.
And that's that.  

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At Long Last, NEO-MYTHOLOGY Is Here!

English: Various mythos. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I'm taking a break from working on my research paper draft (it's due on Thursday, sigh) because I need one and because I've finally got my critical model in a finished state, or so I hope.  It works not just for Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief but also for a bunch of other films.  So, here are the defining characteristics of the Neo-Mythology genre:
1.  The film (or book, too, I guess) is based on already existing mythology and/or folklore.
2.  It uses elements (characters, plot points, etc.) from that mythology/folklore for other than their original purposes.
3.  It creates a new story out of that material.
4.  It is set in a hidden reality that secretly co-exists with the known current reality.
5.  It is in the form of a quest.

I'll discuss these in my next post (since I've met the required 100-word length already).

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Another "Sword-and-Sandals" is Coming

Gladiator (Hercules: The Legendary Journeys) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I've been following the Flickering Myth website for a while now, and yesterday they had an item about Hercules:  The Legend Begins (not to be confused with Hercules:  The Legendary Journeys, the '90s tv show with Kevin Sorbo), which is coming out next spring.  The trailer that was just released for the movie bears out almost everything I've been reading in my sources.  It's become obvious to me that this genre is alive and well, and it looks like my research paper (which I need to begin drafting next weekend at the latest) is going to use sword and sandals as a basis for arguing that Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief  represents either a subgenre of it or a "sibling" genre to it, which I am going to call neo-mythology.  

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Who Doesn't Love Big Sweaty Men with Swords?!!

Conan the Barbarian (1982 film)
 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Warning:  if it seems like I am getting away from Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief at times, please bear with me -- it'll all make sense in the end.

Okay, so now, what about pepla?  I found a terrific article (citation below) by Robert A. Rushing, titled "Gentlemen Prefer Hercules: Desire | Identification | Beefcake."  It looks like Rushing is talking precisely about what my mother meant by "gladiator movies."  And he goes on to discuss them in a way that may be the reason my mom was kind of laughing when she talked about them.  Apparently, the big deal about the Italian pepla is their homoerotic appeal.  I haven't actually seen the movies he discusses, but he explains the genre pretty well, and I can see some/a lot of the elements in movies I have seen, like 300, Conan the Barbarian (the Schwartzenegger one), and The Scorpion King (you gotta love The Rock).  Rushing points out that these films "appear to have been consumed primarily by heterosexual, adolescent male viewers, an audience that would seem to have needed some way of negotiating the highly visible and eroticized spectacle of the male body that these films traditionally presented" (162).  So, the primary demographic here was not gay men, but homoerotic element does not seem to deter heterosexual males from watching them.

Naturally, after reading this, I had to talk to my mom again, and this time she was giggling.  "I knew you'd figure it out sooner or later," she said, which wasn't exactly an apology.

Rushing, Robert A., "Gentlemen Prefer Hercules: Desire | Identification | Beefcake."  Camera Obscura 23.69 (Sept 2008):  158-191.  Print.
(note:  still haven't figured out how to do a hanging indent here.  Sorry for you MLA purists)

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Sword and Sandal, Neo-Mythology, and Percy Jackson, Part 2

עברית: Biblical Sandal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

continuing from the last post

I know I can't use Wikipedia as a source in my literature review, but it had a really interesting entry on sword and sandal films, not to mention a whole lot of discussion on their Talk page, where the contributors hash out any problems with the entries.  Based on what I read there, it looks like you really can't call Percy Jackson/ Lightning Thief  a sword-and-sandal movie, mostly because it has high production values and isn't Italian.  That sounds crazy, I know, but if you read the Wikipedia entry, it'll make sense.  So, I've decided to go with Neo-mythology, which was mentioned in the entry as having been coined as a term by an Italian film director, Vittorio Cottafavi, who apparently just didn't like "sword and sandal" (I don't blame him, because it does sound kind of low rent).

All this led me to my proposal for the project.  What I'm proposing is to establish neo-mythology as a subgenre of action/adventure, based on PJI.  I need to find scholarly sources on the sword-and-sandal genre so that I can compare and contrast, and my research question is "Is Percy Jackson and the Olympians:  The Lightning Thief a sword-and-sandal film?"  I'm going to argue that while it fits a lot of the criteria for s-and-s, it's something different.

I turned it in on Thursday, and I've got my fingers crossed.

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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.   

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What about the fantasy-adventure genre?

Strange Fantasy 01
 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The critical approach that I'm taking for my research project is genre criticism, and the film I'm analyzing is Percy Jackson & the Olympians:  The Lightning Thief.  My understanding of this approach is that it looks at how a film fits into an established genre, or doesn't.  Science fiction and fantasy is one of those genres, as is Action/Adventure, and it seems that my film fits into both, but it's not really science fiction or action:  it's fantasy-adventure.  Beyond that, it is also part of a subgenre that features kids as the heroes. 

And there's the problem for me as well as the benefit.  It seems to me that I'm going to be trying to identify and define a new(ish) category, so there might not be a lot of material available on this genre (bad) while I will have to do a lot to explain my model (good, in terms of meeting the length requirement).  Not only that but I have to include a lot of different films if I stick to what I have so far.  The characteristic that all of them share is that the adults are not involved in the stories except as villains or advisors (and their advice is frequently ignored by the kids).  However, I think that I have to exclude all of the teen-dystopia films (like The Hunger Games), because some of them are almost horror films, going all the way back to the first Halloween, which actually is a horror film.  And that's just the start! 

This is going to take a lot of thinking.  I'm hoping to get started on my library research in the next week.

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