Oh, My Pop Culture Religion: Where are My Goddesses?

via hometheaterforum

During these troubling times, I like to go to my safe space for a while so that I can process things, and for me that often means diving into comics. Recently I was thinking about the 2017 Wonder Woman movie, which I loved, but also had some troubling religious aspects. We talked previously about how Wonder Woman was heavily Christianized, with Ares acting more like the Christian devil and less like the God of War, putting Wonder Woman in the Christ/savior role. But today I want to focus on the lack of goddess figures in Wonder Woman, excluding Wonder Woman herself, of course. Why, in a society of just women, was there so much focus on Zeus as the main god they followed, especially when previous comic incarnations of the Amazons did have them worshiping the Greek goddesses over the gods?

Trailer Tuesdays: Icarus

Given that the world is already full of enough horror at the moment, I decided to forgo the bizarre thriller flick I found and talk about an upcoming animated feature instead. Most of us have a pretty good grasp on at least one or two Greek myths—even if you didn’t have a unit about them in school, they’re somewhat inescapable in popular media. With re-imaginings like Percy Jackson maintaining a modicum of popularity, it’s no surprise that studios continue digging down into the mythology wellspring. Today I present a new take of the story of Icarus that has as much potential to be enthralling and thought-provoking as it does to be boring and even offensive.

Magical Mondays: Coming of Age in Daughters of the Moon

(via wiki)

Outside Harry Potter and A Series of Unfortunate Events, I would say that Daughters of the Moon was most definitely one of my favorite series as a child. Lady Geek Girl introduced me to it back in middle school, and once I started the first one, I didn’t look back. I blew through every book that had been released in a matter of days. It had everything I wanted—multiple female protagonists from different backgrounds, a narrative steeped in Greek mythology and magic, and there were a large number of books to keep me interested. So of course I loved it. And one of the things that I enjoyed most about the story was the price that came from having magical abilities and what growing older meant for the characters. However, the writing itself fell flat more than once, and that detracted from what was potentially a really great message.

Oh, My Pop Culture Christianization: Disney’s Hercules as Christ Figure

The Christianization of pagan stories is nothing new. To convince the locals to convert to Christianity, missionaries would often turn local myths and gods into saints instead so the locals could convert but still keep their folk traditions. For instance, some argue that St. Brigid of Ireland was in fact a Christianization of the Celtic goddess of the same name, and rituals surrounding the goddess Eostre were incorporated into the Christian celebration of Easter. This is a form of syncretism (thoroughly explained by Lady Geek Girl here) that was used consciously and deliberately to erase pagan beliefs and traditions and replace them with Christian ones instead. The case of the Disney movie Hercules, though, is a little different. Its Christianization was likely not deliberate, but it ends up reinforcing the hegemony of Christian narratives in our culture anyway.

Disney’s Hercules vastly revised the ancient Greek myth of Heracles to make it more “child-friendly” and more palatable to Western audiences. The resulting story, though, positions Hercules as a Christ figure—probably accidentally. This seems to imply that only stories with Christian morals and understandings of the world are acceptable as kids’ stories, and also shows how Christian influence seeps into everything in our pop culture narratives, whether we intend it to or not.

Find out more after the break! Spoilers for all of Hercules ahead.

How did this… (via Tufts)

…turn into this?

Throwback Thursdays: Percy Jackson and the Olympians

It’s been years since I first read the first quintet of Percy Jackson books. (I still haven’t read the second.) I’ve been meaning to reread them for ages, though, and since I had a long weekend off work with no actual plans for the first time in… forever last weekend, I decided it was the perfect time to get cozy with a book or five.

Can you believe The Lightning Thief turned ten years old this year?

Magical Mondays: Faerie Food and Sexual Assault

I was thinking recently about faerie food and how it never leads to anything good. Very rarely is the only consequence of eating fairy food that you’re a little less hungry afterward. At first, I thought that faerie food seems to be a metaphor in some ways for drug use and addiction, seeing how, in many myths, humans who eat it become addicted, don’t want to eat anything else, and if there is faerie food available, can’t stop eating it even past the point of being full. But then I started to realize there is a much more sinister connotation to faerie food: faerie food in a lot of ways seems to be very similar to date rape drugs, thus tying it to sexual assault.

Trigger warning for rape, date rape, and sexual assault after the jump.

Oh, My Pop Culture Religion: Zeus, Hera, Male Power Fantasies, & Female Demonization

Ah, Greek mythology, how I love you. Greek mythology has always been incredibly captivating to me, probably because the gods act so human. They have their strengths and flaws, they squabble among themselves, they fight for power, and they can even be tricked or deceived. It’s incredibly interesting. However, I can’t stand the watered down version of the Greek gods that we get in our pop culture. My biggest issues are with how our pop culture portrays Zeus and Hera. While the other gods may also occasionally be portrayed poorly, I feel like the portrayal of these two ends up being the most problematic.

Trigger warning for discussion of rape.

Oh, My Pop Culture Pantheon: Sailor Moon and Greco-Roman Mythology

A lot of things have brought my old favorite TV show Sailor Moon to mind again recently, from the recent anime reboot Sailor Moon Crystal, to the re-release of the original anime in uncut and subtitled form. Even though some are disappointed with Crystal, the fandom has in fact seen a resurgence.

And also I just so happened to go to my first con in my first cosplay as Sailor Moon last weekend, so…

A lot of people, new and old fans alike, may be wondering how Sailor Moon relates to Greco-Roman mythology, since after all, it uses the names of the planets, most of which were given the Roman names of Greek gods. It turns out that Greco-Roman mythology was definitely an inspiration for many aspects of the series, though understandably there are a lot of differences as well. Spoilers for both anime and the manga in my explication below!

Web Crush Wednesdays: Olympus Overdrive

There’s something about Greek mythology that is so interesting to me. Oddly I didn’t find the original tales about the gods and their shenanigans very relatable, but they were fascinating nonetheless. I don’t generally seek out different interpretations of Greek mythology, but this Wednesday’s webcomic, Olympus Overdrive, took a very different turn than I was expecting and I couldn’t stop myself from reading every page. I stumbled upon it as an ad while checking Homestuck for updates, and I continue to read it to this day. From the progressive characters to the idea of Greek gods being rebooted, there’s so much to like about this comic.

Magical Mondays: Sirens and Pandora

There are many, many things I love to see in literature and narrative universes of any form of media. One of the things I’m particularly fond of is taking ancient mythology and giving it a fresh twist. To the detriment of Western media consumers, most of this mythology is largely coming from the Greek/Roman pantheon. While I would really love to see more influence from, say, African and Indian mythos, for example, because knowledge of the Greek and Roman pantheon is so prevalent, this mythology is easier to market. (Again, a flaw of over-saturation in the market.) Due to this, when Borderlands gives me a group of people called “sirens”, I automatically start filling in some of the blanks. But, thinking about it a little more closely, how similar are the sirens in the Borderlands universe to the songstresses from ye olde legends and myths?  Spoiler warning for both Borderlands games under the cut.

—Via Giphy