Dear Cinemythologists,
On Thursday, October 1, our unit on Heracles/Hercules continues. In the second half of the class, we’ll take a close look at another tragic text about the hero. In the first half, we’ll consider the meaning of muscle in visual media writ large.
READING
- Euripides, Heracles.
Of the major Athenian playwrights, Euripides was the least popular in his own lifetime. But after his death his reputation grew, to the point where the number of his surviving works exceeds that of Sophocles and Aeschylus combined.
That said, the Heracles is among his lesser known plays. But it is well worth considering as a literary text that takes great liberties with the hero’s legend. What those liberties are and how they resonate in modern screen texts will be our focus.
VIEWING
Last spring, Gregory Spinner (Religious Studies) and I curated a Tang Museum exhibiton called FLEX, which took a hard look at muscled bodies from antiquity to modernity.
Of the videos linked above, the first introduces some of the aims and goals of the exhibition, even as it kicks off the exhibition’s permanent residency in cyberspace. The second video was part of the exhibition itself, a 20-minute montage covering 100+ years of muscle in screen media.
Watch both and take notes on anything that interests you. In the first hour of our class we’ll be joined by Professor Spinner on a virtual tour of some of the objects from the exhibition, especially those that intersect with the notions of heroism and legend in our current unit.
DC
