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Sep. 22nd, 2009 10:16 amSo sometimes I'm a hack. Example? For my Medieval Lit paper, I'm writing about how, exactly, the 2007 movie fucked up the movie. That's a stupid paper topic and I can write better stuff than that, but I'm in the first week of rehearsals, I had three other projects to finish over the weekend, and I think I can bring up some interesting stuff.
Also, I'm having fun:
( With my notes, for example. )
Now here's the thing. Obviously movie!Beowulf fucks up the idea of Beowulf as hero. That's its most significant flaw, and that's what makes us want to throw stuff at the screen. Beowulf is a goddamn savior; he is not so easily seduced that he would sleep with Grendel's mother rather than killing her. Making him an easily swayed gloryhound makes him into a monster.
Hey, y'know who else reimagines the poem in a way that makes Beowulf a monster?
John Gardner's Grendel.
And yet most of the people I know who are familiar with all three tellings (I will freely admit that I have not read Grendel, only received an analytical summary from roomie) hate the movie and love the novel.
( Why? (Babbling about heroics and playing Devil's Advocate for the movie.) )
Look, I'm not trying to say the movie is good. The animation is disturbing and some of the acting . . . eesh. But it's not worth dismissing it as a piece of crap. It raises interesting questions.
One of the most interesting may be why we are so viscerally turned off by our hero being made non-heroic -- how disturbing we find it to watch an epic where no one can be called heroic. Not very post-modern of us, that.
Also, I'm having fun:
( With my notes, for example. )
Now here's the thing. Obviously movie!Beowulf fucks up the idea of Beowulf as hero. That's its most significant flaw, and that's what makes us want to throw stuff at the screen. Beowulf is a goddamn savior; he is not so easily seduced that he would sleep with Grendel's mother rather than killing her. Making him an easily swayed gloryhound makes him into a monster.
Hey, y'know who else reimagines the poem in a way that makes Beowulf a monster?
John Gardner's Grendel.
And yet most of the people I know who are familiar with all three tellings (I will freely admit that I have not read Grendel, only received an analytical summary from roomie) hate the movie and love the novel.
( Why? (Babbling about heroics and playing Devil's Advocate for the movie.) )
Look, I'm not trying to say the movie is good. The animation is disturbing and some of the acting . . . eesh. But it's not worth dismissing it as a piece of crap. It raises interesting questions.
One of the most interesting may be why we are so viscerally turned off by our hero being made non-heroic -- how disturbing we find it to watch an epic where no one can be called heroic. Not very post-modern of us, that.
