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Sep. 22nd, 2009 10:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adiva_calandiaSo 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:
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? Beowulf is clearly not much a hero in Grendel. He's horrifying. Grendel is who we're supposed to sympathize with, the childlike loner who just doesn't understand why all this is happening to him. Beowulf's a bully who slams Grendel against a wall and abuses him psychologically before killing him. Holy crap. That's our hero? No, thank you.
So why do we hail the novel that demonizes Beowulf as a skilled retelling, and revile the movie that demonizes -- or perhaps, more accurately, humanizes -- Beowulf as a piece of crap?
Well, okay, part of it is that John Gardner's writing is a hell of a lot better than what Hollywood (and Ray Winstone) did to Neil Gaiman's work. Gardner's novel is as poetic as the original; he's a modern schop, a shaper of words. Robert Zemeckis is . . . not. Disturbingly plastic animation and disturbingly wooden acting are sure to put you off. (Tangent: How can this movie have so many amazing actors and still be so bad? Anthony Hopkins! John Malkovich! Robin Wright Penn! Brendan Gleeson! Angelina Jolie! And yet it is so bad! *shakes fist* ZemeckIIIIIIIS!)
And yet the movie really only problematizes the idea of a hero in a slightly different way than the novel. Problematizing the idea of the hero is Neil Gaiman's favorite thing (see: Sandman), so I don't think we can blame that on Zemeckis and the general horrors Hollywood perpetrates on scripts. And really, what's so bad about problematizing heroes?
What further convinces me is that some of the ways the movie fucks with the original narrative to problematize Beowulf's heroism are actually issues we brought up with the poem in class -- in particular, the dragon, 'cause come on, that's the biggest change. We discussed at some length in class the fact that Beowulf -- or, well, the Geats in general -- probably shouldn't have built their civilization on top of a dragon. The dragon was there first, after all. That makes the dragon kind of Beowulf's responsibility. The poem recognizes that, at least a little; Beowulf, as king, takes it on himself to kill the dragon, because that's his responsibility to his people. And we questioned his motives even then. Wasn't it rather glory-seeking of him to go out with a bang like that? Sure, he's also the only man strong enough and badass enough to take on the dragon and have any hope of winning . . . but there's also a certain element of "I'm gonna prove how badass I still am and die with my boots on."
That's not that different from 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:
- Significant changes to plot
- Wealtheow/Beowulf romance
- Beowulf tears off Grendel's arm with mechanical assistance. What? No. Strength of thirty men in each hand, bitch.
- Hrothgar KILLING HIMSELF
- Grendel's mother
- Mother of Grendel, with Hrothgar
- IS NOT KILLED by Beowulf. Instead they have SEX.
- Mother of dragon with Beowulf
- Beowulf cheating on Wealtheow
- Beowulf cutting off his own arm to kill the dragon
- Grendel's mother survives
- Wiglaf takes throne
- Suggestion that Grendel's mother will be seducing him, too
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? Beowulf is clearly not much a hero in Grendel. He's horrifying. Grendel is who we're supposed to sympathize with, the childlike loner who just doesn't understand why all this is happening to him. Beowulf's a bully who slams Grendel against a wall and abuses him psychologically before killing him. Holy crap. That's our hero? No, thank you.
So why do we hail the novel that demonizes Beowulf as a skilled retelling, and revile the movie that demonizes -- or perhaps, more accurately, humanizes -- Beowulf as a piece of crap?
Well, okay, part of it is that John Gardner's writing is a hell of a lot better than what Hollywood (and Ray Winstone) did to Neil Gaiman's work. Gardner's novel is as poetic as the original; he's a modern schop, a shaper of words. Robert Zemeckis is . . . not. Disturbingly plastic animation and disturbingly wooden acting are sure to put you off. (Tangent: How can this movie have so many amazing actors and still be so bad? Anthony Hopkins! John Malkovich! Robin Wright Penn! Brendan Gleeson! Angelina Jolie! And yet it is so bad! *shakes fist* ZemeckIIIIIIIS!)
And yet the movie really only problematizes the idea of a hero in a slightly different way than the novel. Problematizing the idea of the hero is Neil Gaiman's favorite thing (see: Sandman), so I don't think we can blame that on Zemeckis and the general horrors Hollywood perpetrates on scripts. And really, what's so bad about problematizing heroes?
What further convinces me is that some of the ways the movie fucks with the original narrative to problematize Beowulf's heroism are actually issues we brought up with the poem in class -- in particular, the dragon, 'cause come on, that's the biggest change. We discussed at some length in class the fact that Beowulf -- or, well, the Geats in general -- probably shouldn't have built their civilization on top of a dragon. The dragon was there first, after all. That makes the dragon kind of Beowulf's responsibility. The poem recognizes that, at least a little; Beowulf, as king, takes it on himself to kill the dragon, because that's his responsibility to his people. And we questioned his motives even then. Wasn't it rather glory-seeking of him to go out with a bang like that? Sure, he's also the only man strong enough and badass enough to take on the dragon and have any hope of winning . . . but there's also a certain element of "I'm gonna prove how badass I still am and die with my boots on."
That's not that different from 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.
