{"id":67,"date":"2008-09-18T08:35:48","date_gmt":"2008-09-18T12:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benhrome.wordpress.com\/?p=67"},"modified":"2008-09-18T08:35:48","modified_gmt":"2008-09-18T12:35:48","slug":"of-campy-futures-and-ancient-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benhrome.com\/2008\/09\/of-campy-futures-and-ancient-literature","title":{"rendered":"Of Campy Futures and Ancient Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"DSCI0070 by Ghost_Bear, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ghost_bear\/2301663440\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2315\/2301663440_a236340e75.jpg?resize=500%2C375\" alt=\"DSCI0070\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Watched <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0087985\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong><em>Red Dawn<\/em><\/strong><\/a> a while back. <em>What of it?<\/em> Just enough unbelievability in it to make it a less-than-serious movie, but a great mind-sink to just lay on the couch and wander. And as I half-watched, I realized why I kinda don&#8217;t like it. It&#8217;s not because of Patrick Swayze &#8211; though I will admit the &#8216;dislike&#8217; factor there *is* coloring my judgment a little. It&#8217;s because that even if you suspend your disbelief and buy into the premise&#8230;..the movie is disjointed enough that it really doesn&#8217;t tell a good story. Or flesh out the characters enough so you&#8217;d actually care. It&#8217;s just a two-hour trip&#8230;..to nowhere, really. With a jacked-up quick-set epilogue to &#8220;make you feel better.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I wonder how the novelization read \/ would read. Would it be as good as Orson Scott Card&#8217;s <em>Empire<\/em>, of which I am reading now? Or just as bad as Hubbard&#8217;s <em>Battlefield: Earth<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p>Ugh. I need a shower now, and I suspect you do as well. We&#8217;ll reconvene here in a moment and switch to more&#8230;refined tastes.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Ok, we&#8217;re back, yes? All clean now? Good. Suffice to say in review that I&#8217;ll hold <em>Red Dawn<\/em> up as an example of how NOT to write for my own personal reminder.<\/p>\n<p>So we&#8217;ll flip thoughts to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0332452\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong><em>Troy<\/em><\/strong><\/a> and the <em>Iliad<\/em>. Yes, I&#8217;m quite feeling the literati today&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><em>Troy <\/em>was entertaining, but as a friend once commented to me said, &#8220;without the gods as characters, it loses it.&#8221; I think Wolfgang (the director) was going for a more &#8220;historical&#8221; bent, relegating the antics from Olympus to the mystical religiosity side, rather than the goofy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0082186\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong><em>Clash of the Titans<\/em><\/strong><\/a>-esque romp &#8212;<\/p>\n<p><em>[Sidetrack: I loved that movie as a kid &#8211; don&#8217;t ask me why. I think I was hooked on the Kraken. Even had the Kraken playset, who usually ended up pulling the wings off of my brother&#8217;s Pegasus and devouring Perseus whole as he tried to rescue Princess Leia. Good times, good times&#8230;.]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&#8211;which explains the ambiguity of Achilles&#8217; &#8220;power&#8221; in battle (Wolfgang portrayed him as a superior war-crafting warrior, rather than a demigod impervious to harm). If you take it from the historical viewpoint and then &#8220;mesh&#8221; the myth to it&#8230;you can see how it fits. <em> Sorta<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I&#8217;m a sucker for movies featuring large-scale warfare and this didn&#8217;t disappoint. And I thought, personally, Agamemnon&#8217;s portrayal was spot on by actor Bryan Cox.<\/p>\n<p>So regarding the <em>Iliad <\/em>&#8211; folks, remember, I&#8217;m an English degree holder. My specialty (after I forwent the final educational requirements for a teaching license) is classical literature as well as writing. I&#8217;ve read them all: <em>Divine Comedy<\/em>, <em>Paradise Lost<\/em> (and <em>Regained<\/em>!), numerous Shakespeare plays, <em>Canterbury Tales<\/em>&#8230;. and by and large, most of these in older English or translational.<\/p>\n<p><em>[Sidetrack: I actually enjoyed Canterbury Tales in the Old English, as I did reading Beowulf in the same&#8230;]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I still have most of my old texts from college, even. However, I&#8217;ve not read the <em>Iliad <\/em>in well nigh 20 years now&#8230; I have a battered copy of the <em>Odyssey<\/em>, but alas, no <em>Iliad<\/em>. And as I remember, the last time I read it was for high school honors English lit class&#8230;and it was the first time I was subjected to a straight-translation copy, which was one horrendous nightmare to my then-fourteen-year-old brain.<\/p>\n<p>Hence, after watching <em>Troy<\/em>, I realized there was an entire part missing (the interaction of the gods) and desired enough to re-read it that it&#8217;s now got this hold on my brain. Seems I&#8217;ll be needing to locate the library nearest our new home and borrow a copy.<\/p>\n<p>Huh. Seems I went well off whatever point I was trying to make. Which is probably some variation of: &#8220;Read the book, it&#8217;s always better than the movie could hope to be.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, that about sums it up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Watched Red Dawn a while back. What of it? Just enough unbelievability in it to make it a less-than-serious movie, but a great mind-sink to just lay on the couch and wander. And as I half-watched, I realized why I kinda don&#8217;t like it. It&#8217;s not because of Patrick Swayze &#8211; though I will admit &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"readmore-btn\" href=\"https:\/\/benhrome.com\/2008\/09\/of-campy-futures-and-ancient-literature\">+<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12,14,26],"tags":[212,235,285,330],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-movies","category-personal","category-writing","tag-iliad","tag-literature","tag-odyssey","tag-red-dawn"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhrome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhrome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhrome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhrome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhrome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benhrome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhrome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhrome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhrome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}