Hercules (1997)
“Honey, you mean Hunkules!”
One of the reasons (okay, the main reason) I love my course is that watching this film actually counts as studying… Hercules is one of my favourite Disney films, and if you haven’t seen it you really should! But be warned, the songs will be stuck in your head forever. Just in case you haven’t seen it, here’s a quick overview:
- Baby Hercules is born to divine parents Zeus and Hera
- Hades, god of the Underworld, has a plan to overthrow Zeus and needs to eliminate Hercules in order to do so. He sends his minions, Pain and Panic, to turn him mortal. But he doesn’t drink the whole potion so he stays super strong
- Hercules is brought up on Earth and eventually discovers that he is the son of Zeus
- With the help of satyr Phil he embarks on a journey to become a true hero in order to rejoin his parents on Mount Olympus
- Naturally he meets a girl, Meg, they fall in love, and after many trials, including a battle between the gods and the titans and rescuing Meg from the Underworld, the two live happily ever after on Earth. Aww.
As much as I love the film, where the mythology is concerned it isn’t the most accurate. If Hercules is where most of your mythological knowledge comes from, then I’m sorry to tell you that you have been wildly misled…
Hercules’ name
Okay, first things first: the film really should be called ‘Herakles’. Herakles was his Greek name, and Hercules his Roman. As the film is set in Greece amongst the Greek gods Zeus, Hera and Hades it would be more fitting for to be called Herakles (pedantic, I know). But since the 1950s and ’60s he’s been known as ‘Hercules’ in popular culture; to change it now would just confuse things.
Hercules’ birth
In the film Zeus and Hera are portrayed as the happy couple, delighted with their new-born baby. Unfortunately for Hera, their marriage wasn’t quite so delightful. Ignoring the fact that they were siblings as well as spouses, Zeus was also a massive adulterer. Don’t be fooled by this innocent face.
Zeus was frequently popping down to earth to copulate with whichever mortal woman took his fancy, often changing his form to do so, and fathering many a semi-divine child. In the case of Hercules’ conception, the woman who caught Zeus’ eye was Alkmene, wife of Amphitryon. Did Zeus care that she was a married woman? Hell no! He used it to his advantage. Alkmene had refused to sleep with Amphitryon until he avenged the death of her brothers, so when Zeus showed up, having made himself look like Amphitryon, Alkmene assumed that her husband had returned, brothers avenged, and the two of them consummated their marriage. Poor Amphitryon. He actually did return later that night, and they too did the deed (for what Alkmene thought was the second time). Alkmene fell pregnant with twins, Hercules and Iphikles – Hercules from Zeus and Iphikles from Amphitryon – but the latter baby is omitted from the film altogether (understandably as Hercules is portrayed as the legitimate child from Zeus and Hera). So as we can see, Zeus was not the loving husband that he appears to be. The scoundrel! To get around this unpleasant business Disney had Alkmene and Amphitryon play Hercules’ adoptive parents, which is quite a nice way to bring the couple into the film.
Hera’s revenge
Understandably, Hera was not a happy bunny. She knew Zeus was a big, fat cheater but was powerless to stop him. Instead, she took her anger out on little Hercules, sending beasts to terrorise him. In Hercules Pain and Panic take the form of snakes and try to kill Hercules, under Hades’ command. Two snakes were in fact sent to kill Hercules as an infant, but they were sent by Hera. The Hydra that Hercules faces was also connected to Hera, raised by her to be a danger to Hercules. It’s hard to imagine the kind, soft-spoken, pink Hera from Hercules as being so malicious, but the Hera of mythology was often spiteful and bitter.
Hades’ hatred
Hades was not an evil god! Despite many portrayals of him being the bad guy, he was just another god, no worse than the rest of them (who were constantly bickering and bitching and causing havoc for some poor mortal). Once Zeus and his fellow Olympians defeated the Titans, Zeus and his brothers, Poseidon and Hades, were assigned their domains by lot: Zeus the sky, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the underworld. Hades rarely ventured out of the underworld, except for when he abducted Persephone (this might make him seem like the bad guy but this was typical godly behaviour) and in many tales is portrayed as quite compassionate! It is understandable that in modern depictions Hades is often made into the bad guy – the underworld doesn’t seem like the most pleasant of places and Hades’ residence there provides writers with a nice little motive for him to be vengeful. Also, he can be thought of as inherently bad as the underworld now has connotations with Christian Hell. But he wasn’t such a bad guy, not really.
Phil’s hero-training
I’m sorry to tell you that there was no hero-training Satyr called Philoctetes. There was a man named Philoctetes, who fought in the Trojan War, but he has no connection to Danny DeVito’s grumpy little character. I think the writers just wanted to use a Greek name that they could shorten to a common English name – hence ‘Phil’. When Phil shows Hercules around his ‘hall of heroes’ he mentions Perseus, Theseus, Odysseus, Achilles, Jason and (bizarrely) Cleopatra. The chronology here is just plain wrong. Perseus did come before Hercules, but Theseus and Jason were younger than Hercules, and Odysseus and Achilles even more so, a generation later. Cleopatra wasn’t even a mythological figure; she was a real person who was around centuries later when the Romans were running things! This was just a way for Disney to throw in some well-known classical references. One thing they did do right with Phil’s character was having him lust after every female he saw. Satyrs were notorious for getting drunk and raping people and were often depicted on vase-paintings doing so. All a bit sinister really.
The Muses’ music
Different accounts offer different numbers of muses, the earliest proclaiming that there were nine of them; but five is a much more ‘girl-band’ number and works well in the film. The Muses were the goddesses of the arts, and were called upon by poets to help them tell their stories. They help to narrate the film with incredibly catchy songs like ‘A Star is Born’ and ‘Zero to Hero’ (within which the screaming, crying, adolescent girls – or “the sea of raging hormones” – are extremely reminiscent of One Direction fans…). They actually stick to the musical tradition of ancient Greece, which existed before stories were written down, by telling the story though song. They also take on the role of the chorus within a play acting as commentators to the action. A tenuous link perhaps, and it’s doubtful that Disney had this tradition in mind when they decided to put songs in the film (more likely they had the success of films The Little Mermaid and Aladdin in mind), but there you go.
Hercules’ labours
The most well-known ventures of Hercules are his 12 Labours, and although he doesn’t embark on them in Disney’s Hercules, they do make an appearance. Defeating the Lernaian Hydra was one of them, as was fetching Cerberus from the underworld. The Nemean Lion makes an appearance too. Hercules is posing in the lion skin while being painted on a vase, which is quite apt as Hercules was made identifiable in artwork by his club and lion skin (although I don’t think it was made to look like Scar from the Lion King). Phil also mentions the Amazons, and King Augeus’ stable – he advises Hercules “not to wear your new sandals”, good advice seeing as this labour required him to clean stables that were swamped with horse poo. Lovely. During the song ‘Zero to Hero’ some more of Hercules’ labours are shown, namely the Erymanthian Boar and the Stymphalian Birds, but the Gorgons also appear, and Hercules mentions the Minotaur – both creatures that he did not defeat. Again this was just Disney putting in some more famous mythological references.
Hercules’ wives
Megara (a.k.a Meg) was the first wife of Hercules, but they didn’t live happily ever after as Disney would have us believe. Hercules actually ends up beating her to death along with their three children in a fit of rage and madness induced by Hera. I told you she had it in for him. Heartbroken? Me too.
Hercules’ death/apotheosis
Despite what the film tells you, Hercules doesn’t become a god until after his death. Remember Nessus?
He actually causes Hercules’ death. Hercules kills him with an arrow dipped in the Hydra’s blood because he tries it on with Deianeira, soon to be Hercules’ second wife. Before he dies though, Nessus tells Deianeira to take his blood which will make a powerful love charm should Hercules ever grow tired of her. Later in life, she hears that Hercules plans to bring another woman into their house to be his bedmate and in jealousy she uses Nessus’ gift, dipping Hercules’ clothes in it. Because he is super-strong, the result isn’t fatal for Hercules, but the pain is too much to endure so he builds himself a funeral pyre and commits suicide on it, then becoming a god. Much more horrible than the Disney version.
Disney’s Hero
The notion of a ‘true hero’ being measured not “by the size of his strength, but by the strength of his heart” wasn’t really the case in heroic Greece. Men wanted to be glorified and remembered – a theme prominent throughout the Iliad – and they were willing to die memorable, early deaths to do so. But for a children’s film the idea that there are more important things than being famous, and that fame isn’t enough to be a ‘hero’, is a decent message to send.
Disney’s Hercules shows a wildly sanitised version of the Hercules myths to make the film suitable for a young audience, and also adapts the stories so that the film focuses on love, family and becoming a ‘true hero’. The film itself is great! But don’t let the catchy songs, witty lines and sassy muses fool you into believing the mythology!
Images:
http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Zeus
http://bplusmovieblog.com/2012/08/18/ranking-disney-27-hercules-1997/
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