Riordan's Perseus vs. Columbus' cinematic adaptation

A stub idea to be updated and expanded.

Rick Riordan's Aunty Em is a modernized Medusa. And Percy perpetrates her decapitation in an adapted mode, updated to the narrative moment.

    To be clear, Riordan's Percy sees his serpentine foe in a "green gazing ball" procured by Annabeth from among the merchandise in Aunty Em's Garden Gnome Emporium. The Emporium is described as one of those roadside businesses that sell garden gnomes and other cement statuary you might put in your garden. And Aunty Em, it turns out, has been petrifying her clientele for years. Her gaze might turn Percy and Annabeth into similar statuary, if they aren't careful. However, Annabeth has the wherewithal to turn Percy instead into a hero and rid their world of yet one more mythological villain.  (PJ:LT 168-185)
    Medusa's gaze, if you didn't know, turns people into stone. It has done for ages. And gazing balls for ages have been amusing folks with convectional views of their world. If you knew a menacing snake was creeping up on you from behind, you might see its reflection in a gazing ball. The gazing ball would serve the same function as the shield that Perseus used in classical myth. Athena gave that to the hero so that he could track Medusa's moves without technically looking at her or catching her stony gaze.

    Chris Columbus adapted the Riordan novel in the film Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010), screenplay by Craig Titley. [photo from IMDB courtesy of Fox Film Corp] Things play out a little differently in the cinematic adaptation. One key difference is the film's showing the fateful moment of the decapitation from the spectator's POV. Medusa stands stone-still gazing at the reflection of Percy approaching in the moment before her own decapitation. The script really climaxed in Medusa's statement "Son of Poseidon, I used to date your Daddy." [YouTube link: https://youtu.be/K-Y4q2m9OFE] Percy's ingenious use of the shiny back of an iPhone is more than just gratuitous product placement. Ownership of the gag — one-upping Riordan — belongs perhaps to Columbus, perhaps to Titley. But it's certainly part of the cinematic adaptation and not Riordan's doing.

Why this all matters:
   Analysis of Riordan's adaptation should deal with the text that Riordan wrote. That adaptation of the Medusa/Perseus myth is distinct from Columbus' cinematic adaptation of Riordan's text. Without passing judgment on the relative merits of either — each is very clever —adaptation of Perseus/Medusa, the present post strives merely to document my belief that analysis should distinguish between Riordan's gazing-ball and Columbus' iPhone as adaptations of the shield Perseus traditionally uses to survive.
   Those who would write about such adaptations need to distinguish cleanly between the phased adaptations, i.e. myth-novel-cinema, and not conflate them. This is not always easily done.

Osamu Tezuka Apollo

O. Tezuka, Apollo's Song (1970/2007)

Osamu Tezuka adapts the myth of Daphne and Apollo within his manga Apollo's Song (1970). While the whole story's narrative arc is reminiscent of Orpheus and Eurydice, Apollo and Athena are acknowledged overtly but Orpheus is not. The protagonist twice receives oracular instructions from Athena at the story's beginning and end; and Apollo is referenced at two key moments in Shogo's salvation narrative. 

       Tezuka was one of the most creative and most instrumental practitioners of Japanese manga. Topics and narrative modes applied in his graphic novels manifest astonishing diversity throughout the 20th Century, from the rise of Hitler until the artist's death in 1989. Originally serialized in Japanese as Aporo No Uta in Shukan Shonen Kingu, Shonen Gahosha, Apollo's Song was translated into English in 2007. 

       It's hard to surmise from reading Apollo's Song that the artist is not aware of the Orpheus myth. The protagonist is fated to cyclical love and loss, ever closer to attaining real love. The cover art suggests the famous moment in Camus' Orfeo Negro (1960) when Orpheus ascends to the favelas with the limp corpse of Eurydice in his arms. Shogo grapples with his love for Hiromi throughout and ultimately achieves unity with her only in experiencing a hellish death to be with her. Shogo and the Hiromi surrogates perish recurrently and experience resurrection in new stories. Themes of joint suicide, questions about why violence so often interferes with love, lovers who lose their beloved, and human search for the meaning of true love crisscross Tezuka's tale.

O. Tezuka, Apollo's Song (1970/2007)

        Athena is never clearly identified by name in Apollo's Song. Her identity is, however, unmistakable. Phidias' classical masterpiece of Athena Parthenos, ensconced in the naos of the Parthenon (the iconic sculpture portrayed in mirror image in English translation) — speaks an oracle to Shogo in Chapter 1 (of 5). Her utterance is as the Divine would speak: "Thou shalt love one woman again and again, but before the two are united in love, one shall perish. Even in death, thou shalt be reborn, to undergo yet another trial of love." (1.41) Then, the manga's final scene, its epilogue centers on Shogo's return to the unnamed Parthenos to learn that "Thou shalt see [Hiromi] again soon. In every era, in every world, she shall await thee." As Hiromi rises naked from behind Athena's panoply and exits the Parthenon into the light where Shogo has gone, Tezuka's omniscient narrator instructs that "Nature divides us into male and female... We come together and create offspring for posterity..." (2.254-57) Athena, the virginal goddess, therefore directs both Shogo's fate and the eternal prospects of human procreation. In her management of a hero's sexual destiny, Tezuka's mythmaking has contrived a remarkable new role for Athena Parthenos.

Pursuit in water, Apollo's Song 2.205

traditional Apollo's Song 2.203

       Apollo's treatment in Apollo's Song is more overt and at first glance less novel. Late in the final chapter, Hiromi confides in her doctoral advisor, Dr. Enoki (2.199), that she is beginning to have feelings for Shogo and that she is aware of his infatuation with her. The Doctor advises her to "become a laurel tree." Hiromi fails to see the connection. The Doctor then helps her to learn "the Greek myth about the girl Daphne." He explains the myth of Daphne and Apollo along the lines of Ovid's Metamorphoses 1, the western classic ending in a Bernini visual; but, subtle divergences from Ovid are intriguing. Much of the pursuit occurs in water, for instance, recalling the manga's recurrent instruction on reproductive biology, sperm swimming upstream. Tezuka's adaptation explains how the god Apollo pursued and came to hold the object of his lust, how the daughter of Peneus lost her identity at the end of a frightened flight. Dr. Enoki summarizes, "Miss Watari, I'm telling you to become a laurel tree because if you continue to allow Shogo's feelings for you to intensify, he will eventually fall into despair." (209)

Shogo as fallen Icarus, Apollo's Song 1.239

       Apollo is first acknowledged mid-way through the manga. The first acknowledgement in a novel titled for him is rather obscure. "Apollo" is the only word in the principle frame that fills 1.239. Shogo has collapsed, exhausted by Hiromi's sternly regimented training him for a marathon. In an bout of training that one expects will likely result in sexual intercourse, the fleet Hiromi eludes Shogo for many laps around a small lake. As Shogo's physical fatigue darkens his mind, Tezuka in nearly every frame includes a glimpse of Hiromi's running legs and backside clothed explicitly in Shogo's underwear. (1.227-38) Hubris brings Shogo down in the end. He falls flat on his face on the strand. Icarus. And his only utterance rises to the top of the frame — "Apollo..."  Next frames find Hiromi now willingly removing her clothing over the collapsed boy, now that he poses "no threat" to her safety.  Hiromi is his coach. For now, Hiromi is fully in control. Over 200 pages later Dr. Enoki coaches her to play Daphne and relinquish control.

Lefty Athena, Apollo's Song 1.23; the
Japanese original mirrors this, with
Nike extended in the right hand.

       Tezuka's broader narrative in this manga treats the development of Shogo from sociopath to lover. Much is at work in Tezuka's highly original narrative, the whole stands very interestingly as a reception of Orpheus, with Shogo's love and loss of Hiromi never further than arm's reach from the plight of Eurydice and Orpheus. Yet, it is never closer than arm's reach, either. Tezuka's work is hardly a pastiche of the Eurydice narrative, nor is it a mindless pastiche of any classical myth.  The overt acknowledgements of the roles of Athena and Apollo secure Tezuka's manga as a worthwhile narrative for exploring adaptation of classical mythology. The most fruitful analysis will approach the reason why Tezuka names the narrative framed by rumination on "the endless drama" of human procreation "Apollo's Song".

Osamu Tezuka, story of Daphne and Apollo told within Apollo's Song, manga, graphic novel 1970 and 2007 — originally serialized in Japanese as Aporo No Uta in Shukan Shonen Kingu, Shonen Gahosha, and translated by Camillia Nieh — New York, Vertical. 

Hiromi is advised by the Doctor on 2.199 that the only way to avoid Shogo's infatuation with her — "Then become a laurel tree.... Do[n't] you know the Greek myth about the girl Daphne?" The narrative then unfolds along the lines of Ovid's telling, but with subtle divergences worth exploring. 

  Tezuka's greater narrative in this manga treats the development of Shogo from sociopath to lover. The whole stands very interestingly as an adaptation or reception of the myth of Orpheus, with Shogo's love and loss of Hiromi never further than arm's reach from the plight of Eurydice and Orpheus. Yet, Tezuka's work is hardly a pastiche of the Eurydice narrative. 

#ogcma.byu.edu   Athena Apollo Orpheus Eurydice
http://ogcma.byu.edu/Daphne2.0003_Tezuka.htm

Haskell Coffin's Nike

W. Haskell Coffin idealized the appearance of victory as America entered the Great War, as he had done in a wide range of illustrations published in and on American magazines over the first quarter of the 20th Century. He applied his idealized American woman in an image of Nike for a campaign to support the sale of war bonds. A pair of important posters by Coffin helped boost national response to America's entry into the Great War. His "Joan of Arc Saved France," included recently in an exhibition at the BYU Museum of Art ("For Home and Country: Posters and Propaganda from the Great War," curated by K. Hartvigsen) may be better known than Coffin's winged Nike in "Share in the Victory". Coffin's Nike is remarkable for his artistic application.
   Iconographically, Coffin's Nike is clearly derived from classical models. The winged figure is draped in a flowing chiton held over her left shoulder leaving her right should bare, precisely as the Winged Nike of Samothrace (Louvre).

The Louvre Nike's drapery is carved to suggest much finer weight fabric, as it blows back so blithely as to show the navel and other anatomical features of the form beneath the carved cloth. Coffin's Nike has a full, if not voluptuous, figure beneath her clothing, even if the overall impression is rather modest. Likewise, the drapery coming forward in three pleats over the left hip on Coffin's Nike is contrived precisely the same as her Samothracian forebear. Both Nikai stride forward with their right foot, unlike another similar Nike at Olympia. Coffin's model for the poster is certainly the sculpture in the Louvre.
   The attributes held by Coffin's Nike, a palm frond and a longsword, are an interesting invention. Of course the Nike of Samothrace lacks head and both arms; aside from the wings growing naturally from her shoulders, whatever attributes she held in her hands are missing.  She might have held something aloft in one or both of her hands. Since the Louvre Nike's arms are completely missing, it is hard to determine their disposition. The Winged Nike from Olympia, holds her left arm high and her right arm low, as does Coffin's. Her hands missing also, it is unknown whether the Olympia Nike held anything; but her gesture may suggest her pointing, like a herald, to the heavens and to the earth asa messenger might. Classical Nikai often extend laurel wreaths over the head of conquering heroes; thus, for Coffin's Nike to be wearing one herself diverges somewhat from classical iconography. The palm frond extended in her left hand recalls Thomas Brock's Victoria Monument (1901) opposite Buckingham Palace which extends a palm frond in one hand (left) and a wreath in the other.
   Secondary depictions of Phidias' great sculptures indicate that Nikai playing minor roles were preparing to crown victors. A coin stamped at Ellis shows the colossal Zeus sculpture at Olympia extended in his right hand a Nike who held out a laurel wreath. Similarly, the Varvakeion replica of the Phidias' Athena Parthenos likewise held emblems to crown victorious Athens. This Athena is emerging from the battle, not heading toward it. Coffin's decision for his Nike to offer the extended sword seems unprecedented in depictions of Nikai. She enters the fray. Whereas Nike typically comes after the battle has been waged and won, Coffin's new conception offers simultaneously both clean-clad (i.e. easy?) victory and the emblem of peace.
   Coffin's conception of Nike is a youthful American beauty. The blue eyes and rosy cheeks feature regularly in the artist's other portrayals of young women on magazine covers such as Redbook, Metropolitan Magazine, and The Saturday Evening Post. His Nike's short bobbed hair further diverges strongly from classical iconography, a feature tending the image more toward strong young women of contemporary US culture than toward a divinity from Ancient Greece. Portraying a strong, lovely girl who might live next door Coffins aims his message at men and women alike. Both women and men can contribute equally to the cause this Nike represents.

— OGCMA.BYU.edu/Nike2.0010_Coffin.htm