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.
No comments:
Post a Comment