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Cast Your Favorite Myth Meme

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So last year Breakfast With Pandora cast the Aeneid with the help of commenters. This seemed like a good idea to me, especially now that Clash of the Titans came out, and the Percy Jackson movies cast the characters without even needing the myths to go along with them.

So I was thinking about it. Who are your favorite characters? What are your favorite stories? What actors do you think could do them justice?

Now I don’t think I could possibly say FAVORITES, but one mythical chick I’d love to see on screen isGina Torres in Firefly

Antigone

Based off of the Sophocles plays, she’s one tough cookie of a princess, daughter of an (unintentionally) incestuous and doomed marriage between her dad/brother Oedipus and her mom/grandma Iocasta, sister to thepathetic Ismene and two overly aggressive brothers, and fiance to her cousin Haemon whose daddy eventually (SPOILER ALERT) sticks her in a cave to starve to death (she decides not to wait for that and goes with suicide instead).
Favorite line?

Herald:I forbid you to act thus in violation of the city.
Antigone: I forbid you to make useless proclamations to me.

Yeah, The Seven Against Thebes was pretty rockin’. Anyway, so Antigone? I’m going with Gina Torres. I think she’s got the guts and the gravitas to make Antigone as awesome as she should be.

So let’s take a moment to consider the other players in her life.Who could play Ismene, for example?I mean, she startsAudrey Tatou out like a wet blanket, and you kinda love to hate the girl, but she’s not a total wash, and you need an actress who can bring out the nuances of wanting to be a good woman and being stuck with that meaning you’re kind of a wash as a human being. I’ve seen Cate Blanchett do that well, but this really calls for a younger woman, I think. Maybe Audrey Tatou?

That leaves us with a few people, depending on which part of the story we want to tell. Who would make a good Haemon? Who’d make the villain Creon (her uncle, Haemon’s daddy)?  What about Oedipus and Iocasta? How about her brothers (I think Dante Basco should be one of them, tho)?

What do y’all think?

Comments

5 responses to “Cast Your Favorite Myth Meme”

  1. Athene Avatar
    Athene

    One of my favorite greek goddesses is Persephone. I know the myth says she was stolen by Hades to be his husband, her mother Demeter found her after a long search, however she had already eaten of the underworld and had to go down to live there with Hades for one month per pomigranite seed she had eaten causing deep depression in Demeter and winter on Earth.
    But looking at this myth I see it smacked of mysogny. It sounds more like she fell in love with Hades, her mother disapproved of the union and forced her back into her home, however before she left she ate of the pomigranite to be sure that she could see her beloved at least for a few months a year.
    Being the daughter of a knowlageable goddess, I’m sure she would have known not to eat of the food of the underworld. I see her as more of the rebelious youth who fell in love with the bad boy, against her parents wishes. This is something we all know well and have seen throughout history.
    I would love to see a remake of that myth with Johnny Depp as Hades with his uncanny ability to be so many things at once, Judy Dench as Demeter intelligent and strict, and Audrey Tatou or Helena Bonham Carter, or even the girl who played Alice (I can’t remember her name) in Burton’s Alice in Wonderland as Persephone, young and rebelious and in love, smitten with the strength and freedom of being the Queen of the Underworld and ruling along side her love Hades.

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  2. Nomi Avatar
    Nomi

    Athene, you can’t apply modern gender theory to Greek mythology, it just doesn’t work that way. It’s also a bit silly to claim that you know the “truth” of what actually happened. It’s a myth. It’s like saying Rowling was wrong when she wrote Harry Potter, because Hermione actually saved the wizarding world and people just say Harry did because we’re all misogynists. If you read the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, you see that the myth doesn’t smack of misogyny, it just goes to show the differences between masculine and feminine power as believed by the Greeks. By modern terms, yes, the Greeks were sexist. But women were thought to hold an intensely strong chthonic power that countered the more reason-based men’s power and which was vital to maintaining balance in society and the household. Persephone, by falling prey to Hades, represents the inevitable transition from maidenhood to matronhood and all the anxiety that comes with it. Interpreting the story with concepts that are unique to modern Western culture destroys the nuanced importance of the myth and prevents us from understanding how the Greeks thought and felt, and how their beliefs were no less valid than ours.

    As far as my favorite myths go, I love Procne and Philomel. Titus Andronicus is great, but we need a modern masterpiece to reintroduce the story! Uma Thurman would be fun for Procne, and maybe Ellen Page for Philomel (might risk type-casting her though after Hard Candy)? I’m not sure about Tereus, but I like Liam Aiken for Itys, even though I’d always imagined Itys to be about eight or nine. It would be neat to see that character fleshed out though, which would be possible if he was aged up a bit.

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  3. Mark Alford Avatar
    Mark Alford

    I know it has been done, but I would like to see a GOOD movie of Jason and the Argonauts. Lets see Jason for the worthless scum he really is and have Medea be both the victim and villain as she is in the myths. I don’t know who I would cast, I just want it done better than it has been.

    Reply
  4. Athene Avatar
    Athene

    @Nomi I’m sorry, I was looking at the myth from our current viewpoint, you are correct. However I thought the question was what myth would you like to see now on the big screen and I was offering an opinion of how it could be used in the context of today’s society. I should have been more specific. I never meant to imply I know the “truth” of the myth, as it is a myth of an ancient culture and we only have few writings of that era to use for an understanding of the myths of that very important and very unique religion. I did not mean to insult the myth, nor the ancient greeks in any way, just to put it in terms of our modern western society and give it a somewhat different interpretation that may appeal to our cultural understanding, from an entertainment point of view. I apologize if I offended you.

    Reply
  5. Athene Avatar
    Athene

    BTW I have read Homer, and his Hymn to Demeter, as well as studied greek, roman, norse, and celtic mythology. I understand the context. I have also read Harry Potter. All of these cultures and sub cultures have great historic value, but we see them in our cultural context, no matter how hard we try to make our mind a blank slate, we did not live there, and our world culture is as ingrained in us as our genetics. I am not saying you are wrong in any way about your critique on my first statement, as I said before I should have been more specific about what I meant.
    And I would love to see Uma Thurman as Procne! Good call.

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