Bit by Bit Towards Death – Lucan’s Scaeva and the Aesthetisization of Dying

What was a hero in Classical Antiquity? Why is it that their characteristics have transcended chronological and cultural barriers while they are still role models in our days? How have their features changed to be embodied by comic superheroes and film? How is their essence vulgarized and turned into a mass consumption product? What has happened with their literary and artistic representation along centuries of elitist Western culture? This book aims at posing these and other questions about heroes, allowing us to open a cultural reflection over the role of the classical world in the present, its meaning in mass media, and the capacity of the Greek and Roman civilizations to dialogue with the modern world. This dialogue offers a glimpse into modern cultural necessities and tendencies which can be seen in several aspects, such as the hero’s vulnerability, the archetype’s banalization, the possibility to extend the heroic essence to individuals in search of identities – vital as well as gender or class identities. In some products (videogames, heavy metal music) our research enables a deeper understanding of the hero’s more obvious characteristics, such as their physical and moral strength. All these tendencies – contemporary and consumable, contradictory with one another, yet vigorous above all – acquire visibility by means of a polyhedral vehicle which is rich in possibilities of rereading and reworking: the Greco-Roman hero. In such a virtual and postmodern world as the one we inhabit, it comes not without surprise that we still resort to an idea like the hero, which is as old as the West.

The Hero Reloaded

2020

From Hero to Superhero

Gómez

2020

This paper offers an analysis of the interpretative keys of the character of the superhero in comic books, in comparison with those of the hero of Classical Antiquity. It is not only that both characters come to play similar functions in their respective fictional universes, but there is also a genetic link between the latter and the former. And this relationship is two-way, since this dependency determines the contemporary rewritings of the ancient hero in comic books. Taking El héroe (The Hero), by the Spanish scriptwriter David Rubín, as a case study, this paper tries to exemplify that relationship, according to which an ancient hero such as Hercules immediately evokes the typical features of the superhero of comic book.

Metamorphosis of the Mythical Hero in Disney’s Hercules

Rodríguez

2020

This essay analyzes the metamorphosis undergone by the ultimate Greek hero, Hercules, in the Disney film of that name (1997). Such a transformation is a keen example of the reworking of mythical hero figures in present-day popular mass culture. The essay focuses on the creative process behind the Disney film, its structure, the adaptation of classical sources, and on borrowings from earlier mythological films, from blockbusters such as Superman and Star Wars, and from Disney’s earlier movies. Also analyzed are the ways in which Hercules may be seen as a parody of the conventions of Greek tragedy, the influence of this film on later cultural products (novels and movies), and the ways in which the intended audience may have influenced plot differences with the canonical versions of the life of Hercules.