Month: July 2013

Joss Whedon was adapting Stan Lee’s versions of Thor, Loki, and Odin to the big screen. It wasn’t like the comic book versions were accurate to the myths and Whedon’s weren’t. They are fictional characters loosely based on the real gods/myths. Tom Hiddleston isn’t playing the actual Loki of Norse myth, he’s playing the Marvel Loki. It’s the same as Matt Damon playing Loki in Dogma. It’s just a character with the same name.

The Loki Damon played had nothing to do with the myth. I give him a pass.

Yes, Stan Lee is a douche too. And it’s up to artists who want to make adaptations to right the wrongs made in the past. What would you say to a director who remade John Wayne movies and did nothing to change how Native Americans were portrayed?

Calling it Marvel’s Loki when it borrows all its background from Norse myth is a fucking cop-out.

ihavenohonor:

Ouranos/Uranus

We have already seen the primal dethronement of father by son in the Zeus-Kronos (Jupiter-Saturn) relationship. Now we see it again between Kronos and his father, Ouranos (Uranus). But first we have to go back to the Greek version of the beginning of the world. In the beginning was Khaos (Chaos), the shapeless, disordered mass that was the universe before the creation of living beings. Out of Chaos arose the primordial gods: Gaia, Tartarus, Eros, Erebus, Nyx, and Eurynome. Of these, the only anthropomorphic, well-defined divinity was Gaia, the Earth-goddess from whom all things issued. Pre-Hellenic, even Paleolithic, Gaia was often depicted half-risen from the Earth, unable to completely separate herself from her element. She gave birth—parthenogenetically, without any male help —to the Sea (Pontus), the Mountains (Ourea), and the Sky (Ouranos). Then mating with her son Uranus she gave birth to the 12 Titans, the Cyclopes (gigantic one-eyed monsters), and the three Hecatonchires (even more terrible monsters with 50 heads and 100 arms).

Here the various mythologies diverge slightly. One account has it that disgusted by or fearful of his monstrous children, Uranus imprisoned the Hecatonchires and the Cyclopes in Tartarus forever. Since this was part of the Earth (Gaia’s very bowels), Gaia found her children’s presence again in her body painful, and conceived a plan to end both Uranus’ passions and more monstrous offspring. She asked all of her children for help, but only the youngest, Kronos, agreed.

Gaia created an adamantine sickle for him, and he hid under their bed with it. When Uranus came to lie with her again, Kronos cut off his genitals with one sweep of the sickle! From the blood that fell to Earth/Gaia, the Erinyes (the Furies: avenging spirits of retributive justice), the Giants, and the Meliae (nymphs of the manna ash tree) were born. From the blood that fell into the sea, or perhaps from the genitals themselves that Kronos tossed there, Aphrodite/Venus was born from the foam (“Aphrodite” means “foam-born" in Greek). Thus the Earth (Gaia) was separated from the sky (Uranus), a body-mind schism that still pervades Western culture. Being the primordial element from which all the gods originated, Gaia was universally worshipped, but later went into decline and was replaced by other gods.

Having overthrown Uranus, the Titans retrieved their brothers from Tartarus and gave the power to Kronos, who once again bound and imprisoned the Cyclopes there. Much later at the end of the 10-year war between the Olympians led by Jupiter-Zeus and the Titans under Saturn-Kronos, Gaia prophesied a victory for Zeus were he to free the Cyclopes as his allies. When he did so, the Cyclopes—the first smiths—in return gave Zeus thunder, lightning, and a thunderbolt, Pluto a helmet, and Poseidon a trident. Armed with these gifts the three gods overpowered the Titans, cast them into Tartarus, and placed the Hecatonchires in guard over them.

FUCK THE AVENGERS

This will make me popular….

It’s taken me a while to figure out how to explain just how much the depiction of the Norse gods in the movies Thor and The Avengers bothers me. I think I’ve figured out a correlation.

Remember how you thought Johnny Depp was such a douche for his depiction of Tonto? Remember how you thought it was insulting? How you thought that you might have some modicum of respect for it if an actual Native American played the role?

Yeah, like that.

They took a myth and turned it into sugar coated shit. They took people’s beliefs and culture and smeared feces all over it. It’s just something for them to sell.

You could have taken the actual myths of Thor and Loki and made an excellent movie. You probably even could have reconciled it with the Marvel universe if you’re a decent writer, but Joss Whedon took the easy way out. Loki is NOT some Snidely-Whiplash-I-want-to-take-over-the-world villain. He is a trickster whose role in the mythology is to teach the other gods lessons of humility and to overcome obstacles with guile instead of force.

When I see Tom Hiddleston screaming for the crowds at Comic Con to call him Loki, I’m thinking that douchebag should be holding a press conference with Depp telling people they’re sorry for accepting such roles. 

Apocalypse- an unveiling or unfolding of things not previously known

Knowing what we know about the universe, that everything happening around us is simultaneously happening within us, doesn’t make it any easier to watch play out. There is this myth going around that enlightenment brings peace. It, in reality, reveals chaos. You must BE the peace, the light, the center of the storm, in order to preserve balance. We are entering a period of enlightenment on a grand scale. With that comes the shaking and quaking of our individual consciousnesses and thus the mentalities and reality around us. BE the peace you envision, fearless and true to all that is YOU.