(originally posted March 2022)
A man with a head in a bag (so he said) and a curved-shaped sword came to me in my chains and said he could deliver me but demanded an exchange: my life as his wife. So: to live married to a stranger whose personality could be terrible but might be agreeable or to be eaten by a sea monster. Being blackmailed into marriage is bad. But I would rather not die for the principle.
When I was a child My sister Kassandra A child likewise Took up an axe. “If no one will believe me,” Said she, “I will do this myself.” And on she marched to the chamber where our newborn little brother lay. “Jealousy” some called it (As if the latest baby was worse competition than the many that had come before) And began to whisper “mad.” Alas! Woe for all the world All the world we know Lies in rusty blood and sifted ashes Because rational heads Using muscled hands Took away an axe. Alexandros Paris, You should have been cleft as she desired.
Kadmos: I’ll start a city here.
Dragon: RRAAARRRGGGHHH!!!
Kadmos: I smite thee, dragon!
Dragon: Ugh! (dies)
Ares: Mortal scum! You killed my sacred dragon! Prepare for some smiting yourself!
Zeus: Now, now, Ares! Don’t kill him. Let him build the city.
Ares (grumbling): Fine, fine. I won’t kill him. Instead he can marry my daughter, Harmonia.
[wedding bells]
Harmonia was the daughter of War (Ares) and Sex (Aphrodite), and her brothers were Fear and Terror, so we just might want to question whether her naming was entirely sincere.
phon-é is not phón-é So my name does not say “voice,” And no one listens to me. Not my father, Ungreat Zeus, who feels empowered to barter me away (Both the first time and the second) He who endorsed the rule that if I ate, I stayed Perverting the laws of hospitality And turning them to a curse. Zeus Xenios, what a lie. Not Hades, my uncle-husband, who showed me pretty jewels, indeed, But did not ask if I wanted them enough to stay eternally Or offer me a choice to come or leave But imprisoned me from love of my face and shape Without a thought of what might be my will. Not my mother, who has never questioned whether I desired to be always at her side Maiden, decorous, flower-bouquet for her to hold and display A fragrance for her to delight in Whatever I might want besides She was right to protest my capture But I should like to ask If she became so angry on my account Or on her own. No use to plant the question, when for me she has no ears. Then those two brats from Athens (Or the one was from some other city, it hardly matters which) Came believing they could steal me from the Underworld Such fools And worse believed it did not matter what I wanted or could do That I either would not or could not stop them Or have any say in the business of my unending life. A trinket to be fought for and won by mortal clods: They actually thought me that. “Wife,” said Hades, for he must ever grind that in, “Two human louts have come to abduct you And are even now roaming the caves in search of this throne-room, To find you and take you back with them.” While he described the inventive torments he meant for them to have in place of me, I thought more and more of what those men must have thought and felt. And grew a burning rage. Lava flows beneath the earth as well as rising through volcanoes. My hands gripped the sides of the onyx throne, and I looked at my chair here. Yes, this seemed right. Let them become what they thought me to be. I rose and left the throne-room, To set the trap for those two “heroes.” A bench prepared, bare stone, but made to look inviting And there the two mortals, weary from hopeless searching, sat And forgot everything. Memory will return if they simply rise, But there is no reason that they ever should. They have no thoughts with which to form an intent No will to carry one out No voice in which to ask for aid And none around who would give it. Let them sit. Their clothes may rot and fall away, but their bodies will not age or die And their minds shall forever be empty. And the longer they remain, the more the stone will cling to flesh For it should be a part of them Inseparable Till no one knows where they diverge Or can imagine one without the other. When Hades, uncle-husband, saw what I had done, His smile grew sour, cheated of the devious torments he had wanted to inflict, But he said only, “Ah well! This works too!” So there the two men sit, empty vases on a shelf To be looked at and amused by. While I sit full of other things.
If you’ve ever heard someone say, “Release the kraken!” in an imposing voice, you can thank this movie.
The Nostalgic Part
I saw this movie as a child when it was originally released. My siblings and I had the action figures, even though the toy company made Perseus look mean and unappealing. But, I mean, Calibos! How could you resist a figure like that? (Though I don’t think my mom was too comfortable with it.) Sadly, in our household we never had the Kraken toy, which was awesome-looking.
For many, many people of my generation, this movie was a spark that got us interested in Greek mythology. Even if it got things wrong, it made us care about the stories.
The Mythological Background
First, we have to get this out of the way:
1. A kraken is actually a giant squid, and comes from Northern European legends, not Greek myth. The Perseus of myth did face a sea monster, however. (In Greek it was labeled as a kétos, a generic term that could include giant fish and whales as well as unspecified menacing sea creatures.)
2. Perseus did not ride on Pegasus; Bellerophon did, when fighting the Chimaira. Perseus had winged sandals to keep him in the air. Pegasus is connected to Perseus, however, since the winged horse reportedly sprang from the neck of Medusa when Perseus decapitated her.
3. Pegasus is a Greek word, not a Roman one, and if you’re going to be pedantic, the proper plural is pegasoi (not pegasi) and you ought to be spelling the singular pegasos or pégasos in the first place.
4. The Titans were a specific group of beings in Greek myth; Medusa wasn’t one of them, and neither was the sea monster that threatened Andromeda.
Next, some other mythological tidbits:
A. Medusa had two sisters, and all three were referred to as Gorgons, although “the Gorgon” would usually mean Medusa. The tradition is a little unclear about whether all three could kill people with a look, and in some accounts Medusa was mortal and the other two were immortal, though all three were daughters of the same two primal deities.
B. In the original stories, there was a king who wanted to marry Perseus’s mother, and Perseus said something careless to him about getting the Gorgon’s head. Unexpectedly the king took him up on it, saying, “Okay, bring it to me.” More unexpectedly, Perseus did so.
C. Curiously, the earliest Greek sources for the Perseus story seem to assume he used a sickle, not Medusa’s head, to defeat the sea monster. The head was a way to kill his human enemies, not a giant creature.
D. Mythology says Andromeda’s mother got the kingdom cursed with a sea monster by claiming to be more beautiful than the Nereids (a group of sea divinities). The movie changes this to the mother saying Andromeda was more beautiful than Thetis (who in myth was one of the Nereids and also the mother of Achilleus).
The Movie
Although the movie doesn’t stay faithful to the original myths, there is nevertheless some good storytelling here. It doesn’t just throw in bits of myth at random, hoping to “look cool,” it uses those elements to create obstacles for the hero to overcome and add complexity to the story.
Focusing on Thetis, instead of a group of Nereids, makes the plot and character motivations easier to follow and relate to.
Making Andromeda the subject of the “more beautiful” boast creates an obvious reason why the daughter, not the mother who makes the boast, is the one being sacrificed.
Calibos is an invention of the movie, but he makes a good villain, and it’s useful to have a human-but-slightly-inhuman antagonist to mess things up so Perseus doesn’t get by too easily. (Calibos is probably inspired by actual-myth-character Phineus, who had been promised Andromeda and therefore hated Perseus, but he was totally human and wasn’t much of a challenge.)
A little thing like saying Calibos’s worst crime was wiping out all the winged horses except Pegasus helps explain why Calibos finds it so easy to trap Pegasus when Perseus struggled to do so: Calibos is an old hand at this. It also provides an unstated reason why he doesn’t simply kill Pegasus outright: having already been turned into a semi-creature for slaughtering winged horses, he’s not going to risk killing the last one and getting cursed even more horribly. We can assume that he plans to release Pegasus once the immediate crisis is over and figures Zeus won’t throw any thunderbolts just for pinning the animal in a cage a few days.
The early sequence of Argos being destroyed is pretty strong stuff, despite the easy-to-spot superimposed images.
Giving Zeus a little theatre model with clay figures of people has no basis in myth that I’m aware of, but it’s a great device for the movie.
Yes, the special effects look dated and often clumsy. There was no CGI back then, and everything was done in-camera or with superimposed images or with stop-motion miniatures. This may be peak Harryhausen, though. Clay Calibos’s head is too big, but Medusa and the Kraken look quite impressive for what they are.
Other Thoughts
Perseus is an idiot for not retrieving his sword near the end. Come on, this is not a helmet lost in the swamp. The sword is right there. Just because someone’s impaled on the blade is no reason not to get it back.
Charon doesn’t belong in this story at all, but he is just the right kind of creepy and adds an extra tone of menace to the approach to Medusa. I do wonder how Perseus paid the fare to get back, though.
Isn’t it an amazing coincidence how the Kraken has an ape-like face so he can look like a certain other movie monster when he reaches out a gigantic hand to take hold of the woman chained up as a sacrifice?
Much of my information on actual Greek myths is derived from Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1-volume hardback 1993 / 2-volume paperback 1996).
