The use of mythology in Clash of the Titans

Clash of the Titans

The film Clash of the Titans (Desmond Davis, 1981) has a plot derived from Classical mythology, specifically retelling the myth of Perseus and his battle with both the Medusa and the Kraken. The film utilizes these elements in order to create startling visual images using effects method of the time, and the sense of reality achieved is of a high order. The reason why Perseus undertakes these adventures is to rescue Andromeda before she is forced to marry a monster, and Zeus creates these obstacles as tests along the way. Scholars have examined the meaning of the Perseus myth and link elements of the myth to the modern mythology of Freudian psychoanalysis and similar ideas about psychology and society, and though the filmmakers may not have had the same sort of concepts in mind, some are inherent in the myth and so can be discerned in the film as well.

The symbolic frame for the mythology considers that the people form cultures with their own rites and ceremonies, mythology, heroes and stories as unique as any other culture.

The Greeks developed over time a massive and complex mythology that explained in animistic, anthropomorphic terms many of the natural phenomena seen in the world around them and at the same time propounded a direct relationship between themselves and the gods as part of that explanation. In mythology, the Oedipus myth suggests that the hero is challenged and reformed by his encounter with his anima in the form of Jocasta, but his daughter Antigone is herself faced with her animus in the form of her father and all that he represents. Even a superficial reading of the story and an examination of the mythology behind it points to the fact that Antigone's character has been formed from her relationship with her father. Her relationship with her mother is secondary and indeed only sketchily formed at all in the context of the myth. Jocasta plays a role that is vital more because she is the mother as well as the wife of Oedipus than because she is the mother of Antigone. Elements of this myth are apparent in the way Perseus seeks to reconnect with the mother and rebuild the family lost so long ago. The godly world inhabited by these characters is a world where human passions have been projected on the deities so that rather than act as deities might be expected to, keeping some distance from the passions of the world, they instead exhibit human passions heightened because they are part of the behavior of the gods.

Thus, the way the gods are portrayed in the film mirrors how they are depicted in the mythology of ancient Greece. The gods in Greece could communicate through oracles, and the natural world was explained in terms of direct and immediate action by a pantheon of gods and goddesses. These gods and goddesses reside on Mount Olympus and interact as they please in the affairs of human beings. This complicates the lives both of the gods and of men. Some of the complexities of Greek mythology can be seen in the film, with connections between people and events carrying out over time. Clearly, there are certain human needs that are satisfied by these stories and that help shape these stories in a certain way. There is a need for heroes, and there is a need for direct human communication with the gods. These stories help explain a difficult world, a world that may seem to be governed by rules and powers beyond human comprehension. The stories are an attempt to explain those powers and in a way to give them a human face -- it may be a god behind the face, but the gods are conceived in human terms.

Peer W. Rose uses the film in his class as one of the texts by which to teach about Greek mythology and its deeper meanings. Rose notes first the way the film shows an obsession with cerain Freudian themes, and he finds that his students are able to see these themes as well:

On the whole, the most successful aspect of the experiment is the students' application of the psychoanalytic approach to the film. While there are those who inevitably explain the relative absence of the mother as due to the fact that the Greeks liked incest whereas it is not so popular in America, many recognize the ways in which the film demonstrates the de facto return of the repressed unconscious material. (Rose 307)

Rose cites the repeated imagery of flying in the film, finding that this matches what critic Philip Slater says about the Freudian and phallic images in the Perseus myth. Rose refers to this film, and several others of a similar nature, as modern versions of the myths, to a degree cut down from the original in order to something more visceral and more direct. In a film like this, the student has "an opportunity for assessing the concrete differences between the ideological norms of male-female relations in their own society and those explored in ancient Greek myth" (Rose 310).

Stephen R. Wilk considers the film and the way it is designed and also finds elements of the Greek period in the film. He refers tom the designs of special efercts artist Raym Harryhausen when he notes, "Critics have dismissed this sort of animation as 'kitsch,' but I note that Harryhausen often brings to life figures very similar to those in the Greek vase paintings" (Wilk 209). Wilk at the same time notes the way the filmmakers take liberties with the details of the mythological story, such as having Perseus travel on Pegasus instead of using the flying slippers, and with a two-headed Cerberus rather than the three-headed creature of myth. In the myth, Andromeda is supposed to marry the human Phineus, while in the film, the groom is the monstrous Calibos: "The sea monster, here called the Kraken (!!), and Medusa herself are imagined as very different creatures from any previous representations, ancient or modern" (Wilks 210). At the same time, the essentials of the original story are maintained to a greater degree than for other film versions of the ancient myths. The film begins in Argos as Acrisius casts out his daughter and her child, the infant Perseus, angering the gods (and specifically Zeus) by the way he treats his own daughter.

Certain silly elements are added for the film, such as the mechanical bird that only Perseus can understand, and the three Graiae, whom Wilks sees as mirroring the three witches in Macbeth and not mythology at all. The mythology of the Greeks is tied directly to the astronomical system left to us by the Greeks, meaning the fact that "the principal figures are immortalized in constellations" (Wilks 214).