Capeshit thread (comics and movies)

[Guest]

There is an argument to be made that America has no mythos of its own and this pop culture stuff is the closest thing we have to one.

If you're an idiot, yeah.
There's nothing wrong with liking popular media and there is absolutely no reason why popular media can't be good. But comparing the cultural impact of Spider-Man to the cultural, historical, religious etc impact of the works of Homer or Virgil is just plain ignorance.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

"But Spidermon gets rebooted like every decade. When was the last proper adaptation of The Divine Comedy? Why is it called that anyways? It's not funny."

[Guest]

America has myths, they're just tied to politics and war.more than gods.

[Guest]

America has myths, they're just tied to politics and war.more than gods.

I wouldn't really put American society being built on outright lies in the same category as myths

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Who needs war myths if you can have war gods?

[ban]

Epic poetry, despite its name, are also not necessarily epic in scope. Three Kingdoms had the fate of China at stake, but effectively all Greek tragedies primarily deal with the protagonist's personal journey.

I get the reasoning but for greeks, epic poetry was epic since it spanned quite a large chunk of time. Yes, it wasn't a big conflict like in later years but the "Epos" the style of song using a style called Dactylic hexameter which is just another style of poetry. Later down the line, when those epic poems got written down because oral tradition was breaking, the prose become more simple and were righten closer to a modern day book. The contents, namely the extraordinary feats and length of time are what later gave it, eroneously, the moniker of "Epic" as it originally meant "a spoken tale" akin to a bard's tale around the bonfire. It's why historians come to claim that bards are the true successors to epic poets and not the actual "epic poets" who wrote amazing masterpieces in the style of books.

Regarding the ideas in the poem, the greeks always had one thing in mind : the tale of a single man. Even Illiad is the tale of a single man, Menelaos, he just happens to be outshined by the amazing cast of side characters around him but it's ostensibly a journey about a man that goes to war to rescue his wife and mother of his children, a process that breaks him physically and spiritually, effectively stripping him of what made him Menelaos and he had to be rebuilt from the ground up.

Same with Odysseus. The guy who ruled Ithaka, the guy who fought in the Illiad war is not the same guy who arrived at Ithaka and killed the suitors to reclaim his throne. This was a man that was broken, beaten, humiliated and had to struggle for 10 years with countless ordeals. When he tells King Alkinoos his own story, many thing Odysseus is bragging or how the movies portray him as a poet impressing the court. In reality, Odysseus is like a man telling a war story, a soldier with PTSD wanting to go back home which is why King Alkinoos is moved to tears by his story. It's not because Odyseeus was :

"OH LOOK AT ME I'm THE TRAGIC HERO, please cry"

He just recounted everything in the most dry manner possible, having his survivor's guilt get the best of him. Gone was the jovial joker who would use his cunning to escape from any situation and humour others to get to his goal. Heck, many don't pick up that Odysseus, by the time he reaches Ithaka has massive self-loathing issues due to survivor's guilt and they get even worse when he finds poor Argos, his dog that waited for him for 20 years. A dog that was already old enough to be a proper dog when Odyseeus left for Troy so at worst we're talking about a dog that pushed 30 just to see his old master. The moment he recognises him, despite being transformed into an old beggar by Athena, Argos just goes to him and they stare at the sea until he passes away. That's the reason many recount that scene as a complete tearjerker. It's not that the man lost his dog and it's sad, ihe lost his last friend, a dog that defied nature to wait for him. And they just share a small moment.

It's why the movies miss a lot of the meaning of the suitors bullying him as a scene. It's not Odysseus suppressing his rage and following a cunning plan, it's him being an empty hask, just focused on exectuing a task while the fat fucks threaten him with the worst possible punishments and one even tries to fisfight him for daring to be a beggar. And when Odysseus retaliates by putting up against the suitor, it's an empty fight, it stops because others intervene.

It's why only when he completes the bow ritual that he regains his form and the illusion imposed by Athena breaks, Odysseus has to transform from a complete wreck to a new man, find catharsis within himself and move forward to complete his task. Him shooting the arrow throught the hoops signifies a man who regains focus, a man who completed his journey and now must emerge wiser and the audience has to spiritually grow from that experience as well.

This is kinda what triggers me about most adaptations of Greek mythology, be they video game or movie. It's always about saving the entire world from something (usually Hades and/or the titans because writers are lazy af).
Just compare and contrast the two version of Clash of the Titans: the original dealt with saving a city cought in a pissing contest between Zeus and Thetis (which was utlimately resolved without shaking up the status quo), while the remake had Perseus save all of creation from Hades (plus some dumb crap about humans being pissed at the gods for existing, which ultimately made many human characters - including Perseus - look like dumb and whiny bitches).

Yeah, unfortunately its due to later interpratations of what "epic" actually meant for the people back then and what it signifies now. A significant part of greek myths is that humans often fucking beat the shit out of gods on a frequent basis if needed. Hell, Odysseus at some point had to face off against Poseidon and he beat the shit out of him in a fistfight which ended with the two men realising that it was all pointless in the end, Odysseus trying to reconcile with the proud God and Poseidon realising he was too much of a dick when he could have healed his son and let the whole thing go. The fight wasn't even spectacular in fashion, it was just a brawl in the sand.

Then his sissy as can get pegged by one of his two wives, the idiotic cunt.

What the fuck do you think happened on an almost daily basis at the Marston household?

The best Asian character was obviously Inspector Sidney Wang as depicted by Peter Sellers. More of that, please!
Yellow peril and all that.

FTFY.

My chigger!

"Capeshit is the modern mythos!" - The fat cuckold manchild who analyzes Nu Star Wars toy sales.

Also Linkara's opinion, if I remember correctly.
He probably thinks his epic storyline also counts as a modern mythos.
Let that sink in.

Didn't he pick that up from some comic creator? No joking, wasn't some autist in the 90s who said that and Linkara basically parrots it? Because a lot of pop culturefags repeat that phrase ad nauseam and they are all, mysteriously, in their 40s and 30s

Ironically, the closest thing to a "modern myth" that hits the notes close enough, would Mad Max 2 : The Road Warrior as movie without the larger Mad Max "mythos" surrounding it. And I don't know how much of that is due to George Miller being a greek refuge to Australia or just something else.

SpoilerShow

To be fair, they were taught about how epic poems used to operate back in the day at schools, it's probably not a stretch that Miller just learned about it and just subconciously re-used the method for his film. Heck, a lot of older mangaka were explicitely taught about how epic poems were written after WW2, when Tezuka returned from France and it's why some of the older shounen heroes ape the tragic hero formula way too much and have their adventures span years in just a few volumes.

Seems to me the 'modern mythos' argument is just the latest variant of the 'games are art' argument.

There is an argument to be made that America has no mythos of its own and this pop culture stuff is the closest thing we have to one. The Marxists have been gunning for all of it, even trying to ban classic books like Mark Twain and Laura Ingalls Wilder.

This is your problem as a country, the top brass feeding off that insecurity. It's not exactly subtle and has been repeated but it still rings true :






They are trying to exploit that insecurity and turn you into another South Africa / Albania / any modern country that effectively has no real history beyond chucking spears like an oonga boonga before the Industrial Revolution. Lose the part of culture you have no, as small as it is compared to other countries, and you make the stupid anime images true. Fight for your right to keep those Twain books and other great american writters and poets and don't let your cucked librarians ban them because they happened to live back when negroes picked cotton. Unfortunate circumstances aside, banning them would only lead to a second coming of the dark ages and more empowered to the already brainded waves aping the
>WE WUZ

[Tony Schiavone]

I'd argue the closest thing capeshit has to it's own original myth is Captain America.

Superman is basically midwest Christian Hercules (though there isnt much wrong with that). Batman is the gothic horror tradition spun around so the bad guys are the ones that get victimized for our own catharsis.

The rest is where it rightly belongs in B-movie status. Now that doesnt necessarily make it awful. The best B-movies tend to be character studies. Spideman is relatable in that regard, as are others.

But none of them have anything powerful to say about the human spirit or condition for the ages--just commentary on lives or personalities. And while possibly something favorited by a particular individual, nothing a civilization could really be proud of creating.

[Guest]

Superman is basically midwest Christian Hercules

I'd say he was more Achilles. They're both super strong guys with one, glaring weakness

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

How "glaring" that weakness is depends on whether or not you know magic and/or have access to green space rocks.

[Guest]

Well it wasn't exactly easy to get Achilles in the heel, either