Liberal Talk Radio

I was putzing around with my new, fancy “On Demand” service from Comcast (had to sign up to get Sopranos!), and I decided to “demand” the film Troy last night. Thankfully, Comcast acquiesced to my demands quickly in what was a surprisingly one-sided negotiation.

Troy is kinda schlocky, but it’s just the kind of popcorn-history big budget epic that I was in the mood for. Anyway, I think Wolfgang Peterson is a pretty good director for this kind of stuff, so I gave it a whirl. They take a lot of liberty with the story (the idea to build the Trojan horse comes like 10 years — not 10 days — after the Greeks land at Troy, for example). I suppose that’s to be expected, but two things struck me in that regard.

First, they took out all the Gods. In the legend, most of the characters are children of Gods or half-children of Gods, and so the Gods intervene at various times and perform magic and sweep people away just before they’re about to die, etc. But all of this was scrubbed out. It was an oddly secular affair. People just killed each other instead.

I think that says something about our culture, that we’re unwilling to accept a “deus ex machina” in the very literal sense of the phrase these days. I had a conversation with a friend several years ago after Star Wars: Episode I came out. There’s a scene where Qui-Gonn (sp?) takes a reading of young Anakin’s blood and determines that he’s going to be a Jedi because his something-or-other (mitochlorions?) are off the charts. My friend posited that Lucas felt compelled to add this bit because these days we need a scientific explanation for everything. Can’t just be magic.

Second, they took out all the money! In the legend, the characters have pretty basic, greedy motives. For example, Paris steals two kinds of booty from Menelaeus: his woman, Helen, and his treasure. But in the film the latter booty is removed to make the whole thing more romantic, I guess. Similarly, King Priam buys his dead son’s body back from Achilles, but in the film, he just delivers a moving speech about fatherhood and Achilles releases the corpse.

These two observations are probably related, of course. Perhaps in our culture, the nobility of not doing something for money is deemed to be God-like behavior, and therefore the Gods are redundant. Or maybe love is such an exalted thing that it needs to be kept from the corrupting power of money. Either way, it’s interesting to note the different value sets between present-day America and Ancient Greece.

PS: They killed Agamemnon in Troy! You can’t kill off Agamemnon! He has to return home and get killed by his wife in retribution for the killing of their daughter which then causes their son to kill their mother and, and, and… well, let’s just say that if Agamemnon had died in Troy, a lot of stuff would be different today.