Mythopoetics

  I thought it was rather curious that one of the few Greek kings of the Iliad that returns home alive, the blond Menelaus, was killed by Eric Bana at the doors of sacred Troy as a prelude to the war. The version, indubitably unsuitable for the rapsodos of the Mycenaean courts –which sang the myth to the heirs of the Atreidai- would have surprised greatly Homer for -as Borges noticed- Paris and Hellene are but a footnote to the epic. Hollywood’s versions of classical myths have always produced the condescending smile of theorists of culture and historians. To Adorno and Horkheimer [ Dialectic of Enlightenment ], culture industry was a form of mass deception. However, in order to have a deception we need to have a real thing which is being supplanted, and in relation to the Iliad (and myth in general) there is not such a thing. Besides the fact that on the big screen we are only seeing Brad Pitt and never Achilles (Hollywood actors are always themselves, in opposition to what trage...