In Homeric epic one of Zeus’ chief concerns is to keep the other gods in check and to reaffirm his divine leadership continually. This is not always an easy task. At the opening of Iliad Book 4, for instance, Zeus is forced to back down from his suggestion that the gods should put an end to the war, and ends up making a compromise agreement with his wife. Yet the respect the other gods have for Zeus is clear: they acknowledge the fact that his decisions carry more weight than any of theirs. In film the same strain is placed on Zeus’ powerful shoulders; he continually reasserts his authority, either with gentle coercion and good humor or with furious anger and bullying. In Jason and the Argonauts, Zeus is the undoubted head of the pantheon and, when Hera decides to aid Jason’s quest, Zeus is perturbed and suggests that she looks after the fate of Jason’s infant sister, a role more becoming for a goddess. But when Hera insists that Jason will be her concern, Zeus concedes that she may help the mortal on five occasions only and adds firmly, ‘‘That is my final word.’’ In The Clash of the Titans the husband-wife relationship is ofless interest than Zeus’ interaction with the other Olympians - both as a group and as individuals. His pre-eminence among the gods is established visually, for only Zeus sits on a throne placed on a high dais. The gods attend on him as if in a formal court audience hall, and as they look up at him on his throne they see lightning beams radiating from his head like a halo (the effect is created by laser beams, a popular special effect in 1980s movies).
By and large, the gods obey Zeus’ commands: when he instructs his brother Poseidon to ‘‘destroy Argos [and] release the Kraken,’’ the sea god readily obeys. And yet Zeus, as we have seen, is the object of the goddess’ smutty jokes and frequently has to contend with the gods’ discontent. When he instructs Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena to aid Perseus by bestowing gifts on them, Zeus specifies that Athena should give the mortal her pet owl. This instruction horrifies the goddess:
Zeus. It is my wish, my command! [Zeus leaves.]
Athena. Never! Let great Zeus rage until even Olympus shakes, but I will never part with [my owl].
As a compromise Athena asks Hephaestus to fashion a mechanical owl as a gift for Perseus. It is a clockwork reproduction of her beloved Baubo which she bestows on the baffled Perseus.
In the Homeric epics the gods are very much concerned with human affairs. One reason for this involvement is the fact that many gods and goddesses who have mated with mortals have human children or human favorites participating in the Trojan War. The gods take sides in the war in accordance with their like or dislike of one side or the other. For example, Athena and Hera, who lost a beauty contest judged by the Trojan prince Paris, are fiercely anti-Trojan, while the winner, Aphrodite, dotes on Paris and favors the Trojans in the war.
This divine partisanship is highlighted in the myth movies too. Concern for their mortal offspring causes Zeus and Thetis to quarrel on several occasions, a conflict which, indeed, fuels the plot of The Clash of the Titans. Thetis is adamant that laws of gender and hierarchy rule in Olympus and that while Zeus’ philandering with diverse mortals and the subsequent birth of a clutch of infants may go ‘‘unnoticed’’ in Heaven, the misdemeanors of any goddess lead to her chastisement. Thetis’ crime of bearing a mortal child, Calibos, is punished with Calibos’ own transformation from a handsome youth into a monstrous demon. Zeus, however, insists that Calibos was disciplined for a crime independent of his mother’s transgression: he allegedly hunted and slaughtered Zeus’ herd of sacred winged horses (only Pegasus remained). For this crime, Zeus declares, is Calibos turned into ‘‘a mortal mockery, a shameful mark of.. .vile cruelty.’’ Thetis weeps and begs Zeus to spare her son, but the king of Olympus is adamant: ‘‘This is my final judgment,’’ he says. But when Zeus’ back is turned, Thetis claims her right to avenge her son and her plan of action for her unrelenting torment of Perseus begins. Nevertheless, at the close of the film, and with Perseus’ triumph over the Kraken, and over Thetis and her son, it is left to Zeus to gloat:
Zeus. Perseus has won. My son has triumphed!
Hera. A fortunate young man.
Zeus. Fortune is ally to the brave.
The interest and involvement ofthe gods in human lives have an important effect on the action of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The gods universalize the action of the poem. Because the gods take interest in human affairs, the events described in the epics are not just particular actions of little significance, but take on a universal meaning and importance that would have been missing without the gods. On the one hand, the involvement of the gods exalts human action. Thus, when Achilles in Iliad Book 1 considers killing Agamemnon, his decision not to kill could have been presented on a purely human level without the intervention of a deity, but we are shown just how critical a decision it is by the involvement of Athena. Throughout the Iliad there is a tendency to present action consistently on two planes, the human and the divine. On the other hand, the gods also serve to emphasize the limitations of man, how short his life is, and, quite paradoxically in view of the previously stated purpose, how ultimately meaningless human affairs are. The same justification for human-immortal interactions can be found in the myth movies. In Jason and the Argonauts the gods of Olympus spend their time meddling in the lives of mortal men, semi-divine offspring, and favorites, who are depicted as clay chess-pieces to be maneuvered by the likes of Zeus and Hera. When Jason is first brought to Olympus, as we have seen, he is placed on a giant chessboard as a pawn in the great Olympian game. Although this has no Homeric (or later Greek) precedent, the rationale for the chessboard image is suggested by Harryhausen: ‘‘It was important to the story that the human characters feared the gods but also saw them as... fickle by treating the mortals as chess pieces’’ (Harryhausen and Dalton 2003:155). Thus, at the end of the film, with the Golden Fleece safely on board the Argo, and Medea’s life having been saved by its magical powers, Zeus is able to say to Hera, over his chessboard: ‘‘For Jason there are other adventures. I have not yet finished with Jason. Let us continue the game another day.’’ In The Clash of the Titans a similar, but more sophisticated, device is used to show how the gods interfere with mortal lives: in the halls of Olympus one room contains, at its centre, a miniature arena with hundreds of tiny terracotta statuettes in niches all around the walls. These are the game-pieces which are taken from their recesses and placed into the center of the arena by the gods. Each game-piece is made in the likeness of a human: Perseus, Calibos, Danae, Andromeda, and Acrisius of Argos all suffer a dramatic turn ofFate when their icons are placed into the arena. Like an ancient Greek magical kolossos or a modern voodoo doll, each terracotta statuette contains the essential life-force of the mortal being. Thus when Zeus decides to end Acrisius’ life and to destroy Argos, he does so by taking the terracotta figure of Acrisius in his hand and crushing the clay to dust. As he does so, the audience is shown Acrisius in this throne room clutching at his heart in the midst of his death throes.
Harryhausen has expanded on his decision to use the arena motif in The Clash of the Titans in some detail:
As it was my task to visualize the story’s events, I was conscious that we had to avoid the same situations seen in Jason, especially in the sequence featuring the gods of Olympus. After reading an early treatment by Beverley [Cross], I felt it required a transition between gods and mortals, similar to the chessboard used in Jason, which communicated to the audience that a deadly game was being played by the gods for the hearts and lives of the Greeks. I came up with using a miniature arena. Behind this ‘‘arena of life’’ were niches containing hundreds of characters reflecting all the Greek legends. Zeus would put the figures into the arena, where the gods would control their destinies. It was a vital tool in introducing the characters of our story, which is evident when Zeus takes the figure of Calibos and commands that ‘‘He shall become abhorrent to human sight,’’ whereupon the shadow of the tiny statue transforms into a monstrous creature. This tells you much about Zeus, and everything about Calibos, before the audience even sees him. (Harryhausen and Dalton 2003:261-2)
Yet despite the gods’ control over the lives and fates of mortal characters, there remains in these films a sense of impending doom for the Olympians. Homer may not have conceived of a end for the gods, since for Homer the Olympians are as deathless as they are ageless. But for Beverley Cross the writing of the film scripts for Jason and the Argonauts and The Clash of the Titans afforded him the postmodern opportunity to tell his audience that these gods, so feared and revered by the onscreen heroes, no longer exist. Their time had past. Thus, in The Clash of the Titans, Thetis, alarmed that Perseus has defied the will of the gods and has completed his task of saving Andromeda by his own mortal bravery, declares that he will set a ‘‘dangerous precedent.’’ She continues:
Thetis. What if there more heroes like him? What if courage and imagination became everyday mortal qualities? What will become of us?
Zeus. We would no longer be needed. But, for the moment, there is sufficient cowardice,
Sloth and mendacity down there on Earth to last forever.
So while human shortcomings remain, the gods will be needed - not to set the precedent for how life should be lived (for the gods of epic and of film do not set the model for a good life, in heaven or on earth), but to terrorize, inspire, and awe mankind. But should Zeus’ vision of the future of the gods fail, he has one more possibility to ensure that, if nothing else, the legends of the Greeks will never be forgotten. Zeus:
Perseus and Andromeda will be happy together. Have fine sons... rule wisely.. .And to perpetuate the story of his courage, I command that from henceforth, he will be set among the stars and constellations. He, Perseus, the lovely Andromeda, the noble Pegasus, and even the vain Cassiopeia. Let the stars be named after them forever. As long as man shall walk the Earth and search the night sky in wonder, they will remember the courage of Perseus forever. Even if we, the gods, are abandoned or forgotten, the stars will never fade. Never. They will burn till the end of the time.
World History
