Analysis of ‘Jason and the Argonauts’
These days classical myth comes in many varieties of forms from children’s books, video games, myths from classes in elementary school to college, and one of the most important ways classical myth is shown in the world today is through cinema. Movies can show classical myths in many different ways and many of these movies lose some of the actual meaning from the actual classical myths. I have picked two scenes from the movie ‘Jason and the Argonauts (G:
1963)’ to analyze closely. The first scene I picked is from when Hera interferes in trying to drown King Pelias and when Jason saves Pelias from the river. This is when King Pelias come across the ‘one sandaled man’ (Jason and the Argonauts, 9:30-13:30), the second scene is where
Jason and the Argonauts go to see Phineus a prophet who had lost his sight, this is where Phineus told him how to get by the clashing rocks and gives him an emulate which is shown when they are going through the clashing rocks (Jason and the Argonauts, 53:30-58:30 and 65:00-66:00).
The first scene is when Pelias is being played by Hera the goddess in making him drown in the river that he is riding by. He then gets saved by Jason and realized that he is the man with the one-sandaled. From noticing that he is the one that would come kill him, he invites Jason back into camp and let him sit on his throne. Jason does not even realize that he just met King
Pelias, the one that stole his rightful kingdom. He told King Pelias that he has come to get his rightful kingdom back and to kill King Pelias, but first he is going to get the Golden Fleece. In doing this it will prove that he has the favor of the gods. This is when King Pelias encourages him to go and get the Golden Fleece at the end of the world before killing King Pelias. What strikes me as strange is that when Pelias invites him This scene strikes me back into his camp, he let him sit on his throne, and this does not even give others or even Jason a weird vibe. In this
scene includes Jason, Pelias, Pelias’s son Arcastus, and the god Hera. Most of the scene there was a short part of where they were just sitting there watching some entertainment of female dancers. I assumed that they added this scene into the movie was to keep the audience attention.
With both of these different medias, they both portray the same scene, they also differ in many different levels. I am left in aw that they left quite the amount of detail that they left behind when making a movie adaption. In this scene what seemed relevant to the ancient source was that
Pelias did convince him to go after the Golden Fleece before killing King Pelias. What was different though from the ancient source was that Pelias was not saved by Jason from the river and Hera did not interfere in trying to drown Pelias, so that Jason would be able to save him and that King Pelias would come across the ‘one-sandaled man’. In the ancient source it was aid that
Pelias was performing a sacrifice to Posideon the god of the sea on the shore and he invited many people to it including Jason, Jason lived in the country and crossed the river and lost his sandal. This is when Pelias noticed him and approached him (Trzaskoma et al., 25). In this scene there are no two myths being collapsed into one story. It is noticed that in the film it left out a lot of details that would have been good to add. Through reading though you get more of the emotion and detail then you would get through a film.
In the second scene, it shows when they go visit Phineus the prophet that was blinded. He would tell them what they wanted to know only if they would get rid of the harpies that would attack him every time he starts enjoying a meal. This was his punishment by Zeus and the gods because he told a prophecy that was not true. Once they had gotten rid of the harpies he would tell them how to get past the clashing rocks. He asked Jason in the
