Cleaned Up Disney’s Movie Version Of Hercules Leaves Out Seamy Details Of The Original Story
Woe to you, Southern Baptist parents, if the animated film “Hercules” inspires your impressionable youngster to investigate the classical roots of Disney’s contemporized and sanitized story. Say what you will about Michael Eisner, he’s a darn sight more family-friendly than the ancient Greeks.
Gone from the Disney version, presumably down the same sinkhole that swallowed the grim, heart-rending tragedy of Victor Hugo’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” are the madness, murder, incest and cannibalism of the Greek gods.
In tales from antiquity, Hercules was the bastard son of the god Zeus and a human mistress. Zeus’ jealous wife, Hera, tried to kill the baby Hercules and, failing that, later caused him to go mad, leading him to slaughter his wife, Megara, and their three children.
Hercules may have been an Olympian blueblood, but his forebears were pure trash. His daddy, Zeus, got to be king of the gods after making his own royal father, Cronus, disgorge all of Zeus’ brothers and sisters, who then whipped their papa and put him in prison. Cronus had it coming. He married his sister and castrated his father, Uranus, before deposing him. Uranus, by the way, was married to his mother. And so it goes.
In the Disney version, Zeus and Hera are a happily married pair who give birth to a bouncing baby god, Hercules. Herc is kidnapped by agents of Hades, turned nearly mortal, and grows up as a klutzy teenager. His challenge is to become a brave warrior and avoid the pitfalls of celebrity while on a journey of self-discovery.
Understandably, Disney will sell a lot more loot to the wee ones with its sugary version than with one true to its literary sources. Nobody was fool enough to market a “Deliverance” Happy Meal, and inasmuch as kids’ movies these days are as much commercials for the licensed merchandise as anything else, the Disneyfication of myth, legend and literature makes good business sense.
Herewith, the classic vs. the cartoon:
Hercules
Myth: The son of Zeus and Alcmene, a mortal woman. Hera, Zeus’ goddess wife, is not pleased about the love child’s existence and sends two serpents to his cradle, but the precocious infant strangles them. Hera later commands Eurystheus to be Herc’s taskmaster, testing the man-god with various adventures called the “Twelve Labors.”
Movie: The entirely legitimate infant son of Zeus and his loving wife Hera. Hades, lord of the underworld, dispatches his hapless henchmen Pain and Panic to kidnap baby Herc and feed him a potion to make the god-child fully mortal and therefore not a threat to Hades’ plans to mount a “hostile takeover” of Olympus. The baby fails to drink every drop, which leaves him with superhuman strength. A kindly couple rescues him from Pain and Panic, who have morphed into two serpents.
Megara
Myth: Hera’s hatred of Hercules is so great she afflicts him with madness, during which he kills his wife, Megara, and their three children. The labors and service under Eurystheus are a form of purification and atonement for the murders.
Movie: Called “Meg” in the film, she’s a coy dame with a past. Though initially pressured by Hades to entrap Hercules, she falls for the hero, who eventually, Duke-of-Windsor-like, renounces his Olympian home to live on Earth with his darlin’ Meg. Mama Hera approves.
Hades
Myth: The name refers to both the underworld - the realm of the dead - and the god who rules it. In the last of Hercules’ labors, he descends into the “lower world.” Hades permits Hercules to take the ferocious three-headed dog Cerberus to the upper air, provided he can do so without using weapons.
Movie: The lord of the underworld, a satanic figure who is evil and conniving, but in the relatively non-threatening style of a showbiz agent. When Hades captures the soul of the dead Meg, Hercules journeys to the underworld and risks death to fish her from the river of souls (stealing a plot line from the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice).
Hydra
Myth: In his second labor, Hercules wields a mighty club to slay the Hydra, a fearsome nine-headed monster ravaging the country of Argos.
Movie: In an effort to kill Hercules, Hades sets up various challenges for him, such as a daring encounter with a 30-headed Hydra. In this way, some of the mythological Hercules’ penitential labors are re-imagined as tests of courage.
Zeus and Hera
Myth: Zeus is father of the gods and ruler of Olympus. Hera, Zeus’ wife, is also his sister. Although she is the goddess of marriage, conjugal life with her straying husband is rarely the epitome of domestic bliss.
Movie: The Ward and June Cleaver of the Olympian court.
Pegasus
Myth: When Perseus (another of Zeus’ half-mortal by-blows) severs the snake-haired head of the Gorgon Medusa, the winged horse Pegasus springs from her blood as it touches the ground. Pegasus aids another hero, Bellerophon, in his fight against the ravaging Chimera.
Movie: Herc’s sidekick, awarded to him as a present at birth, joins him as a fully grown winged steed as Herc advances into heroic manhood.
The Satyr
Myth: A half-man, half-goat creature with cloven hooves and horns, dedicated to unrestrained pleasure (often sexual) and revelry.
Movie: Philoctetes, Hercules’ amusingly grouchy trainer is introduced as a ladies man, but one with a cartoonish, va-va-va-voom innocence.
Muses
Myth: The nine daughters of Zeus and the goddess of memory, Mnemosyne. Each symbolized a particular department of literature, art or science. They were: Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Euterpe (lyric poetry), Melpomene (tragedy), Terpsichore (dance and choral song), Erato (love poetry), Polyhymnia (sacred poetry), Urania (astronomy) and Thalia (comedy).
Movie: Five only - Calliope, Melpomene, Clio, Thalia and Terpsichore. They serve as a funky, African-American girl-group Greek chorus, a Motown-meets-Thebes quintet that comments on the drama.