I found your entry interesting so I’ve added a Trackback to it on my Journal…

Or perhaps “knocks your block off” would be a better phrasing.

“Hero” was a radical departure in both style and content for Zhang Zimou. Many people see “Hero” as his apology to the Chinese government and a tactic to lift some of the pressure off himself. (Not that I blame him.) After choreographing a lot of the spectacle of the latest Summer Olympics in Beijing, he has now come under fire from anti-government groups for what they see as his 180-degree turn in support of the government, and has been very vocal that he is “not interested in politics.”

I don’t think we can take this one director’s very specific political and artistic journey as truly indicative of an entire culture’s outlook. Maybe partly indicative. Maybe.

Totally agree about the Mycenaean kings.

The first is different values. I don’t think Americans misunderstood the point of Hero — they just disagreed with the moral. But story wise, there was nothing difficult or boring about the movie. On the contrary, it was beautiful and well-executed (excuse the pun).

But there are also different literary conventions. Sometimes those might not be as effective on different audiences.

Example. In the Shahnamah, eleventh century Iranian epic, there is an episode in which the hero is challenged to 14 duels. Whichever side wins the most of the duels wins the field. Modern rules of fiction would like some suspense to be involved in this. Maybe the hero should lose a few. Or maybe he should at least doubt his ability to win them all. Or maybe we should at least not be told he wins them all before he does. But the hero wins all, has no doubts, no flaws and we are told all this in advance — but have to slug through detailed descriptions of all the fights anyway.

Now is this is this a matter of values or literary skill? Perhaps values are at stake. Perhaps medieval Iranians preferred heros with no faults, who won every single fight, whereas Americans like to cheer on an underdog who only triumphs after enormous struggle.

Or perhaps Ferdowsi just didn’t think that one through and would have made it more suspenseful if he’d had a good critique group or literary agent to suggest the change to him.

@ Megs: Every rule has it’s exception (including this one, they’re just few and far between)

The bit about the distinction between SF/fantasy brings to mind ancient literature for me–to use specific examples, Homer’s Iliad and Vergil’s Æneid. Ancient Greek literature (and Roman, but to a lesser degree) has the basic assumption that everything out of the ordinary can be traced back to the gods’ direct interference; all of the Greek heroes are descended from gods, usually within one or two generations. If they had been written now, they would be firmly placed in the “fantasy” category, but back in the day they were considered more or less historical (or, in Vergil’s case, political propaganda, but never mind that.) In Hindu tradition (and I’m a bit hazy on this, so please someone correct me if I get it wrong) most heroes are considered the reincarnation of other heroes or gods, like Krishna. Western culture tends to view this with a bit of scepticism.

Back to what you said about different views of war (manly-man versus horrible atrocities) I would like to add that causes of war have also shifted dramatically, as have the perceptions of said causes. Modern warfare (i.e., Crusades and after) tends to have decidedly moral underpinnings (at least in the West. I’m going to be paranoid about making universal assumptions now.) However, back in the Bronze Age, it was nothing of the sort. War was more or less just an alternative form of trade, with the primary intent being slaves and loot. Soldiers were more armed bands of brigands than armies, and usually only two or three cities would be involved in any given conflict (overlord empires notwithstanding.) And even the nature of the slavery was different, because families were usually kept together rather than deliberately separated. To modern sensibilities, the thought of attacking someone just to take their gold and women seems pointless and cruel, but then it was just business as usual. I imagine that if you transplanted a Bronze Age Mycenaean king to now, he would be (a) horrified at the sheer numbers of people involved in warfare, (b) amazed by our simply leaving the survivors to deal with the hell we’ve created, and (c) perplexed why we were getting so worked up over usually minor ideological differences.