La Ron S. Readus
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Blood of Zeus: Hera Deserves Better (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2020-11-02 21:00:03 +0000 UTCMy NaNoWriMo project this year is basically Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, but it’s Hera relocating all of Zeus’s illegitimate children she tormented over the years to modern times so she can seek their forgiveness and work on bettering herself.
Oh, no; I’m DEAD serious. I legit decided that this was going to happen the moment I finished watching the final episode of this show.
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Readers, I don’t think I like Blood of Zeus
Don’t get me wrong. It tells a pretty decent story for utilizing Ancient Greece and Greek Mythology, and is a pretty decent addition to the ever-growing list of adult-oriented animation being produced by Powerhouse Animation.
/But after I finished the 8 episodes that consist of the first season and came to the conclusion that I didn’t really dig it, I legit contemplated to myself for a while the main reasons why./
And it wasn’t anything nitpicky like fluidity of the animation or story semantics like plot holes and the like.
The actual reasoning I gathered was actually a bit more revealing to me, because it caused me to question how I feel about Greek Mythology as a whole, and whether or not I could genuinely still enjoy the original stories and the more contemporary ones that are heavily inspired by it.
/And it all started with not just the show, but how Greek Mythology regularly depicts the goddess Hera./
So, a few spoilers for the beginning of Blood of Zeus. But if you’re any and all familiar with Greek Mythology and how both the gods and the more popular heroes in Greek Mythology work, then nothing I’m about to explain to you is surprising.
You see, the show is about Heron who -- as you can imagine -- is another one of Zeus’s bastard offspring fated to save the world; this time from a plot involving a fairly different take on Greek Mythology’s version of the Giants.
/His mother, Elektra, was a queen to a very asshole king. So when Zeus took on his likeness to fool around with her -- similar to how he presented himself to Heracles’s mother Alcmene -- she legit thought that he had the ancient Greek version of D.I.D. or schizophrenia because of how night and day their personalities were. But she eventually was able to figure out that he wasn’t her husband and Zeus revealed himself to her./
However -- also like in stories involving Zeus’s human-born offspring -- Hera found out about the affair, and was able to convince the REAL king that Elektra was pregnant with twins and that one of them wasn’t his.
So upon Heron and his brother’s birth, he vowed that he would kill the one that wasn’t his.
/But Zeus intervened and spirited Elektra and baby Heron away to a small town, protecting it from Hera’s gaze by concealing it in a fog formation until Heron’s call for adventure eventually happened./
Now the reason why I said that Hera has acted like this in other stories, is because there are in fact other stories like this.
Out of all of the stories in Greek Mythology featuring women -- and other goddesses -- that Zeus seduced and the offspring of the unions, you’d imagine that she’d get tired of Zeus’s shit and put him in check about it.
But no. In just about every story telling the tale of either an ancient Greek hero or god in which it was revealed Zeus was the father, Hera instead takes out her aggression on the woman that was seduced, the child that was conceived, or both.
When Zeus seduced the goddess Leto and conceived Apollo and Artemis, Hera cursed her so that she couldn’t give birth anywhere on Earth where the sun shone, and had to go to a giant rock in the middle of the ocean to give birth to them because it wasn’t an island yet, and therefore “wasn’t on the earth” after being hunted by a giant snake sent by Hera.
When Heracles was conceived, she literally forced the goddess of childbirth to sit with her legs crossed and clothes tied in knots to keep him from being born, and then proceeded to drive him mad enough to kill damn near every family he decided to start.
One of the only exceptions to this rule was Zeus’s first human son Perseus, well known by the mainstream media thanks to both the original 1981 film and the 2010 remake Clash of the Titans.
/But even in the original film that loosely adapted the adventures of Perseus and attempted to tie them all up to fit one overall narrative, her feelings for Perseus and his mother Danae were made clear once she found out not only about her father casting the two of them out into the sea, but mostly about the affair/ (Why should I care or show any pity? Let the girl drown)
Ma’am. Your husband literally transformed to rain in order to achieve physical contact with her. How do you consent to that??
Basically, what I’m getting at, is that while Greek Mythology is constantly recalled and meme’d for Zeus constantly staying Horny on Main, Hera is ALSO constantly depicted not only refusing to check Zeus on his shit, but for punishing the women and goddesses he seduces along with the offspring.
Women -- mind you -- that are either tricked into thinking they are having relations with their marital partners, or encounter him through forces of nature that others would think nothing of when it comes to weathering them.
Like, can you imagine having to worry about Zeus impregnating you every time you had to go out in the rain or snow...in the form of the rain or snow?
Even when I learned about this learning Greek Mythology in High School, I was all like “None of this sounds fair!”
That’s because it’s not. Women in Greek mythology have always received the short end of the stick when it comes to the actions brought upon them by its male figures.
The reason why Athena punished Medusa by turning her into a Gorgon was because she was “seduced” by my favorite Greek god Poseidon and they had sex in her temple!
You’d imagine that because she was Zeus’s favorite among his children that she’d have the nerve to tell Poseidon off about what he did without having to worry about being reprimanded for it.
But did she confront her uncle about what he did before immediately punishing one of her most faithful priestesses? No. Because in Greek Mythology, the only way women can express their emotions and wrath brought upon by the patriarchal pressures provided in both human and Olympic society is by punishing the innocent victims of the male individuals who benefit from it.
/Hera is not only a prime example of it by the time the story in Blood of Zeus happens, but also the product of how the system has both failed and twisted her./
Now am I saying that women are not capable of manifesting said feelings and desires toward the third party when it comes to reacting to the unfaithfulness of their partners? Absolutely not. I have met plenty of women that have shown complete disdain for their partner for cheating, the person they cheated on them with, and the innocent end product of said affair.
Even if everything was initiated by the partner in question, even if the third party wasn’t aware that they were in a relationship, and even if they had no idea the woman in question was part of the picture.
But I’ve also seen men react the same way; even more so because their very masculinity constantly feeds their ego that they have to make an example of any and all others that might have eyes for their suitor, and go EXTRA hard in either trying to catch their partner slipping or punishing the uninformed party involved in the affair if they are.
Hell, just a few months ago, my sister told me a story about how her at-the-time boyfriend -- someone who has been in my life long enough that I consider them family -- broke into her high-rise apartment near the midtown/downtown border of Detroit while she was hanging out with her girlfriends because he thought she was sleeping with someone other than him, and caught him asleep in her bed when she got home. I can confirm that men are capable of just as much crazy bullshit as women have been depicted performing in media for YEARS.
The fact that Greek Mythology constantly depicts Hera as such a scornful entity that always goes after the women Zeus seduces and the offspring his affairs produces -- when they are always the innocent party in this case -- as opposed to Zeus himself, and that those who write in the realm of what’s established about Greek Mythology never change that aspect about it, only helps solidify a super-strong opinion about women that the genre has about them overall that’s deeply rooted in sexism and patriarchal rule
/Blood of Zeus tries to fix this by having his affair with Elektra and Heron’s conception be the final straw that sends her to war with Zeus. So much so that she’s willing to resurrect one of the greatest evils the world has ever seen in this version of the mythos in order to bring about his downfall./
But in doing so, she’s still taking out her frustrations on not only Electra and Heron -- the innocent party affected by Zeus’s actions -- but on Olympus itself.
/And this depiction only helps confirm how she’s usually shown in the myths; a cold and scornful goddess who has no love for any of Zeus’s children other than the ones she gave birth to (Another one of Zeus’s bastards), and takes out her agressions on individuals lesser than her who are nothing but innocent bystanders of Zeus’s escapades, instead of either discussing things with -- or throw some hot grits on the face of -- the one who truly did her harm first and foremost./
/(You should have thought about that when you slept with that hoar) *Sighs* She wasn’t a hoar. She was a queen who thought her husband had mood swings, but go off, sis.../
Readers, I don’t think I hate Greek Mythology.
But the amount of misogyny within it and how much it leans into favoring the patriarchal figures within it by constantly villainizing its important female characters leaves me tired.
Blood of Zeus TRIES to make a statement about this by using the one story element people like to reference about Greek Mythology in regards to Zeus and ask the question, “What if Hera finally had enough of his shit?”
But because of how she’s so commonly depicted in these situations, despite finally showing her direct her aggressions his way where they belong, they feed the fire that is Hera constantly depicting herself as villainous to the innocent bystanders that are both born and victimized from Zeus letting loose the Goose.
/Thus solidifying -- even in works that are completely conceived outside of what has already been told about the mythology -- that this violent, scornful and downright unfair depiction of not just this one goddess, but women in general, is more common than you think./
It would be different if Zeus and Hera were properly depicted actually communicating their frustrations with each other and came to a mutual understanding of how their relationship would and should work. After all, Zeus even says in the show that the Greek gods are fallible and that has been true in pretty much every “official” depiction of them; they mess up just like us.
So if they’re capable of that, then that means they’re also capable of properly discussing and expressing their feelings, wants and desires with each other. Maybe even come to a mutual understanding involving ways their relationship can be saved as a result.
I mean, if Will and Jada can be in an open relationship and be genuinely happy together for as long as they have been thanks to proper amounts of communication with each other in order to reach that conclusion, then Zeus and Hera have no excuse.
Blood of Zeus could’ve been a great opportunity to do something interesting and fresh with how certain elements of Greek Mythology have been depicted with the gods and the victims of Zeus’s exploits since we became old enough to meme them.
/Instead, it just added more fuel to the fire to the aftermath of his usual escapades and produced a story that resulted in so much unnecessary tragedy. And all because two gods couldn’t be bothered to agree on marriage counseling and couples therapy./
But, I digress, Readers. Your homework assignment for the day:
Write in the comment section below what you thought of Blood of Zeus if you’ve seen it.
Or, if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, what story you first heard in the collection of Greek Mythology that initially told you that they didn’t really have that much respect for women.
Even better: Write in the comment section below a story in Greek Mythology you heard that doesn’t villainize women by restricting their actions to fit the patriarchal systems represented in them.
Either way, I’d love to know your thoughts.
