But I now realize that the industrial-entertainment complex's educational efforts are actually far more pervasive and subtle than even I could have imagined. A couple of weeks ago I watched a popular film, hoping for just a few laughs: what I got instead was a brilliant re-working of traditional literary themes and devices for the new millennium.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen: any teen who's seen Harold and Kumar go to White Castle is going to
find world lit. class a breeze. I don't know why some critic hasn't pointed out the links between the literary canon and popular film before: Greek scholars have long known that the working title of The Iliad was Dude, Where's my Chariot?Harold and Kumar go to White Castle has all the characteristics of a traditional epic. You might think a quest for White Castle burgers is unworthy of the genre, but no epic hero is really after anything that grand. Odysseus is just trying to get home for god's sake. * Don't get me started on The Iliad--the hero, Achilles, spends a lot of it sulking in his tent. Spoiled brat. And the Táin Bó Cúalnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), the Celtic world's great contribution to the epic tradition, is about stealing livestock.
No, Harold and Kumar are actually an improvement on traditional epic heroes--they're smart enough to know where they live, they can control their tempers, and they're honest enough to pay for their beef fair and square. Now, according to the good people at the National Endowment for the Humanities, the characteristics of an epic hero and his quest are the following:
1) Hero is possessed of supernatural abilities or qualities.
2) Hero has a quest.
3) Hero is tested.
4) Presence of numerous mythical beings, including magical animals, to aid the hero in his quest.
5) Hero's travels take him to a world normal humans are barred from entering.
6) Hero nearly gives up.
7) Resurrection.
8) Hero attains his quest.
First let me address an issue I know some people will bring up. In the traditional epic there's one hero. The fact that Harold and Kumar has two heroes is simply part of the re-imagining of the heroic tradition for our time. We're a culture that likes duos. Batman and Robin. Holmes and Watson. So it's gotta be Harold and Kumar.
1) Supernatural abilities: Our heroes really show what they're made of later in the film, but we do learn very early on that Kumar knows how to score amazingly good pot. A little later we learn that Harold can write financial analyses while stoned.
2) The quest: Get White Castle burgers. Duh.
3) Our heroes are tested in numerous ways: Harold gets thrown in jail and his car is stolen by Neil Patrick Harris. They are both attacked by a raccoon and humiliated by racists.
4) Aided by mythical beings and magical animals: They are helped by a vaguely cyclopean tow-truck driver and get a cheetah stoned and ride it through the wilds of New Jersey.**
4) Aided by mythical beings and magical animals: They are helped by a vaguely cyclopean tow-truck driver and get a cheetah stoned and ride it through the wilds of New Jersey.**
4) Aided by mythical beings and magical animals: They are helped by a vaguely cyclopean tow-truck driver and get a cheetah stoned and ride it through the wilds of New Jersey.**
4) Aided by mythical beings and magical animals: They are helped by a vaguely cyclopean tow-truck driver and get a cheetah stoned and ride it through the wilds of New Jersey.**
5) Our heroes enter a world inaccessible to normal humans: Harold and Kumar pretend to be surgeons in the hopes of scoring medical marijuana and end up being called into an operating room to save a gun-shot man's life. Which they do! It's not a descent into the underworld--but hey, it's something most of the people I know will never do.
6) Harold wants to give up.
7) Kumar psychologically resurrects Harold with an inspiring paean to hamburgers.
7) Kumar psychologically resurrects Harold with an inspiring paean to hamburgers.
And then, as if we didn't have enough literary devices and archtypes already, after Harold and Kumar get to White Castle they realize they're out of money. Just when all seems lost, Neil Patrick Harris appears out of nowhere and pays for their order:
Deus ex machina!
Who needs a liberal arts education when we've got Hollywood?***
*In some of the earliest written versions of The Odyssey, Book Seven, traditionally called "Odysseus at the Court of Alcinous," is actually entitled "If You Lived Here, You'd be Home by Now."
**Okay, it's not exactly magical--but a cheetah that'll smoke pot with you, how cool is that?
***And in less than two weeks a probing exploration of human rights violations will hit theaters: Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Movie studios. Is there anything they can't do?
Deus ex machina!
Who needs a liberal arts education when we've got Hollywood?***
*In some of the earliest written versions of The Odyssey, Book Seven, traditionally called "Odysseus at the Court of Alcinous," is actually entitled "If You Lived Here, You'd be Home by Now."
**Okay, it's not exactly magical--but a cheetah that'll smoke pot with you, how cool is that?
***And in less than two weeks a probing exploration of human rights violations will hit theaters: Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Movie studios. Is there anything they can't do?
1 comment:
brilliant.
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