"Like Kurosawa I make mad films"

[larryhammer]

Ten things I learned from reading the Aeneid:

1. If you whinge every step of the way but still do the work,* you too can be immortalized as a pious national hero.
   
   
2. Dido is a shotacon perv. She may rationalize fondling and sleeping with ten-year-old Ascanius** as a substitute for his inaccessible father, but really, it's creepy.
   
   
3. Camilla apparently studied wire-fu at a Hong Kong temple, where she learned how to run over stalks of grain without bending them and fight two men at once with flying kicks.
   
   
4. I can think of few births more disorienting that being transformed from a ship into a nymph. Even if it's with your fleet-sisters.
   
   
5. Virgil's strong suit was not internal struggles with strong desire. (Someone should hire Ovid for a ghost rewrite of book IV.)
   
   
6. Nor were transitions.
   
   
7. Nor women.*** In fact, if you're a female character, avoid at all costs being cast in a work by Virgil.
   
   
8. He was, however, good at pacing and rhythm and bits of Cool Shit (see 3 & 4).
   
   
9. While it's not clear whether replacing anyone with a ninja would improve the story, Aeneas would be much more interesting as a samurai -- say, the leader of a band of ronin. Preferably played by Toshiro Mifune.
   
   
10. Fifth time's the charm.

And now I can stop trying to read it, because I finally have.


* Yes, Aeneas whinges much less in the second half, but this can be attributed almost entirely to the fact that he's hardly ever on stage -- and when he is, he's too busy fighting a war. I was amused by a moment when he starts grumping but is interrupted by Mom before he can, as it were, get up a full spleen of steam.

** Actually, Ascanius's age confuses me -- he seems to waver from about ten to his mid-teens. I may have missed a detail that nailed it more exactly. At the time Dido held him in her lap, I had him pegged as ten.

*** Virgil's are all either paragons or raving psychobitches, and available data suggests he thought the former a developmental stage leading to the latter. Camilla is the exception, and she's undone by "a female's love of plunder and of spoils."

---L.

Comments

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

Camilla-the-War-Mare says, yeah, so? You got issues with kung-fu warrior grrlz?

Toshiro Mifune as Aeneas: *brain dribbles out ears* (in a good way, mind)

[larryhammer]

No prob at all with she-fu warriors. They fun. 'Twas a pity Camilla got so little stage time, and so long delayed after her teaser.

I'm right, though -- the Trojans are ronin. They totally are.

---L.

[enrobso.livejournal.com]

I never made it through Th Aeneid so I admire your determination.

And as a possible reward, I thought you might enjoy this. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHzl-Q9El6Y) Shakespear's Scottish play as rewritten by Eminem and performed by the Lego theatre company.

Again, fifth time's the charm

[larryhammer]

'K, now THAT's amusing.

---L.

[sharonskinner.livejournal.com]

*rotflmao*
Number 9. Number 9. Number 9.

[larryhammer]

I'm right, aren't I?

---L.

[sharonskinner.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. A whinging ronin leader. I can picture it now.

"I might as well just commit sepuku and be done with it. Only it would be painful. And messy."

But it makes me wonder if you're old enough to remember Mifune, or just an old (meaning the age of the films) movie buff.

[larryhammer]

Old movie buff -- with a side order of Japanophilia left over from when we lived there a year, as a kid. Though I am old enough to have watched Shogun when it was first broadcast.

---L.

[sharonskinner.livejournal.com]

Ah.

When Shogun came out, I was stationed aboard the USS Jason. We spent a month in Yokosuka, Japan. While there, we went to see the film in English, with Japanese subtitles. A very interesting experience.

[larryhammer]

Heh. Yeah, that must have been an interesting experience indeed.

---L.