Beowulf - too hot?

[PoolMan]

Hey gang, I was discussing the new Beowulf movie with my lovely wife the other day, and she said she was pretty annoyed that the Beowulf movie had sexed up and Hollywoodized the classic story, particularly around the part of Grendel's mother, played by Angelina Jolie.

Now, I read a little Beowulf back in high school, but one of PoolGirl's majors in university was English literature, and she seems pretty set that while Grendel's mom does indeed figure into the story, there's no seduction attempt at Beowulf. I seem to remember there was.

Can anyone tell me the key differences between the two versions, especially along this theme?

[TheOogieBoogieMan]

I'm actually studying Beowulf right now, as part of my Medieval Literature class. I haven't seen the new movie, but I saw the trailer, so I know what Grendel's mother is like in the movie.

The conflict between GM and Beowulf in the poem is a straight-forward full out fight, definitely not sexual/seductive, and the fact that the poem describes her as a "monster-woman," among other things, tells me that GM isn't meant to be attractive.

According to the poem, Grendel and his mother are direct descendants of Cain, beings of evil. I find it weird that "evil" translates differently based on gender, according to the new movie, especially since Grendel and his mother are, you know, related. You'd think that a mother and her son would look more alike and behave more alike than Angelina Jolie and Crispin Glover.

[Al]

EDIT: Blast! Foiled again by my lackadaisical typing speed!

---

Well, I haven't seen the new Beowulf yet (I was supposed to go to the IMAX theater a few towns over but couldn't make it ) but I've also read the epic more times than I'd care to admit during the course of higher education.

Poolwife is right in saying Grendel's mother doesn't do any seducing in the poem; she actually doesn't accomplish much more than killing some guys, stealing back Grendel's arm, laughing at Beowulf's first few attacks, then dying. That said, however, every single attempted adaptation of Beowulf I've ever seen (except Eaters of the Dead/The 13th Warrior) portrays her as a seductress. I'm 99% sure there's no literary basis for it, I guess it's just something Hollywood has latched onto as the 'demon queen' sort of archetype.

[TheOogieBoogieMan]

gunslingeral said:

That said, however, every single attempted adaptation of Beowulf I've ever seen (except Eaters of the Dead/The 13th Warrior) portrays her as a seductress.

As much as I hated the deservedly-overlooked Beowulf and Grendel (starring Gerard "This is Sparta!" Butler), the movie did a pretty good job portraying Grendel's Mother as she is in the poem, a freaky-deaky monster-momma

[TheLuckyOne]

PoolMan, there is one element I remember from back in my senior seminar class (Postmodern Monsters), when we were analyzing interpretations of Beowulf/Grendel. There's a part in the story where Beowulf is fighting Grendel's Mother and he stabs her with a sword; her blood melts it, almost like the aliens in, uh, Alien. Some scholars have interpreted this as sexual imagery, that the sword represents his *ahem* manhood, and after thrusting it into her, it "melts away," so to speak. (And believe me, you haven't lived until you've heard a guy try to explain that to the one female student who just wasn't getting it. "What we're getting at is that, after thrusting the sword into her, it melts, representing that he was, er, um, well... uh, 'spent.' You see?")

However, this interpretation of the myth is presented as by no means a seduction on the part of Grendel's Mother; on the contrary, it's generally interpreted as symbolic rape by Beowulf. After mortally wounding her son, he invades her dark, wet sanctuary, forces himself on her, stabs her, then wrestles with her until she's dead. Lots of crazy psychosexual stuff going on in that legend, no question.

-D

[PoolMan]

Wow.... thanks all!

So what you're really saying is... Neil Gaiman definitely added his usual sexual imagery into the screenplay. Interesting.

[sarahbot]

I remember Neil Gaiman once wrote on his blog that he was just getting over the fact that his parents would read everything that he wrote when he realized his children would, too.

[pfrsue]

sarahbot said:

I remember Neil Gaiman once wrote on his blog that he was just getting over the fact that his parents would read everything that he wrote when he realized his children would, too.

You know, I think you just destroyed my evening by reminding me of that. *Goes to hide all copies of her book and put a new password on the computer*

[Spiderdancer]

Pick any given classic and some critic somewhere will find a way to interpret it all Freud-like. I found one suggesting Poe's story "The Devil in the Belfry" was actually about him having seen his stepfather having sex with his mother when he (Poe) was a kid based on the overlapping hands of the clock.

I like "pointy sword" jokes as much as the next person, but the fact remains that if you can't effectively make an edged weapon that stays sharp, pointy is the next best bet. Thus there is logically going to be some stabbing in any given medieval-or-earlier type of epic.

Besides, even if the original story DID intend some sort of subliminal imagery, that's a leeeeetle bit different than having Grendel's mother being a shapeshifting supermodel...

[TheOogieBoogieMan]

Well, you know what Moe Szyslak says about Post-Modernism: "Weird for the sake of weird."

[sarahbot]

spiderdancer said:

Pick any given classic and some critic somewhere will find a way to interpret it all Freud-like.

You would not believe the Oedipal reading of Jack and the Beanstalk my film theory TA was telling us about yesterday. Suffice it to say that to maintain the ideal Oedipal relationship with his mother Jack has to destroy a gigantic phallus.

[PoolMan]

God. Sometimes a beanstalk is just a beanstalk.

[Ms. Jellybean]

It's probably not fair for me to flat-out reject Beowulf-the-film like this, but I am refusing to see it on virtue of the fact that it's brutalizing one of my favorite epics. Ever. (Bonus points to me because I've read some of it in Anglo-Saxon.)

The fact that Grendel's mother has become Angelina Jolie demonstrates that Hollywood simply insists on sexualizing everything. And it's not even the fun, subversive, literary kind of sexualizing. I'm all for discussing Ken Kesey's apparent mommy issues and Ralph Ellison's America-as-a-painted-whore as much as the next person, but Hollywood's just slapping us in the face with something that has absolutely no basis in the source material.