Disney's Hercules
Gospel music, Greek Mythology, and what I learned from Twitter
(Image of Muses comes from here)
Twitter users are famous for loudly proclaiming what’s the best and the worst of everything from hamburgers to Disney movies.
Like Greek Mythology, the debate never gets old.
Usually I scan these tweets and move on. But last fall (on November 14, to be exact) there was an epic Twitter poll that attracted hundreds of thousands of votes.
It wasn’t about the best movie. The choice was between the soundtracks of four Disney animated features: Mulan, Hercules, Lilo and Stitch, and Aladdin.
Choose three out of four to keep. You could never listen to the songs of the other one again.
I didn’t expect Hercules to be there because I didn’t think of Hercules as having a great soundtrack. I’m a terribly sentimental Beauty and the Beast fan.
Besides, as a Greek myths purist I didn’t pay much attention to the movie when it came out in 1997. I sympathized with the Greek people who thought it was a stunning instance of cultural appropriation.
But apparently there are a lot of Hercules fans.
Lilo and Stitch was chosen to be booted, although it was pointed out that the other three were musicals, whereas Lilo and Stitch was just a movie with some songs in it.
Mulan got the least votes, making it the favorite.
But Hercules nearly beat out the iconic Aladdin for second place.
How is this possible? Is it about the enduring power of the Greek myths to re-invent themselves for every succeeding generation?
Maybe. Probably.
But there is another, powerful reason: the gospel-inspired soundtrack anchored by a group of African-American Muses.
I sort of knew this in the back of my mind. I knew the Muses were Black. But I didn’t know—until I investigated the music—that they had such a big part in the movie.
The decision to combine this genre of Christian music with a decidedly non-Christian story was bold and creative and is attributed to co-director and screenwriter Paul Musker, who explained his idea in this way: “Gospel is a storytelling kind of music. It can be exhilarating, especially when it gets everybody on their feet. We were looking for a modern equivalent for the Greek references and this style of music seemed to be entertaining and a real departure at the same time.”
He defined “A modern equivalent for the Greek references” as that gospel music is about God, and Hercules is about the gods.
But like a lot of explanatory quotes from creative people about their art, I don’t think this one gets to the heart of things.
Christianity has always had an issue with Greek religion, since Christianity in its infancy competed against it for hearts and minds. By the first century AD, the original observance and belief had fragmented and was not the only god game in town, but it was still strong enough that Paul and Barnabas, early Christian evangelists, were hailed as Zeus and Hermes in human guise after they performed a miracle in a small town in ancient Asia Minor (Acts 14:12).
The next twenty centuries or so saw a dynamic duel between Christianity and Greek Mythology. Christianity alternately hoped Greek Mythology would die and at the same time celebrated it for its resilience and flexibility to adapt itself to its circumstances.
Then came Disney’s Hercules.
The story is of a god, Hercules, the son of Zeus and Hera, who is demoted to human stature by the dastardly deed of the villain Hades, god of the underworld. Hercules must win his way back to immortality by going from “zero to hero.”
There are many ways to see the appeal of the story.
For understandable reasons, I want to emphasize the religious.
The plot of the movie follows the basic pattern of creation-fall-repentance-redemption that weaves its way throughout the Bible. Hercules is born and at first is in union with the divine; then a tempter comes in and breaks the relationship, throwing Hercules into the realm of imperfection, confusion, and toil. A quest to find out how to remedy the situation is initiated. Deeds of betrayal, confession, selfless love, and Christlike heroism (by Hercules and his love interest, Megara) follow upon each other in turn, all of which eventually results in resurrection after death, restoring the former relationship with the divine.
This is very different from the original Greek story of Heracles, but the same lineaments are there. He is, in fact, the only hero in the original Greek myths who actually earns immortality through a lifetime of toil. Romantic love, self-sacrifice, things that we Americans (and others who are influenced by a Judeo-Christian worldview) value, are absent from this tale of Heracles. His death is actually a terrible tragedy put in motion by Heracles’ wife Deianeira (Megara is out of the picture, having been murdered by the hero while maddened by the goddess Hera).
The story is fully told in Sophocles’ play The Women of Trachis. Because Heracles appears to be abandoning Deianeira for another woman, she gives him what she thinks is a love potion; it is really deadly poison. Heracles, in agony, begs his son Hyllus to kill him by burning him alive. The presumption, based on inferences from other myths, is that Heracles’ spirit rises to the gods with the smoke of his burning pyre.
Heracles then goes on to marry the goddess of youth, Hebe, and live in bliss with the Olympians.
You can see the faint threads between the two stories showing through in “Go the Distance,” perhaps the score’s most famous song:
“I will find my way—
I can go the distance.
I’ll be there someday
If I can be strong.
I know every mile
will be worth my while.
I would go most anywhere
to feel like I belong.
Much of this is influenced by the soaring, beautiful, desperate and often tragic hope of the aspiring Broadway actor.
But it is really just the human condition: hard work and suffering is our lot, redemption our hope.
And to bring it back to where we started, this is also the emphasis of gospel music.
African-Americans deeply know what it means to toil, to work, to achieve and build great things (though not to be celebrated for them), to hope for redemption, to sacrifice, and to endure tragedy. Their life in the United States has been, to say the least, Herculean.
Gospel music is the anthem of the Black American experience. And gospel has been the Muse of American contemporary music from R&B to rock n’ roll and everything in between.
I think it would be fair to say it is divine.
In an American movie about Hercules, therefore, Black women singing gospel music are the only appropriate choice for the Muses.
As the triumphant final song, “A Star is Born,” of the movie proclaims:
Just remember in the darkest hour
Within your heart's the power
For making you
A hero too!
So don't lose hope when you're forlorn.
Just keep your eyes
upon the skies.
Ev'ry night a star is
(Right in sight) a star is
(Burning bright) a star is born!
Like a beacon in the cold dark night,
A star is born!
Told ya ev'rything would turn out right,
A star is born!
Just when ev'rything was all at sea,
The boy made history!
The bottom line?
He sure can shine.
So where does this leave us?
Where does it leave me, the former eschewer of Disney’s Hercules and sympathizer with the Greek people?
The Greeks have a legitimate beef. But then again, it’s pretty special that anyone is still telling their three-thousand-year-old stories at all.
In 1997, I felt one way. Nowadays I’m going to conclude something different: creativity is always more creative when different human cultures are brought together and interact in dynamic juxtaposition. It’s delicate, it’s complex, but that’s where I stand.
In other words, yes. Not so long ago I would’ve voted to let Hercules go, of those four choices.
But now I know better.
And I’m glad we’re really don’t have to let any creativity go if we don’t want to.
I suspect they had the satyr idea first, and then they cast around for a name that sounded American. Meg = Megara Phil = Philoctetes. I don't know that it was any more complicated than that. But I have no inside scoop on that.
The gospel muses were a highlight of that movie, but what was the deal with depicting Philoctetes as a satyr?