This video can be watched before or after "Avengers: Infinity War" Before the movie was released, the directors had already spoken: Thanos is the protagonist in "Avengers: Infinity War" It seems simples, no big deal. What's the meaning being the protagonist in the movie with another 20 important characters, and probably the reason the people went to the cinema? But that's exactly the point.
I don't want to spoil anything here. I won't use scenes from the movie, nor could I. I just want to tell a story.
"Myth: fantastic story of oral transmission, which the protagonists are gods, demi-gods, supernatural beings and heroes who symbolically represent phenomena of nature, historical facts or aspects of human condition. " Mythology is the study of the myths. The way that we found to signify, to think and rethink about these myths.
The most famous is the greek mythology. And the story I want to tell, and will introduce too, by the hero's name: Theseus. Accepted by his father only after proving his strenght, Theseus was the greatest hero from the city of Athens.
Among his achievments, one stands out: There was a being in Crete. Body of a man, head of a bull. It was seen as a monster, and every nine years some men was sent to his labryinth as offering.
None of them came back alive. It became known as the Minotaur. Theseus voluntarily decides to be part of the next group to be sent to the labyrinth, on the promise of killing the Minotaur.
Ariadne, his lover, gives him a magical sword and a ball of wool, so he can find his way back home. In the labyrinth when he encountered the Minotaur, he killed with one stroke, and found the exit following the of the ball of wool. This is a seminal story.
Identifiable and heroical by nature. It's hard not to hope for Theseus, don't stand besides him. We know that he is doing the right thing, we just know.
With his disadvantage origin, his obstacles overcomed, his passion. . .
everyone sees him as a hero. He is a hero. Theseus symbolizes, in practical terms, some kind of virtue inherent in man: his pure and physical strenght.
His name means "the strong man par excellence", and he's a character, at a certain level, unquestionable. Kill the Minotaur is his apex. But, at what cost?
Borges wrote: "Every nine years, nine men enter the house so that I may deliver from all the evil. I hear his footsteps or his voice at the bottom of the stone galleries and run happily to look for them. The ceremony lasts a few minutes.
One after another, they fall, without my blood-stained hands. Where they fell, they stay, and the corpses help distinguish one gallery from others. I ignore who they are, but I know that one of them prophesied at the hour of death that one day my redeemer would come.
Since then, loneliness does not hurt me, because I know that my redeemer lives and that at last he will rise from the ash. If my ear reached all the rumors of the world, I would perceive his steps. Let's hope it may it lead me to a place with fewer galleries and fewer doors.
What will my redeemer be like? - I wonder. Is it a bull or a man?
Is it perhaps a bull with the face of a man? Or will it be like me? " This is not the whole text, but is the catharsis of what Jorge Luis Borges writes in his short "The House of Asterion", published in Brazil in the book "The Aleph".
Justifying the name of one of the greatest titles of Argentine literature, what Borges does, is to give voice to the Minotaur itself. A lonely suffering creature who believed it was doing the right thing. Theseus killed Asterion with only one stroke.
Would you believe me if I said he did not even resist? It's revisionist, but that's precisely why it represents the deepest exercise in mythology. And in that way, to say that superheroes are modern myths is no exaggerated at all.
They represent values, party and ideas that we know we should hope for. Present, undeniably, in the collective consciousness "Avengers: Infinity War" is the apex of a concrete popular mythology, but also is a delicate proposal of sensivity. That's because Thanos is in the movie, what the Minotaur is in Borges' short: the protagonist of the story.
A story predisposal externally not to look at him that way, that automatically marginalizes everything that is not unquestionable, that not wear the superhero costume, and rethink the story that we thought we were going to see is relevant for one reason: empathy. Thanos is not the idea that comes to confront us. In the movie, it's the ideia that we follow, so it may be wrong, we can disagree but.
. . he makes us sensitive to it.
and this exercise is what shows us how many difficulties, how many attempts, how many sacrifices this being went through also makes us realize that what we have become accustomed to vilanize, also has its truths. And right or wrong, he believes them. He needs them.
It is harder to point the finger when you find out what the other person feels, and maybe, just maybe, he didn't want all that either. My name is Henrique and I had no pretension with this video, all we do here in the channel is usually much more planned, edited and laborious but I decided to adopt a simpler format just not to let this get swept under the carpet. If you're new in here, check it out the other videos, we have tons of great and much more complex content, and I would like to thank Gabe for presenting to me the Minotaur tale.
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