Personal thought
A not so small personal thought, because this is something that has been weighing on me everytime I see a post about it on every social media platform. And also because I feel more sensitive in July, probably it's because of my birthday...
One of the things I’ve always loved most about mythology is how many different interpretations can coexist.
You can prefer a tragic Ganymede, or a happy one. A Ganymede who was taken against his will, one who chose to leave, one who loves Zeus, one who hates him, or anything in between.
You can tell the story of Hades and Persephone as a tragedy, a romance, a complicated relationship, or reinterpret the circumstances of the abduction entirely. You can choose between different traditions surrounding Medusa, focus on one specific source, combine several of them, or create something new from what came before.
You can stay as close as possible to ancient sources, or use mythology as the foundation for something completely different.
And, of course, you can dislike any of these choices. It's okay, I have my preferences too!
Personally, as much as I love tragedy and drama, I sometimes find myself more interested in interpretations where relationships are given more emotional complexity than simply “one person hurt another.” Not because I think darker interpretations shouldn’t exist, or because difficult subjects shouldn’t be explored. They absolutely should. It’s simply not always the story I personally want to tell.
Sometimes I want to explore what happens when characters choose to stay or when they misunderstand each other. When they hurt each other without necessarily wanting to. When they love someone they probably shouldn’t. When nobody involved is entirely innocent or entirely guilty.
Sometimes I simply want to imagine that things went a little differently. And why not, maybe even in a funnier way.
What I find increasingly exhausting, however, is seeing personal preferences turned into moral judgments about the people creating or enjoying those stories.
There is a huge difference between saying “I don’t like this interpretation” and saying “people who create or enjoy this interpretation are disgusting.”
I know that some of the choices I make in my own stories won’t appeal to everyone. Some of my characters and relationships are deliberately very different from popular modern interpretations, and I’m perfectly fine with people disliking them.
What is becoming harder for me is the feeling that fictional preferences are increasingly treated as evidence of someone’s morality.
Mythology has survived for thousandsof years through different traditions, storytellers, cultures, adaptations and reinterpretations. There has never been one single, universally accepted version of every Myth, and I think it would be incredibly sad if modern creators felt they could only tell the versions considered morally acceptable by the loudest voices online.
I don’t expect everyone to like the way I interpret mythology. Honestly, it would be incredibly boring if we all created the exact same stories.
I just wish we could disagree about fictional characters, relationships and creative interpretations without feeling the need to turn every difference in taste into a judgment about someone’s morality.
That’s all. Just something that has been weighing on me. Have a nice day! Small P.S.: if you ever find yourself typing something like, “Ew, I hate when people romanticize X and Y! It’s disgusting because in the REAL myth...”
Please remember that a) “the REAL myth” is usually a wonderfully dangerous phrase to use when talking about mythology in general, and b) you may have just gone from criticizing a fictional interpretation to making a moral judgment about a real person you know absolutely nothing about. Which is, admittedly, a rather impressive amount of work for a single comment!
