Turns Out Disney's Hercules is Super Duper Queer (feat. Historical Homos)

Hear ye! Here ye! Liv met up with the Historical Homos https://www.historicalhomos.com/ again to talk all things Disney Hercules and how wonderfully queer it is! Thebes as the big city! Feeling out of place as a child because of something that's just a part of you! Merch as success! It's simply the most beautiful thing in the world. Submit your question for the next Q&A via email http://mythsbaby.com/questions or a voice note https://www.speakpipe.com/LTAMB. Get ad-free episodes and so, so much more, by subscribing to the Oracle Edition at patreon.com/mythsbaby http://patreon.com/mythsbaby CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. I try to provide direct warnings when there is reference to anything with overtly traumatic themes but be aware that Greek mythology regularly features assault, death, and many other potentially triggering events. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here:mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful, and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com/groups.

• 0:35Speaker 01

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• 1:07Speaker 00

  Hi, hello. It's, uh, let's talk about myths, baby. Uh, it's not, it's not Liv, it's Michaela. Hi. Uh, Liv is on vacation and we have, by we, I mean me and her have decided that she needs to take a vacation that is fully just off from work, which is really hard to do when you're, you have a podcast. It's the, the amount of times you just, you just need to be on all the time is exhausting. And, but she really, really needed the break. So she's off enjoying herself and said you get an introduction by me. So this week, uh,

• 1:44Speaker 00

  we are doing a collaboration with Historical Homos and on Disney Hercules. Isn't that fun? Uh, Liv and Bash got together and talked about the show and all its queerness and its delightfulness. And it was so much fun to give this a listen to and get ready for you guys because, ugh, oh my God, I loved Disney Hercules growing up. It was my favorite, it still is my favorite Disney movie. I swear to God, Meg was like my queer awakening. I either wanted to be her or be with her. You know, it was one of those vibes. But anyways, yes, it is.

• 2:25Speaker 00

  So delightfully fun and exciting. So without further ado, here is the collab. Bye.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  Welcome back to another episode of Historical Homos, the world's only no fucks given guide to queer history. May I say today that I am so excited for this episode. This has been in the works for months, really, probably my entire life. It is all about Disney's Hercules. Now, this was a movie that didn't turn me gay, because I definitely knew I was gay before. I think maybe The Little Mermaid fully turned me gay, just wanting to be part of that world. But my obsession with Greek mythology was an early and recognizable sign that I was

• 3:28Speaker 02

  indeed very gay. And this Disney's Hercules just turned it into, put it on steroids, put it on absolute steroids. I went crazy for this film. And one of the reasons that I went crazy for it is that it's actually kind of grown up. It's the writing is so clever. It's all of the historical references are, well, mythological references are amazing. It's so carefully done. And even my dad, who is, was a crotchety old bastard and was a writer himself, so did not hand out praise lightly, said this was the only Disney movie that he could actually sit through. He loved it that much. And if you haven't seen it, it's going to convert you by the end of this episode. First of all, if you don't know

• 4:10Speaker 02

  the story, we're going to get into it. But this is basically, this is a classic Disney princess tale of a misunderstood girlie who has to go to the big city and discover herself and realize that the only thing that is going to really save her is love in the end. Okay? Now, that could be the plotline of Pocahontas, that could be the plotline of The Little Mermaid, and it is the same plotline for Disney's Hercules. As I said, this is one of the greatest films ever written, hands down. It is also one of the campest Disney films on record. So we're gonna go through and we're gonna, we're gonna ask, what makes this the greatest film ever written, number one? And question number two, why is it so goddamn camp?

• 4:53Speaker 02

  And to do that, we're gonna talk about the original myth of Hercules, the actual Greek hero, who was, it turns out, pretty bisexual and gay a lot of the time. And then we're gonna go through the actual movie and, and talk about it bit by bit. So get out your strappy slutty little sandals and get ready to dive into the wildly homosexual waters of Disney's Hercules, where it's actually very, hmm, let me just test my toe in there. Oh, yeah, delightful human temperature.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  And we are back. I am so thrilled to welcome to your tight little ear holes, a second time guest on this podcast, the wonderful, the delightful, the delicious Liv Albert. Liv, how the fuck are you?

• 6:18Liv Albert?

  I'm so fucking excited. How are you?

• 6:22Speaker 02

  I'm good. Like, I have been looking forward to this all day, literally. Like, something that I can really just dish about, you know? Something that I know inside out. Liv, since you joined us last time in June, I've instituted a new law where I start every episode with three questions. How are you? Who are you? We already covered that. Who are you? In your own words. And what's inspiring you right now?

• 6:48Liv Albert?

  How am I is I'm excited about Disney's Hercules and very little else right now because 2025. Um, and the next question, who am I? I, I am Liv. Uh, and I, there's a lot of things I could say here.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Mic drop.

• 7:06Liv Albert?

  Yeah. I am the person who may or may not have been yelling in your ears about Greek mythology for the last eight years for my podcast, Let's Talk About Myths, baby, which, like you, heavily exists because of Disney's Hercules. And what inspires me, or what is inspiring me? Oh gosh, are people finding inspiration right now? Is that like a thing that people are finding? Because I would like some.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  It's been harder and harder to ask this question, I will say.

• 7:38Liv Albert?

  It's not the year for it. Everything's on fire, but that's been increasingly true over the last, what, five plus years? So who's to say?

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's more of an acceleration of the trend.

• 7:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I would say Greek mythology is the thing that inspires me all of the time. Usually it's my righteous fury about, um, not just how women were treated, but how we talk about how they were treated now from a historical perspective. And I think the more I learn, the more fueled I am by righteous feminist rage. And that is inspiring.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  That'll keep you going.

• 8:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah, it really does.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  It'll keep you going for years.

• 8:17Liv Albert?

  Well, eight years running. Yeah.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Great diet. Um, steady diet of rage. Okay, that's inspiring to you. I mean, let's talk about Disney's Hercules for a moment. I want to know, when's the first time you saw it? What, do you, do you remember watching it for the first time? I have to, I'll answer my own question first. I probably blacked out from excitement watching it the first time. Like, I have no recollection. It only exists in my mind as a movie that I've seen 26 times. Do you know what I mean? Like, I think I must have watched it four times within the first week or something like that. And now to over to you.

• 8:50Liv Albert?

  No, I think that's similar to my experience, which is, I don't, I honestly have almost no, like, direct memories from childhood, which is maybe a good or a bad thing. Who's to say? I think it's ADHD. I think it's that everything else got shoved out of my head the more I learned about the most absurd intricacies of Greek mythology. Um, I just don't have room for anything else anymore. So I have, I have no memory of like when I first watched it. But I know based on the fact that it came out in 97 and I was born in 88. So I think I was just, I mean, I'm sure that I just stumbled face first into this story and then never looked back. And I have no memory of it because I was nine, but I know for a fact

• 9:33Liv Albert?

  that like, I must've just watched it and then never looked back because it was peak age and it was like peak interests and I'm, yeah. So that's, that's all I know. But I, I also just remember it as like a movie I know way too well.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  I'm obsessed with you saying you remember nothing from your childhood because I kind of also have that. Like I, I have like vague memories, but like to me, there's like my life before I came out and my life after I came out. I came out when I was 16 and everything pre coming out is sort of like, I was definitely there, but I couldn't tell you exactly who did what, you know? Whereas like post coming out, I'm like, remember everything. Except for my mid twenties, maybe when I was, you know?

• 10:16Liv Albert?

  Yeah, there's other reasons, right?

• 10:17Speaker 02

  A little too drunk for comfort, but.

• 10:19Liv Albert?

  No, I, I think, yeah. I mean, I don't have anything like as iconic as that, but I really think it's that I had undiagnosed ADHD and like, there was just too much coming in. Everything else got pushed aside. My memory is just this like floating like hippie weirdo kid, um, who probably watched a lot of, of, I mean, I know my mom was keen on a lot of Disney's. So I'm sure that we went straight out and she was like, this one, you can learn about history and Greek mythology and being entertained.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  It was so exciting to me. I, the first Greek mythology book I had was Dolores Book of Greek Myths. I've spent hours and hours going over and over tracing the pictures in that book. And then to have something that kind of presented that in like beautifully animated, perfect form, it was just like brain on fire.

• 11:09Liv Albert?

  I have to say something about Dolores because I was not a Dolores girl, but like I have heard so much from people over the years about like how that book got them into it. But like, have you reread it at all? Like, so I had to buy, I say this, I bought a copy because I'm, I'm working on this children's odyssey book. I don't know if I mentioned it last time, but that's literally the only thing I've been doing with my time. Um, and so I bought it because I was like, I need to, I just am curious like how kids have been taught Greek myths. I don't remember how I learned, but it wasn't through this. Can I just say that the first opening is in olden times, when men still worshipped ugly idols, there lived in the land of Greece, a folk of shepherds and herdsman who cherished light and beauty.

• 11:51Liv Albert?

  They did not worship dark idols like their neighbors, but created instead their own beautiful radiant gods. And anyway, it just turns out that the opening of that is the most overtly disturbing like racism I've read in a long time.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Racist, Western centric bullshit. Yeah.

• 12:10Liv Albert?

  Ugly idols, the Greeks and their beautiful radiant gods. Anyway, sorry. I've not been able to talk about that with anybody because it has, the layers hasn't come up. And so I had to spout it at you, but I think it's a good example too of like the way that, I mean, I think Hercules is a good example of like learning about Greek myth without it being like in contrast to other cultures. Like there's obviously problems with it, but at least it wasn't like, look at these Greeks, they're better than everyone else.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  I love that you bring that up also because I found that recently while I read the first Percy Jackson book. Cause I was like, as an adult, I was like, I've, I've never read this before. I want to see. And it never, Percy Jackson has never, it's like, there's something to mainstream about. I'm like, this is not hardcore shit. Like this is not for real Greek mythology fans. And when I read it, I was like, okay, it's actually clever. It's, it's definitely got some, some good, you know, action beats to it. But there's this big part, a big passage in the front. That's all about how the gods go wherever Western civilization is strongest.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  And it was like, that's why first they went, they were in France for a while. Well, that's why they were in Greece and then they went to Rome and then they were in France for a while. And then they went to, uh, England and then now they're in America, which is obviously the best place on earth that does everything right. And that's why they live here. And it was just like, it was so transparent. I was like, how dare this be peddled to children in this way?

• 13:43Liv Albert?

  I've also never read Percy Jackson. It came out when I was like, Late teens, so I just never, I just never got into it. But I like last week, recorded with a friend who we were talking about like reception and all of these problematic things. And she actually read that whole opening section to me and I'd never heard it before and I couldn't believe what I was listening to. She was talking to me about it in relation to this article that a mutual friend, a professor, wrote about, it's called the whitening thief, like about those issues, but also that like Rick Rorden in general. Yeah, it's great. Rick Rorden generally though, has like addressed a lot of it and like really tried to change it in his later books, which I've heard, which I think he deserves a lot of credit for, particularly in comparison

• 14:24Liv Albert?

  to some other people whose work was deemed problematic after the fact and they just doubled down and became enormous assholes. So, yeah, but I have heard how wildly Western civilization that beginning is.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  No, that's true. And he came out with all those other series that are around like ancient Egyptian gods.

• 14:40Liv Albert?

  Yeah. He's just made an effort, just comparatively to other people at least.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  He's made, we'll give him, we'll give him a pass on, on that unbelievably Western centric nonsense. But it is, I mean, it's interesting. It's how Greek mythology, especially when it's transmitted to children is positioned as important because it is this like, you know, home of, of Western civilization. When actually like Greek mythology is just fucking freaks everywhere.

• 15:07Liv Albert?

  I mean, it's freaky and it's also all for the most part bored or inspired by the East and North Africa. They didn't come up with it in a vacuum.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  You know, totally. So, okay, we have, we must, um, the time to act, the time to act will be at hand. Unleash the Titans, your monstrous band. The goal for this episode, as I said, is to figure out why Disney's Hercules is the greatest film of all time. But I also want to talk, because this is a queer history podcast, about how gay it is. Like, I really, I, and you know, you may, you could, I feel free to dispute anything that I put forward here. But I did a ridiculously close queer reading of this film in preparation for this episode. And there's a lot, there's a lot that is just straight up queer. coded or camp and it's not limited to the typical like Disney move of making

• 16:02Speaker 02

  the villain gay or stuff like that like it's not that sorry.

• 16:05Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  So we're going to get into that. And then at the very end, we will have our special new fangled straight sisterly segment because representation matters, which you will only be able to access if you are a Patreon subscriber. So hit that link, baby. Go to Patreon.com slash historical homos, sign up, subscribe and join us in our celebrate our condemnation, rather, of the straight people who have landed us in the future that we live in. Are you ready?

• 16:34Liv Albert?

  I am. I'm so ready.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  You're ready. Here we go, baby. Act one, The Origins of Hunkules.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Honey, how did we get to Hunkules? I think the first thing we need to establish is who was the real Hercules? And we don't need to do like the full mythological cycle and all of that. But I do want to just set up in this first act, who was he? What did he mean to the ancients? Like, what did they think of him? And how gay was he? Of course. So tell us, tell us a little bit about the origins of Hercules, which is his original Greek name.

• 17:12Liv Albert?

  I would love to. I would love to. And I think all of this started because I'm sure I've said this many times into a microphone. And I think you were the recipient of the most recent, which is that I maintain that Disney's Hercules is one of the most mythologically accurate pieces of modern reception about Greek mythology, period. Like in terms of movies, I should say, and TV, like on screen, because they actually get a lot pretty right. So Hercules, Hercules is the son of Zeus and this woman named Alcmeni. And, you know, I believe in this case, there's so many stories of Zeus impregnating women. It's utterly revolting. But I think in this case, it's not overtly gross, I think. Maybe it's one

• 17:57Liv Albert?

  of those ones where he transformed himself into her husband, though. Those are pretty icky. But her husband is this guy named Amphitriion, which I love because in Disney, Hercules Hercules's adoptive parents are Alcmeni and Amphitriion.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:12Liv Albert?

  And, you know, in the myth of it all, she he is born to Alcmeni. He's also a twin.

• 18:20Liv Albert?

  And his brother is the son of Amphitriom, so it's like a one godchild and one mortal child. That happens a lot in Greek myth, too. Genetics, as they are. And his whole thing is that he's strong right off the bat. He kills these two snakes in his, like, bassinet kind of thing. They are sent by Hera. Hera is very immediately his big foe in the world. His name actually means glory of Hera, which people think maybe is something to do with. So his early name is Alcides, and then the sort of idea around the transmission

• 19:00Liv Albert?

  of the myth is that he kind of picks up this name of Hercules, almost like ironically, because Hera makes it like her entire duty to ruin his life, which of course is very common in Greek myth, because the women are very often caricatures of male fear. And that is what Hera very much represents, is this like angry woman because Zeus had a son with somebody else. But what it means is that, yeah, she's, I mean, obviously she has so many examples like that, but the Hercules one is the most famous. And so that sort of becomes his overarching story, is this sort of Hera hating him. But what's most

• 19:40Liv Albert?

  interesting about Hercules compared to, you know, every other Greek hero, is the lasting power and the way that he was a Greek hero for all of Greece. We can safely say he's the, the one who is this like ubiquitous Greek hero, whereas everyone else tends to be limited to their like regional heroes, even the big ones like Perseus is the regional hero of Argos. He's very famous, but he is the regional hero of like that part of the Peloponnese, like Mycenae, Argos area. And, you know, even like Jason, I mean, he's sort of broadly, but also not really considered anyone's hero, because he's kind of a loser. You know, Theseus is Athens and a loser, all of these things. But Hercules becomes

• 20:24Liv Albert?

  so beloved across Greece that every town has a story of him, down to the fact that there's this one idea where he went off and he slept with these 50 women and Impregnated all 50 of them in one night and then so all of these 50 sons of Hercules were born nine months later and you know it's it's one example of like all of these ways where every part of Greece wanted like a hand they wanted like a piece of Hercules so they came up with all these stories. Yeah. And so it's really interesting but like you said too he's also the gayest of the heroes by I would say 100% like none of the other you know quote unquote typical heroes really have any homosexual relationships whereas Hercules has like a comfortable few.

• 21:07Liv Albert?

  I mean not only does he have a handful of boyfriends, one of which is his cousin, that's less great. But he also he also like has this whole period of time where he lives with this eastern queen named Mphali and they have this like I forget quite a why he's there it might be some kind of punishment but it doesn't really seem like it he seems to really love it and his whole thing is like for 10 years he dresses like Mphali and Mphali dresses like Hercules. And so he also like does a kind of whole like I think we can best describe it as drag almost because even there's lots of like art of it and it's very like drag coded of

• 21:48Liv Albert?

  of Hercules this like big strong hero everyone's favorite hero and there's this decade I think where he's like wearing this queen's clothes and she this queen who's I think from like probably Turkey area now and she's wearing his like lion skin cape and holding the club and all these cool things so. Right. I mean that's like a very broad idea of Hercules but the idea is that he is this like he is the Greek hero he's the big guy he does countless things his most famous are his labors but there are so many myths like you know there are probably like 100 Hercules myths for every one of like any other like even big hero you could name like Hercules

• 22:30Liv Albert?

  is really just this all over the place he did everything he helped everyone he also harmed a lot of people killed his first wife. Got killed by his second wife. It's quite a time.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  The idea that he is like every Greeks hero is really important because he's, he's the, he's the Urtex. He's like this paragon of masculinity in the ancient world, which I think is actually really important to understand when reading the film, when doing our close reading of the film, because that's not how he is originally presented in the beginning of the film.

• 23:08Liv Albert?

  He's very underdog.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  He's, he's a bumbling, awkward, you know, outcast, which is not really the vibe around Hercules myth. I mean, I'm not sure there, there's like a huge amount around his, like, childhood or whatever, beyond the killing the snakes.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  But he's, he's this paragon of masculinity. You also mentioned that he's psychologically quite interesting, which is not something you always get with the, with the Greek myths, necessarily. Part of Hera's revenge is getting someone to strike him mad, or he, someone sends a frenzy and he goes into this, on this killing spree where he kills his first wife, Megara, and all of his children. So he's also like this violent psycho as well. And that's, I think, interesting that the Greeks tied that to their sort of like major masculine guy, you know? And I wonder if there's something we're meant to be reading

• 24:06Speaker 02

  in, into that in terms of like over, overweening, overflowing virility and the dangers therein.

• 24:14Liv Albert?

  Yeah. No, I think that's so true, though. And like, in terms of the sort of psychology of him, the nicest part about Hercules as a character overall is that because he was this hero for all of Greece and so many people wanted him in stories, we have so much more than everyone else, whereas most other heroes have like one or two stories, but Hercules has like all of them. And so it does become really interesting and it is absolutely this look at Greek masculinity. But simultaneously too, it's like a good place to remind people that our idea of what a hero is or should be is entirely based on like a modern reading of heroism. We don't, like,

• 24:58Liv Albert?

  In the ancient Greek world, their heroes were not meant to be these like beacons of moral good. They were

• 25:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:07Liv Albert?

  The word hero, I mean, the overall idea is that these were more of like a main cultural character. Like, that's kind of what made you a hero. Usually, it's that you went on a quest, you, you know, completed some kind of task, some kind of labor, you did something. But like, it wasn't about always helping people, saving people, doing like, objective good. And I think that's where we often get sort of thrown by this story. Like you said, you know, he gets Hera. I think she just like sends him a madness. And yeah, he kills his first wife, Megara, and their two sons, I believe, two or three.

• 25:46Liv Albert?

  What's interesting, too, is like, that is what seems to be like this, obviously, like, very big moment. Like, you'd kind of imagine it as more of like a climax moment of his life. But what that actually serves as is the impetus for his labors, which become like the thing he's known most for. And then like, after those labors, he marries another wife who ends up, I mean, famous for lots of other ways, but how he meets her is in Hercules, in the form of how he meets Meg, which I also love. Now I'm gonna like, jump around because I love the accuracy in everything they've done. And like, the ways they've melded characters together in this movie. But, you know, he's not the bumbling teenager.

• 26:30Liv Albert?

  He's not this like, he's meant to just be doing good. I really, the way Disney plays up on this idea of heroes is incredibly fun for overall Greek mythology. Like, you know, when he meets Philoctetes, and it's like, and we've trained all the greats, like, a lot of yeses. You know, like, that whole, that whole scene with Danny DeVito, who is like iconic in every possible way, is so perfect. And also, like, it's not very Greek mythology, but like, it's so good.

• 26:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And also, the thing about his masculinity is that that is part of, I think, what allows him to do the drag thing as well.

• 27:05Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah, because he's so masculine.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  He's so masculine, he can wear a dress, this dude, you know, like, wow, what's next? But I love, I think it's also important to note, like, as you were saying, the difference between a hero and a heros, the ancient Greek word, like, these, these figures are worshipped, you know, they, you pour libations to the heroes, you like, or do you leave them little honeycakes? You do something.

• 27:31Liv Albert?

  I think it would depend on who it is, probably, like, each hero cult, I would imagine, have their own. Like, Hercules becomes a god, so then he has his own very specific hero cult, but, yeah.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Right. There's almost a, an element of ancestor worship going on here of, like, these, nobody really knew when they existed, but these heroes were believed to have existed, like, they had a very real connection to them.

• 27:54Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  Well, very spiritual connection to them, I should say. So, okay, before we start, before we start going through the film in more detail, why do you think, I mean, do you think it's just because Hercules is kind of the head honcho that Disney chose him as the, as their only human male Disney princess? If you think about it, all the other male protagonists are not royal, they're not, like, descended from, except for Simba, but he is a, but he is a human, he is not human, famously, even though I am kind of attracted to him in his adult lion form, not sure what's going on there. But like, Tarzan, not really, Aladdin, definitely not, like, he, Hercules is kind of the Disney princess, but the boy

• 28:41Speaker 02

  version, which is another reason I think gays are so into him, is because it's like, oh, we get to go on a big adventure with our, you know, and be, and be little royals who have to find ourselves. But why do you think he, why do you think they chose Hercules? Is it just because he's like, the big one?

• 28:55Liv Albert?

  Um, okay, well, first, I, I'm not sure if my mic picked it up, or we had a little blip, I have to clarify. But Robin Hood is a great example of, one, another hot animal from Disney, but two, he might actually count as another Disney princess. Have you thought about that?

• 29:11Speaker 02

  Is, I don't even know the Robin Hood film.

• 29:14Liv Albert?

  You don't know Robin Hood the Fox? Where did your sexuality awaken if it wasn't from Robin Hood the Fox?

• 29:22Speaker 02

  Um, oh, oh, no, I do know this.

• 29:23Liv Albert?

  Is the millennial sexuality awakened with Robin Hood the Fox?

• 29:27Speaker 02

  God, you're gonna have to explain more about that because this is not, it's not making me horny this one.

• 29:33Liv Albert?

  Oh, my God. Okay. Well, I'm not gonna be alone when people listen to this. It is a long running meme. That like, in any case, that's fine. I mean, I think

• 29:44Liv Albert?

  the nice thing about Hercules and like, probably why they picked him is that he has this like wealth of mythology to pull from. And this is something that like, I think about a lot because I think a lot about how we have had very terrible on screen representation of, of Greek myth broadly. And like, so I compare it, you know, a lot and, and I'm gonna sort of compare it to Clash of the Titans because I think it's a good experiment for why Disney's is good and interesting, but also like the only one I can think of that also has like a featured hero, you know, like they use Perseus in Clash of the Titans. But then at the same time, they like, pick out all of these things that Perseus didn't do and like make him do them.

• 30:27Liv Albert?

  Or they pick out all these characters that are not associated with Perseus and they do that instead, you know? Whereas like, and, and that's what always baffles me about these kind of reception pieces is like, there are so many myths that are as they exist, like so entertaining and would make for incredible on screen representation. And I think that's why I think Disney's Hercules is the best example because they rightfully saw that in picking a character like Hercules, you can tell these kinds of stories in a way that keeps it unbelievably accurate to Greek myth.

• 31:04Liv Albert?

  While also making it into this like fun goofy kids movie, right? Because so many of the things he did are, are able to be kind of like. Put into this more comedic way, whereas a lot of the other heroes, what they did is a lot more overtly violent, but like in a way that is less kid friendly. Like obviously, Hercules is our violent to a degree, but in this way that they can make it can't be a kid's movie.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  It's so episodic, like they're, like you're saying, like there's, and it's also, I mean, I guess there are monsters in other ones, but like just the, the preponderance of monsters in this cycle of myths about Hercules is just like, yeah, there's just so much to play with.

• 31:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah. And I think that's a lot to do with like, how early of a myth he is too. Like in terms of the broad idea of mythology, Hercules is this character that they conceptualized as being, you know, more ancient than the heroes of the Trojan War. Like he is said to have been the generation before that.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:06Liv Albert?

  So, and that's why he's associated with all these good monsters and stuff too, right? Because we're, they're imagining him at this like very early time, at this time when the monsters were all still around. They needed to be, you know, brought to heel or there are even, you know, Hercules participated in the war with the giants, according to, you know, the, the early sources. And that's something that is supposed to have happened like before Zeus had even really taken full control of Olympus. Like he's really there at kind of all of these formative times for mythology. And yeah, it means for a lot of good monsters, but also like a lot of material they could pull from and keep it accurate, which is so nice.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Okay. We're going to come back to that because I think one of the things that I love about Disney's Hercules is that it literally has the Titanic in it. Like at the end, you get to like the big cosmic battle that underpins like so much in Greek mythology. Let's get into the movie now because, and I'm, I'm going to play the gay side and apparently you're going to play the straight cis side because you believe, because that's the model that you've signed up for.

• 33:10Liv Albert?

  No, well, yes, but also like, I mean, you'll see what I mean. In a, in a fun way. I'm excited for this, this juxtaposition we're going to have.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  I, I, I respect your position and your practices and your beliefs.

• 33:22Liv Albert?

  So, I wish I wasn't.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Oh no. We didn't think this would happen. We didn't think the time would come when I started doing self-promotional ads for my own goddamn Patreon in the middle of these episodes, but here we are, people. Here we are. If you enjoy what you're listening to, consider subscribing to our Patreon. You do get cool shit. You get some fun stuff, bonus content, as well as the right to vote on future episodes. So please do consider signing up. I want your money. Okay? I'm American. I'll be very plain about it. Enjoy the rest of the episode and check out our Patreon at patreon.com/historicalhomos. All right, back to the episode.

• 34:08Liv Albert?

  This episode is brought to you by Quince. You know the drill. Quince makes elevated, everyday essentials using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and premium stretch denim. I have been speaking into a microphone about Quince for a while now, and I have no complaints. I have a bunch of their stuff. I've got a couple cute sweaters that, I mean, it's nearing sweater season, so those will be back in the rotation anytime now. And I have this leather bag that I absolutely love. It's like this braided leather, and I use it like basically every day. Because that's the thing. They have really great basics.

• 34:52Liv Albert?

  Like, they have really great things that you can wear with so many other things. Just the options are endless. And as the weather gets colder, like all the sweaters in my closet, Quince has everything you need to round out your wardrobe, from warm, responsibly sourced down jackets, and cozy cashmere scarves and gloves, to beautiful 14 karat gold jewelry that adds the perfect finishing touch. And of course, everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And if we haven't learned anything in the last 10 years, isn't it just getting rid of the middlemen, you know? Making things more affordable?

• 35:35Liv Albert?

  So find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was me. Let's talk about myths, baby. It's the best way to support the show.

• 36:01Speaker 01

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• 36:34Speaker 02

  Act Two, From Zero to Hero, Just Like That.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Okay, so let's go bit by bit. We, this is the greatest Greek mythology film of all time. And I do, I would like to apologize to Ralph Fiennes' nude scene in The Return.

• 36:51Liv Albert?

  It's not enough.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Which is, which is the movie about the odyssey of Odysseus coming home to Ithaca. It was an exciting moment, I will say, in Greek mythology film history.

• 37:03Liv Albert?

  I've heard nothing else was particularly worthwhile, though, so.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no, it was garbage. It was terrible. It was absolutely terrible. But this movie, first of all, just has so much heart. This movie just like has that like, you can do it, like, big optimism in it. And I think that's actually one of the beats that I want to start with. Like, there is this, the character of Hercules is, I mean, you know, we'll get to the muses. We'll get to all of that. But the character of Hercules is so endearing. And it's, it's kind of, it's almost disarming in a way. Like, he's all brawn and heart and no brain, really. And it's kind of like an amazing. Amazing. It's it. I mean, I'm trying to think like Pocahontas is not like that. Pocahontas is smart. Mulan is clever. Like, The Little Mermaid has her beautiful voice, you know?

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Like, there's something so adorably blonde about Hercules. That really, that I think is a great place to start this with because he's like, he's kind of a Disney princess, but he also subverts some of the conventions, you know, of of how those characters are typically positioned. So I just think that's interesting. And then the other thing that we have to start with that makes this movie overall extremely camp and fucking fabulous. And by the way, is the only really good part of the Disney, the live production on the West End, right? The Hercules musical are the muses. The.

• 38:31Liv Albert?

  The muses are culture forming. Those muses, yeah, like they changed the world.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  They still are.

• 38:39Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  They still are changing the world. The idea to take the Greek chorus gospel is, I mean, it's insane. It's insane. And like their mannerisms, the way they interact with the narrator, like, everything is just so over the top. And it it creates, it sets this, it also completely subverts what we were talking about in the beginning of like, Greek mythology is for white people who love being white and coming from the West, you know? And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not our vibe. And I also just want to mention that Howard Ashman, who was Alan Menken's, Alan Menken wrote all of the, all of the music, not the lyrics, but all of the music for Hercules and for all of the films in the Disney Renaissance in the 90s.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  Howard Ashman was Alan Menken's gay lyrics partner. They wrote like The Little Shop of Horrors together, you know, they did all sorts of stuff. And I like to, Howard Ashman is the one who decided that Sebastian the crab should be Jamaican in The Little Mermaid. So he just had these brilliant, these brilliant little flourishes that like made these movies really kind of Broadway and camp. And I like to think that taking the Greek chorus into a gospel place was very much inspired by that kind of homosexual shenanigan. So the muses are their own thing. The, I can't tell you how many times in the back of my head I say.

• 40:02Speaker 04

  Honey, you mean hunkies. I'd like to make some sweet music.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  Apropos of absolutely nothing. It's just like, that's my Tourette's is honey, you mean hunkies. But let's bring it to the birth because this is, this is where, this is a big deviation from the myth.

• 40:21Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Okay. But it's interesting because it set, I think it sets up a dichotomy between the kind of queer-coded villain and the cis-het perfection of, of the couple, of Hercules's parents. So in the movie, he's born to Zeus and Hera. He is obviously the son of Zeus and Alchemine in, in the, in the myth. But what's interesting about that is that like Zeus is also kind of a dummy dum-dum in the, in the film. And then Hera is kind of his prom queen wife, you know? And they kind of have this like perfect little family, perfect little house, that then

• 41:03Speaker 02

  the very witchy kind of camp villain comes into and, wearing a dress and says, you know, I'm gonna blow all this up and, and destroy this perfect nuclear family. What do you make of this?

• 41:18Liv Albert?

  See, what I think is so straight washed about this is that, is his parents. Because to me, like, I mean, I'm phrasing it as straight, but to me, it's the like, that's, that's the like sheen of good Western people, civilization kind of stuff that, that makes me go, ah, it's just too bad. I understand why you're not gonna be like, okay, this king of the gods is an enormous slut who gets around with everyone. But at the same time, like, I think there could have been a way to not present this idea that he does come from this like loving hetero, like completely, you know, passive almost kind of couple who like are forced to let their son live on earth. I don't know.

• 42:02Liv Albert?

  That's the part that, I understand why, but it's boring. And to me, like, I guess what comes with the like, the straight washing in my head is just this like, um, this turning Zeus into loving father and husband that I go, ick. Like, and that's, you know, it's, again, it's not, I'm not gonna like argue for- That the movie is is straight because of it. But there are these moments where I'm like, I wish I could see a bit more of the Greek myth in there because I find it so obnoxiously like, yeah, clean cut, like what they're supposed to be. That's what I'm saying. I dislike any objective part of this movie, but you know.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  No, and it's there for a reason. Obviously, it's like it sets up like perfect heavenly father vibes versus like the devil coming up from literal underworld to to screw it all up. But it is interesting that the the hatred of Hera, as you said, is the thing that drives the entire myth of Hercules.

• 43:03Liv Albert?

  Yeah, it doesn't really work without it, but they make it.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then and then it's all transpo- it's all kind of moved over to Hades, although he doesn't necessarily hate Hercules because he's the son of Zeus. He just hates him because he's going to get in his in his way.

• 43:19Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  But I think the the thing I like, and so Hades, the introduction of the of Hades is, I mean, John Lithgow, like, no, wait, not John Lithgow.

• 43:28Liv Albert?

  No, it's James Woods.

• 43:29Speaker 02

  That's Shrek. James Woods.

• 43:31Liv Albert?

  But he does this, the the character is perfect, so we can ignore this.

• 43:36Speaker 02

  It's pitch.

• 43:37Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  It's pitch perfect. Hades is this weird combination of sort of like brash New York sleaze ball. Also, the influence of like New York Jewish culture on this movie is amazing. Like, there's so many, like, Hades says oi a lot. Like, it's just fucking hysterical. And we'll talk more about the connection to New York when we when he goes to Thebes, because that is also, I think, a big part of of the story. But Hades is kind of this like sleazy, New York-y kind of guy who talks who talks like this and is like, you know, come on. And and then he also has very important feminine touches, I think, you know? Like, he has these sort of like long spindly fingers.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  He is, as I said, wearing that black dress. He has the way he produces like the evil potion, you know? And he's he has all of these sort of like camp. I mean, of course, on a podcast, I'm doing visual. I'm doing. Doing visual movements here. But he has all of these kind of flourishes that make him seem a little, I think, a little bit, you know, is he? And, and of course, his number one homosexual trait is his skill in charming older women. He is able to, he's able to sweet talk the fates into revealing his future, without which, nothing in the movie would work. Nothing would happen. So anyway, I think that's all hilarious to set in contradistinction to the dumb Jocka vibe of Zeus,

• 45:07Speaker 02

  who like, you know, rages when his son is, when he figures out that Hercules has been stolen. And then the kind of very diminished, you know, almost British looking like wife that Hera is portrayed as, you know, she's just like this doting, I think she even has a vaguely British accent.

• 45:26Liv Albert?

  Yeah, and she kind of talks like she's like on a cloud, which I get, I mean, they're up in Mount Olympus, but she, yeah, she doesn't talk like a human woman.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that's, I, I was obsessed with the characterization of them as a kid. Like, because I, again, I went from seeing these illustrations in Delirious Book of Greek Myths to then seeing it on screen and I was like, oh my God, they're so real, like, I can see them. And, and then now as I'm, as I re-watch it, I'm sort of like, oh, they're actually like complete basic bitches.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  And, and I think maybe, maybe there's also something going on here with, like, you almost don't want Hercules to get back to there. Do you know what I mean? It's sort of like, that is the house with the white picket fence and like, you want him to not fully become a here, but you don't want him to go back to Olympus, totally. I don't know if you have that vibe also.

• 46:21Liv Albert?

  No, I do. And I think that, that leads me to like, I would say, one of my only real like complaints with this movie's structure overall is that I think this dichotomy of Hades versus Zeus and Hera.

• 46:36Liv Albert?

  Like in addition to everything you've said, but it it also just, it's very, um, like, I think it does really work in terms of the movie, like you're saying, but in terms of the mythology, it's always disappointed me. Anytime that they make the bad guy Hades and the good guy Zeus, to me, it feels like it's just unfortunately screaming Christianity.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:59Liv Albert?

  It's in the same way that

• 47:00Speaker 02

  It's the devil versus God.

• 47:01Liv Albert?

  Exactly. Like, whereas mythologically, there are no stories of Hades causing any trouble to anyone except for his wife the one time. And so like, you know, it to me, it is a little bit of like, it's a little mean to Hades because I think overall what I find interesting about Greek mythos is that they weren't inherently like afraid of death and the underworld in this way that we think of with Christianity. Like, it's the underworld was not hell. It was not meant as a punishment. Like, you know, and those are things that just kind of disappoint me about how they've gone about it because I think there's more interesting ways. But like you said, too, like, it really sets up the story in in a very, like, very satisfying kind of way of like where you're kind of going to get to, though agree, like,

• 47:47Liv Albert?

  not getting back up to Olympus because Olympus doesn't seem that interesting to me. It's very much everything down on Earth.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  I never realized that until just going on my big ramble just now, but it's like, there is something kind of like basic bitch, like white culture about Olympus. Also versus like the fabulous divas who are like guiding us through the story. You always want to be pulled back to that.

• 48:06Liv Albert?

  Yeah, or even the underworld sounds more interesting to me than whatever they have going on at Olympus.

• 48:10Speaker 02

  I actually was just, in my head, I was like, he ran the underworld, but thought the dead were dull and uncouth. And it's like, that also, like, there's just little things being like, okay, he's like, lives on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, and he drinks martinis, and he uses words like uncouth, you know, like, I'm sorry, but he's a homosexual, ladies and gentlemen. You heard it here first. So we get out of the underworld and Hercules has been stolen from Mount Olympus, turned into mostly human baby Hercules and discovered by Alcmenian and Amphitriion.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  And then I think we have another queer moment where he's a fucking reject. He's an outcast like because of who he is, because of naturally occurring things within him. He cannot fit into society, you know? And like I, I rewatched that scene now and it is like the, it's perfectly played. The way it's like, you kind of understand what the problem is with someone like this, you know, bringing their entire Agora to the, raising it to the ground, but um,

• 49:19Liv Albert?

  By the way, the Greek architecture would never.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  I, I know, I know. But that's, that's just how strong Hercules is. He can.

• 49:29Liv Albert?

  But the columns are singular. You can't just knock them all down. The, in reality, the columns are made of the circular drums because the Greeks knew they had earthquakes. They, it's stupid. Sorry, that, that actually really stuck with me when I was watching the movie yesterday.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  Inaccuracy number two that we have logged for today.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  But yeah, I think it's just like really sweet. It's really bittersweet how you kind of understand that he can't stay there. But it just fucking hurts him so much, you know? And that's what, that's what sets him going back home and, and his parents telling him like, honey, you're different.

• 50:06Speaker 02

  And it's time for you to set out on your big journey to the city to understand what makes you so different. Although we don't know that he's going to the big city yet. I, I will, I will.

• 50:15Liv Albert?

  Yeah, he's gotta go find Phil.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  He's gotta go find Phil Octides. So this is, I, I would say this is the, um, this is the Hercules glow up moment, right?

• 50:26Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  Where.

• 50:27Liv Albert?

  He's got a full montage.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  Oh, a full, a full, a song, a montage. So we meet Phil Octides. He's like chasing, he's being, he's very much like dirty little satyr chasing the nymphs, you know? And kind of unapologetically presented that way. And then, actually I have a question. Do we, is there, is this a myth that?

• 50:47Liv Albert?

  Thank you for asking.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Is.

• 50:48Liv Albert?

  Phil is one of a few of my favorite ways that this movie plays with real mythos. The first is, I realized we almost went over them. So just real quick, I have to say that the fates are amazing because.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 51:03Liv Albert?

  They are this. Brilliant conflation of the moirae, the actual fates in Greek myth, and the grey eye, who serve very little purpose except to help Perseus find Medusa, unfortunately.

• 51:18Liv Albert?

  But who share one eye and one tooth between them.

• 51:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:22Liv Albert?

  And that is the most delightfully unhinged thing in myth. And so the fact that Disney was like, okay, we gotta combine these characters fills me with so much joy every time because it's

• 51:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:37Liv Albert?

  spot on to make them just wacky in the best way. But Phil is another really

• 51:41Speaker 02

  Do you know what? Wait, sorry, just one quick thing on the fates because you're so right. I'm such a bastard for skipping over them. But one thing I just realized that's interesting about them also is that they're kind of scary, like in the movie, but they're not evil necessarily. And that very much reflects, I think, what you were saying even just about like Hades before of like, they weren't like, I mean, the grey eye were more monstrous maybe, but like, they're not necessarily like villains, the fates.

• 52:07Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  You know, like, they're just a part of nature.

• 52:10Liv Albert?

  The grey eye actually are not described in any way monstrous. The monstrosity is like later misogyny. Because what they, the word actually just means the grey ones. They're basically just older women. And like the monstrosity of sharing an eye and a tooth, I will give them that. But in the only, the only other way they're described, other than being the grey ones, is like swans. Sometimes they're kind of swans, which is super weird. But yeah, like they're

• 52:39Speaker 02

  I'll take it.

• 52:39Liv Albert?

  Yeah, exactly. They're, they're wacky ladies. I love them. But they are this great example in the same way that the fates are where it's like, yeah, this, they're powerful and they like kind of wield this sort of power in that very specific way. But at the same time, like they're not meant to be, nobody's really is good or bad in Greek myth. Everybody is just

• 52:58Liv Albert?

  Doing things and there are results, you know, like in this really interesting way. It's just sort of, because the purpose was not about-

• 53:06Speaker 02

  And let's see what happens.

• 53:07Liv Albert?

  Yeah, because the purpose is to see what happens. The purpose wasn't to like, tell some story about good versus evil. The purpose was to like, you know, expand their cultural identity and memory and all of these things. Um, but yeah, no, the, the gray eye and the moire, the way they're squished together into those characters has been my favorite for all time. I think, and since the moment I learned who the gray eye were, my brain went, oh my God, Disney's Hercules squished them together with the, with the fates. I'm obsessed. Um, because they're a delight. But Phil, to get back to that, is another great example of this, of the conflation of two different characters in order to make this like, very, very appealing on-screen character.

• 53:49Liv Albert?

  So Phil is a combination of the actual character Philoctetes and Chiron, the centaur.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  Oh my God, of course.

• 53:57Liv Albert?

  Yeah, so they make him into a satyr because I think they're like, this is objectively funnier. And I, I, part of me does wonder whether they, like, which came first, the satyr or the Danny DeVito? Because like, he wouldn't play a centaur, he's a satyr.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  They're like, we can't get Danny to be a centaur.

• 54:15Liv Albert?

  No, exactly. And, but also like, literally no one else could play that role except for Danny DeVito. Iconic. But so what they did is, yeah, they made him a satyr, but otherwise he is this conflation of characters. So one of Hercules is like, very good friends. There's, there's a whole mythos that doesn't make Hercules look all that good, but is Philoctetes. So he's very famous as being a very like, important named friend of Hercules. So that's where we're, they're getting the name from. Um, but then, yeah, the implication is that he is Chiron, the trainer. So sort of the whole storyline about him training all of these heroes is coming from Chiron. But the Philoctetes is coming from Hercules specifically. Not least because I don't-

• 54:54Speaker 02

  That's such an unlock. Wow.

• 54:56Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  I totally did not clock that.

• 54:59Liv Albert?

  It's a good one. It's a good one.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  I should know that.

• 55:02Liv Albert?

  I mean, but no, that, but that's the fun of all of these is the way that you can kind of like, piece stuff together as you go, you know? Or the more you watch it, the more like these things that'll unlock. But yeah, he's a favorite for that because, I mean, they they found, what a fun storyline for this trainer of heroes, right? Like, he is known for being, you know, he definitely trained Achilles, and he's associated with like, all of these other heroes, and he's known for being this kind of trainer. So then, yeah, to like, pull in Phil Ictetes, so that you can call him Phil, and make him a sater. Like, it was, it's a very well-done in this way that you can tell they did their research, but also they're making a good movie.

• 55:43Speaker 02

  You just set off so many things for me. I realized we also went right over the scene where Hercules meets Zeus in the temple, which is just interesting from a historical standpoint, because like, that statue of seated Zeus was like, a very famous one in the ancient world of Zeus at Olympia. Right? And then, and then also just the like, religious side of the Greeks thought that the gods were in those statues, you know, like, they, that's why they made them, to manifest them.

• 56:16Liv Albert?

  The temple is a god's home. And people were even, I think, there's a lot of restrictions about regular people couldn't really go in either, because it was a god's home, like, the priests were the one.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  I've heard something recently, but again, there's so many things I've learned over

• 56:31Liv Albert?

  the years, and they come from so many different sources, and people, you know, can or cannot confirm that type of stuff. But I have a feeling that it was, people weren't really allowed in.

• 56:38Speaker 02

  It would make sense.

• 56:39Liv Albert?

  Yeah, like, the priests were allowed in, but it was, it was absolutely considered like, the gods' home. So being able to have him interact in that way, I actually just realized that's where, like, I don't know, 15 years ago, one of the reasons I got into what I do now, slash, just got a classics degree, is I wrote a novel featuring a Greek myth, but I was like, 20, and it was garbage. But I had like, a whole scene, I think, where basically that happens. And now I'm like, I think you pulled that straight out of Disney, where somebody goes into a temple and talks to a statue, and I'm like, son of a bitch, I didn't come up with that?

• 57:11Speaker 02

  Well, frankly, neither did Disney's Hercules. I mean, it's, I actually wrote my dissertation about Greek tragedies, where there's a god on stage, and there's a statue of the same god. And there are a couple of scenes where that happens in Greek tragedy. But anyway, that's an interesting thing that like, is actually kind of from Greek religion in a way. And also, that's why we get Pegasus. Pegasus, who is completely from the Perseus myth.

• 57:43Liv Albert?

  Nope, you just pulled the Clash of the Titans.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  Oh my god, it's, who is it?

• 57:49Liv Albert?

  Bellerophon.

• 57:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my god. Flame me.

• 57:53Liv Albert?

  It's okay, you and every other person who's ever interacted with the Pegasus myth thinks it's Perseus, so.

• 58:01Speaker 02

  That's so true. That is directly lifted from that motherfucking movie that I think I watched like nine times in various classes at school. I don't know why that was always one of the movies that they like trot out.

• 58:14Liv Albert?

  Then I imagine.

• 58:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. On, on the like, the big boxy TV that comes out on the rolling tray and you knew that Clash of the Titans was coming on. Okay, memo to me, name myself later. Memo to me, memo to me, name you after my meetings.

• 58:31Liv Albert?

  Pegasus, single flying horse, his name is Pegasus, it's not a breed, and Bellerophon was the only hero who actually rode him in a myth.

• 58:40Speaker 02

  That's why, that's why we have you.

• 58:41Liv Albert?

  Yeah, this is a long, running thing for me. I would, I mean, this, we're talking the entire eight years of my podcast have I been telling people these facts over and over, so.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  This is a hill that you've been dying on for eight years.

• 58:53Liv Albert?

  I will always.

• 58:54Speaker 02

  I also would like to note that satyrs were meant to be funny in Greek culture a lot of the time, right? Like, they had, in Greek tragedy, after you watch the sad plays, you have a satyr play where a bunch of big dicks.

• 59:09Liv Albert?

  I was gonna say, yeah, the thing that.

• 59:10Speaker 02

  Prance around. It's, it's horny as hell, so.

• 59:13Liv Albert?

  Enormous hard dicks, that's the big difference. Satyrs were meant to be funny, but they also were always sporting oversized erections. Literally always, which.

• 59:24Speaker 02

  And it's, it's one of the things that, that's why I hold them close to my heart.

• 59:27Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 59:28Speaker 02

  But I think that's funny because Phil is kind of portrayed in that like.

• 59:33Liv Albert?

  Yeah. He's playing the satyr role pretty well, just everything except the. Yeah, enlarged palace.

• 59:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, not, not in this version.

• 59:42Liv Albert?

  Dicks on sticks, as I would call them for generally worship in the ancient Greek world. Just a lot of dicks on sticks.

• 59:47Speaker 02

  Yes. And then, okay, the last thing that I also realized, tell me what you think about this. But like, the way he meets Phil and has to like, bring him out of retirement, kind of reminiscent of trying to get Odysseus to come on the Trojan War, right? Like, that's a little bit of a harking back to that movie.

• 1:00:05Liv Albert?

  Well, not to blow you up, but you're not wrong. Except what it's really harkening back to is the time that Odysseus actually goes to the island of Lemnos. Yes, Lemnos, to bring Philoctetes back to save the day at the end of the Trojan War after Achilles dies. Yeah, Odysseus and Neoptolemus go and they get, they bring back Philoctetes to save the day.

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  He's been left there. They left him there.

• 1:00:33Liv Albert?

  Well, Hercules left him there because he got bit by a snake.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, blayers.

• 1:00:36Liv Albert?

  Yeah, his best pal Hercules left him there because Philoctetes got bit by a snake and Herc was sure he was gonna die. And then flash forward like 40 years, somehow Odysseus and Neoptolemus are like, well, we're losing the war. We've got to go get Philoctetes. I hear he's been on that island forever. And then he just is there and he didn't die.

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  Okay, so it's, it's much more that because it's, it's literally, they have to convince him to come save the day.

• 1:01:02Liv Albert?

  Yeah, and it's literally him.

• 1:01:04Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:01:04Liv Albert?

  Like, you're right, but also like, yeah, there's a more direct connection.

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  No, there's a more direct, no, no, no, no. Okay, love that. Okay, so, once we have trained up Hercules, then stuff can, we can begin, right? And so, the, first of all, I love that they go to the big city. Getting to Thebes is how Hercules is gonna make a name for himself. And I do, I'm sorry, but this is just pure camp to me. This is like the ingenue, Hercules is the ingenue, like any young actress from the Midwest going to New York City to make her way on Broadway. Like Hercules is effectively doing that entire thing.

• 1:01:42Liv Albert?

  This is so true. I love that so much. Sorry, I've, I had not made those connections and I am obsessed.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  I had not made it until I started thinking about. This episode, but it is exactly that. And it's so brilliant because not only do they get New York into the film, but then afterwards, after Zero to Hero, when he becomes a hero, then they start to spoof celebrity culture and Hollywood and all that stuff. And it's so clever. But before we get to all of that, we have to go to the inciting incident, which is where he fights the river god, right?

• 1:02:12Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:12Speaker 02

  And now this is gonna be, this is all you.

• 1:02:15Liv Albert?

  This is my time to shine.

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  This is pure mythology. There are some interesting deviations when you think about like who the real Megara was, all that. But tell us about the river god, what happens there and how and its relation to the actual myth.

• 1:02:27Liv Albert?

  Thank you. I'm so glad you asked. I mean, I absolutely love this scene because again, it's this moment where we are realizing that they are smushing together these characters in order to like honestly tell even more of like Greek myth via, you know, the, the few characters they've chosen to have. Because what they've done here is directly conflate Hercules's first two wives. Like I was vaguely talking about earlier. His first wife is Megara, like you said, he killed her awkward. His second wife is a woman named Dionera. And he meets Dionera by saving her when she is being abducted by a centaur named Nessos.

• 1:03:09Liv Albert?

  And I mean, in, in Hercules, this centaur is named Nessos, like Meg says it very openly, which I love. And so it's very much this guy. And this is another, I mean, I think maybe this is another reason why they made Phil a satyr too, so that they could have this like big, bad centaur. Because one of the confusing things about Greek myth is that like 99% of centaurs are big and violent and scary and dangerous. And then 1% being Chiron is like a good, helpful guy who's like also a healer. It doesn't make any sense. Um, and that's just Greek myth. But what, though, actually, this might be my right time and the right show to remind people that the other difference between Chiron and the other centaurs is that visually on a lot of pieces

• 1:03:54Liv Albert?

  of pottery, he is depicted as a full man with the back half of a horse, which does imply that he has both a human man dick and a horse dick.

• 1:04:05Liv Albert?

  And I do have a friend who has coined the word double dong Chiron.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  And personally, that is what I'm looking for in a partner.

• 1:04:14Liv Albert?

  Just think, you know, that's canon. You gotta have options.

• 1:04:17Speaker 02

  Doppelganger Chiron.

• 1:04:17Liv Albert?

  You gotta have options. But yeah, so I think that that they want to show this centaur of like a more true centaur of Greek myth, which is that they are scary and they're abducting women and they're doing all this stuff. And so, yeah, he, you know, Hercules stumbles on Meg being abducted by this character, which is so true to Dionera. What I love is that Meg is like, I don't need you. Fuck off. Which is so delightfully 90s in this way that like, I think we've lost some of that level of like mouthy woman and we need it back.

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  Yes, agree.

• 1:04:48Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I mean, she, she didn't need his help, but they met anyway, and that's adorable. But the, the story with Nessus and Dionera is great because, right, okay, so this goes back. Because when Hercules first kills the hydra, which is also comes up in the movie, but after, he dips arrows in the hydra's blood, which is like super duper poisonous. And he then later in life uses those arrows and like shoots one at Nessus. And that's what kills Nessus the centaur and how he rescues Dionera.

• 1:05:29Liv Albert?

  But as Nessus is dying, he gives Dionera his, yeah, his.

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  Some of his blood or something, right?

• 1:05:38Liv Albert?

  Gives her his like clothing or something that has this now poisoned blood from the hydra that then carries this poison around. And then Dionera later in life, Hercules is fucking her over. He's like threatening to bring another woman home against that woman's will. He'd just been off with Amphale where he's been wearing her clothes for a while. And Dionera is really over him. And honestly, I don't think she's wrong. And the, the hard part though, is that she doesn't know that the, the shirt, the fabric, whatever she has from Nessus is poisoned. She is told by Nessus as he's dying that it's like. More like a, I forget what the implication is, but, or I forget how it's said, but the implication

• 1:06:23Liv Albert?

  is that it's like a love potion. So Dionera thinks that by giving this to Hercules or putting it on him, whatever happens, a lot of this is coming from a play that I haven't read in a while. Um, and so she gives that to him, thinking that it'll like bring him back to her because he's been so terrible and out and about and with all these other women. And instead it kills him. And then that's how Hercules ends up dying. And so it's like, he dies through all of these ways. The machinations are such that ultimately is entirely his fault via like from the Hydra down to Nessus to Dionera to all of this, right? But what's exciting for this movie is that they managed to get this scene in that not only has to do with Hercules' second wife, but also leads to his death. And they've

• 1:07:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:09Liv Albert?

  made it into this like magnificently campy moment with this like big scary gruff centaur who's like a nasty terrible guy and Meg helps herself. It's a great way of like linking together all of this like very deep level mythological references into this like easy to understand packaged children's movie.

• 1:07:31Speaker 02

  It's so true. I've never thought about how like, cause Dionera, like the myth of Dionera and Hercules is not kind of the famous one really that like, most people know like the 12 labors, like that is probably way more preserved in the, in the Western canon, I guess. Um, but you're right. It's like, his end is kind of in his beginning in this, in this movie. And also like, if you think about it, by the end of the movie, Meg will be dead and Hercules will have to go save her from the underworld, also kind of killing himself in the process. So there, so like Meg being his downfall kind of thing, uh, but also savior is, is interesting, um, given the overtones of the Dionera thing.

• 1:08:14Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, and I do think I'm, that's interesting. I hadn't thought about it that way. But I also think like this is, my theory has always been in large part that they wanted to use mostly the story of Dionera, but the name Meg is way better for a nineties audience than Dionera. And so

• 1:08:33Speaker 02

  Die.

• 1:08:33Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Yeah, like it's a

• 1:08:35Speaker 02

  Princess Die.

• 1:08:35Liv Albert?

  It's a hard word, too. Like, there's so many letters in that name. Whereas Megara is like Meg, you know, so

• 1:08:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:08:42Liv Albert?

  I think that that's like really something in there is that they also are kind of bringing in this further storyline of Dionera, even though they're not using her name, but they are still kind of continuing on with that from the myth itself, which is even more interesting.

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  Totally, totally. And now let's, let's pause for a second and talk about Meg because if Hercules is the kind of, I don't want to say inverted Disney princess, but like, that's kind of like, you know, like all muscle, no brain, a boy instead of a girl, like Meg is kind of the anti love interest. Like she's not into him at first, you know, like she doesn't need him. And on reflection, when I took my extremely queer eye to this film, I realized that she also comes across kind of as like Hades' fag hag. Like she's

• 1:09:34Liv Albert?

  Oh, yes.

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  She's sharp tongued, she's down on her luck, she's bad at boyfriends and Hades owns her and kind of is like, you know, the, the big male relationship in her life and that she has to stay loyal to instead of allowing herself to, you know, fall for the, the hunky hunkules. The way that her, the way that her character comes across also is very New York like bitch.

• 1:10:02Liv Albert?

  I was gonna say that too. Yeah, so much.

• 1:10:04Speaker 02

  You know, when she's like,

• 1:10:05Liv Albert?

  He comes on with this big innocent farm boy routine, but I could see through that in a Peloponnesian minute.

• 1:10:09Speaker 02

  I can see through that in a Peloponnesian minute. That is, it's so Will and Grace banter, like that I just fucking love it. And I hadn't really thought about how much she is presented in that, in that way. Because of course, as I will argue later, I do not really think that Meg and Hercules are really in a straight relationship. They have the least believable

• 1:10:29Liv Albert?

  They do.

• 1:10:29Speaker 02

  romance

• 1:10:30Liv Albert?

  They really do.

• 1:10:31Speaker 02

  in, in all of the Disney films. It happens way too easily. And it is, and you just, you just don't buy it.

• 1:10:37Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I think they're gay best friends. I really do.

• 1:10:39Speaker 02

  They are gay best friends. I really think that. I really think that.

• 1:10:42Liv Albert?

  It's also very queer coded.

• 1:10:43Speaker 02

  That doesn't, that doesn't detract. That doesn't detract from their love at all.

• 1:10:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah, they're just, I think, I don't think they're regularly fuck, regularly fucking. That's what I think.

• 1:10:52Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no. There's no P and V happening. So yes, this, this is also like what sets off kind of the, the labors. AKA, we only really get the Hydra from.

• 1:11:04Liv Albert?

  We get a lot of others in like little references here and there.

• 1:11:08Speaker 02

  We got, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's talk about Thebes as New York really quickly. The big olive itself. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. Like, it's so funny when, when the guy opens up his cloak and says, you wanna buy a sundial? Like, it's so Times Square coded. It's so funny. And there's so many little things, so many little jokes throughout that whole sequence that I'm obsessed with. But yeah, my biggest, my biggest insight here was really the ingenue thing that I already talked about. It's exactly, it's, it's how it's all set up is like, you have to go make it big. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  Like, there's all these little, all these little snippets that make it feel exactly like that, like that story. And then we get to the Hydra, um, which is, I don't know, it feels kind of accurate the way that it's in, in terms of like, the details, right, of the monster? What's your take on the Hydra?

• 1:12:06Liv Albert?

  I, it's so funny you say that because I was watching it last night and I realized that I spaced out during the way he actually kills it. And I was like, ooh, was that accurate? Should I rewind and go check? I don't remember. Um, so I don't remember if he does like, but he does like, um, kind of like, uh, like burn the necks so they can't grow more, I assume. Do you know? That's what he does in the myth. Like, basically.

• 1:12:29Speaker 02

  No, he, no, he, he, he, um, smashes the mountain and it falls on the Hydra after he cuts off too many heads.

• 1:12:36Liv Albert?

  So, no. Um, but the Hydra, many heads is accurate, yeah. Which that like every time you cut one off, you know, to grow from it. Um, which is what makes the Hydra a real thrill. And I mean, I would say the Hydra's fun just because I think, I think the Hydra is one of the most, I think the Hydra is one of the most likeable monsters. And by that I mean, like, for me personally, I like that the Hydra is one of the only ones that isn't like, sexualized or feminized in this pointlessly yucky way. And so I like the Hydra because it's just a monster.

• 1:13:11Liv Albert?

  It doesn't have any.

• 1:13:12Speaker 02

  Pure play.

• 1:13:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah, there's no like, I don't know, there's some weird thing about a dude wanting to fuck a woman and he can't or something. So it's she's a monster. This is just like, nah, the Hydra's messy. But what's interesting is in the myth, this is one of, um, this is like a highlight of one of his potential love stories is that the only way he can kill the Hydra in the myth is that he has help from his cousin slash like.

• 1:13:38Speaker 02

  His cousin boyfriend.

• 1:13:40Liv Albert?

  Yeah, his cousin boyfriend, Aeolus. I don't know how to pronounce it.

• 1:13:44Speaker 02

  Aeolus, yeah.

• 1:13:45Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:47Liv Albert?

  And so like, that's the way that Hercule's can actually do away with it. They like work as a team. So, you know, I, I think that that, that's a little, I like that he has help in those ways. But at the same time, I think the reason, one of the reasons why he has to do more labors than 12 is because then Eurystheus, who's like the one in the myth telling him to do the labors is like, you had help, so that that one doesn't count. So maybe it's good. He doesn't have help in the, in the movie, but I mean, it doesn't have the same purpose, but.

• 1:14:17Speaker 02

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 1:14:18Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's like, yeah, he's like, oh, you didn't do it alone. Cause you couldn't.

• 1:14:22Speaker 02

  You had your boyfriend helping you.

• 1:14:23Liv Albert?

  Yeah, exactly. Your cousin boyfriend. But I have to say that the Thebes thing for me, I mean, I do love the way it's so clearly representing like New York. But also I was so, I mean, I think it's just where I'm at now and, and kind of how I take in like reception of this type of stuff, but I was so thrilled to be reminded how much they emphasize that it's Thebes. And that to me, yeah, like that was so, they're paying attention to the myth and not the culture. And I love that. Like, if, if they were just wanting to make like a quintessential like Greek myth, like, you know, it would have been in Athens or Sparta. And I don't think Athens is even

• 1:15:03Liv Albert?

  mentioned. I know there's like a joke where a guy in Thebes is like, oh, I'm going to move to Sparta. Cause he's like over it.

• 1:15:09Speaker 02

  That's it. I'm moving to Sparta.

• 1:15:13Liv Albert?

  And but yeah, so I just really love, I mean, the Hydra geographically takes place nowhere near Thebes, but Hercules is from Thebes in terms of like his overarching mythos. And so it's nice, it's really just nice to see Thebes get some representation, honestly, because it's my favorite town.

• 1:15:31Speaker 02

  Well, I've not been there. It's the big mythological city in a lot of ways in like, you know, in the, in the sense that, I mean, stuff happens elsewhere, but it's like, a lot happens in Thebes, you know, like, there's a lot centered in Thebes. So that's very true. I hadn't, I hadn't clocked that of like, New York, what, what would the equivalent be? It's not like Athens or Sparta, which is what everyone knows, but in mythological terms, it would be Thebes. That's where, that's where everything happens.

• 1:15:58Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, and in large part because so many of the sources we have are Greek plays where the Athenians are kind of shitting on Thebes. So it's often like, is it Thebes? Or is it like Athenian propaganda? But in this case, I mean, it doesn't matter here. It's like, you're still picking up on the city that does feature, like all of the best myths, Hercules included.

• 1:16:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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• 1:16:51Speaker 02

  So, okay, he kills the Hydra. It drives Hades nuts. And Meg is sort of like, well, now I'm watching you. Now I'm into you. You got something. And it's interesting that the whole musical sequence of Zero to Hero is kind of like, to me, the transference of all the diva power of the muses onto Hercules. So now he is a diva.

• 1:17:14Liv Albert?

  That's so true.

• 1:17:15Speaker 02

  He's a diva in his own right, you know, he's, suddenly he's rich. He has a house in the, he has like a palatial house in the Hollywood Hills. He's Living a superficial life, he's getting his portrait painted. There's an amazing reference to the Nemean lion.

• 1:17:29Liv Albert?

  And it's Scar.

• 1:17:30Speaker 02

  Which, which is then Scar from The Lion King. All of these little like delicious Easter eggs in this movie too.

• 1:17:37Liv Albert?

  There are so many.

• 1:17:38Speaker 02

  It's really, to me, it's, to me, it's really like spoofing superficial Hollywood celebrity culture. You know, we've got, we start in New York, then we go to LA. It's the cla- it's the classic, the classic pipeline. And to me, it's all encapsulated in the moment where he then goes back to talk to Zeus. And Zeus is, Daddy Zeus says, it ain't good enough. Try harder. You're not a real hero yet. And he, and he just holds up his thing. He's like, the father, I'm the most famous person in all of Greece. I'm, I'm an action figure. You know, merch is like the ultimate sign of success.

• 1:18:16Liv Albert?

  Yeah, air hercs.

• 1:18:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, the air hercs and the herc, herc, uh, hercade or something. I can't remember what it's called, but he has a drink too.

• 1:18:26Speaker 02

  So it's, that, that, setting that up, that, that is really interesting. And it drives the story forward because, you know, then Herc is kind of like, what's, what's the point of all of this? Like, I'm totally lost. Re-enter gay best friend Meg, who is secretly there to discover his weakness. But she takes him and plays hooky. And then they're suddenly in love. In fi- in, we don't see anything that happens. There's no, there's no characterization of it. They're just sort of sitting down in a garden and then they're in love.

• 1:18:58Liv Albert?

  That garden is full of so many Easter eggs. I mean, the love doesn't make much sense. But like every statue in there is like a beautifully drawn, not, they're not all ancient. There's at least one point where there's like a Cupid and Psyche, the Antonio Canova sculpture.

• 1:19:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:17Liv Albert?

  And stuff like that. But I, I mean, as a person who started as an art history nerd and turned into this, like watching that, I'm so obsessed with like every little reference. There's so many, I mean, that.

• 1:19:27Speaker 02

  The Venus de Milo.

• 1:19:29Liv Albert?

  Yeah, they, they chop off her eggs.

• 1:19:31Speaker 02

  Skips her, her, her arms.

• 1:19:33Liv Albert?

  Her eggs. I'm doing well. Also, we.

• 1:19:36Speaker 02

  Leave her eggs alone.

• 1:19:37Liv Albert?

  We, we call her. Aphrodite of Milos in this house.

• 1:19:41Speaker 02

  Aphrodite of Milos, of course.

• 1:19:42Liv Albert?

  I like to be a little bitch about it. But yeah, no, there's so many of those moments and like, there's so many little in, I mean, just in the montage, I'm trying to think of examples, but I just remember like clocking, there's so many little references, the visuals generally, like the patterns they use in the background of like, every time the muses are on, all of the different like pottery motifs, like everything is so spot on in this way that again, like, I'm infuriated to say this, but I don't think is matched in like any other reception where you get this many like tiny details that are pulled straight out of ancient art or ancient sources or all of these things. It's so nerdy.

• 1:20:24Speaker 02

  It is, it's so careful. I just realized also when they enter into the garden, they're talking about going to see like a play and they're like, that Oedipus guy? Man, I thought I had problems. You know, like there's all these just like dumb little references to like different layers of ancient culture coming in.

• 1:20:44Liv Albert?

  And Thebes, though.

• 1:20:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:20:46Liv Albert?

  Oedipus is like a few generations removed from Hercules and technically related. So it doesn't really work on a like mytho chronological standpoint, but every other way it's great.

• 1:21:01Speaker 02

  And you will be sending a letter.

• 1:21:02Liv Albert?

  I always.

• 1:21:03Speaker 02

  To that effect.

• 1:21:04Liv Albert?

  Always.

• 1:21:04Speaker 02

  I already have. Now, I think the, the next thing that's important in terms of my big gay reading is that interestingly, Meg is really resisting falling in love, right? That's the whole, she needs the song to get her.

• 1:21:19Liv Albert?

  She won't say she's in love.

• 1:21:20Speaker 02

  Shh, no chance.

• 1:21:22Liv Albert?

  No way.

• 1:21:23Speaker 02

  I won't say it. And in a way, like Hercules also can't see that love is the answer to his dilemma, you know, in the sense that that is what's going to actually make him a hero is true love and sacrifice, right? And actually kind of superseding the self and going beyond just being in it for himself, which is a lesson all gay people have to learn, that it's not just about yourself. I still haven't learned that, yeah.

• 1:21:53Speaker 02

  But I think I just like that they kind of mirror each other in their unwillingness. I mean, Hercules is sort of is willingly in love, you know, but he doesn't, he doesn't understand the full implication of it in a way. He's kind of naive about love. And then we have the word that I had to look up because I'm a terrible ex classicist. But we have the big reveal and the big reveal in Ancient Greek Tragedy. Anagnorisis.

• 1:22:20Liv Albert?

  Oh, now you got me.

• 1:22:23Speaker 02

  Which is when it's like, it's the moment where you like realize what's what or something like, you know, and or the truth is revealed. And so Hercules obviously does this deal where he gives away his strength to save Meg or to free Meg for no harm to come to her rather. So he sacrifices his, his strength, but then realizes that Meg is kind of a lying bitch. Um, who's fucked him over. So they're having a best friend fight. And then, then we get the full Titans v Olympus, the famous court case. And it's, I love this part of the movie. Like this, the, the whole thing just sort of like devolves into chaos.

• 1:23:04Speaker 02

  And it's kind of amazing because that was like the big threat, you know? I guess in, in kind of like the, the Greek understanding of cosmic order is like, thank God we have Zeus because he came and he made everything normal again. Cause everything was just fucking fucked up before.

• 1:23:20Liv Albert?

  Back when the earth was new.

• 1:23:21Speaker 02

  And then they show it, they, they show that like real fear, you know, of that being unleashed again, the Titans being unleashed. Um, I guess it's not, it's not giants that are, there's a cyclops. We don't have, we don't really have giants.

• 1:23:36Liv Albert?

  Well, I mean, yes and no. I would say that actually this is another case where they've done a brilliant job of conflating two different things in Greek myth in order to serve what they want.

• 1:23:48Speaker 02

  Okay, tell us.

• 1:23:49Liv Albert?

  I think that this is like, it is a real smushing together of the Titanomaki with the Jagatomaki. Because visually, I think, I would say they more resemble kind of what the giants were more conceptualized as, like the Titanomaki.

• 1:24:07Liv Albert?

  I mean, one, we don't really have any visual ideas of anything and we don't like there's the Titanomaki in Mythos is a lot more like opaque. We don't it's sort of just like a thing that happened. Whereas the Gigantomaki is this like direct, you know, war between the gods and the giants who are in this case, much more like earth giants, like the Gigantomaki, the earth, the giants are like sprung from Gaia. So they visually kind of fit with what they do in this movie. But most importantly is that Hercules fights in the Gigantomaki. So I think that like what they're trying to convey is more the Titans, because I think that's easier to explain to kids, but visually and in terms of like the storyline, I think

• 1:24:50Liv Albert?

  they're also working with the Gigantomaki, which was much more of like an on earth battle, where people could say this happened here and Hercules helped and, you know, the gods defeated these giants. The Titanomaki is really just this amorphous, like the time that, you know, the Olympians took power from Cronos, but it's more to do with like Zeus defeating Cronos than anything else. Whereas the Gigantomaki-

• 1:25:14Speaker 02

  It's the first victory. Yeah.

• 1:25:16Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Whereas the Gigantomaki is much more of like, well, one, it happens after Zeus has already taken power from the Titans. And there's this moment where really in terms of text sources, it's mostly lost. So it's more visuals, but we have, what we know is that the giants are meant to be these creatures sprung from Gaia to fight the Olympians. So it really fits with with that kind of mentality.

• 1:25:42Speaker 02

  That's so interesting. And actually, I mean, another reason that this is my favorite, one of my favorite parts of the movie is because you get all of the gods like fighting as well. And then you see more of their insignia. Like it was my favorite game as a kid was trying to guess who was who, because they're not all immediately obvious.

• 1:25:59Liv Albert?

  I love Poseidon. He's got his little fin.

• 1:26:01Speaker 02

  Poseidon is lit. I also love Dionysus. I think he has like a giant, big red nose and the grapes and he's really short too and like tubby. Frankly, he's exactly my type. And then, so you get all of the different gods like fighting in their chariots and shit like that, but then they lose pretty quickly. They have to have Hercules fighting. But basically by the end of the movie, like Meg dies, the only way that Hercules gets his strength back, becomes immortal, achieves his true, you know, self-actualization is by sacrificing himself, is by getting over himself, essentially.

• 1:26:39Liv Albert?

  Putting on that poison shirt, setting yourself on fire.

• 1:26:42Speaker 02

  Well, and then that's not even the full end, right? Because the real end is when Meg returns the favor almost and says, "You have to go back and be with your people and I understand that and I'm, I'm willing to give you up too." But then it's the, you know, the surprise end is that Hercules would rather be mortal on Earth with the woman he loves, the gay best friend, the fag hag he loves, than stay with his family on Olympus, right? So he kind of literally goes for his chosen family in the end. And I think there is something about that or about like going back home and realizing that you're, this isn't your home anymore, you know? That is also super queer-coded in a way, in terms

• 1:27:27Speaker 02

  of like queer people having to like go out into the world and like discover themselves and then kind of make their own thing after being, you know, essentially born into cis het families that are not bad by any means, but are, are not the end of the story. They're not going to go replicate those necessarily.

• 1:27:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:45Speaker 02

  I think that that is also a queer moment. The fact that he accepts the, the new version of himself rather than, you know, going back to white picket fence Olympus. There it is, ladies and gentlemen. Disney's Hercules, the greatest film ever written.

• 1:28:03Liv Albert?

  It truly is. It's just such a joy. It's such a joy.

• 1:28:10Speaker 02

  Now we need to turn to our final segment, straight s history. Now, this is when I like to invite my guests to essentially rant about a straight person or idea or institution in history or mythology in this case, who is in some way responsible for landing us in the mess that we now find ourselves in. So Liv, do you have someone to share with us today, a straight demon?

• 1:28:42Liv Albert?

  Gosh, there are so many. Gosh, gosh. My people are terrible. No, I don't even want to call them my people anymore. I'm queer in some way. It's fine. I don't like men anyway. Um.

• 1:28:54Speaker 02

  You're queer by association.

• 1:28:55Liv Albert?

  Thank you. That's the thing I've, yeah, also decided I can claim with the.

• 1:29:00Speaker 02

  You come on this podcast, you're queer.

• 1:29:01Liv Albert?

  Thank you.

• 1:29:02Speaker 02

  It is contagious.

• 1:29:03Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. In any case, I mean, I think my fascination is overall straight s history because I think, but to me, that can be drilled pretty deeply to like Christianity and when it came in to fuck shit up. But I think it fucked shit up for so many of us. And by that, I mean queer people, women, everyone who isn't a typical man. And in this way that I think I can kind of see it in things like Disney's Hercules, but also every way that I consume mythology, except when it's just like me figuring shit out on my own. Um, which is just that, like, we have put so, we as a culture have put so much straightness onto the ancient world that it has like lost, it's lost what it

• 1:29:48Liv Albert?

  could have been if not for Christianity or like what we could understand about the ancient world's relationship with gender and sexuality and all of these things. I don't think we'll ever be able to fully conceptualize what that was like because of the 2000 years of Christianity that has come in between, completely destroyed our ability to like actually understand what it was really like back then. And so I think just generally, my rant is about the.

• 1:30:21Liv Albert?

  Cristocentric nature of the West.

• 1:30:24Speaker 02

  Take that, motherfuckers.

• 1:30:26Liv Albert?

  It's everyone. The problem is everyone.

• 1:30:29Speaker 02

  I agree. And like, it's interesting that the way you put it, that we can't unsee it. You know, like, we can't unsee through it.

• 1:30:38Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:38Speaker 02

  We can't, we can't take Christianity back. Um, I, I feel that it is, it's interesting to think about it in figures like Hercules, actually. So my, my straight figure, like Hercules is not only the big hero in the ancient world. Like, the myth of Hercules has been repeated so many times in film and television. And it's always as this kind of like hulking brute, you know?

• 1:31:08Liv Albert?

  Hyper masculine, super straight.

• 1:31:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, but he's actually like a bit more than that, I think, in the, in the ancient mythological cycle. So he gets kind of dumbed down because of this super like masculine stereotypical depiction. You know, it's kind of what I think leads to him being the all brawn, no brains type in, in the Disney film. And, and so really quickly, for, for my rant about straight history, I just wanted to introduce into the fold Arnold Schwarzenegger, who you may not know, played Hercules in the little known, but extremely terrible 1969 film, Hercules in New York.

• 1:31:51Liv Albert?

  That's one where I know that title exists, but I have no frame of reference, thankfully.

• 1:31:56Speaker 02

  Sweetie, sweetie, it is the worst film that has ever, it's not even a film. It's just like a montage of scenes where clearly someone was sitting behind the camera being like, I can't work with this guy. I cannot fucking work with him. He was fresh off of winning Mr. Universe, or whatever the fuck the thing is, the bodybuilding competition was. And the reason that I bring that up also is because Arnold Schwarzenegger is of course, an evil straight person from history, who by the way, was on steroids the entire time. He is not, he, that, that body's not, um, you know.

• 1:32:28Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I, I hope that's not news, but I guess.

• 1:32:31Speaker 02

  No, but you know what I mean? It's like, he's kind of billed as like the OG like bodybuilder who invented modern bodybuilding. It's like, shut the fuck up, you cheater. You were doing... So anyway, that bothers me and I just needed to mention that. But this film is...

• 1:32:47Liv Albert?

  Sorry, real quick. I just want to say how quickly Schwarzenegger would lose in a pankration competition. There are no rules. He would fail so, like, just, you know, for him being this like OG bodybuilder, like, send him back to ancient Greece, get him in front of a scrawny looking guy, but who's good at pankration, and he's fucked.

• 1:33:07Speaker 02

  And tell the listeners about what pankration is, because that is...

• 1:33:11Liv Albert?

  The whole thing is, the only rule is no biting, or like eye gouging. Like, it's a hand-to-hand combat wrestling style. Yeah, but it's like way more hardcore. So it's more like, I think if like UFC was like naked and oiled up and...

• 1:33:31Speaker 02

  I'm listening.

• 1:33:32Liv Albert?

  Yeah. No, but yeah. Like, literally, it was two dudes wrestling naked, covered in olive oil, and the only rule was no eye gouging.

• 1:33:42Speaker 02

  Wow. So, that's made me both horny and hungry.

• 1:33:46Liv Albert?

  You would have loved the ancient Olympics. So much naked, so much oil.

• 1:33:51Speaker 02

  So much oil, babe. Oh my god.

• 1:33:53Liv Albert?

  They did tie up, though. You want to hear a quick, really gross, fun fact about the ancient Olympics and games?

• 1:33:59Speaker 02

  Yes, please.

• 1:34:00Liv Albert?

  So they had to perform naked. That was the whole thing, right? They did all of their athletics naked, because the Greeks were incredibly straight, as we both know. But they, you know, they still had the problem of like swinging business. You know, you're naked, you're wrestling, you're running, what are all these things?

• 1:34:15Speaker 02

  Technical term.

• 1:34:15Liv Albert?

  Yeah, absolutely. You know, the thing's swinging, and they thought, well, that's uncomfortable. So, but we still have to be naked, because we can't be like putting on clothes. That's wacky. So instead, they developed, I forget what it's called, but my friend described it to me in the most delightful of ways. They had like a little, a little string where they would kind of tie up their penis in some such way with a little bow so that it couldn't fly around, but that they could still be naked, oiled up wrestling.

• 1:34:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:34:43Liv Albert?

  Because again, these were incredibly straight people.

• 1:34:45Speaker 02

  Kind of like a reverse tuck.

• 1:34:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:48Speaker 02

  Like, yeah, okay.

• 1:34:49Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:49Speaker 02

  So you don't, you don't.

• 1:34:50Liv Albert?

  Tied it up nice little bow.

• 1:34:51Speaker 02

  You don't shove the balls up there. You, you sort of gather up all the business and then tie it in a little bow and tie it, tie it to your waist or something.

• 1:34:58Liv Albert?

  Yeah. And then you wrestle another guy in front of all of your friends and all of the men of like all of grace.

• 1:35:04Speaker 02

  With your flattened dick and your like Ken doll genital space. Um, wow. Thank you for that image.

• 1:35:12Liv Albert?

  You're welcome.

• 1:35:13Speaker 02

  Thank you for that image.

• 1:35:14Liv Albert?

  This is what happens when you have friends who specialize in ancient spectacle, the stuff they can tell you. Sticks in there for life.

• 1:35:20Speaker 02

  Scrotal, scrotal dick time. Um, somehow I am even hungrier now. Um, so that says a lot about me. Okay. Well, whether it's Arnold Schwarzenegger or just Christianity or Zeus or whoever it may be, I need all of the straight listeners to start reckoning with your ancestral past with all of these people who have ruined the world in one way or another. Until that day, we thank you all for listening. Thank you, Liv, so much. This was such a fun and breezy, beautiful conversation to have, and I'm so glad we finally did it. So thank you.

• 1:35:58Liv Albert?

  Thank you. I'm so thrilled that we got to go the distance together. It was a real delight. I will though say, I meant to say it earlier, but one of my favorite lines is when Meg calls the centaur a pinhead with hooves. And I did write that into an episode title when I did about, when I covered Dionara.

• 1:36:15Speaker 02

  I mean, the number of lines.

• 1:36:17Liv Albert?

  Oh, it's so quippy.

• 1:36:19Speaker 02

  I was gonna do, um, the opening, I was gonna open this episode trying to imitate the fates doing, "In 18 years precisely, the planets will align ever so nicely."

• 1:36:34Speaker 02

  And I just did it there. I just did it there. So I hope everyone listened for that. Remember that Hercules is one of the gayest movies ever made, one of the best-written films in history.

• 1:36:45Liv Albert?

  The most accurate Greek mythological representation on screen.

• 1:36:48Speaker 02

  The most accurate, the most inventive also, representation of Greek mythology on screen. You heard it here first. Liv, thank you so much. And thank you to everyone for listening. Love you.

• 1:36:59Liv Albert?

  Thank you.

• 1:37:00Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 1:37:04Speaker 02

  That's all for this week. Thank you so much for listening. If it's your first time listening to a Historical Homos episode, welcome. You are officially one of our little historical hormones. If you like what you hear, please leave us a five-star-only, of course, review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps the podcast so much. We have also recently launched a Patreon, so if you want to check out how you can support the podcast, you can go to patreon.com/historicalhomos and check out all of our fun tiers. You get access to bonus content. You get the right to vote on future episode topics. If you would like to merely keep a breast and a testicle of all things Historical Homos, you can follow us on Instagram at historical.homos or sign up for our weekly email on our

• 1:37:48Speaker 02

  website at www.historicalhomos.com. Love you. Bye.

• 1:37:57Speaker 00

  Wasn't that fun? It's so great to just get to host these kinds of conversations and these kinds of collaborations and being able to speak about just the wonderful ways that myth and Greek history is represented in our modern day and how it is adapted. It is so fun. I know Liv had so much fun doing this conversation and we love the Historical Homos so much. So we are really happy to get back and have another conversation and talk with them about all the queerness that is so rampant in antiquity. And yeah, so.

• 1:38:38Speaker 00

  Let me just do the end credits for y'all, because that's why I'm here. I'm here to give you intro and outro. Ahem. Alright, so, let's talk about Myth's Baby is written and produced by the one and only Liv Albert. Away, vacationing, relaxing, enjoying, I don't know, sun? Who knows? Michaela Pangorish is the Hermes to all you Olympians, the producer, and I don't know, I do other things like stress out about school and work deadlines. Don't worry about it. Anyways. Also, deadline, next week, Tuesday, wink wink, see you there. Select music by Luke Chaos, thank you Luke. The podcast is part of the Memory Collective Podcast Network, a collection of creators that all strive to bring you accurate and

• 1:39:21Speaker 00

  reliable information on the ancient world and, you know, all that shit. These include the wonderful friends at Movies We Dig, the partial historians Sweet Bitter, and so much more. Get ad-free episodes and so much more by subscribing to the Oracle Edition on Patreon, patreon.com/MythsBaby, or via the link in the episode's description. Would love to see you all there. I love sharing what my current books I'm reading, or, you know, the wonders of the Vancouver Public Central Branch Library that is, for some reason, shaped like the Colosseum. I don't know, I could not still find a reason for that. Anyways, I'll see you all next week. We'll talk about something very fun and historical

• 1:40:06Speaker 00

  on Tuesday, November 11th. Bye.

• 1:40:10Speaker 05

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