#I've seen a few media coverage praising the Medusa episode

[litapeanut]

The retelling of Medusa's story isn't getting better

A review of Percy Jackson and the Olympians season one

I've not read the source material, but from what I watched, the series is a generic mainstream fantasy show, with Percy being the blandest protagonist ever, despite everyone else around him stating he is special, he literally does and says nothing that resonates this specialness.

Particularly, the thing I found irksome is the third episode where Percy goes on to kill Medusa. Sure, the show made a point that she is no mere monster and included her origin story, but, she is still seen as a quest to be accomplished, and she gets beheaded anyway ( just censoring that with the invisible cap doesn't make it less brutal, I also saw people applauding the invisible cap treatment, as if women being brutalised is okay as long as they are brutalised in a more humane way😂), and furthermore, her head is shipped to Olympus like a common parcel. None of the micro progressive changes matter, because she still ends up the way she is in the original story. I'm not against female characters dying, but female characters dying in a tropey and pointless way.

Let's look at the original Greek mythology, it is a story so well-known that non-classics-professionals are familiar with. The essence of the story boils down to: 1) Medusa is a victim of feudal misogyny and victim blaming; 2) she is being objectified as a quest to conquer and a weapon to use even after her death. The original story is ugly. If you want to keep the story as it is, you have to keep the ugliness too, no wishy-washy sanitisation is going to make it "better". One good way to handle this is to acknowledge the ugliness and offer modern critique, especially in a fantasy show set in contemporary times. The series' way of handling is dodgy, since it is literally a retelling that preserves the core element of the original story invented thousands of years ago, without any updated criticism. (Well, if I want the original version of the story, I'd read a non-fiction book about this matter, not watch a modern fantasy story.)

Perhaps my disappointment came from my expectation that I hoped Medusa could somehow become an ally without having to die, since it's the 2020's now, we probably moved on from the binary hero-vs-monster trope. I still remember that episode from the 90's Hercules cartoon series I watched as a kid (also produced by Disney) in which Hercules came to understand that not all monsters are malefic, and he makes friends with Medusa in the end; more importantly, Medusa lives. This is yet another good way to reimagine the old myth by taking a wild leap. It's sort of sad that a silly cartoon show made more than twenty years ago has a more nuanced understanding than our current production.

How we view non-human beings in the fantasy world, more or less, reflects our attitude on other people who are different from ourselves in real life.