#someone's yiayia would bash them over the head with her κουτάλα if they tried this shit near her

[shoecrabs]

! long-ish post !

I'm not good at talking about this stuff and I'm no expert but here's my piece.

Unfortunately, yes.

As a non-American, picking up on the sheer Americaness of Rick's works was easy, even as a younger kid ngl and that's fine.

However, what saddens me the most about Rick's portrayal of the gods and our culture is the unapologetic whitewashing of them. I understand why he simplified the figures and stories and can therefore pass it off as him simply teaching the mythos for kids to get interested in the real history and culture and such, but the American imperialist undertones stop me from fully embracing his world without a bitter taste in my mouth.

For example, the USA being the centre of a 'western civilization'in tLT didn't sit right with me at all. If understand if it was the gods being ethnocentric but nope it was American pride from distinctly Not American beings. This kind of thing is pervasive in the whole series as language keeps being appropriated to fit foreigb societal moulds. And honestly? some of the community continue this trend in the opposite. I remember years ago someone calling Rick's choice for Medusa to have a head scarf racist despite many traditional (not ancient) Greek outfits having a form of headscarves (especially within our older generations) which is how i interpreted her design so theres more grey area on this one. And even within the LGBT+ community (hello fellow fruits) who insist that Patroclus and Achilles were dating without considering the nuance of cultures, or those who jump onto the 'they're Greeks of course they're all gay' tidal wave that's hit the internet.

from my observations, It's a common thing within the USA and the UK to jump onto anything Greek and/or Roman to build (usually whitewashed) ideas and standards to claim as their own so it gets everywhere haha. They love to claim this as their legacy, normalizing the impacts this does to both us and them. So I believe Rock's exposure lead him to unfortunately chosing to present Greek myths as an American Dream-like Fantasy rather than with something more accurate and respectful. Annoying, but not unexpected.

tldr:

No, We don't have the same interpretations as the USA/West, and we did not hand them over a blueprint for a ""Flame of the West"" for the gods to fly around and land somewhere convenient for the author to write about.

It gets irritating dealing with them taking our stories and reading them through rose tinted glasses but what's been done is done

I really do hold a special place for these books in my heart and really enjoy the mesh of modern and ancient in Rick's reinterpretation. I just wished more people remembered the difference between the Funny Mythology Fanfic vs the Actual Myths and how to make it more authentic to the actual stories. Hopefully what Rick has done was unintentional bias that's going to be sorted in the show.

So I was recently searching through academic essays and I found a really interesting one about the Americanization of greek mythology in Percy Jackson. I had to post a part of it here because more people need to read this:

"Slowly by looking at the structure of the stories, the narration technique and the perspective that Riordan has used to narrate the whole story of Percy Jackson and his friends, is actually Americanization of the Greek ways, culture, traditions and thus its mythology as well.

Mythologies of different cultures are like collections of many stories that have been

created by keeping in mind the roots, traditions of the culture in which they take shape. Though these stories evolve, they always possess the essence of the culture that they belong to. When a person from another culture looks at it, tries to analyse it and then rework it, he/she knowingly or unknowingly ends up putting his/her own perspective into the interpretation of these stories. The main reason behind this is, that the person belongs to a particular culture and thus his/her perspective, beliefs, faith, tradition etc. play a major role in the way he/she looks at the myths of the other culture. Such a person is also called an Ethnographer.

The bigger problem arises when an ethnographer not only reworks the mythology

but tries to super imposing his/her own culture over it. It is a possibility that his/her culture overpowers the culture of the mythology on which he/she is working. Here the whole perspective of the gazer and object of gaze plays a very important role. The ethnographer becomes the gazer and ends up colouring the object of his/her gaze by his/her own culture. This tendency to work in the field of Ethnology and try to become an expert of other culture is mostly western(...)

We see a similar relationship between Rick Riordan and the Greek mythology which

he reworks in the Percy Jackson series. There is no doubt that Riordan has taken the Greek mythology as the base of this series, but simultaneously, we can see that slowly and tactfully he Americanizes the whole Greek culture and he clearly brings forth the American culture as the culture that is more powerful, responsible, strong, moral, ethical and thus better than any other culture of the world. We can see that Riordan emerges as an ethnographer who seems to have studied Greek culture and its mythology. He incorporates it in his series and reworks it and shapes it into an American mould. This series eventually ends up reinforcing the fact that American culture is trying to colour other cultures, ways of living and even their mythologies. Thus American culture clearly emerges as the dominant culture in and trough this series(...) "

Source: https://www.academia.edu/resource/work/41896665