E-Book, Englisch, Band 5, 218 Seiten
Reihe: Popular Fiction Studies
E-Book, Englisch, Band 5, 218 Seiten
Reihe: Popular Fiction Studies
ISBN: 978-3-8233-0212-4
Verlag: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
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Introduction
The past decade has witnessed a striking renaissance of Nordic mythology in popular culture, mainly in the realm of audiovisual media. Be it the reinterpretation of Thor and his clan in the Marvel cinematic universe, or the success of series such as Vikings or American Gods, the truth is that the mythical tales of the ancient Germanic peoples of pre-Christian northern Europe have become increasingly popular and today exert a curious power of attraction, especially among younger audiences. Heroes like Thor, Siegfried, Ragnar, the Valkyries and Odin populate television series, films and video games, together with mythological creatures, such as the dragons Nidhogg or Fafnir, the wolves Fenrir or Sköll, and Odin’s crows. Moreover, Asgard, Heimdall, Muspelheim or Midgard, the settings for the mythical Nordic heritage, have become household names since they became ubiquitous in mainstream television and comic series. Why this growing interest in Germanic mythology in audiovisual culture? Why are so many traces of Norse myths observed specifically in popular art that fuses sound and image? When did this interest in Germanic mythology in audiovisual media arise? The articles included in this volume aim to answer these and many other questions. To that end, the volume is structured in four thematic sections: “Richard Wagner and His Impact on Contemporary Audiovisual Culture”, “Germanic Myths in Cinema and Audiovisual Translation”, “Germanic Myths in Television, Videogames and Propaganda Posters” and “Ecocritical Use of Germanic Myths and Comparative Mythology”. The first section, “Richard Wagner and His Impact on Contemporary Audiovisual Culture” analyses the legacy of the Wagnerian interpretation of the Germanic medieval sources in his tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung and shows the extent to which the German composer’s reading of the myths has influenced all subsequent representations thereof in the audiovisual culture of the 20th and 21st centuries. The section opens with a chapter entitled “The Siegfried Myth in Opera and on Film: From Richard Wagner to Fritz Lang”. This essay by Paloma Ortiz-de-Urbina explores the Siegfried/Sigurd myth through opera and film, beginning with Wagner’s seminal interpretation in his opera Siegfried (1876), the third drama in his Ring of the Nibelung. In its combination of different medieval Germanic mythological sources (the medieval German Song of the Nibelungs and the Scandinavian Eddas) and its original aesthetic realization in the new Total Artwork (Gesamtkunstwerk), Wagner’s original view of the hero marks a watershed in the way the fledgling cinema of the early twentieth century depicted the myth audio-visually. This is illustrated with reference to Fritz Lang’s silent picture, Siegfried (1924). The analysis shows that despite Lang’s wishes to retain a distance from Wagner’s reading of the Sigurd myth, his film contains evident parallels with the German master’s interpretation. The analysis also suggests that Wagner’s artwork was therefore truly visionary, not only in its recovery of the ancient Greek fusion of music, poetry and dance, but also in its addition to that amalgam of a new element which would be of vital importance to twentieth-century art and omnipresent in the present century’s audio-visual culture: the image. In the next chapter, “The Ring of the Nibelung: Philosophy, Wagner and La Fura dels Baus”, Magda Polo examines the impact of Nordic mythology and the influence of the philosophers Ludwig Feuerbach and Arthur Schopenhauer in the composition of Wagner’s tetralogy. The analysis shows how this influence is to be found not only in parts of the libretto but also, and especially, in the new worldview that represents the Total Artwork in The Ring of the Nibelung. Polo explains how we can find the marks of the philosophers in a footnote that appears in the original version of the last opera of the tetralogy: The Twilight of the Gods. The so-called “Feuerbach ending” and the “Schopenhauer ending” express an optimistic and pessimistic view, respectively, of the end of the world that, ultimately, did not come to light in Wagner’s original libretto. However, in the late 2000s, an adaptation of Wagner’s tetralogy by the avant-garde Catalan theatre company La Fura dels Baus included an overwhelmingly positive and Mediterranean ending, which illustrated the role of man in re-establishing a new order and thus reinterpreted the main ideas of Feuerbach's philosophy for the stage. Likewise in his article “Staging Wotan: Chereau, Schenk and La Fura dels Baus”, Miguel Salmerón reflects upon this recent version of La Fura dels Baus and compares it with the production of other stage designers: Patrice Chéreau’s proposal for the “Festspiele” centenary at Bayreuth (1976–79) and Otto Schenk’s work at the New York Metropolitan (1986–89). Salmerón focuses his analysis on the character of Wotan/Odin, who in The Ring of the Nibelung undergoes a profound metamorphosis. Majestic in The Rhinegold, he is torn between the law and his yearnings in The Valkyrie and becomes a wandering traveller in Siegfried and a barely perceptible, but present, shadow in Twilight of the Gods. In his chapter, Salmerón explains how stage designers have provided different solutions for the full enactment of Wotan and his transformations. Finally, Jesús Pérez-García’s “Die Wandlung des Nibelungenmythos in der bande dessinée von Sébastien Ferran L’Anneau des Nibelungen” analyses the adaptation of the Nibelungen myth in the French comic adaptation of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, Taking as its point of departure the fact that the myths in the Romantic period emerged as constructs that modelled a stylized past and laboriously reclaimed cultural heritage, responding to the aspirations of nationalism and idealism in Europe at the time, Pérez-García examines how in the context of the globalized digital society, these semantic references are lost today, which leads to their radical transformation. The comic L'Anneau des Nibelungen reinterprets the myth for young audiences and analyses how the so-called heroic fantasy has a genre-defining effect in this renewal. The second section, “Germanic Myths in Cinema and Audiovisual Adaptation and Translation”, studies the adaptation of Nordic mythology in films and analyses the translation strategies used in the subtitling and dubbing of television series that are inspired by Germanic myths. Heidi Grünewald begins this section with an essay entitled “Mythos und Utopie in Fritz Langs Nibelungenfilm”, which examines the concept of myth and utopia in Lang’s film The Nibelungs (1924), thereby linking it to Ortiz-de-Urbina’s chapter. As Grünewald notes, Fritz Lang was of the opinion that a film can only be convincing if it also corresponds to the nature of its time. The director also lays claim to this for his two-part film, whose production and reception reflect the mental state of the Weimar Republic. Based on the reception of the film, the article deals with the cinematic transfer of the key ideas of the Nibelung myth onto a society characterized by disillusionment and rationalization and analyses Lang’s pictorial language with a view to the utopian or dystopian projections manifest in the film. For her part, Laura Arenas adds another dimension to the study of Fritz Langs’ Nibelungs by comparing it with a contemporary film that also adapts the medieval epic poem Song of the Nibelungs: Uli Edels’ Dark Kingdom (2004). In her essay entitled “The Image of Germany in German Films. A Study of National Stereotypes in Two Film Adaptions of the Epic Poem Nibelungenlied”, Arenas analyses national stereotypes in both films. She starts from the fact that films, like other media, contribute to the transmission of the image of a country. This image, often riddled with stereotypes, not only provides information about a certain national group, but also about its producers. To analyse the image of Germany in those two film adaptations of the epic poem, she examines national stereotypes as mechanisms to represent mythological characters in movies and determines whether the image that is conveyed of Germany in both cinematographic productions has been modified or reshaped over time. Finally, in “Artusmythos und Transtextualität in Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, Peio Gómez examines the characteristics of the relationship between Arthurian myth and the classic comedy movie from 1975. The transformation processes of elements traditionally associated with Arthur and Lancelot are analyzed using two fragments to finally determine the transtextual relationship between film and myth based on these transformations. Using theories of transtextuality, Gómez suggests that Monty Python and the Holy Grail can be regarded as an artificial myth that ultimately triggers the demythologization of the Arthurian myth. The third section of this volume, entitled “Germanic Myths in Television, Videogames and Propaganda Posters”, explores the influence of Germanic mythology in videogames and television series and it surveys the intersemiotic translation processes through which the Nordic myths can be rewritten to serve political purposes. To begin with, Ana Melendo proposes a first approach to the analysis of the television series Vikings that recreates numerous Germanic myths and has experienced a great success among the youngest...
