Do
you remember Miranda? He3. Girls, masih ingat nggak waktu kita melototin film
Epic "300" dan "Troy" diantara perasaan kagum, miris dan
meringis ?#bukan karena disana ada penampakan abang
Brad Pitt dan Mas Orlando Blom-yg maen di Pirates of the Caribbean-#.
Flashback, saat itu kami bertiga #Triple E: Esa, Eva,
Erwina aka Wina Anggari# mendapat tugas untuk mata kuliah PPS. #PPS apaan ya, coba saya intip di transkrip dulu= ohg,
Pengantar Penelitian Sastra ternyata# Dengan berbekal software video
cutter gratisan dan gaya amatiran nge cut video, kami berhasil menyelesaikan
tugas, dan seperti inilah hasilnya:
Note Before Reading: This writing was
made in 2008 to complete the “Introduction to Literature Research” group task.
If there is any mistake or inappropriate statement that harms any parties, we
really don’t mean by that and would like to say sorry. Thanks for reading. Comment
and feedback are well accepted.
THE
STUDY OF THE SOCIO-CONTEXT OF ANCIENT GREEK BY ANALYZING THE SCENES IN CLASSIC
EPIC MOVIE
-TROY
AND 300-
"Greek’s art of war: they restrained the
enemy’s power by using shield and then with the quick movement, stabbed the
opponent with their swords or spears".
The epic movie is a film, story, etc dealing with brave
deeds and exciting adventures. In another words, it is the story about the deeds of great men and women or about a
nation’s past history (Oxford Dictionary).
The story that reveals the artistic of war, heroism, and morality value of the
society indirectly offers the additional understanding for the audience
in considering about the socio-context of the ancient people. The socio-context is the context that has to
be considered or related with the society. It concerns with the relation between people, communities,
and its culture.
Here, we focus our study on the socio-context of
ancient Greek by analyzing the sequence scenes in the classic epic movie “Troy”
and “300”. The analysis will associate with the way of thinking and the culture
of the ancient Greek people themselves.
Among several classic epic movies, “Troy” and “300” are the
example of the movie that offered the greatness of the Ancient Greek. “300” is
based on the epic graphic novel of Frank Miller that tells about the heroism of
the Spartan’s King Leonidas with his 300 soldiers in fighting Xerxes and his
massive Persian army, while “Troy” is the movie based on the famous Greek’s
epic “Troy” that was taken from the poems of Iliad and Odyssey of Homers. The
lines of these poems have influenced the development and the spread of the
greatness Troy as the well-known epic in Greek mythology. Since the objects of
analysis are two different films (“Troy” and “300”), the analysis will be
divided into two parts. First, the analysis on the sequence scenes in “Troy”
and the second is in “300” the movie. Later, the combination of those two
analyses will help us in knowing the socio-context of the ancient Greek and its
influence through the Modern Greek’s life today. How the great epic are
transformed in the movie or how the Greek people has been visualized in those
two movies and what are the importance or the significance of the epic toward
the Modern of Greek.
A. Analysis of the sequence scenes in
“Troy”.
1. War scene.
The majority scenes in this movie are war scene, since it
was a classic and also action epic movie. Greek people basically are known as
the nation that love fighting. The Greek people are very regularly in arranging
the war strategy because they glorified war. As stated in the Greek’s art of
war, they restrained the enemy’s power by using shield and then with the quick
movement, stabbed the opponent with their swords or spears. This technique
seems effectively insisting on their enemy to retreat. The director of the movie
has successfully to visualize the war scene between Trojan and Spartan. There
are some of fighting scenes even too dramatic to be seen. One of the battle
scenes that were dramatically to be seen is the scene when Achiles with his
quick movement stabbed Hector that resulted in the death of this “Prince of
Trojan”. The combination of the brilliant and talented martial art of the actor
which is supported by a dramatic music surely gives a big contribution in the
liveliness of the story, especially in building up the real visualization of
war.
2. The scene where the death
body of the killed soldiers were collected.
The war always brings the victims
for both sides. In the end of the first war between Spartan and Trojan-that
caused by the death of Menelaus by Hector- there is a portion of morality value
in the Philosophy of Greek. It can be seen by the peace agreement made by both
of sides to collect the dead body of the soldiers and held a proper funeral for
them. Basically, they honor all the soldiers whom had been killed in the war, no
matter they were their soldiers or their opponents’.
3. The worship of Apollo.
In “Troy”, there is a scene
that shows how the Trojan gives worship to Apollo. They are definitely sure
that Apollo can help them in every aspects of life include in war. In the
mythology, Apollo is gods of art and he seems does not have the relation with war. In
the contrast, when they are attacked by Spartan, they asked help from Apollo.
It is very strange, when they trapped in a dangerous situation why they do not
ask the help of Ares (gods of war). It shows that they have a great appraisal
to art (in fact, by seeing the artistic architecture of their housing); they
might think that even a war has an art on it. According to the Greek mythology,
Trojan has not been defeated by other nation in the war. It explicitly stated
that Trojan are the state that very concern with the war or it can be said that
military has a great portion in the life of its people, but here in the movie
the different stereotype reveals from the screenplay of the movie. The Trojan
is not only concern with the art of war but also the real meaning of art and
this gives us a new perspective about the Trojan people.
4.
Priam gives the heritage of
Trojan’s kingdom (a sword) to Paris.
Paris, the second son of Priam the
Trojan’s King, has fallen in love with Helen- the Spartan’s Queen and also
Menelaus’ wife-. He and Helen escape from Sparta and they live in Troy but it
unfortunately brings a disaster to Troy. Even though Paris has done a mistake
by bringing Helen to Troy, his father still loves him. Moreover, he gives a
sword to Paris that actually should be given to Hector because he will become
the next king of Troy to substitute Priam. It shows that love from the parents
is not limited even though their children have done a big mistake. They still
love them even in a bad condition. In the process of movie making, several
things such as the early life of Paris was not exposed to help the
audience focusing to the main theme of the movie that is the battle. However,
despite the battle focused of the movie, we can learn that this movie also
portrays that the Ancient Greek also has passion of love and care for their
family.
B. Analysis of the sequence scenes in “300”.
1) War scene.
The Ancient Greek is popular with war include the Spartan
insight. They always use spear, sword, and shield as the compulsory tool for
the battle. They prefer to apply the defense system by strengthening the troops
and waiting for the enemy’s attack. As stated in the Greek’s art of war, they restrained the enemy’s power by using
shield and then with the quick movement, stabbed the opponent with their swords
or spears. This technique seems effectively in insisting on their enemy to
retreat. This technique is not different with the Trojan but instead of that,
the Spartan also considered with the geographical situation of the Greece to
defeat their opponent as seen in the one of the scene. In that scene, the
setting that portrays the hilly of Greece is used by the Spartan to apply the
cornering strategy for defeating their opponent. It showed how expert they were
in the war because they have already trained since their childhood. In the
movie, Spartan is portrayed as a good nation that loves peace. They did the war
because they are forced to do that if they did not fight, their nation would be
attacked by Persian. The movie here shows the good image of Spartan while this
condition is very different from the mythology that the Spartan is also
intentionally expanding their territory by attacking another nation.
2) The Appearance of Oracle scene.
In the movie of “300”, this scene is the example of part
that shows the bad side of gods. It is different with the image of gods in the
others movie such as Hercules or Xena “The warrior princess the series”. Here,
Gods have a great desire (the sexual ambition) toward beautiful women. It can
be proved by the existence of the Oracle (pure and beautiful women) as their
sex satisfier. The sending of Oracle by the Spartan has shown their respectful
trait toward their gods. Actually in the Greek mythology there is also a story
about the gods’ affair with human. It was told that Zeus (the leader of the
gods) had a secret affair with a woman in the earth and Hercules was born as
the son of Zeus who has the blood combination between gods and human. Then, the
other deviation which has been done by gods is shown by their traits toward the
material. They pictured as the material oriented one when they accepted the
bribe (the gold coin) from Xerxes “the King of Persian”. In the other epic,
gods are described as the perfect ones but here in “300” this perfectness is
somehow disappeared. The output that can be seen here is less good condition of
both physical appearance and behavior of them. Spartan glorifies and gives
their respect to gods who played as the guidance for them even though here (in
the movie) they have bad attitude. In shortly, the Ancient Greek absolutely has
great appraisal to their gods and their belief.
C. The correlation between
the epic with the real condition of Modern Greek.
The epic of the Greek that has been transformed into the
movies (“Troy” and “300”) is a very dramatic story in spite of the complicate
real story of an epic. The objective in making movie is to entertain the
audience with the requirement that it will have a high value of selling or can
fulfill the demand in the market of the entertainment’s business. There are
several points that can be highlighted from those two. The Ancient Greek is
portrayed as a great nation that glorifies war (they have Greek’s art of war),
honors their war heroes, appraises art, worships gods and has passion of love –
care to their family.
Epic and mythology still exist in the Modern Greek today.
The Modern Greek proud with that since it has been directly strengthened their
culture. They used the epic as the way to show their nobility. The example of
it can be seen in the movie entitle with My Big Fat Greek Wedding. In one of
the scenes, they still keep their tradition to spit on the married couple.
Another example came from the Sport World when two giants’ soccer clubs (AC
Milan and Liverpool) had their competition in Greece. The Greek people analogy
this football competition as the Trojan War where AC Milan represent the Trojan
and Liverpool represent the Spartan. It might be used to reveal a great
football match that held in a great country which is tough in its
mythology.
From the several statements above, we can conclude that epic
is the term that can not be separated from the life of the Greek people itself
that they still hold tightly their mythology. The geographic condition of hilly
Greece that is a fallow land is one of the reasons in the liveliness of the
epic. There are a lot of historical building from Greek Ancient can be found
there; such as temple of Artemis,
Parthenon and Erechteum, the theatre of Epidaurus- that contain of the statue of Pallas
Athena. As the consequence, the epic grows in line with the concern of Greek
people to make their living from that potentially tourism sector. The epic
story is the crucial part that attach to those heritages and the world amazes
by the morality value that explicitly reveals from the story. In another
word, the existence of epic has given a big influence in the Modern Greek today
for the life of the people.
Membacanya
lagi membuat saya merindukan kalian dan masa-masa itu kembali. Bulan ini,
September ceria buat kita. Miss u so much my big sisters# secara saya yang
lahir paling akhir. hahaha#. Semoga kita senantiasa mendapat kan
rahmat dan syafaat Nya, selalu dalam lindungan Nya wherever we are. Happy
Birthday for us. Peace Loph n Galau.. eh salah Peace Loph n Gaul.
