This whole Greek thing

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Our goal here is to see how the basic DNA of Western Culture---Greek mythology---is still alive in movies and books and tv and games today.


I'm going to give you an example of the sort of thing you might do by using a story from the Bible. (Because, after all, if Greek Myth is our mommy, the Bible is our Daddy.)


My example story is David and Goliath. 


I'm starting with the Wikipedia article. It gives me a basic version of the story, how the story has been important to Jews and Muslims, and a couple examples of modern tellings (mostly, weirdly, an Italian film series).


I also googled "david and goliath stories" which helped me find David and Goliath being used as a basketball metaphor, a new comic book told from Goliath's perspective, and a news story comparing Apple to the giant.


As I think more about the basic elements of the story (little guy beats the undefeatable big guy), I realize that a lot of teen romantic comedies are David-and-Goliath stories---the little guy wins the girls from the sexy jock (or whatever). I also remember a recent book I read that had a Goliath in it, but when I went to the library webpage to find it, no luck. I did, however, find a bunch of other books and movies with the name Goliath. Which made me realize that  the word "Goliath" only really exists to talk about something huge, like the giant in David and Goliath. For instance, I remember when Magic Mountain opened the roller coaster Goliath which had a drop so hard that went into a spin so deep that they had to slow the ride down---too many people were blacking out (I got close to blacking out every single time I rode it).


Now the question is, when I look at, say, A Bug's Life, is it a coincidence that the little guy beats the big guy, or is there something intentional going on? Do we like stories about little guys beating the big guys just because, or do we like them because centuries of David and Goliath have trained us to like them?


Probably it's a bit of both.


For my project, I'm going to try and do the following:

• Explain the orginal David and Goliah
• Talk about the basic elements of the story (kid vs giant, righteous vs wicked, overcoming crazy odds, the good winning the day, underdogs, etc)
• Show how these ideas appear all over today (for instance, look at these movie/tv quotes! check out these song lyrics!)
• Explain which ones I think are deliberate references to the original story and which ones I think are accidental---that are just similar because David and Goliath are in our cultural DNA and we can't escape them
• 
  

Your project will not look just the same as mine, obviously. You'll find different things to focus on, different interesting facts.


Have some fun with this. You will be filling 5-15 minutes of time, after all. Look for things that interest you.


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Some other links:


Poetry Foundation


Finding Greek myth in everyday life


Companies named after myths


Greek mythology in western art and literature


Greek Mythology in the Modern World


Greek Myths and Modern Greeks


I trust that's enough to get you started?