ArtofACOdyssey: Medusa, AKA The Writhing Dread
AS PROMISED: this latest installment of #ArtofACOdyssey features the beautiful, deadly, and always badass Medusa. This is going to be a very long thread so strap in and bring a shiny shield.
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| Medusa standing over Kassandra's body. Screenshot from Assassin's Creed Odyssey (Ubisoft 2018) |
First, a bit of background. Medusa is one of the most recognizable monsters in the classical pantheon and, I daresay, one of the most popular. She lives with her two immortal sisters, Stheno and Euryale, on an island at the edge of night (translation: very far away). Her story grows as time goes on, although she seems to have been associated with Perseus for most of it. She starts out as a child of Phorkys and Keto (Hesiod, Apollodoros, Aeschylus, Pausanias, Nonnius Dionysiaca - Hyginus says Gorgo and Keto and Homer nixes the sisters).
Notably, the whole thing about her being a beautiful woman cursed by Athena for being raped by Poseidon in her temple doesn't come along until Ovid. So, despite that being what everyone thinks of as the story of Medusa it's a relatively late development. Medusa's appearance changes with time as well. The constants are wide staring eyes, crazy hair, and ultimate decapitation - thus, her petrification abilities and demise are encoded early on. How that gets expressed is, as I have argued elsewhere and will continue to do so until the end of time, a barometer of societal fears. She is the ultimate monster, a conglomeration of psychological concern that has continuously adapted from her first depictions all the way to modern blockbusters.
Stage 1 is when artists are still trying to figure out exactly how to portray her. My favoritist of all is the Boeotian amphora in my profile pic [on twitter], where she has the staring eyes, scary teeth, and ornate hair but also...horse bits. That's right, she's a centaur-gorgon (Photo from Theoi; amphora in the Louvre, c. 795 BCE).
We also have the Eleusis Amphora (Eleusis Museum, c. 650 BCE) with all three gorgons, where we still have scary teeth and wide eyes, but the gorgon heads are really obviously inspired by protomes.
These are the ones that show up in all of the heroic battles. Lions are pretty obvious, but if you haven't actually looked into boars you might be confused. They're just hairier pigs, right? WRONG. Boars are insane. They are shrieking packages of tusks, bristles, muscle, and pure rage that doesn't really give a second thought to f---ing you up. Shoot it with an arrow? Nah, bro. Stab it with your spear? Reflect on your life as it scatters your guts like ribbons. Boars took people and dogs and a lot of strategy to kill, which is reflected in every single depiction of the Calydonian boar hunt. Get killed by a boar and that gaping mouth and red eyes would be the last things you see.
So, when
we look at Medusa, she's worse than a boar. She's worse than a lion.
She is the very embodiment of soul crushing terror that you feel when
nature is about to remind you of your mortality, and THAT'S what Perseus
has to harness, and what Athena gets for her aegis.
Stage 3 comes with the classical age. Medusa looses her teeth, but not her edge - the new fear is humanity itself. Monsters across the board become less monstrous, instead morphing into characterizations of excess...brutality, sexuality, etc.As in Athenian drama, women and their sexuality/power are on people's minds. Medusa reflects this by becoming a beautiful, if slightly out of the ordinary, woman. In this pelike from the MET (c 450-440 BCE) you wouldn't even know it was her if not for Perseus. This trend continues into the Hellenistic and Roman periods, where she may have puffier cheeks and the sort of monstrosity you get with the giants on the Altar of Pergamon, but no real trace of non-human anatomy. Except for the occasional snake in her hair, that is.
That brings us to the modern period. Medusa as femme fatale is the overwhelmingly likely choice for most but one notable exception is Harryhausen's Medusa from Clash of the Titans. (Pic of Tony Dalton w/Medusa, from Gwangipedia). One of the reasons Harryhausen used claymation instead of live action and costumes was because he wanted his monsters to be more monstrous - he loved the otherwordly quality they had in myth and didn't think that came across in live action.
So, his Medusa remains humanoid but has nothing of the beautiful maiden about her. Her entire lower body is snaky (this turns her into more of a naga than a gorgon and isn't attested in classical art or lit), her skin is reptilian, and her hair is a mess of snakes. She turns people to stone with glowing eyes, kills with a bow and arrow, and lurks in an underground ruin lit entirely by torch and bonfire. Oh, and she has a rattlesnake tail. While she does have impressive fangs and slithers around showing them off, she's more serpent than anything. Still, she's iconic and has had a HUGE influence on later representations. Take, for example, the ARH Medusa (pic from when Sideshow was selling it). The vamp factor is through the roof but the inspiration is clear.
She is also a great indication of Medusa's current stage, which is again female sexuality. Think of Uma Thurman in the first Percy Jackson movie, for instance. Black leather and shades? Cracks about dating Percy's dad? Yeah, it's real obvious. Back to Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Our girl has a lot of influences from all of the above. She's closer to femme fatale than archaic, but is still humanoid. Rather than scaly skin she's more leathery and instead wears a scaly dress.
Her snake belt and jewelry are attested in ancient art - See the pediment of Artemis at Corfu or the COMPLETELY charming Boeotian bowl at MFA Boston. Her headdress strikes me as more near eastern than Greek, but if anyone has a better idea I'd love to hear it.
As far as the battle goes, she takes more cues from Harryhausen. Apart from zipping around she has a petrifying attack that manifests as...you guessed it...a beam of light from her eyes. Since the misthios is a badass and also has plot armor, it won't kill but will slow down.
Others aren't quite so lucky, as you'll see from the many suspiciously realistic statues on the way in. My favorite is this guy...because honestly, same. Medusa can also compel her statuary to attack you so watch out for that.
Once you finally take her down you wrest the artifact away from her (the golden snake on her head - no decapitation here but it's kind of symbolic) and take Perseus' harpe as a reward. But back to the barometer of societal fears theory. The Assassin's Creed Odyssey Medusa wasn't born from monsters - she was made from contact with a First Civ artifact. Keeping First Civ tech out of the hands of people who would use it to control humanity is the entire point of the series. You get the artifacts as part of a quest to keep the Cult of Kosmos from using them to <spoiler redacted> and we learn elsewhere that hybrid monsters were the result of First Civ meddling.
In short, the battle between Kassandra and Medusa is a microcosm of the overall plot. She goes in to save Ligeia (Daughter of Artemis dating Bryce, the quest giver) from the Writhing Dread (artifact) but ends up protecting society from the dangers of unchecked First Civ tech.
This isn't to say that Ubisoft skipped the amazing archaic bits of her history...far from it. If you look around while fighting for your life you'll notice a relief on the back wall...with a lolling tongue, fangs, and beautiful pinwheel curls.
Non-screenshot photos linked to original source except for AMH Medusa, which is no longer distributed by Sideshow.
Originally posted on Twitter, Jan 19 2019.
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