Monday, February 10, 2014

Captain Hammer and Oedipus Rex

Captain Hammer and Oedipus are very similar in terms of being tragic heroes. One of them falls by being overly arrogant, saving and getting a girl, and then killing said girl as well as hopelessly putting himself out of commission. The other...oh, wait. It is hard to discuss "unity of action" without simply summarizing the stories, since unity of action is about how everything in the stories is cause and effect. So instead most of what's here will be about the place of status that the two tragic heroes fell from. But first is a little summarizing. Captain Hammer starts by being the town superhero, almost like Superman, but with no civilian alter ego. Oedipus starts as the prince, and then becomes the king of the neighboring kingdom. Captain Hammer saves the girl, and in saving the girl he gets the girl. Oedipus does the same, but he saves the whole city as opposed to a single person. Actually, Captain Hammer does that as well, but not in this particular instance. Anyway, once he has the girl, Captain Hammer flaunts said girl in front of his nemesis, and that makes the nemesis want to kill him. Oedipus just starts to find out more about how his life is actually organized and also how his prophecy did come true. Then Captain Hammer's annoyed antagonist tries to kill the Captain, and when Captain Hammer tries to fix everything he winds up killing his girlfriend and hurting himself, allowing the villain to run rampant. Oedipus, when he finds out the truth, causes his mother/wife to commit suicide and then scratches his eyes out at what he's done. And those are the very sad stories of Captain Hammer and Oedipus.

Now, the places of status. Captain Hammer is basically the biggest deal. He is the town superhero, everybody loves him, he's fabulous and he knows it. He thinks very highly of himself, but he thinks it's with good reason. He saves people every day, and he prevents the supervillains from overrunning everyone. Oedipus is also a very big deal. Not only is he the king, and well-liked for being a good king, he is the ex-prince of the neighboring kingdom, he saved everyone from the big bad Sphinx and won the queen's hand and the throne that way. So then he is the prince as well as the king. Captain Hammer basically stays the same arrogant person the whole time, but he does sort of start to realize he has problems at the very end when he goes to the psychiatrist. This all connects back to the poster because this is what was portrayed there, the gradual falling of Captain Hammer.