Gender Roles In The Film Hercules

The film Hercules (Clements 1997) is loosely based on Greek Mythology and focuses on Hercules, who is the son of the Greek god Zeus. While Hercules is a baby, the god of the Underworld, Hades, who is also Zeus’s brother, develops a plan to take over Olympus, which is the home of the gods. Hades hears that if Hercules were to fight against his plan, it will fail, and therefore he makes Hercules mortal. Hercules is put on Earth after becoming mortal and raised as normal even though he still has the strength of a god. It turns out that he may only return to being a god if he proves his worth on Earth as a hero. In the end, Hercules stops Hades plan and saves a girl named Meg from the underworld, thus proving himself as a hero, but choosing to …show more content…
Extreme caricatures, to an extent, can be very important to media and raising issues through their ridiculousness. However, the objectification of the few women who are even written into the movie is a terrible demonstration for our youth. Meanwhile the depiction of what a man should be, and the idea that only those traits will please women can severely hurt many young male’s image of themselves and the world around them. Real people are complex and never one dimensional, especially when it comes to gender roles. For instance, real women and men carry masculine and feminine traits depending on their own character, such as a competitive woman or gentle man. If the ultimate goal is to bring people to be comfortable with their gender, then Hercules is an example of how not to encourage that idea. These issues could be a large contributing factor to various male and female sociological problems including body shaming, self esteem problems, suicide and self harm, and unhealthy relationships. In the future, if media can improve its representations with more realistic characters and inclusion of more groups of people, our society could see much more healthy people, and perhaps that is what we should all be striving