Talk:Greek mythology in popular culture/Archive 1

Archive 1

Mixed thoughts

What a splendid resource! I shall certainly be adding to this useful directory. --Wetman (talk) 03:59, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

By blanking sections of existing articles, apparently. — goethean ॐ 19:14, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Moving content is not blanking. Wetman's actions were completely appropriate. Mintrick (talk) 20:05, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

goethean is perfectly aware that blanking text is a form of vandalism, but surely wouldn't have the gall to call me a vandal. I like frankness and clarity. This new article is an opportunity for any responsible editor with a genuine interest in this subject (that wouldn't be me) to pull together some well-sourced introductory text. Wikipedia:LIST explains why bulleted lists are less than encyclopedic. --Wetman (talk) 23:02, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I too think this article is a great solution to the endless war over popular culture additions to mythology articles. I particularly I have been struggling with this problem at Prometheus (see Talk:Prometheus). I do though have a few minor concerns over how this has been implenented. In particular at Mnemosyne where the popular culture section was removed and replaced with a link to Greek mythology in popular culture under the 'see also' section, without explanation or an any edit summary at all (see here) I assumed this was vandalism and restored it. I haven't had a chance to fully investigate how this has been implemented for other articles though I want to express that this approach undermines the whole point of creating and article such as this one. In order to insure that popular culture information gets added to this article as opposed to cluttering up the individual myth pages there should be 1. a popular culture section with 2. a link to the appropriate section within this article and 3.a well written paragraph summerizing the most important popular culture references (if possible) or at the very least a sentence explaining that 'x' has had a role on popular culture (such as Wetman has done for Lamia). If there is no section or clear linking to this article, I can guarantee you will see the readdition of all the popular culture trivia almost overnight. I also agree that this article needs an appropriate intoduction. I admit I'm not really the right person either. I have a personal dislike for trival popular culture references; I find it rather unbearable that they have a constant want for inclusion. Nevertheless I am happy for this article's creation. France3470 (talk) 12:36, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Mintrick carried on lots of these cutting IPC sections and removing them to either stand-alone pages or cobbled ones like this without any consensus to do so, and was not averse to seeing the IPC material deleted. He hasn't edited in 9 months anyway. Once the moves were doen, it was very hard to undo under moving/merging etiquette. Anyway, all I can see is this sort of article creates more room for arguments. Most articles will still accrue IPC material anyway regardless of separate artticle or not. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:51, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

CLEANUP!

This article is very long and obviously not unified. If someone could organize this, it would be nice. I like the format of the section Elysium the best, while the Cerberus section is a complete mess (with even some first person)

Citations would be nice, and shortening the article would be nice. In my opinion, this article should be dissolved into incorperating each section into their respective articles (ie, cerberus section in the Cerberus article)

Also, if someone could please add this for me, I'm not quite sure how to do it: For the Elysium section, In "A Street Car Named Desire" (play by Tennessee Williams) the Elysian Fields is the name of the apartment complex where the majority of the play takes place. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.248.199.196 (talk) 19:16, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes - far too long. IMHO, the current sections 1 to 5 should be hived off into separate articles.

The remainder would be about the right length.

We need somebody to wp:Be Bold and do this.

Unless I read a good reason not to (or somebody has beaten me to it), then 'one day' I shall - be warned :) Trafford09 (talk) 22:36, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Structure

Does anyone besides me think the article could be improved with more divisions? Say: Olympians, Minor Gods, Monsters, Humans? Goldfritha (talk) 22:18, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

A single alphabetical list functions as an index. Multiple lists function as multiple indices, less useful to the Wikipedia reader. --Wetman (talk) 10:11, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Sections, Athenas, Proteus, etc etc, are being split away without leaving any rerouting here for the reader. Perhaps someone will want to leave redirects in the lists.--Wetman (talk) 18:53, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I'd applaud today's sterling work. The links - left in the place of the removed text - work well.

The article is starting now to approach a manageable size (although more could always be done). Trafford09 (talk) 00:16, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Of Cerberus and it's appearences

Cerberus had no appearence in Mass Effect series. The Cerberus group only took the name from the mythological dog. So is it ok to mention it's appearence? The information might be misleading. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1singur (talk • contribs) 22:19, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Avoiding deletion

For a long while I have been tempted to propose this article for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. It appears to be an indiscriminate collection of WP:TRIVIA, a ghetto, a dumping ground for cruft that would normally appear in other articles about Greek mythological figures.

The most glaring problem is that this article fails the guideline WP:LSC, that is, it lacks any criteria for inclusion whatsoever. This article would be deletable for that reason.

So before this gets proposed for deletion, does anyone have any ideas for inclusion criteria? If we can come up with some, and prune this article to be in compliance, then it becomes a useful list rather than an indiscriminate collection of information.

To get started, I suggest that an entry here meet the following criteria:

• The topic referenced in the entry must have its own Wikipedia article (in other words, no red links). Novels, games, songs, etc. that don't pass Wikipedia's notability threshold for inclusion should not be included in this list.
• At least one of the following conditions must be met:
  • The Greek mythology aspect of the entry (e.g. "Apollo appears in video game XYZ") has coverage in independent, reliable, secondary sources. The fact has to be significant enough to warrant attention by at least one reliable secondary source — and more than a trivial mention, at that. This is less than the minimal threshold for notability, which requires coverage by multiple sources.
  • The entry explains the significance or impact on popular culture, with references to reliable sources. That is, the appearance of an instance of Greek mythology in a song, video game, novel, etc. has had demonstrable influence on other works, artists, authors, English vernacular, or whatever.

The above assumes that all the parent articles in this list do not have their own "Popular culture" sections, and instead have a link to this page in the "See also" section. If parent articles are to retain their own individual popular culture sections, then there isn't much point to maintaining this list, but in that case I would add the criterion that no entry in this list can exist without a corresponding entry in the parent topic.

Any other ideas? ~Amatulić (talk) 01:28, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Basically I support your proposal, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't support changes as well. I think the highest priority task with regards to raising the article's quality at this point is removing the trivial references, and I'd start off by defining trivial as any reference that doesn't include a third-party source to establish its significance (and in some cases eliminate original research concerns).

I'm not sure "topic referenced...must have its own Wikipedia article" is a necessary criterion; it's not a bad one though. Your second sentence in some ways contradicts this, as a subject could be appropriate for inclusion in WP yet not have an article.

I would flat-out reject additions to the article that don't have reliable third-party sourcing. An explanation of significance is original research without a backing reference.

It would seem to be a valid question (though perhaps debated before?) as to whether we should as a standard have this kind of catch-all article, or whether these references should be included in their parent articles in all cases. I don't really care for the notion that some articles have their own sections, while others have their pop culture references here; it seems arbitrary and potentially inefficient. That being said, if a parent article does have it's own section I would recommend including a link to the article and pertinent section here.

Hm. I guess I had more to say about this than I thought. Doniago (talk) 17:39, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Good points. My proposal is just a draft, by no means perfect, so I would support changes too. Certainly the final criteria wouldn't be worded as I worded them, with all the explanatory text.

Regarding the proposed requirement for a referenced pop culture topic to have its own Wikipedia article, I modeled that after the inclusion criteria at Template:Editnotices/Page/List of common misconceptions, which appears automatically to anyone who tries to edit the List of common misconceptions article. Those inclusion criteria, by the way, resulted from a monstrous AfD debate and have the consensus of a fairly large community behind them.

I guess one could require that the pop culture topic simply meet the WP:NOTABILITY criteria rather than requiring it has an article, but then one potentially invites warring and arguments about items that don't already have their own article — and this article isn't the place to have such debates. List of Apple II games and similar lists are more appropriate for including redlinks about video games, not a list related to Greek mythology.

I guess the part I wrote about whether articles have their own pop culture sections is more of a style guideline issue than an inclusion criteria issue. Once inclusion criteria are agreed upon, however, it would be good if they applied to other Greek mythology articles that have their own pop culture section. But that's something to be dealt with one article at a time. ~Amatulić (talk) 21:01, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I was unhappy how this article got set up and I hate hiving off IPC articles from the main topic matter, as they invariably fall into the cycle of delete, material recreated in main article etc. But yeah, the criteria below are what we generally follow on larger articles. The fine detail is the primary secondary issue at daughter article level. It is easier to make a case for secondary only when the IPC material is essentially a subtopic of a parent article, less so when IPC has been hived off as daughter article. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:47, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I was also unhappy with the fact that this article even exists, because it looked like it was set up as a dumping ground for trivia that nobody wants in the main topic articles. But with the proper criteria, I think this list can have encyclopedic usefulness. ~Amatulić (talk) 21:55, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Revision 1

So here's the template I propose, based on the conversation so far:

Inclusion criteria for this list

Entries to this list must fulfill both of these criteria:

• The popular culture topic has a Wikipedia article of its own, or have an associated page that describes the topic.
• The Greek mythology aspect of the popular culture topic has significant coverage (more than a trivial mention) in at least one independent, reliable, secondary or tertiary source.

An item on the list should also explain its significance to popular culture; that is, describe how the Greek mythology aspect of the popular culture topic has influenced language, authors, artists, or other works.

If you want to add an item that does not fulfill these criteria, please first suggest it at Talk:Greek mythology in popular culture.

Still a draft, but closing in on something. Anybody, suggest revisions/improvements. ~Amatulić (talk) 21:55, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

My views on these popular culture article's (particularly the mythology ones) have really come rather full circle since I first posted on this page. Although I believe they serve a role in removing some of the clutter that tends to accumulate on the main mythology pages, this is actually an extremely poor reason for them to exist. This is in light of the fact they tend tend to go against so many guidelines and policies which the community upholds. I think that sweeping them under the carpet has long been the norm, but I do think perhaps it is time to actually start to really get down to policy and find a solution to these articles which are constant sources of disagreement. The mythology articles are a good place to start as they will always have and always will be sources for popular culture items. I am glad this discussion has been initiated.

A few thoughts. I think the proposal is a good start, it adresses the two major issues, triviality of items and unreferencing both of which allow for so many non-notable items to creep into this list. I am not sure that requiring an article is entirely necessary. I would prefer this inclusion-criteria to be more like those for entries on disambiguation pages (these lists are very similar), in that the item either 1) has to have an article or 2) has an associated page which talks about the subject. In these cases I would suggest that the subject actually be discussed on the linked page, not just name-dropped. I do however wonder if perhaps deletion might still be a better option. A quick look though the list suggests very few potentially notable entries by this criteria. Additionally, many disambiguation pages already contain notable popular culture mythology items, so I am perhaps reluctant to suggest that this list holds any more encyclopedic-value. I suppose one could argue that all items being on one pages enhances the value although I remain unconvinced. France3470 (talk) 15:08, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, deletion is still an option, although there are some entries here that would be unfortunate to lose and may be rescued with sources. I revised the first criterion with your suggestion on having an associated page. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:41, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Support - I support the above 'Revision 1'. I'd recommend one change though: to clarify that both criteria (not just 1) must be met. I assume that this is what was intended, but without it's being stated, it could be ambiguous. Trafford09 (talk)

Yes, that's what was intended. I just added "both" to the first line above. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:41, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Revision 2

Looking at the article again, I wonder if the criteria should be relaxed a bit. There are entries here where the Greek mythology connection is obvious or intentional but may this connection may have no coverage in independent sources — but the entry's topic is notable enough to have an article on its own. An example would be a notable video game in which you have to fight a creature (say, Medusa) that was clearly based on a figure from Greek myth. ~Amatulić (talk) 13:42, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

I would prefer the article be limited to pop culture references that have received significant third-party coverage, but I'm willing to abide by consensus. Saying that the connection is "obvious" or "intentional" strikes me as original research unless there is third-party coverage, though. Doniago (talk) 13:54, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

If you look at the article history for my edits, you'll see I've been deleting entries that don't meet the "obvious" criteria. In actual practice, after going through a few sections and deleting some entries, I find myself using the following criteria:

• An entry in this list must refer to a parent article on Wikipedia.
• The parent article must mention the Greek name in the entry (like Medusa or whatever).
• The entry must have an obvious connection to a Greek mythology figure. Preferably, the parent article should make some mention of Greek mythology somewhere to establish a Greek mythology context. For example, we have an entry on Hydra in the game Kingdom Hearts II, which mentions the "Hercules-themed world" of the game, thereby establishing a Greek mythology context. Lacking that in the parent article, I look for an obvious similarity. For example, a "Hydra" in a video game must be a creature with multiple heads, or a song must refer to such a creature, and not merely share the same name. I don't see this as original research, just verifying context.

Those 3 criteria are quite conservative and allow many entries to remain, but those criteria have so far served well for me to eliminate many egregious entries from this article. Those criteria are a good start to get rid of the really bad cruft. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:48, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

I would submit that the clause about the reference receiving significant third-party coverage in a reliable source (which of course should be listed for the item) is also important. If no third-party sources have taken note of it, then I don't think it should be included here on the grounds that it isn't significant enough to merit inclusion. This also helps with potential OR or WP:WEIGHT concerns. Doniago (talk) 15:33, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, of course. The more relaxed criteria I propose above is intended just for initial non-controversial pruning. I think we need more involvement from other editors before making large-scale removals. ~Amatulić (talk) 20:02, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

That's fair. There's a Project page referenced above where this conversation could be noted, and I believe there's also one for standalone list articles (mentioned on the Talk page for Animal Farm in popular culture, where I've been actively involved in a LSC dispute)...though I'd note the latter didn't appear to draw a great dela of notice, unfortunately. Doniago (talk) 20:35, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Further splitting into sub-articles

As you know, the article has been rightly accused of being too long. Articles over 40K, I read, are deemed worthy of consideration of being split up.

Good work has already been done, IMHO, in making Titans in popular culture a separate article. This has reduced the main article's size from (December 2010) 165K bytes to its current 93K. But still obviously far > 40K.

So, shouldn't we continue with the splitting away, as per Titans?

The article currently has these sections:

• 1 Olympians
• 2 Minor gods
• 3 Humans and demi-gods
• 4 Titans
• 5 Giants and monsters
• 6 Nymphs
• 7 Locations
• 8 Other

I'd propose we split off sections 1, 2, 3, and 5. I'd leave section 6 in the main article, as it's currently small.

I'd imagine people would agree with that proposal? If you have views - esp. counter-views - kindly register them below. If we don't see opposition or other ideas, I'd suggest we soon start the above splitting.

Thanks for your time, Trafford09 (talk) 01:00, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

I wonder how much smaller all those sections would be if we applied the criteria for inclusion proposed in a section above on this talk page. I've been removing things here and there that are obviously just trivial mentions or wherever the name of something isn't an actual reference to Greek mythology simply by virtue of the name.

If we diligently applied those criteria however (requiring a parent article for each entry and independent sources acknowledging the Greek mythology connection) I think we'd pare down the cruft to the point where this article becomes a singificantly shorter list without needing to split it off into separate articles. ~Amatulić (talk) 01:43, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Let's clean this article up first and then re-assess the need to split. Doniago (talk) 13:04, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Hydra

The entire section on the Hydra seems to have been deleted, I came back to check after I clarified a sentence yesterday. (Changed something along the lines of "Hydra appears in Kingdom Hearts II" to "The Hydra as depicted in Disney's Hercules appears in Kingdom Hearts II" so that it would be clear they're not just talking about any Hydra. Anyway, regardless of whether this edit was necessary or not, I came back today to check if it was still here and it seems all except one cultural reference on the Hydra page are completely gone..? 84.111.255.31 (talk) 10:33, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

That would be because they didn't meet the criteria for inclusion as defined up above. Doniago (talk) 15:13, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

That's odd, most of the references seemed significant enough, and the Kingdom Hearts one was even mentioned in the discussion as an approved one, but okay. How come they weren't removed before I tempered with them? I'd hate to think it was my fault. 84.111.255.31 (talk) 17:19, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Alleged significance doesn't matter if there's no sourcing with which to verify it, which is a huge problem with this article. I've been addressing it in a somewhat piece-meal manner, and usually around the time editors are making changes to the article, because I simply don't have the time to take on the whole thing in one shot...you'd be welcome to help! (smile) Doniago (talk) 17:44, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to help, but I need to fully grasp the concept of verifiable and not verifiable. I've been wanting to help a bit here and there around Wikipedia but in order for my contributions to not pass as vandalism I need to understand it, and I'm always scared of the seemingly huge rule book. See, for example the verifiability page. I'm pretty sure all of the examples were in fact verifiable by the source? The actual source includes the mythological figure, there's not much to prove or disprove? Would it be necessary to find an official publication of a trusted magazine or newspaper featuring it? 84.111.255.31 (talk) 23:21, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

It isn't enough that, for instance, a hydra appears in FFX, we need a statement from a third-party reliable source that makes note of it and establishes that in some manner the appearance of a hydra in FFX is notable for some reason. Based on your comment it sounds as though you might be focusing on verifiability, when in this case verifiable significance is arguably the more appropriate way of looking at it. This article isn't supposed to be a list of every single occurrence of Greek mythology in popular culture (an impossible task); just the ones that were recognized in some manner. Doniago (talk) 13:31, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

To clarify about the comment about the Kingdom of Hearts entry in the Hydra section being "approved", it was kept only because it met extremely minimal requirements that were used to get rid of a lot of extraneous material from this article. Those requirements were:

• An entry in this list must refer to a parent article on Wikipedia.
• The parent article must mention the Greek name in the entry.
• The entry must have a clear connection to a Greek mythology figure (not just by virtue of sharing a name).

Those requirements were sufficient for an initial paring down, and got this list down to a somewhat more manageable size. However, the discussions above agree that there still needs to be an additional requirement that verifies significance:

• The Greek mythology connection must be noted in an independent reliable source.

Finding such verification for every entry is a big job, and may result in a very short list once it's done. ~Amatulić (talk) 16:16, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Freud and Jung

This paper looks quite interesting and relevant: [2] It considers how the work of both Freud and Jung relates to the Greek Mythological tradition. Unfortunately it seems to be pay-for-view, unless someone has JSTOR access, and this probably not a good source? Martinevans123 (talk) 12:52, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

I dont have access either, but from the abstract that does look like it would help fill in background and context.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 13:32, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

My only doubt was that it is a general high-level analysis that considers their general analytical approaches/frameworks, rather than specific theories. The well-known concepts that are definitely part of "Popular Culture" are already mentioned in the article (well for Freud anyway). But I think it might be a very useful reference. If someone is able to read it to confirm, then I guess the original journal reference could be given. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:07, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Potential sources

Holding tank for potential sources

• Greek myths on tapestries to decorate Holyrood: not really "architecture" not sure where it fits.
• see re Grote, use myth couter example of for promotion of democracy and separation church and state
• Graphic novels / manga
• in marketing
• in geography
• from Pygmalion to My Fair Lady - different endings
• greek myth in modern culture
• use of names from Greek Myth without any of the actual story: creating non-allusions
• satyrs role in etymology of "satire", appearance in modern fantasy works
• The Eternals in comics and general influence in comics
• we could probably crib this whole book

• comparison of how Medea was seen in Greek times to how she is portrayed in modern cultures.
• advertisement early 20th century gaia and the green movement and the pill

• greek religion and
• more ships

• in a training program
• in marketing

References

Sisyphus

Forgive me if this is included and I missed it, but shouldn't Albert Camus' essay The Myth of Sisyphus be included somewhere in this article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.3.196.198 (talk) 20:18, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

The article is probably missing a lot of things! thanks for bringing this one up.

this looks like a good source talking about the impact of Camus in bringing back the image of the myth into culture. Havent quite figured out how to work it in to the article; but while I am noodling on it, if anyone else wants , have a go. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 01:45, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Capricorn is not Pan

Capricorn does not represent Pan. It is, like Aquarius, a depiction of Ea/Enki. ♆ CUSH ♆ 12:08, 12 December 2016 (UTC)