A recepção do mito na sociedade moderna: reflexos da Medeia de Eurípides na construção da personagem Wanda Maximoff do UCM

Abstract

Considering the presence of mythology in the course of our lives, this work assumes the role of discussing the movement of transposition of the myth from Classical Antiquity to contemporaneity, starting from the comparison of the protagonist of one of the greatest Greek tragedies, Medea, and one of the most recent heroines to become an antagonist in the movie Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), Wanda Maximoff. Therefore, the process of transposition undergone by the myth will be explored, firstly, through the adaptation carried out by the cinema throughout history, in particular the Hollywood films of Marvel and DC cinematographic studios that adapt the mythical figure of heroes in the representation of superheroes. The theories developed by the mythologist Joseph Campbell (1990) in his book, The power of myth (O poder do mito, in Portuguese), will be adopted to develop the questions evoked from the comparison between the characters in question. For the specific analysis of this procedure, in the second part, this research will be dedicated to establishing a link between the two heroines through the archetype of the “nightmare woman” developed by Silva (2021) in her master's thesis, Lilith and Medeia: women- nightmare of patriarchal society. Studying the metamorphosis movements undergone by the myth over the years, particularly in light of the comparison of the figures of Medea and Wanda, is an attempt to understand how much of classical mythology resides in our daily activities.