Everything is Awesome for Jason and Medea

Jason and Medea have one of the most fascinating relationships in classic literature. To my knowledge, it is perhaps the first time in Greek literature where the protagonist is more flawed than he is a hero.* It is also a romance with a Beta male and Alpha female. This is something that strikes me as interesting because you don’t see a lot of this type of relationship in classic literature.

Besides being a satire on the classic hero’s tale, The Lego Movie shares plenty of parallels with the story of Jason and Medea. Emmet Brickowski feels strikingly similar to Jason. Both of these two characters aren’t reliable heroes. Often times they rely more on sheer luck or the intervention of others to aid them on their journey.

Wyldstyle, Emmet’s romantic interesting, is very much like Medea. Both of these strong female characters often times pull their respective heroes out of almost certain failure. Both Medea and Wyldstyle are dark characters. Medea uses witchcraft while Wyldstyle is portrayed having a “goth” fashion sense and a gritty attitude.

The Lego Movie goes beyond the simple parallels of the Beta/Alpha relationship. There are many similarities in secondary relationships as well. Where Jason has his Argonauts, Emmet has a group of lego heroes. (Batman being my personal favorite.) who act as his posse and supporters much in the same way that the Argonauts did for Jason. (There’s even a scene where they are sailing in an old school boat that reminds me of the Argo.) Just like in these ancient Greek fables, the heroes that accompanied Emmet were often times more adept than Emmet himself. Which adds to the charm of the movie.

If you go even deeper, you can uncover fundamental similarities within the structure of The Lego Movie story. In the movie the wizard Vitruvius prophesizes to the evil Lord Business that “the Special” will find the Piece of Resistance and put an end to his reign of terror. In The Golden Fleece—Pelias, usurper of Jason’s father’s throne, is told by an Oracle that a stranger wearing only one sandal will overthrow him. After being told these prophesies, both villains go out of their way to try and make sure the prophecy doesn't come to fruition. Lord Business locks up Master Builders and is on the relentless lookout for “the Special.” Pelias fears Jason the moment he sees he’s only wearing one sandal and sends him on an impossible mission.

These are all subjective allusions, based solely on my own understanding of the story. However, the parallels are there. The fact that they are both a hero’s quest immediately puts them into the same category.  There are a lot of other allusions that I didn’t even have time to add because of the word count. Like Mount Olympus and the gods, but a lot of it is there.

As an advertising design major, I can see what I would extract from the Jason/Medea relationship. It would be the Beta male with the Alpha female.

I would, however, leave out all the killing of the children and other more tragic stuff. Sadly, it’s hard to create a Beta/Alpha relationship without some sort of sexist connotation. I find that people often call it the “ball and chain” relationship or the “person who wears the pants.” Those phrases reek of sexism to me. Lazy advertising goes for clichés.

As someone who is going into mass communicating as a career, it’s my job to look past the objectification of women and to create work that propels our cultural narrative in the right direction.

*I don’t know if this is true. It is only the oldest that I know of.