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| Stephen Reid (Left) - J.C. Leyendecker (Right) |
Cu Chulainn is the most popularly invoked name from the great mythological cycles of Ireland, although popular culture does not extract images from the Irish myths with much frequency except to provide names to weapons in JRPGs or for exceptionally dangerous seeming roller coasters. His training, heroic exploits, and death form the major part of the Ulster Cycle, concentrated primarily in the epic Táin Bó Cúailnge, and he remains one of the principal culture heroes to emerge from the region beside his counterpart in the Fenian cycle, Finn McCool.
But rather than summarize the mythical narrative, I believe it will be more fruitful to pinpoint the 'type' of heroic archetype exemplified herein. Cu Chulainn is not an Odysseus, a wily paragon of middle-age, nor are his exploits followed by a long period of paternal distance upended in tragedy and the promise of renewal like the Arthur of later romantic tradition. On the day that the young Cu Chulainn takes up arms, he enters a pact: unending fame in exchange of a brief life ("Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles, who would not live long") [1] He is transfigured in his embrace of premature death, in a process previously described by Foucault:
"The hero accepted an early death because his life, consecrated and magnified by death, passed into immortality...". [2]This heroic isolation in time is made the more complete as Cu Chulainn unwittingly slays his son in battle: he inoculates himself against any potential for generational continuity, reinforcing his adolescent character by a denial of the relationship that would otherwise define his masculine maturity.
That quality of youth is emphasized in all the most compelling portrayals, recognized for its symbolic and descriptive import. In these instances he is lithe and beautiful, evoking the bishounen type wherever he appears in Japanese media. This is an inversion of the relation between image and mortality expressed in the senescence of old Saturn- we behold not the thing itself, but the potential for decay that lives inside every unlined face, every instance of youthful vigor. But there exists an occasional tension in popular culture between the need to depict Cu Chulainn as he is and the desire to portray him as a paragon of traditional masculinity, a Heracles for Ulster.
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| Ernest Wallcousisn |
This is another projection of the idealized, 'lost' masculinity of antiquity as evinced in reactionary circles and channeled into depictions that favor cartoon exaggeration over textual nuance - the hulking Celtic warrior with flaming hair and moustache, muscles described by lines of blue war paint pulled straight from Bellum Gallicum, maybe a kilt and claymore depending on the extent of Scottish emphasis. Ironically, there already exists a sort of shadow reflection of this masculine fantasy in the riastrad, the heaving, monstrous form which Cu Chulainn assumes in battle. But where interaction with the original text might be limited, these elements simply pool into the outline of the Cu Chulainn 'image', his nature otherwise obscured. This may be credited to the lack of a unifying cultural portrayal comparable to the thousand marble statues of bearded Zeus.
This tension will doubtless be evident in the many incidents of his character in videogames. In this realm the differing design trends can be mapped to an extent against an eastern/western divide, but there is some fluidity to the elements that most often abound, recalling that absence of standardized form.
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| Megami Tensei, 1992, 1995, and 2002 |
Cu Chulainn appears in every major era of the early Megami Tensei series, illustrated by Kazuma Kaneko and modeled after Ryoko Yamagishi's Fairy King. While each iteration of the slender, Leyendecker-esque design maintains the essential attributes of plate armor, raven hair etc., the 'elvish' qualities eventually disintegrate in the modern incarnation- whereas the pointed ears suggested an early association with the 'Fairy' race, which has long demonstrated a Celtic influence tracing back to a correlation between the mythological Tuatha De Danann and the faefolk of post-Christian Ireland, the final design settles on the more human quality proper to the heroic 'Genma' race.
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| Smite, 2014 |
Cu Chulainn is a playable God in Smite, one of the most perfect vehicles for devesting the meaning and potency from religious iconography ever conceived under capitalism. While several themed skins are available via the psychotic expenditure of real currency for 'gems', this default design and the "Bruiser" skin are sufficient for our purposes as they conform to the design types described above. The former is a sort of frat-boy Adonis accentuated with extremely broad Celtic iconography, while the latter is an advertisement for Irish Spring soap that I imagine was added to the game in response to anxieties over whether the original design was "too gay".
Both feature the seldom seen riastrad- while in myth this form is described in delirious terms that defy easy visualization, here it resembles a pink Hulk, or a golem made of foreskin.
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| Celtic Tales: Balor of the Evil Eye, 1995 |
It's that crazy year, 1995, and suddenly Cu Chulainn is one of the champions of Koei's Celtic Tales: Balor of the Evil Eye. This design belongs strictly to the masculine fantasy, with the addition of what appears to be a horned helmet straight from Asterix. He cuts a slightly more middle-aged appearance than even his divine father, Lugh. And yet the perfectly gormless expression crystallized in this postage-stamp portrait gladdens my heart on this day.
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| Final Fantasy XII, 2006 |
uh-oh...!! party time!!!
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| Rage of Bahamut, 2011 |
Cu Chulainn makes out like a bandit in the abysmal roulette of mobile TCG design work with this striking portrayal from Rage of Bahamut. A sober balance of stylized and practical elements describes the lightly armored profile, and the less standardized form of the spear recalls the whale bone construction described in the Tain- it looks reasonably like something that might explode inside a victim's bowels. And this one has an 8-star rating, so you know it's good.
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| Tir Na Nog, 1984 - 1995 |
Perhaps his earliest incarnation in the medium, Tir Na Nog for the ZX Spectrum centers a perfectly archetypal Cu Chulainn, the sort of shirtless, stooping gremlin one might imagine in the youthful portion of his adventures. Judging from the preliminary screens and concept art available to us, the aborted 1995 PC remake of the same would have recast the lanky abstraction for a bronzed barbarian in the affective mode of Frazzetta, a form rarely surfaced in favor of its Celtic counterpart described above.
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| Fate/Grand Order, 2015 |
2. What is an Author?, 1980, Michel Foucault
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