User:AndyJones/Hermes in popular culture

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The character of Hermes from Greek mythology has been featured in a number of pop culture references.

[edit] Businesses and public services

• Florists Transworld Delivery (FTD) use Hermes (whom they call "Mercury Man") as a company symbol.

• Goodyear uses a logo of a winged sandal, a symbol of Hermes.

• Western Electric used an adaptation of the winged Hermes, with cables as snakes, clutching bolts of lightning.

• The International Health and Medical Media Awards "The Freddies" are given each year for outstanding contributions in the fields of medical media and communications. The Freddie Award is modelled after the god Hermes as the messenger of health and well-being.^[1]

• The Hermes Four is the logo of the Columbia Business School in New York City.

• Hermes has been a symbol of Greece's postal system since 1861. See Postage stamps and postal history of Greece.

[edit] Literature

• Shakespeare refers to Hermes in Romeo and Juliet.
  • "She speaks! Oh! Speak again bright angel
  • For thou art as glorious to this night, being o'er my head,
  • As is a winged messenger of heaven
  • Unto the white-upturned wond'ring eyes
  • Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him
  • When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds
  • And sails upon the bosom of the air. "
• In his 1931 novel, The Night Life of the Gods, American fantasy author and humorist Thorne Smith prominently depicted Hermes (under the Roman name Mercury) as a statue brought to life, in addition to a few other figures from Classical mythology.
• Ingeborg Bachmann Prize-winning author Sten Nadolny's 1998 comic novel, The God of Impertinence, tells of Hermes being freed in the late 20th Century after being trapped in a volcano for 2000 years.
• The young adult novel Quicksilver, by Stephanie Spinner (not be confused with Quicksilver (novel), by Neal Stephenson), is a depiction of the Greek myths told from Hermes' point of view. In it, Hermes tells the myths of Perseus, the seasons, and the Trojan war, among others.
• On January 11th, 2007, J. K. Rowling signed a statue of Hermes in her room at the Balmoral hotel in Edinburgh, Scotland upon completing the last novel of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. She was staying in the hotel at the time to complete the book, and wrote, "JK Rowling finished writing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in this room (652) on 11th Jan 2007."
• The Japanese manga Hellsing a modern gothic horror series about vampiric beings is subtitled with the couplet "The Bird of Hermes is my name/Eating my wings to make me tame", a phrase pertaining to the series protagonist, Alucard.

[edit] Film and television

• In the 1935 film adaptation of Thorne Smith's The Night Life of the Gods, Hermes/Mercury was played by American actor Paul Kaye.

• Hermes was played by actor Michael Gwynn in Jason and the Argonauts, 1963.

• In the Walt Disney animated feature Hercules, Hermes was comically voiced by musician Paul Shaffer.

• In Andrei Konchalovsky's 1997 television adaptation of the Odyssey, Hermes was portrayed by actor Freddy Douglas.

• Hermes appeared in the Justice League Unlimited episode, The Balance, in which he instructed Wonder Woman to help Hades defeat Felix Faust. He referred to himself as the "original speedster" when Wonder Woman mistook him for the Flash. He was voiced by Jason Bateman.