'he-he Hesioid, I don't respect him cuz he don't respect me' - Maybe expecting the same kind of 'respect' is an entitlement thing and kind of a you problem. You don't get anything out of art or culture just by asking what IT can do for YOU. Why is someone who openly hates and resents the classics for not feeling 'included' in it purporting to make educational content on the subject?
I find this time and time again with retellings of Persephone and Hades ‘love story’ is that Persephone’s mother Demeter is portrayed as this nag and nuisance that comes between the two lovers. That really takes away from the original myth, where Demeter makes it a point to see her daughter even after the forced marriage, something many Ancient Greek daughters and mothers never had. Often after marriage, the daughter would be sent to go live with her husband and she might never really interact with her mother again. This would leave mothers with no way to know or help if their daughter was being mistreated.
Strong opinion about MEDEA: My problem with modern day plays of Medea is that she is often portrayed by middle aged actresses of over 40-usually in their 50s (like Fiona Shaw). Nothing against the actresses some of whom have been the crème de La crème of actresses but it changes the perception of the story for the audiences. As you read in the video the perfect age of marriage for a women was 15 but lets assume that she was around 20 (older by the standards of that day but capable to brutally execute her brother). Their marriage was 10 years. So she was around early 30s when she killed her children. When an audience today watches the play,it tries to find reason for the killings that Medea committed(as is human nature). An actress in her 50s makes the audience feel like Medea is probably a woman who has gone through menopause, is probably tired of her life at that point and can understand why Jason would look for another woman (who could probably have children). A 30 year old actress would have so much more impact. The audience would question why a man like Jason would leave that young wife who is full of love and life and ready to spend many more decades by his side? Why would he break his oath to this young woman who stands through everything by his side from the start (killing her brother for him). It’s one thing that makes me really passionate about because every few years there is a new play here (I’m from Greece) in the summer off Medea. Last year it opened in the theatre of Epidaurus with an older actress again who the director conceptualised looking disheveled. Also it is a decision that was made ,at least in the previous century ,by male casting directors and directors and the trend continued. But that also means that it is a male view of who Medea was and trying to rationalise her decision in the male eyes because they can’t easily imagine a young fertile woman having so much anger and hurt in this betrayal that would that. The play on each own is written very nicely but this casting choice that is made time and time again doesn’t allow the audience to feel more complex things(understanding a young woman who just killed her kids because of the betrayal of her husband) and come closer to understand Medea’s point of view and Jason’s betrayal. Sorry for this essay but it’s something that I’ve thought about before.
I have to admit I have a hard time picturing Medea as an old woman during the events of the story. I guess it plays into the modern archetype of the hag... Now that I think about it, Medea as a young woman is more original. Young and beautiful female vilains are quite often played as femmes fatales but Medea could be a good subversion of this stereotype as she never is the one to use her charms but in the opposite falls heels over head for Jason and uses her formidable powers to solve all his problems for him.
A hang up I personally have with how Medea is often portrayed is how so many stagings treat her like she's irrational. She's not. She was responding in a way that was very consistent with her character from the beginning--she's established as a woman who will kill to get what she wants, who made enormous sacrifices for her husband, and then when times are tough, her husband finds another princess to chase. And not only is this bad in a modern context, but it was HORRIBLE in the ancient context because not only was Jason leaving Medea to a life of poverty since she had no support from her family and she couldn't remarry, but effectively, Jason leaving her would bastardize their sons and leave them without any kind of status or citizenship. Medea says repeatedly that she won't allow her sons to be humiliated and abused because of Jason's decision, and that's just as much presented as part of her reasoning for killing them as for hurting Jason. And that MAKES SENSE for her character, because pride is so important to Medea, humiliation was worse than death in her eyes, and she had a history of killing people she loved to serve her purposes. It drives me up a wall to see so many 'reimaginings' treating Medea as either menopausal and crazy, or postpartum and crazy, or just plain crazy. Women can kill their children for reasons other than hormonal imbalances and mental health struggles. Diminishing Medea's rage to hormones is just plain misogyny.
very true, Western culture rides Ancient Greece's dick so hard its exhausting. And its related to, like Princess mentioned, this chauvinism bc the West thinks of itself as a spiritual successor to Mycenaean Greece, and this concept of western society being the peak of civilization. like there are other story types, don't call every journey narrative an Odyssey. I've been into Journey To the West which is very fun and full of hijinks. I love trickster types so I've liked stories like those about Anansi in the past, but if yall have other recommendations (for original sources or retellings) I'd love them
100% agree. I understand why Greek mythology has such a big cultural presence and impact on a wide range of media, but there are plenty of other fascinating world mythologies that get nowhere near the same level of attention and analysis. My personal favorites are native Hawaiian and Alaskan mythologies.
@@nickthrailkill379I absolutely love Chilean mythology. It’s incredibly expansive. You have the Yamana and Mapuche peoples myths, plus post-colonization myths and tales.
This. Very very much over it. It’s always cool, but as a consumer of media that uses Greek methodology heavy heavy as an influence for their stories - I’m bored.
racism exists because people are lazy thinkers. It's like how black people think just because some white people in the past bought slaves from other Africans who sold their own kind as slaves that all white people are bad because they share the common trait of having white skin. They don't even know how much the arabian slave trade actually genocided them in the middle east. But white people bad, amrite? Where dem white women at?
@@helvete_ingres4717that is a reductive take on the issue, and you know that. Some of the statues were blonde, yes. Others were dark-skinned and brunette. Ancient Greek statuary reflected the real diversity of real Greek people, shockingly. Quite apart from the fact that "white" is a completely bullshit arbitrary category that a bunch of Germans made up so that people like you and me would fight for our own oppression. But I'm sure if you keep saying you're white while kissing their asses they'll eventally believe you...🤣
As a Greek I must say that the story of Medusa was never seen as a feminist simply because the original myth is an old one from the Archaic period in which Medusa was always a Gorgon, she was neither punished nor assaulted. She was viewed simply as a creature like any other in greek mythology But people remember the later version written by Ovid a Roman author who drastically changed her story. But there are many great female characters in greek mythology that deserve recognition like Antigone or Electra or Penelope and many others that inspired with their courage and bravery without needing powers or only physical strength.
The biggest issue I have with modern myth retellings (especially those regarding Medusa) is that they are primarily influenced or subverting Ovid's version (he's our first source for the r*pe version) and he was very open about reimagining the stories to vilify the god's because of his bias against the emperor. We have no evidence that people actually believed his versions of the stories so when people say they're the definitive version it shows how little people actually understand the myths. Basically it's like retelling Harry Potter, but basing it off My Immortal (I know eww Harry Potter, but I don't know of any other fanfictions to use in the analogy)
Half-life full life consequences is a good off the walls famous fanfic. Not as famous as My Immortal ofc, I think our fandom culture would be less rich without it.
I'm not sure I see the problem with that? Unless the authors are claiming they're specifically riffing on the myths as the Greeks originally told them?
@@oftinuvielskin9020 that's the thing, most people believe and say it is the prime version of the story. If you've ever been on a mythology forum you'll be constantly bombarded with "the true story of Medusa" which just repeats the same story about Poseidon r*ping her and Athena victim blaming, while ignoring that Ovid was writing fanfiction and the older sources have her be born a monster. After a while you just want to punch anyone who repeats that version. It's been so oversaturated and misrepresented that it's lost all value.
A part of me gets why Ovid did it, since it was his way of criticizing the Emperor (and boy did he deserve criticism), but I do hate that classic courses don't also teach non-Ovid versions of the myths
An American Greek here. I've been saying for years how it's odd that my Grecian history has been given the "white washing" treatment, even when we're also technically white. It's been really weird. My Greek family hailed from the Istanbul (Constantinople) area, and if you know you know, making us darker colored Greeks. Side note, Disney's Hercules was a rude awakening for my child self, thinking they "white washed" Greeks in that movie, but really we just came in different colors because... "colonialism". I use to enjoy Lore Olympus, but stopped months back. The misogyny of the series became too much for me to enjoy anymore. But the fans of the series are also why I stopped reading it. Literally seeing comments brag "I'm glad I don't know the myth so I won't be spoiled on this comic" really hit me hard. You just scoffed off my ancestry, real history, so you could enjoy a self-insert fantasy using my culture as a background? Imagine I read Addy's story (American Girls), and be grateful I'm unaware of actual USA Slavery history so I can enjoy the book better? Context matters. With these retellings, ignoring the actual history, is what I find damaging. I'm a feminist, I'm Greek, I'm fully aware of the way things were back in the day, but ignoring the bad for a modern happy smile story is where I see the white washing start. Like a lot of our own history here in the USA being "toned down" for retellings. Thank you for this video, especially love how you ended it. Look forward to your next deep dive.
Some people would say that to be "white" means to be white-washed of your specific cultural and ethnic roots, in exchange for the "privilege" of being assimilated into a homogenized, dominant racial category
I don't think it is that contradictory that they were shitty to women but had strong female deities. Gender historically is very much about relationality; so godesses (and sometimes powerful women like queens or empresses) are often seen across cultures as "not really socially women," because the fact that they have power at all puts them in a different category. It is honestly a bit like how girl boss feminism doesn't help anyone collectively. (Love to hear you talk about mythology. Thanks for the video!)
One thing to note about the myth of medusa as a woman assaulted by poseidon is that was a later Roman interpretation of the myth by Ovid! The original had Medusa as being born of a race of Gorgons I believe. Medusa being inherently monstrous doesn't work much better as far as feminine representation goes so it still works towards the point. Great video btw!
I think the story is told in reverse. The rapist is the monster that turns the victims into stone through fear. Then to avoid punishment for the misuse of power, creates a convenient narrative to suit.
And even then, the point of Ovid's telling was that _both_ Medusa and Perseus were pawns of the gods. Medusa was a victim of Poseidon and blamed for it by Athena, turning her into a monster. Then the gods used Perseus to clean up their mess.
Honestly the retelling of Minerva/Athena turning Medusa into a gorgon to protect her from men or any other assaulter for the temple treasures is nice. It makes Medusa powerful like a Red Sonja template.
I joke with my greek myth friend that Electra's farmer husband from Euripides' play about her is the only man from the entire mythology deserving respect because he opens the play saying "no, i won't take advantage of this teenage princess who didn't want to marry me and you're fucking gross if you would. Fuck off" Also i can't remember if it was mentioned in the play or original to the Irene Papas movie, but the husband sleeping on the floor so she could sleep in the bed alone was really sweet. Dude just wanted to make this poor girl in all her misery as comfortable as he could. He didn't even want her to feel obligated to do chores she wasn't used to. I love that guy. I'd trust him with my life
I think Antigone is fascinating because she exists to do two things: 1. Honor the males of her family 2. Die And yet this woman, demure paragon of humility, stands up to a king and says "come at me bro"
I haven't watched fully yet, but just yesterday I remember seeing a post about someone being over "feminist" versions of myth coming out, and as someone who's tired of seeing feminism used as a marketing tool I agreed with their points. To me in order to gage if an allegedly updated tale is worth reading I'd need to know what the writers idea of feminism is, what they thought was not feminist about the original story, and lastly what they believe they made feminist about the story as a result. Book descriptions alone rarely tell me that.
Lol, the Medea section gave me flashbacks to a college course I took. My classmates probably thought I was nuts, because I was trying to say it's interesting that a female character got to live (relatively punishment free) after committing what both back then and now would be considered the ultimate sin, which is killing her own children. As they would be seen as her husbands property getting rid of them granted her the ultimate freedom from him.
Sorry for so many replies but I have ADHD and long videos are my kryptonite (though I love them). I think ultimately like you said having more options is better than having none. I just wish we didn't automatically equate a woman author with feminist principals since they can replicate sexism too. Also on a personal note as an Aphrodite fan I think she still gets done dirty most of the time, even Lore Olympus (to me) dropped the ball with her.
i honestly prefer more accurate and objective translations/modernizations over feminist retellings. i like to analyze the way that women in the stories are treated and described by their original authors because that can tell you more about the societal norms at the time and the views of the authors. a feminist analysis does not mean rewriting a story to give it a feminist message but instead understanding the ways in which the female characters are treated by the narrative and society as a whole of course it’s impossible for any translations to be completely unbiased just because every author subconsciously brings their own biases with them
Interestingly, women in Sparta actually had the right to own and inherit property. Since the men often went off to die in wars, this led to some extremely rich and influencial women who held a lot of land.
@@UsenameTakenWasTaken You mean the slaves that formed ~90% of the population? Badly, same as the male slaves. Sparta was awful. Just the worst, in so many ways. It is interesting, however, that sexism is one very common bigotry they did not seem to cling to, at least not to the degree of the rest of ancient Greece. Focusing on that one aspect would of course give a warped impression of Sparta, but it is still a fascinating nuance of an otherwise monstrous society.
In general I'm in favor with reinterpreting mythology for the modern day, but my issue with a lot of current female-centric retellings is that they too often lack creativity and nuance. There's a lot to explore about gender roles and dynamics in the ancient world, but stuff like Ariadne and A Thousand Ships just kinda falls into "men bad, women suffer". Ironically, despite their best efforts, the female protagonists feel sapped of agency and interiority. Even one of the most acclaimed works in the genre, The Penelopiad, left me cold because it dwells way too much making every part of Penelope's life miserable - even ancient women had moments where they were happy, right? (Not the mention the way Atwood writes Helen is...questionable.) It doesn't help that since it's become a hot new trend, too many of these books feel interchangeable. If you want a retelling that feels interesting and unique, Circe by Madeline Miller is the baseline that so many want to rip off, and Lavinia by Ursula K. LeGuin does a great job as well. I also hate to say it, but one of the best female-centric retellings was written by a man, and not just any man, but C.S. Lewis. Don't let that put you off, because Till We Have Faces is something really special, with a realistically flawed female protagonist and unreliable narrator, and a profound examination on faith.
yeah despite there being a lot of questionable aspects to his books, C.S. Lewis did have some surprisingly entertaining female characters once in a while, like Aravis (although the horse and his boy is extremely orientalist)
I actually just read Lavinia and I was kind of disappointed tbh. Generally, I like and often love Ursula Le Guin's texts, but I found her Lavinia to be bland and her portrayal of various male figures equally dull, her world strangely white. Meanwhile the meta element of Lavinia's communion with Vergil broke my immersion and kind of muddled the story for me - Though I can imagine that aspect maybe working in a short story format more condensed and focused.
Til We Have Faces is genuinly a masterpiece. I think what a lot of retellings miss about myth is that this was religion, with all the baggage that entails. I also think a Lewis has gained a reputation for being some kind of propagandistic evangelical Christian, which is frankly inaccurate. As someone who's never been religious, Faces made me understand the philosophy of faith in god(s), but it's not a book out to convert anyone, just use myth as a framework of exploring theology in a really natural and intesting way. Plus, it does function as a feminist retelling, without being dependent on rape as a source of drama like far too many others, and rather focusing on a woman's complex relationship with her sister. ( Also I learned that a lot of the book was influenced by Lewis 's wife who was a first wave feminist.) So yeah, glad to see someone here mention Til we have faces.
Circe is definitely peak imo, the story references every myth she's mentioned it but spins them to make a cohesive narrative and character arc. Circe is a deeply flawed but genuinely kind character that feels so whole and human despite literally being a god. I tried reading the Penelopiad because of how much I loved Circe but it felt.. like it was reveling in the misery of her life. Like yes, women should be able to tell their stories and not have to pull their punches, but the idea that every woman's life prior to modern Western civilization was unfailingly dismal and bleak feels like an incredibly limited view of history and the world. I don't wholly disagree with Atwood's methods of focusing on Penelope but I also think that its a very white feminist approach and was almost gratuitously violent. It wasn't for me, but I think it's meaningful that it exists
So happy Euripides gets the credit he deserves for this. Ironically I think I felt more for these characters from him than from any retelling. Also shoutout to Cassandra’s monologue in Agamemmnon. Aeschylus is a dick and a misogynist still, but Cassandra asking to be avenged in that show is absolutely heartbreaking.
I mean I suppose he’s not wrong - Euripides was evolving the medium in some pretty interesting and subversive ways that were by no means ‘pure’. (See: Alcestis’s genre problems). In my opinion, that’s in large part why his work remains so powerful to this day!
Apologies in advance for this absolute behemoth of a comment, I’m very excited and have a lot to share! - I am a classicist and archaeologist (beginning my senior year) and was excited at the title :) I think this is a comprehensive approach, and I like the consideration and time put into the video! If it’s alright, I would like to add a couple notes/cool points to expand on what is touched on in the video-I will preface this with I am primarily a Latinist rather than a Hellenist (I study Rome more than Greece, and within that really more mid to late Roman Republic), so please forgive me for discrepancies. I will also add that I have not read a lot of recent modern retellings, so I’m mainly going to be discussing the classical history and literature which I’m more familiar with: -I like the discussion about how big the geographical scope of the ancmed sphere is! I would add that when taking into consideration trade routes and colonization, the scope of the classical world extends even farther to India, sub-Saharan Africa, and northern Europe! It is a lot larger and more diverse than some reception takes it to be. There are multiple discussions of skin color in myth and in other sources as well. (Example-Architect Vitruvius posited that skin color varied due to how close someone lived to the sun, ie folks closer to the south would be closer to the sun…which, when considering the equator, is kind of vaguely right? He’s confused but he’s got the spirit. He then talks about how geography can affect the pitch of someone’s voice, though, so, yknow, can’t all be winners.) -Hesiod, God I hate him. It is worth noting that even for Athens (an already pretty misogynistic society), Hesiod is noted at being, like, Extra Sexist in modern study and even in ancient considerations. He’s generally an asshole. There are definitely more comprehensive women characters out there, and while Hesiod’s works are important due to them being earlier, I definitely agree that Euripides’ works elevate women to a better light and can give us a wider view about what life as a woman in Athens would’ve been like. Hesiod is definitely not and should not be the end-all-be-all. I do like the discussion of him in this video, though, as his works often get kind of forgotten about. -I love Medea so much. Super interesting to think about how it was performed in a masculine space, with the theater being only accessible to Athenian land-owning men. -(Hesiod’s name is technically pronounced hee-see-id but he deserves absolutely no respect) - (very worth noting, also, that Greece is Not One Big Thing until much later-Athens is different from Sparta is different from Thebes, and so forth. This video addresses that pretty well) -(also very worth noting-though we don’t know much about Minoan and Mycenaean culture, the prehistoric predecessors to the classical era, it is notable that the Minoan frescoes we do have do feature a lot of women in different contexts (saffron gatherers, goddess fresco, bull jumping fresco, etc) which is intriguing.) -Many modern (by modern in this case I mean medieval and beyond) tropes (particularly those regarding Zeus/Zeus’ assaults/infidelity) come from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, one of my favorite texts that goes through a lot (A LOT) of myths in a shifting genre (comedic, romantic, epic). Ovid is interesting in how varied his works are and how much we learn about love, sex, festivals, religion, and women in the early Roman Empire. (I’m super biased, my faves are like, him and Catullus, lmao.) Not gonna go into detail because i don’t wanna make this longer than it already is, but the contrast from his Ars Amatoria (a poem about picking up women, intended as comedic/satirical but also very rough to read and what got him exiled) to his Heroides (poems in the form of letters from mythological women to their lovers, like Penelope to Odysseus for example) is stunning and gives a lot of insight. -EMILY WILSON MY BELOVED!!!!! I am super excited for Wilson’s upcoming translation of the Iliad (it comes out in September!!). I had the amazing opportunity of attending a guest lecture from Wilson where she discussed how modern perspective affects their translation and what modern retellings have to offer. I think modern retellings as a way to re-examine both the diversity of the ancient Mediterranean and the varying role of women throughout not just classical history but history as a whole is valuable. Really my only main response to the trend has been some concern of disregarding the complexity of the myths-for example (I will def have to watch your Persephone video, because I assume you’ll note in there, too, about) how the story of Demeter (which is Very Much Noted in the Hymn to Demeter as well as in the Metamorphoses) gets somewhat glossed over in favor of solely elevating Penelope. This isn’t a thing unique to myth retellings, though, as much as it is the general thing of (can’t think of a better word so I’m gonna go with) girlbossification. Overall I love how your video points to the diversity and size of the ancient world, and I deeply appreciate the meticulousness of the video! Apologies for this being so long, I got excited and couldn’t stop typing, lol. I haven’t seen your Persephone video yet but I’ll have to give it a watch! Here is a closing list of orgs that support inclusion in Classics and Archaeology: -Pharos: a project from Vassar documenting the use of classics within white supremacy, particularly in the modern Trump/Post-Trump sphere -Sportula/Sportula Europe: microgrants for classics/ancmed students, with priority given to low-income, non-white, and queer students -Black Trowel Collective: anarchist archaeology collective; microgrants for archaeology students, with priority given to students with backgrounds in working class and historically looted communities -Res Difficiles: a conference in classics discussing racism, white supremacy, oppression, and other intersections in classics -there are plenty more out there as well that I’m forgetting names of
I just finished reading Atalanta and it SLAPPED. I love reimaging ancient tales from women's perspectives. Imagine Shahrazad after a lifetime of having her stories extracted from her by threat of death, only to wander now as a bitter ghost stealing the dreams of men.
Circe >>> TSOA is absolutely right! I love myth retellings, but I don't necessarily love how a lot of authors tend to sand down the rough edges to make certain stories more palatable. If you wanna turn Persephone and Hades into a ~spicy~ dark romance, instead of a kidnapping/rape/abuse, fine, but don't frame it as a feminist revision. Especially if you're centering their romance over her relationship with her mother, which is arguably more of a focal point in the original myths (and dare I say, a way more empowering story). I'm currently reading "Children of Jocasta" by Natalie Haynes, and it really excels at delivering both the impending sense of doom and the cyclical tragedy. I'm only halfway through, but I'd definitely recommend it.
Yes, I love Lore Olympus as much as the next basic b lol but it's still.... very very weird with her relationship to Hades and all the problematic other relationships they have And my only problem with The Song of Achilles is how Patroclus is framed as this... soft boy healer, meanwhile he is part of an invasion force. It just doesn't really click for me
If people want a forbidden romance story where the mother of one of the leads is the main antagonist, and lends itself to feminist retellings, then Eros and Psyche is a significantly better choice than Hades and Persephone.
I've not so organically been pushed to classics because my mother is Greek. I majored in Hellenic studies at university and took some classics courses to support my major and boy, those departments don't always compliment each other like you would think. I was pretty stunned to discover how heavily the teaching of classics leaned towards making it make sense for Northern Europeans. The pronunciation of most letters and words resemble the pronunciation of the Latin alphabet and English words and don't resemble actually spoken, modern Greek. I hadn't realised that for hundreds of years Greeks had non- Greeks telling how to pronounce ancient Greek. It would be like me, a Canadian, correcting a Brits English pronunciation. Colonialism at work.
@@bewilderbeastie8899Every Greek language and dialect today comes from some form of Ancient Greek, unless you mean it resembles the most? If the latter, how do you figure Griko retains the most features?
this makes me think of this one documentary I watched about a scholar of the classics and classical music (put a pin in that) were attempting to reconstruct what songs from ancient Greece would've sounded like, and the song they kept using as their selling point, from a tragedy by Euripides, resembled absolutely *nothing* of the musical traditions of the region because these were classical musicians, they did not factor in the ethnomusicological aspect of reconstructing ancient music, and ignored the fact that in order to achieve something maybe not fully authentic but coming close to it, one not only had to look at the instrumentation and the modes that were common in the compositions, but also the common rhythm and performance style - in other words, they had to interact directly with any successors to the ancient tradition to get an idea of what could've come before it I saw a comment on the documentary video from a Greek person who said that Ancient Greek musical tradition (at least the kind used in cultic practices) was inherited by Greek Orthodox chants that followed it in the medieval era, and I'm much more inclined to believe them over scholars of the Greek classics who didn't even interact with the contemporary folk culture of the period they were trying to revive - musicians and ethnomusicologists from the region especially
I wished people talked more about Medusa from the Theogony. She was the daughter of sea gods, and she and her three sisters were The Gorgons, a trip of monsters. She was never a human, she was never helpless. She was a badass, she was a monster.
My degree was in classics, and as another member of Euripides fan club, I would like to present another interpretation of Euripides Medea (which fits alongside the sociological one). Medea is often considered an aspect of the triple goddess (along with Demeter, Hecate, who is sometimes her mother, various forms of Persephone, sometimes Artemis), along with Circe. The triple goddess is basically a life-cycle divinity, maiden mother crone, etc. But also a "men ain't shit" revenge divinity sometimes. So if you read the play as a typical hubris tragedy, then the end of the play is not so much a dea ex machina, but an understandable conclusion. Jason is the hubristic hero, Medea is the divinity he has offended, and the chorus, thinking they know how these plays usually go, are bloody confused when Medea says "No EYE am the drama" and flies off with ne'er a blood befoulment to be found. Essentially, the play is Jason forgot who the fuck he was talking to and paid for it. But it's rare to get a really full-bodied divine perspective in hubris plays, excepting like...The Bacchae another Euripides banger. (I would also say that Sophocles often does nuance for female characters too, like Antigone is amazing. Aeschylus much less nuance, but the Oresteia is so interesting for both Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Electra, like Clytemnestra gets a whole murder speech and then comes BACK two plays later as ghost to literally wake up the Furies...queen shit). Honestly my problem with feminist retellings is that some of these authors aren't engaging with the society they're claiming to upend. It's great to change myths because you want to, that's somewhat the point of them, but you gotta do some research before you claim that the Greeks don't tell women's stories, when part of the problem is literally that we don't have many surviving works.
Your point about not having many surviving works is so important because we also have to look at who had the funds and status to want to/be able to preserve these works. Archives were often in religious or royal buildings, especially after the Roman and Greek societies gave way to the Holy Roman and Bysantine Empires (i.e. Christianity) who would have disapproved of these 'pagan' (i.e. non-Christian) stories, especially those that disagreed with their attempts to created a unified and uniform Christian society. Celtic mythology is a great example of this as many of the sources we have come from Christian monks in Ireland writing down the folktales centuries after Christianity had spread through Britain. The previous cultures were oral and so didn't write anything down and it is likely that these monks used a Christian frame of understanding/interpretation/RETELLING which has warped the modern versions of these tales.
Ive read interesting analysis about how the myths resonating w women in antiquity is important to keep in mind. The story of Persephone would be something both mothers and daughters would relate to and that might be why there was longevity in her story. A mother separated from her daughter by a man who everyone claims isnt cruel but who did trick her daughter away. Hell it even resonates w me as a moroccan american because thats the story of my grandmothers, both of them. Separated from their family and villages.
I do want to push against the notion that Athena doesn't defend women because she does. There are stories about how she saves women and helps them get back at their abusers. That being said she does turn them into animals to save them so it's not ideal. I do wish we could understand how women saw the goddesses because most of them did the female population dirty so I am curious how they saw them.
I’ve heard the idea of Medusa being raped by Neptune and transformed by Minerva rather than just being another gorgon with gorgon sisters (as in the eastern Greek version) was already a reimagining of the myth by Ovid who deliberately wanted to play up the irony of her similarity to Andromeda who Perseus saved. Spencer McDaniel has a great blog post on this.
Note: yes a million others have made this point but my big thing is I want a Princess Weekes Spencer McDaniel collab if possible. The two of you have a lot in common.
I also love feminist retellings too. My only problem is that sometimes authors just seem to slap on the word "feminist" on the cover to make some money from the trend. Like, the first book that comes to my mind is "The silence of the girls" a retelling of the Iliad from Briseis' perspective. like I was so excited about reading from Briseis because in the Iliad both Achilles and Agamemnon treat her like a thing, and the only one that treated her like a person, Patroclus, died. So even after losing her family and her freedom, she then loses her friend. And then I buy the book and... Briseis doesn't do anything, more than that, at some point the narrative kicks her out completely to focus on Achilles and Patroclus! (If I wanted to read about Achilles and Patroclus I'd read the song of Achilles, I wanted Briseis!) And she doesn't have any meaningful relationship with any other enslaved women, like her most important relationship in the book is Achilles! Iphis, the woman Achilles gifted Patroclus, is mentioned as one of her best friends, and she appears like twice in the whole book! At some point I remembered reading a part where Briseis thinks about just how much influence Patroclus has over Achilles, and I thought "Great! Maybe the story is going to be about Briseis manipulating Patroclus so he could convince Achilles to treat the women better!" Nope, she doesn't do ANYTHING! Like, Andromache in the Iliad barely appears, and I swear to God she does way more than Briseis did in "the silence of the girls" Yes, this was just about me venting because that book was really disappointing
I never understood why Medusa was a feminist icon, I always felt Atalanta was more fitting of this role. This mostly because I view Ovid's Medusa as victim who has nothing but bad rhings happen to her and Hesiod's Medusa was a monster who harmed people. Meanwhile Atalanta was a capable warrior who was mistreated from birth because she was a woman. Her father abandoned her to die, several warriors refused to acknowledge her as their equal and her expressing herself sexually with her husband led to them being turned into lions so they may never be together. Her story was one of perseverance till the end where it became a tragedy and things were taken from her control by beings she had little connection to. I feel there are so many great greek women who can be made feminist icons, some who came out not to badly despite a holes like Hesiod's extreme sexist writings. But Medusa is not one of them
My problem with the Medusa statue is that, for Perseo, killing Medusa was the most important day of his life, for Medusa, turning a man into a stautue is just another Tuesday
Frankly I think the thing many don't consider in the discourse about whiteness in Greek and Roman mythology is that in popular culture, art and media in general it's almost always some kind of north-european hyperwhiteness, they don't just choose to represent historical or mythological mediterranean characters as simply white, they tend to look very wasp-y often with only a hint of often fake tan. Like, I live in a touristic place in Southern Italy, the easy way to spot (most) foreign tourists at the beach is to look at how zombie-white they are or how their tan makes them look like boiled lobsters and they seem to almost always choose *that* type of white people for *some reason*. 🤔
IT'S SO ANNOYING. When I heard they cast freaking Joe Quinn as Caracalla for the upcoming Gladiator movie (especially when they have Pedro Pascal in the cast, who looks like every second man in South Italy) I was just... mad.
Would be cool if they cast people that actually look like they're from the Mediterranean. Like I'm from Portugal, and you do get people with fairer features here, yet they still don't look like they're Northern European.
@@brainwheeze6328 Exactly! It's not like there aren't multiple people in Hollywood that look Mediterranean. It's not like there aren't people of Italian and Spanish descent and white Latines. We're not /rare/.
Greek viewer here! Excellent video! There are so many points about these myths and topics that were presented really well and I loved hearing about them from another perspective! Also in 16:00, the pronunciation was pretty good!
Sorry this video isn't doing well, but as a classicist, I'm really glad you made it! If anything, I feel like current retellings aren't pushing hard enough, digging into the messiness in the original texts. For example, I was really disappointed in the Song of Achilles because the central conflict of the Iliad (Achilles and Agamemnon's beef) is barely given time to really breathe and make us as an audience question our preexisting affiliation for Achilles. Agamemnon is 100% a shitlord, but a big part of the pathos of the Iliad is that the worst guy ever might have a point. It just doesn't seem interested in commenting on that aspect, which is totally its prerogative, but I think it's a Huge missed opportunity. But hey, here's to even more radical retellings to come!
I'd also like to point out that this all gets even more complicated when you look at the Orphean myths, which basically posit Zeus as an illegitimate ruler of the world, Gaia as the mother of life and all of the underworld deities as the actual good guys with our boy Zagreus (you know, the one from the videogame everyone likes) as the one who can transcend death and redeem us all. Orphean myth tends to be way more willing to have women as more than victims and prizes
@@skydome5481 Its more like the cult of Orpheus and the group that would become Christianity had exchange between their theologies. Bits of Jesus are in that version of Zagreus and vice versa. You see this with a lot of religions from the time by the way because the False Ruler and the True Redeemer narratives emerge in theology and expand in popularity during times of political strife and disillusionment with the way of things.
The ending Euripides' Medea always stuck with me especially when I learned more about the history Greek theater, culture, and narratives. The fact that she is on the skene (a place held for the gods), has a chariot from her grandfather Helios the Sun, and is able to ride off with her children's corpses in the end sends such a powerful statement to the patriarchal cultures. And I remember in college writing about how I thought Euripides used Medea to speak on patriarchy/misogyny because she was considered a foreigner.
As someone who is dating a classics PhD student I really enjoyed this video! My gf and a lot of her friends are exploring a lot of interesting things with gender and sexuality and trying to expand and diversify the academic space.
I remember reading "House of Names" (about the Curse of the House of Atreus), and just wondering why Clytemnestra was basically just portrayed as crazy. "Elektra" by Jennifer Saint takes the same story, and doesn't even change that much. It just takes the space that was there to portray Clytemnestra as a traumatized and furious mother, who saw her husband slaughter her daughter in front of her. I liked that version much more, simply because it takes the same events and humanizes the characters so much more.
Claire North's "Ithaca" also paints an interesting portrait of Clytemnestra. The whole darn book is brilliant, with Hera, the oft-vilified goddess, as the narrator. I haven't read "Clytemnestra" yet, but I''m eager to.
So, I loved this video and it's great to have a few more books to look for in the future. Reinterpreting stories is how we get "Hadestown", "Oh Brother, where art thou?", the PJO books and so much more that I'm too distracted to remember. The credits music. Every time I watch one of these videos I hear it, and from then on the song lives in my head for hours. Which is annoying, because I have no idea about its name or who made it.
“She is after your barn SENNNT MEEE Great analysis, as always! Also, as a person with a theatre degree, I appreciate the Euripides shoutout (+the Phaedra mention) bc they were plays that impacted me a lot when I read them (Medea just from reading, Trojan Women bc a friend played Cassandra in a production of it and Phaedra bc I had to reinterpret it for a class). Antigone is another interesting one, especially when taking into consideration the role of women in that society and what her defiance ends up meaning for her!
@@christopherb501 I really liked Circe! We also have Jennifer Saint’s books, Stone Blind, and all of the Lore Olympus volumes. Oh and I’ve heard Clytemnestra is good!
to be honest, the only book in this adaptational niche I've liked is Christa Wolf's Cassandra, which is from the 80s and German, and it genuinely is about women and the relationships between them during the Trojan war. It is actually, structurally, feminist. It acknowledges passingly the different relationships to attraction and race that would have been held at the time. It's dense but I really do recommend it. I hope to find more books like it soon. I've been hunting down this brand of retelling specifically because I've found so many of them disappointing -- I think it stems from the idea that a book about women is inherently feminist (which - in some ways it is), but these novels are often not *structurally* feminist. In A Thousand Ships, Penelope's chapters are her summarizing the Odyssey (I am not joking, that is all they are), and somehow this is...feminist? She rarely speaks her mind except to be jealous of other women. All of the women in A Thousand Ships detest Helen for unknown reasons. I even went to listen to Haynes' podcast episode about Helen and found it surprisingly interesting - she explains that Helen is smart and charismatic, in pretty much all sources. And yet her Helen is none of those things. I don't know how Haynes got there. Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati just kind of dropped Helen as a delicate feminine physically weak white blonde woman and Clytemnestra as darker-skinned, more aggressive, more masculine, and physically stronger at the start of the book, which...yikes, man. I don't think Casati really thought through how those stereotypes might affect the work (and I think this could have been well-subverted by having Clytemnestra be *perceived* as those things moreso than her lighter-skinned sisters, but this was not really dealt with). It really soured the rest of the book to me, which was disappointing, because I love Clytemnestra. I adapt her again and again. Also, I think a huge part of the failure of these novelizations is that there just isn't that much story to adapt -- which means these authors have to build their own part of the narrative, which fails because often they just can't satisfactorily fill in the gaps. Often they also try to remove any sense of mythology or magic to the story, like Daughters of Sparta, which tried to be an accurate portrayal of Mycenaean Greek life, but, like, it's HELEN and CLYTEMNESTRA. The magic and mythos is the draw. I don't really want to read about how these two amazing mythological women didn't actually hatch from an egg. Play adaptations miss the mark less often, I'll say. Zinnie Harris' This Restless House is really great. Also, Luis Alfaro's Greek Trilogy, which adapts Oedipus, Medea, and Elektra in modern-day LA. They're great. Iphigenia and the Furies (on Taurian Land) by Ho Ka Kei is so, so good and deconstructs colonialism in Iphigenia among the Taurians, while also being hilarious. It just won the Lambda. Read it, for real.
I feel like Circe did a great job of weaving the mythos in with well written characters to create a narrative that feels like someone is telling you their life story. It also doesn't portray any of the characters as white-- it doesn't frequently mention physical characteristics unless they are plot relevant or revealing of character, but the features it does mention allude to that different understanding of race, including tan or golden skin, dark hair, dark eyes. I'm somewhat disappointed to hear that Clytemnestra had that stereotypical framing that reeks of colorism. Thank you for the incredible play recommendations, they're now on my list
I loved reading about greek myths around middle school. The rampant inaccuracies in modern reinventions really got on my nerves as a nerdy kid on the spectrum. Kalon Kakon would be a bad-ass tattoo. I love how women arrived as a punishment for receiving fire. Kind of works with speculation that women first brought fire home for humankind to use.
When I was studying classics, this is the exact kind of thing I was interested in!!! I did a lot of comparative studies of Helen within different ancient narratives, in addition to her reception by contemporary female authors. One thing that I always joked about with my professors is that sometimes ancient male Greek authors were able to take a more nuanced view about Helen's involvement in the Trojan War compared to say a Madeline Miller or Natalie Haynes. I feel a great degree of respect for these mythological women, as many of their stories came to me during an especially difficult period of my life. It always saddens me to see the way that modern authors sometimes approach these stories as though the source material has nothing of value. I find in some attempts to retell a story, the emotional core is lost in the process of trying so hard to make a statement (or under bad writing *cough* Jenifer Saint).
Hi! Thank you for this video, especially with that powerful ending! I'm a Vietnamese poet currently working on the first ever translation of the Aeneid into Vietnamese. Your point about translators and scholars viewing the classics in different ways *REALLY* strikes a chord with me. There's just SO many things that came to my mind when I was translating the Aeneid straight from Latin, not just regarding the myth itself but also how other cultures with their own history would come to perceive this piece of literature. For examples, the entire Book 2 where Troy falls reminds me and my beta readers not just of the Fall of Saigon, but also the American bombings of Hanoi in December 1972, i.e. both sides of the war could see themselves there. Or how the Romans' conception of the dead and funeral rites for them are strikingly similar to Vietnamese ancestral worship, which means there are Latin words about funereal ceremonies that just translate perfectly into the Vietnamese because similar concepts exist! Or last but not least, the bond between Aeneas's family and that of Hector (Aeneas's brother-in-law). This kind of extended family dynamics is something that's hard to feel in most English and French translations I've read, but because they're so strong in the original and because my target audience *really cares about* their extended families, it'd be a major omission not to highlight them in the translation. To sum it up, I highly, highly agree with the idea that every new translator from a new culture offers a new perspective on these texts. It would be so great if these texts are not held as solid artifacts that must be seen through the glass in certain ways, but essentially thrown to the wolves, but not any wolves but wolves that have done their research and decided what they wanna change/highlight in the original. Anyway, that's a long, tangentially related rant. Gotta get back to Book 3 where Helenus is talking a little bit too much and I can't wait to be back to Andromache.
Omg I was waiting for someone to do a video about this trend or I was going to make one myself. So far my favorite retellings are Madeline Miller's. I'm glad that the classics are getting a second look from a feminist lens, and I love the fact that we have so many options. That being said, not all (or most, one could argue) come out smelling like Madeline Miller. I feel like some authors are trying to imitate her, and sometimes it creates something that is really well researched and new. Other times everything, particularly the feminism, is very lazy. My least favorite feminist Greek mythology authors are Natalies Haynes and Claire Heywood. Heywood just copies what everyone else is doing. She literally released Under the Shadow of Perseus the same year as Stone Blind; I think several people owe her a plagiarism lawsuit. Natalie Haynes… on the one hand I owe a lot to her. A Thousand Ships introduced me to Andromache, my favorite, and so many amazing heroines. Her nonfiction work is amazing, and it’s clear that she knows a lot about Greek mythology. But her fiction… Stone Blind is the biggest example of her problem. It hardly focuses on Medusa, or any woman, and spends most of its time showing how big its scope is and how awful the men are. The women are little more than a camera lens, something to see the same story through. And not to say #NotAllMen, but her vilification of Perseus was unnecessary; unlike someone like Theseus or Hercules, his worst crime was killing Medusa, which was to free his mom. There are plenty of asshole men in Greek mythology, but Perseus really wasn’t one of them. It feels like she made him a stupid bigot just to hammer her message, or rather, her own ego, in. Her narration can be rather self-righteous and self-congratulatory, boasting about how she uplifts forgotten women’s voices (which, as was stated in the video, is not a new thing and goes all the way back to Euripides) A Thousand Ships also suffers from some of the similar problems, particularly with Penelope’s chapters. But I can’t totally write off Haynes. When she actually does focus on the women, it’s magical. It’s insightful. What she wrote about Andromache really got me interested in her character, so much so that I want to write about her myself. So far, my favorite adaptations were Circe, Song of Achilles, Atalanta by Jennifer Saint, and Ariadne by Jennifer Saint. My other favorite retellings are Hadestown by Anais Mitchell and Percy Jackson. One that is super interesting is The Memoirs of Helen of Troy by Amanda Elyot, which is from the 2000s and has a lot of the same feminist, sex positive undertones. I don’t necessarily like it (there is way too much sex, including a “romance” between 40 y.o. Theseus and 14 year old Helen, most of the other women are shown to be shrewish and jealous, and Helen can be downright narcissistic), but it is very interesting.
Really appreciated your note re: transposing their ideas onto these myths while Greek people still exist. I'm from a culture that literally billions of people who are Not Us feel absolute entitlement to and ownership of, all while telling us we're doing our own culture wrong (or even think we're extinct!) So important to remember that people are not metaphors, and Western Europe and Western Europeans are not somehow the inheritors of the Greek tradition or descendents of the Greeks in any way. Basically, it just sucks to be written out of your own story.
But Western Europe is AN inheritor of Greek tradition, by way of the influence of Greco-Roman culture first through contact with the Greek classical world and Roman conquest (which also led to the adoption of the Greco-Roman pantheon by peoples from Britain to Iberia), and later by the influence of Classical culture on the medieval Christian world. To say that the modern Greeks are the only inheritors of classical Greece is like saying that only China is the inheritor of classical Chinese culture, ignoring the influence it had in Korea, Japan, Vietnam...
@@MaylocBrittinorum That's not a terrible point. But I think these situations are not really analogous, you're missing the relative balance of power between these players. You don't have people in Korea, Japan, Vietnam, etc., saying they are the inheritors of Chinese culture; you have people saying their cultures were influenced by Chinese culture. Also, frankly, the power relationship between Western Europe and Greece, for more than a thousand years, has been entirely opposite the example you gave. Greece is not the powerful metropole exerting colonial influence on Britain, France, and Spain, it is a relatively marginal economic player in southeast Europe, while western European countries and their "Greco-Roman influenced" cultures have been economically and culturally dominant since at least the Middle Ages. Meanwhile, China remains a massively powerful and dominant cultural and economic force in Asia, as it has been for thousands of years, and continues to exert its power on other nations in the region.
this was such a great love letter to the art of retelling stories and what it can accomplish! I feel like lately I've been seeing some backlash to the whole feminist retellings of myths trend, probably bc as you say it's become so common now, so it's nice to be reminded of how far we've come that this trend can even exist!
My school did lessons in Classics and this combined with a 1980's cartoon called Ulysses 31 which is a sci-fi retelling of The Odyssey is what got me interested in Greek Mythology. Another book I remember reading is The Firebrand by Marion Zimmer Bradley which covers Cassandra's life from her childhood through to the events of the Trojan War.
OK, this is making me want a retelling of Carmilla. And a genderbent lesbian Dracula. Anyway, personally the goddess Freyja always resonated with me for transfemme reasons.
Hi, you should read The Moth Diaries. While it's not exactly a retelling of Carmilla it's heavily inspired by it and has that gothic atmosphere. It's set in a boarding school and has an almost all-female cast of characters! I love Carmilla and I just wanted more people to know about the moth diaries because it's pretty good!
I studied Classical Studies in high school and university. It's one of my obessions as I adored Greek mythology well all mythology. And I love these retellings. There's also a great historical book called the Lion's Den which talks about women in a pompeli brothel just before the volcano exploded. It's great.
im sure you've read it but if you haven't, i recommend A Thousand Ships by natalie haynes. it's a retelling of the illiad and the odyssey from the women involved. like, SO many. it's really interesting how many stories the author was able to make from names who are barely mentioned in the surviving works but very cool video! i love this subject and was excited to see you touch on it, sad to see youtube hiding it
would strongly advise all those doing additional (modern) reading to understand the perspectives of the authors! for example, mary lefkowitz famously had a back and forth with another classicist about how she believed that other, non-greek civilizations (ancient egyptians, phoenicians etc.) had little to no impact on the way the ancient greek culture developed, and she is currently a member of a society advocating against diversity in the field of classics. modern intersectionality is very important for a field that has historically been used to do and justify great harm (most notably the trans-Atlantic slave trade) and when reading a socially conservative author it is important to remember that the perspectives of non-dominant societal groups are absent from the narrative. non-white (according to modern definitions of such) perspectives and influences being erased from history by white supremacist groups are absolutely lies, and all cultures that have come into contact with each other have influenced and changed the other in significant ways. the archaic style of greek sculpture was heavily influenced by the egyptian styles but that doesnt mean the ancient greeks did not innovate with it, and vice versa, and that is just one small example. the ancient greco-roman peoples believed in the superiority of their own culture but also exchanged a great deal with other cultures as well, so please beware of modern scholarship that denies as much. for additional reading on intersectionality in the classics i would highly recommend the works of dan-el padilla peralta, who once (according to an inflammatory nyt article) said that “the field of classics should die”. happy reading!
One of the weirdest experiences for me was when I was my university’s equivalent of a TA for the course “gender and sexuality in the ancient world” and like every classics dude in the class was just ///breaking down////. Like the level of just active ignorance behind the argument “they wouldn’t have thought about gender” still haunts me.
I literally love listening to this and I will be back! Every time the desire hits I start digging into different cultures' mythos and I love hearing people share their thoughts about the retellings or informing people about how the stories have changed over time.
Something that you touch upon your video and which I think about a lot when coming across media based on Ancient Greek history and mythology is how so much of it is an interpretation by people in Western Europe and North America rather than Greek people themselves. A big reason for this is due to just how mainstream Anglophone media is in the world, and how much more likely we are to consume said media versus that which is produced in Greece. But I often get the impression that Greek people are never really considered when people from other places create works based on the former's heritage. Yes, the Greeks of today aren't necessarily the same as the ones from Ancient Greece, but they're still descendants of those people and their culture owes a lot to them. It also doesn't help that a lot of media that takes place in Ancient Greece casts actors that clearly aren't Mediterranean looking, instead going for fair-skinned British people (because RP accent seems to be required by law when making a period piece).
This is only tangentially related to the main point of your video but MAN would I listen to you just ramble about whatever you feel like regarding Hades. I wanna hear your hot takes and favorite characters and stuff!!
Algorithmic punch! Really enjoyed this thoughtful overview of both the trend of feminist reimaginings of Greek myths, and the flaws of one trying to speak as an expert of all the vast, and absent of documentation, ancient Greek culture. I think, to try to sum up what you said, the call to action to reference the classics in art and narrative to build the culture we want to have, not the one we are told to have, has a lot of power to it.
I really enjoyed this video and I never even had a Greek mythology phase lol, though I had friends who did in middle school/high school. I feel like you often amplify certain topics of discussion (or specific angles) that are not as widely talked about, and I really love and appreciate that. of course being someone that's not super familiar with classics/Greek mythology I'm sure that many of these discussions are already being had without me seeing it, but in terms of video essays in the mainstream RUclips sphere, I think it's a pretty unique subject. I always come away from your videos thinking about things in a new way, and that's pretty cool.
I remember seeing a casting announcement on Facebook a few months ago for the new Percy Jackson show and it had a photo of the actors who were hired to play Poiseidon and Zeus: Toby Stephens and Lance Reddick (may he rest in peace). There was a lot of outrage because Greek gods were being portrayed by actors who aren't white. I did not see much anger directed towards Stephens who, when I looked it up, did not have any Greek ancestry, or at least had as much chance of Reddick of having a distant Greek ancestor. It kind of illustrated what you said at 6:14 or 32:11 that white get to claim whatever story from Europe as "theirs" even if they have no real connection to it, who would be considered "barbarians" by the very Greeks they feel ownership over.
Similar thing happand when they anouced that Annabell will be playd by a black girl. I'm white and I don't have any problem with it. I'm still waiting for the series. The kid who will play Percy doas not look like the ilustrations of Percy eather, and I don't seen any outrage about that. And Uncle Rick is working on the series too. I'm on board with a Percy Jeckson adaptation no meeter who plays who as long, as Rick has creativ control unlike with the case of the movies. (As Rick said "there are no movies") And well I think it would be good to see a retelling that involvs Greeks (I don't know why) in the making of the show. I remember having an idea of a show that is a Greek mythology reteling centerd around a specific god, the character disgns are based on Greek statues, and the cast is all Greek, and a lot of the writers also ara. Similar with Egyiptian mythology. It would be instresting to see shows like that with multiple mythologies from defrent countries. Sorry for the gremmer, and spelling mistakes, English is not my first laungvige.
I just finished Stone Bind! What a refreshing and illuminating RUclips creator. Thank you so much! And thanks for including maps! I think the algorithm sent me to you after watching the free Gresham College lectures.
This was a nice discussion! Lots to chew on, and one thing I'd like to point out is with Greek myths is that many of the Greek myths are actually much older than Greece---they probably come from what we'd today call Mesopotamia; they're inherently not "western" stories. The conversation about Médousa coming from Ovid---that's like basing your perception of Jeanne d'Arc on her portrayal in anime. It's many times removed from the source. And we know that the stories of the war at Troía and the labors of Hēraklḗs are much older and have much more hidden origins, in the same way that divinities like Diónusos and Hekátē are pre-Greek but we can't pinpoint from where exactly. Even Aphrodítē is clearly a "Greekwashing" of the Egyptian Isis or the Sumerian/Babylonian Ištar/Inanna. Lots of Greek works probably have Phoenician or Sumerian/Akkadian ancestors---the obvious example is "the sea" ἡ θάλαττα hē thálatta clearly comes from the Akkadian name for Tiamat, tiāmtum, which is also the word for "the sea" and refers to the primordial goddess from whose blood the stars were made. Fun fact---Tiāmtum is also cognate with the semitic word in Genesis 1:2 often translated as "nothing" or "abyss", ṯəhôm or תְּהוֹם, from which God created everything. Mḗdeia is another interesting one, and I think one of the reasons she's such a controversial figure and subject to so many differing interpretations is that we don't have all the tools and knowledge of her context to understand her. Euripídēs gives her a reason for everything she does in the play---she's by far the most rational person there---and her actions there are consistent with her history in myth. I actually view her as one of the first, like, 'colonized person revolt' stories. (Somebody pretty up that language.) She looks the Greek patriarchy in the face, spits in it, symbolically negates the Argṓ story of her colonization (she was basically soul-r*ped by Érōs's arrow, after all), and confers divinity upon herself by flying off in the chariot of the sun and establishing a cult. Plus, that she goes to Athḗnai---the center of the Greek world---at the end of the play while Iásōn is stuck in Kórinthos---by all accounts a backwater kingdom---is subtextually pretty telling. Another thing is that the Greeks were a capital-S SLAVE society, and one of the things that really worries me about holding the past up as some kind of ideal is that there was a lot of stuff going on that today we would pretty universally agree is Not Acceptable. The Greeks were always at war. Much of the population of Athḗnai was slaves. So feminist retellings are important, and the majority of women in history---not just Greek history---never had their names recorded or their stories told, but what we have from the Greeks is the product of a slave society and colonialism. I'm not here to say that was good or bad in its original context---it was the past; it is what it was---but it's something I wish we were more mindful of as we begin to reacquaint popular knowledge with these ancient stories. That history is part of us too.
Your conclusion rocks! The ancient greeks were misogynistic but also multicultural. Our current historical understanding seems VERY different from the modern/cultural interpretations. You hit this one out of the park… so to speak.
"Reception," which my advisor studies and so I hope to explain it well, is a concept in classics that many of my fellow classicists in the comments have mentioned, so I just want to define it. Instances of Reception are based mostly on looking at these modern 20th-21st century retelling of old stories, where the backbone and arc of the story is reinterpreted through a modern lens with modern values. Although this is heavily focused on modern pop culture retellings, the concept can be applied to anything that pulls from another source (this requires nuance). So just as Circe is Reception, so are Shakespeare's history plays, the millions of retellings and kid versions of religious texts, movie remakes of old books like the Great Gatsby, and you can argue that these "original" texts by Hesiod and Euripides are also Reception. These ancient texts, imo, should be interpreted with the same scrutiny as modern retellings (like you mention in this AMAZING video), especially since when written they are referring to stories that are generally +100 years old. It is also what makes these modern day retelling so fascinating, cause they are receptions, of receptions (multiplied probably). Now dropping the professionalism, a "fun" thing about this is how modern copyright law fucks up this literary tradition. There is no copyright law on the stories of Medea and the Iliad (although some people have tried) which allow us to constantly receive and reinterpret, but because of copyright law (heavily pushed by Disney) we can't do the same things with like Olive from Popeye or Minnie Mouse, at least not at the high profile level of these books. The internet allows us to get past this and erode copy right law's power, but I do sort of see these modern retellings as a punk rock way to say "you won't let us work with these new characters? Fine, we'll just take your cherished Origin of Western Civ" lol Also shout out to Antigone and thank you so much for your awesome video!
When I saw the thumbnail with Medea with the title "Why We Needed To Relearn The Classics" I thouht you were about to try and convince me that Medea is a Classic movie series and needs to be rewatched for its timeless messages and I don't know what I was about to do.
four minutes in and i've already got a nostalgia whiplash - three seconds of the Xena intro is enough to send my brain back in time but then you added that Loose Canon throwback! whewf. no idea what year it is or how old i am but i know my neck hurts. 😅
oh dang i loved watching this on nebula! as someone who has had an interest in ancient mythology for a long time this is a very interesting watch. i love the new perspectives women are bringing to these stories:)
i think it's safe to say that The Song Of Achilles is what really ushered in this age of classics retellings, but my favourite came before that- Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin. Le Guin is of course a brilliant fantasy and feminist author. Lavinia is a retelling of The Aeneid which follows the titular Lavinia, the third and final wife of Aeneas who a war is fought over. in the Aeneid, Lavinia never speaks, only cries, but in this book she is intelligent, brave and opinionated, without ever feeling unrealistic for a young woman in ancient times. the writing is also brilliant at bringing to life an immersive vision of pre-Roman Italy and it's culture. and the book does some really great meta stuff with Virgil. honestly, i can't recommend it enough.
The idea of absorbing the classics with modernity already within them is so central to much of our interpretation and representation of the world. Not only are mythological stories contextualized by the societies that created them, but the very movement of these tales through time and the changes in their form and content must be appreciated by any truly critical perspective. More than that, this analysis actually demonstrates the contradictions in analyzing itself, the shortcomings of our conceptualization of the world and, most important, the path forward to truly understanding the existence of these stories and the humans that reproduce them. Thank you kindly for putting together a video on such an essential procedure!
I really enjoyed your take on this trend! It's interesting to see the new ways in which this has been developing. I personally have some very double feelings on these feminist retellings because I think they are in a way whitewashing a cultural heritage that is quite honestly (as you discussed) quite awful to women and anyone not adhering to its own cultural norms, and not always examining what is underneath their coat of feminist paint and what history it is obscuring. At the same time I'm very glad to see some of these stories reclaimed because I'd rather we reclaim them than that they end up becoming a dangerous tool in certain other political ideologies, as we have also seen in recent years. I would also like to point out (while understanding obviously that you are speaking from an english/american perspective) that next to, like you state, the odyssey and ilias have been translated in other languages by women before this new english translation came out, and I understand that Song of Achilles changed a lot in Achilles' queer reading in English language discourse,here too this has been a very common and standard reading in my own culture for quite a long time, as well.
I got into Greek mythology when I watched the cartoon Class of the Titans. Before that I only knew of their Roman counterparts when I first read the explanation behind the names of the planets.
There is a wonderfull retelling of the Trojan War story from a womans Perspective: "Cassandra" by Christa Wolf (published in the 1980ies). Cassandra is the narrator of this story, and we follow her memories (non linear) while she waits to enter Mykene (where she will be murdered by Klytaimnestra). It is inspired by the authors own experiences, as a woman in east Germany watching her country becoming a police state. Don´t expect Gods or magic in this story though. This is a classic in German Literatur, and the original is very well written. I don´t know how good the english translation is, though.
That Medusa state did Perseus so dirty when you consider that Perseus is usually the least problematic Greek mythical hero 😭 Like bro Poseidon is the problem in the Ovid version of the myth, not Perseus who's just doing his job
I feel like such a nerd but I'm genuinely excited for Emily Wilson's translation of the Illiad to come out. I've read the Odessey three different times due to school, but I have only ever enjoyed it when reading hers. So I'm super excited for her translation of the Illiad to come out since I have never read it in full.
this was great. i would love to here your take on Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons. I study ancient history and biblical literature, and its really eye opening to learn about how much of 'classical' culture has been misunderstood, selectively revised, or invented whole cloth by early modern european scholars to reflect their loathsome sensibilities. There were so many versions of these deities and these stories that individual cities and regions all had their own versions. The ways the ancients interacted with these stories was closer to how we use psychology today then anything resembling religion or a literary canon. Most people also don't realize that after the alexandrian conquests, Greek stopped being an ethnicity and became a socio-political identity (Alexander and his generals were macedonians after all -- looked down upon by the athenians and spartans who became their vassels ). During the Hellenistic age of the mediteranean world, cities and groups sought to gain Greek status as a way to integrate into the global economy. In Egypt the Ptolemies employed Jewish mercenaries to such a degree that in egypt being a Jew meant you were automatically Greek by virtue of being a Jew. I also recently learned that one of the defining features of the Ancient Greek Novel (and the ancient Jewish Novels produced during the Helenistic period) is that they tended to involve heroic female protagonists (think book of esther). This is an almost universal feature of the genre, so to pretend that ancient people were not interested in female characters is willful ignorance. Female perspective centering mythology fan fic has been around since way before the Roman Empire or Jesus and more people need to know this.
I have always loved the idea of retellings and analyzing old myths from different cultures, and of course, ancient Greek myths have always been my number one! It simply a passion to explore the oldest/original texts or sources to understand how life was back then and what we can learn or unlearn from it. Lately, I have been delving into biblical narratives and even listening to the podcast "It's In The Book," which offers a fresh and queer perspective on the Bible. It made me reexamine the story of Adam and Ḥawwāh/Eve for example. Like that Eve was originally referred to as Adam's "savior" in the ancient texts, unlike the English translations that changed the word to "servant." or when they want to feel nice "helper". OR the concept of gender was created by God ripping the "Adam" in half to make man and woman, rather than simply taking a "rib bone" as commonly depicted in the English versions. I have also trying to find retellings stories from the bible such as "The Prince's Psalm", that is a romantic retelling of the story of David and Yehonatan. At first, I was confused by the lack of discussion/interest about their relationship, heck as well as other relationships like Judah & Shua and Daniel & Ashpenaz. However, I soon realized that there are ALOT of people that tend to pushes a narratives they are personally "comfortable" with. And if someone makes a feminist and/or queer retelling like The Prince's Psalm or and even The Red Tent, they tend to get reviewed bombed and hushed out. Because of that, there isn't much of that type of content. It bugs me out so much! Let me read my retelling stories gawdammit!!
I have loved mythology as long as I can remember.Ten years ago, we moved in with my grandfather to take care of him, and I found an old set of the Junior Classics with various mythologies' sanitized versions within.
I'm so glad you made this video! When I was a sociology student a few years ago, I was DESPERATE to write an essay about a topic like this but didn't have enough time to find sufficient academic sources 😭 Also; Madeline Miller is simply incredible. TSOA is my favorite book, I have two tattoos for it 😅 And I love Circe so much too! I'm so excited to see what she does with her Persephone retelling. Based on what she did with Circe, I'm sure she's gonna give Persephone her own voice separated from Hades and I SO LOOK FORWARD TO THAT 🙏🏻✨️
I haven't been getting the notifications for your videos so thank you for posting about it! Of course I didn't get a notification for what u posted 😒 I just happen to be scrolling in my subscriptions feed. RUclips really had the nerve after I went in to check I was signed up for all notifications (I was) to send me a push notification about this video smh ANYHOW U SLAY AND UR PERSPECTIVE IS VERY THOUGHTFUL AND INSIGHTFUL!!
So I used to watch all the old Claymation movies and Jason and the Argonauts was my favorite. Hera became my goddess and the rest is history. I never heard Medea or read it, so I just knew that much about it. I am sure Hera was done a massive amount of dirty but again, She was expected to stay good and loyal and subservient or else she was the "bad guy". I read comic books and saw cartoons where she was venerated and I took it to heart. Others took away the negative, and I only took away the positive. I learned the crazy bad azz things she did in Myth. That she stood up to her husband and while he was the King of the gods, she was the Queen, and she did not let him get away with his shenanigans. I learned eventually she was a triple goddess and one of the first Gods worshipped in Greece. She was connected to Egyptian gods, and the Apple and the serpent started with her. She hat a tree of golden apples guarded by a serpent of knowledge. She protected those who were loyal, or at least tried to help them, from what I saw. There was so much bad, but the people writing down these stories were men, and as you say, thought women were the ruination of all man kind. Gods or not. I Loved her depiction in so many things, where they come ever so close to my idea of her. I have since gotten more and more myths from all over about different Greek Myths. From Hamlet, to Xena, to Roman myths. It's just one of my favorite topics. I was sad the only mention of Hera was a bow in Hades, but you better believe I caught the reference to her snatching Artemis' bow and turning it on her. It brought me some real joy. Maybe we will see her in the next one. I do like the over lap that seems to happen where every myth basically is the equivalent to a myth from another region. Thanks for this vid, there was some books I will have to check out, and I will for sure be picking up Medea to read how Jason lets us down.
Banger vid as always! I loved every bit of it! I cheered when I saw your copy of Emily Wilson's Odyssey and pointed at the screen like the Leo DiCaprio meme
I had an obsession with mythology back in 6th grade and I'm very certain every middle schooler in the 90s had that phase. Of course, I never outgrew that phase!
I became interested in Greek myths when I was nine because I got a book called the top ten Greek myths at the Scholastic book fair. I ended up studying classics in college so it really stuck with me. This was a wonderful video, as always!
The delivery on "Do not let a woman with a sexy rump deceive you... she is after your barn" had me HOWLING
Common dialog heard in my home region of Skyrim
He said “don’t trust a big butt and a smile”
This needs to be written in all NBA locker rooms.
I need this embroidered on a pair of yoga pants.
'he-he Hesioid, I don't respect him cuz he don't respect me' - Maybe expecting the same kind of 'respect' is an entitlement thing and kind of a you problem. You don't get anything out of art or culture just by asking what IT can do for YOU. Why is someone who openly hates and resents the classics for not feeling 'included' in it purporting to make educational content on the subject?
I find this time and time again with retellings of Persephone and Hades ‘love story’ is that Persephone’s mother Demeter is portrayed as this nag and nuisance that comes between the two lovers. That really takes away from the original myth, where Demeter makes it a point to see her daughter even after the forced marriage, something many Ancient Greek daughters and mothers never had. Often after marriage, the daughter would be sent to go live with her husband and she might never really interact with her mother again. This would leave mothers with no way to know or help if their daughter was being mistreated.
Strong opinion about MEDEA:
My problem with modern day plays of Medea is that she is often portrayed by middle aged actresses of over 40-usually in their 50s (like Fiona Shaw).
Nothing against the actresses some of whom have been the crème de La crème of actresses but it changes the perception of the story for the audiences.
As you read in the video the perfect age of marriage for a women was 15 but lets assume that she was around 20 (older by the standards of that day but capable to brutally execute her brother). Their marriage was 10 years.
So she was around early 30s when she killed her children.
When an audience today watches the play,it tries to find reason for the killings that Medea committed(as is human nature).
An actress in her 50s makes the audience feel like Medea is probably a woman who has gone through menopause, is probably tired of her life at that point and can understand why Jason would look for another woman (who could probably have children).
A 30 year old actress would have so much more impact. The audience would question why a man like Jason would leave that young wife who is full of love and life and ready to spend many more decades by his side? Why would he break his oath to this young woman who stands through everything by his side from the start (killing her brother for him).
It’s one thing that makes me really passionate about because every few years there is a new play here (I’m from Greece) in the summer off Medea.
Last year it opened in the theatre of Epidaurus with an older actress again who the director conceptualised looking disheveled.
Also it is a decision that was made ,at least in the previous century ,by male casting directors and directors and the trend continued. But that also means that it is a male view of who Medea was and trying to rationalise her decision in the male eyes because they can’t easily imagine a young fertile woman having so much anger and hurt in this betrayal that would that.
The play on each own is written very nicely but this casting choice that is made time and time again doesn’t allow the audience to feel more complex things(understanding a young woman who just killed her kids because of the betrayal of her husband) and come closer to understand Medea’s point of view and Jason’s betrayal.
Sorry for this essay but it’s something that I’ve thought about before.
I think this is a great point!
I have to admit I have a hard time picturing Medea as an old woman during the events of the story. I guess it plays into the modern archetype of the hag...
Now that I think about it, Medea as a young woman is more original. Young and beautiful female vilains are quite often played as femmes fatales but Medea could be a good subversion of this stereotype as she never is the one to use her charms but in the opposite falls heels over head for Jason and uses her formidable powers to solve all his problems for him.
HARD agree. A young, vital, strong Medea who is NOT tired but flooded with indignation and anger is what we need.
A hang up I personally have with how Medea is often portrayed is how so many stagings treat her like she's irrational. She's not. She was responding in a way that was very consistent with her character from the beginning--she's established as a woman who will kill to get what she wants, who made enormous sacrifices for her husband, and then when times are tough, her husband finds another princess to chase. And not only is this bad in a modern context, but it was HORRIBLE in the ancient context because not only was Jason leaving Medea to a life of poverty since she had no support from her family and she couldn't remarry, but effectively, Jason leaving her would bastardize their sons and leave them without any kind of status or citizenship. Medea says repeatedly that she won't allow her sons to be humiliated and abused because of Jason's decision, and that's just as much presented as part of her reasoning for killing them as for hurting Jason. And that MAKES SENSE for her character, because pride is so important to Medea, humiliation was worse than death in her eyes, and she had a history of killing people she loved to serve her purposes.
It drives me up a wall to see so many 'reimaginings' treating Medea as either menopausal and crazy, or postpartum and crazy, or just plain crazy. Women can kill their children for reasons other than hormonal imbalances and mental health struggles. Diminishing Medea's rage to hormones is just plain misogyny.
I was in a production of Seneca’s Medea in college and I think she works much better as a young woman, I agree
Me personally, kinda tired of greek mythology being the it girl of mythologies. Currently learning about African mythology like the Orishas of Ifa.
Or even better, the tale of Obatala and the creation of the Earth.
very true, Western culture rides Ancient Greece's dick so hard its exhausting. And its related to, like Princess mentioned, this chauvinism bc the West thinks of itself as a spiritual successor to Mycenaean Greece, and this concept of western society being the peak of civilization.
like there are other story types, don't call every journey narrative an Odyssey. I've been into Journey To the West which is very fun and full of hijinks. I love trickster types so I've liked stories like those about Anansi in the past, but if yall have other recommendations (for original sources or retellings) I'd love them
100% agree. I understand why Greek mythology has such a big cultural presence and impact on a wide range of media, but there are plenty of other fascinating world mythologies that get nowhere near the same level of attention and analysis. My personal favorites are native Hawaiian and Alaskan mythologies.
@@nickthrailkill379I absolutely love Chilean mythology. It’s incredibly expansive. You have the Yamana and Mapuche peoples myths, plus post-colonization myths and tales.
This. Very very much over it. It’s always cool, but as a consumer of media that uses Greek methodology heavy heavy as an influence for their stories - I’m bored.
"racism exists because marble lasts longer than paint" is a hilarious take that I will treasure to my grave
you mean the paint that showed the statues had blonde hair?
racism exists because people are lazy thinkers. It's like how black people think just because some white people in the past bought slaves from other Africans who sold their own kind as slaves that all white people are bad because they share the common trait of having white skin. They don't even know how much the arabian slave trade actually genocided them in the middle east. But white people bad, amrite? Where dem white women at?
@@helvete_ingres4717 and dark skin? xD
@@helvete_ingres4717that is a reductive take on the issue, and you know that. Some of the statues were blonde, yes. Others were dark-skinned and brunette. Ancient Greek statuary reflected the real diversity of real Greek people, shockingly.
Quite apart from the fact that "white" is a completely bullshit arbitrary category that a bunch of Germans made up so that people like you and me would fight for our own oppression. But I'm sure if you keep saying you're white while kissing their asses they'll eventally believe you...🤣
@aazhie dude's a troll. He's in like every comment thread spreading misinformation to get attention. Silly ass behavior.
As a Greek I must say that the story of Medusa was never seen as a feminist simply because the original myth is an old one from the Archaic period in which Medusa was always a Gorgon, she was neither punished nor assaulted. She was viewed simply as a creature like any other in greek mythology
But people remember the later version written by Ovid a Roman author who drastically changed her story.
But there are many great female characters in greek mythology that deserve recognition like Antigone or Electra or Penelope and many others that inspired with their courage and bravery without needing powers or only physical strength.
I see it as feminist because being an evil eldritch sea creature with tusks and wing and a much too wide smile is pretty girlboss of her
And speaking of female characters that deserve more attention, Nyctimene
The biggest issue I have with modern myth retellings (especially those regarding Medusa) is that they are primarily influenced or subverting Ovid's version (he's our first source for the r*pe version) and he was very open about reimagining the stories to vilify the god's because of his bias against the emperor. We have no evidence that people actually believed his versions of the stories so when people say they're the definitive version it shows how little people actually understand the myths. Basically it's like retelling Harry Potter, but basing it off My Immortal (I know eww Harry Potter, but I don't know of any other fanfictions to use in the analogy)
Half-life full life consequences is a good off the walls famous fanfic. Not as famous as My Immortal ofc, I think our fandom culture would be less rich without it.
I'm not sure I see the problem with that? Unless the authors are claiming they're specifically riffing on the myths as the Greeks originally told them?
@@oftinuvielskin9020 that's the thing, most people believe and say it is the prime version of the story. If you've ever been on a mythology forum you'll be constantly bombarded with "the true story of Medusa" which just repeats the same story about Poseidon r*ping her and Athena victim blaming, while ignoring that Ovid was writing fanfiction and the older sources have her be born a monster. After a while you just want to punch anyone who repeats that version. It's been so oversaturated and misrepresented that it's lost all value.
A part of me gets why Ovid did it, since it was his way of criticizing the Emperor (and boy did he deserve criticism), but I do hate that classic courses don't also teach non-Ovid versions of the myths
@@irondragonmaiden that's the problem, everyone acts like Ovid's version is the definitive version, and not a criticism of the emperor
An American Greek here. I've been saying for years how it's odd that my Grecian history has been given the "white washing" treatment, even when we're also technically white. It's been really weird. My Greek family hailed from the Istanbul (Constantinople) area, and if you know you know, making us darker colored Greeks. Side note, Disney's Hercules was a rude awakening for my child self, thinking they "white washed" Greeks in that movie, but really we just came in different colors because... "colonialism".
I use to enjoy Lore Olympus, but stopped months back. The misogyny of the series became too much for me to enjoy anymore. But the fans of the series are also why I stopped reading it. Literally seeing comments brag "I'm glad I don't know the myth so I won't be spoiled on this comic" really hit me hard. You just scoffed off my ancestry, real history, so you could enjoy a self-insert fantasy using my culture as a background? Imagine I read Addy's story (American Girls), and be grateful I'm unaware of actual USA Slavery history so I can enjoy the book better? Context matters.
With these retellings, ignoring the actual history, is what I find damaging. I'm a feminist, I'm Greek, I'm fully aware of the way things were back in the day, but ignoring the bad for a modern happy smile story is where I see the white washing start. Like a lot of our own history here in the USA being "toned down" for retellings.
Thank you for this video, especially love how you ended it. Look forward to your next deep dive.
Fellow Medi! I understand you perfectly. We are not a flavour for storytelling we are people too, with culture and our own stories.
Some people would say that to be "white" means to be white-washed of your specific cultural and ethnic roots, in exchange for the "privilege" of being assimilated into a homogenized, dominant racial category
I don't think it is that contradictory that they were shitty to women but had strong female deities. Gender historically is very much about relationality; so godesses (and sometimes powerful women like queens or empresses) are often seen across cultures as "not really socially women," because the fact that they have power at all puts them in a different category. It is honestly a bit like how girl boss feminism doesn't help anyone collectively.
(Love to hear you talk about mythology. Thanks for the video!)
One thing to note about the myth of medusa as a woman assaulted by poseidon is that was a later Roman interpretation of the myth by Ovid! The original had Medusa as being born of a race of Gorgons I believe.
Medusa being inherently monstrous doesn't work much better as far as feminine representation goes so it still works towards the point.
Great video btw!
I think the story is told in reverse. The rapist is the monster that turns the victims into stone through fear. Then to avoid punishment for the misuse of power, creates a convenient narrative to suit.
@@Celinamars666 Do you got evidence that the stories are told in reverse. In all version it was Medusa who had the ability to petrify with her gaze.
Yeah the original Medusa was the only mortal Gorgon and had two sisters whose names I can't spell lmao
And even then, the point of Ovid's telling was that _both_ Medusa and Perseus were pawns of the gods. Medusa was a victim of Poseidon and blamed for it by Athena, turning her into a monster. Then the gods used Perseus to clean up their mess.
Honestly the retelling of Minerva/Athena turning Medusa into a gorgon to protect her from men or any other assaulter for the temple treasures is nice. It makes Medusa powerful like a Red Sonja template.
I joke with my greek myth friend that Electra's farmer husband from Euripides' play about her is the only man from the entire mythology deserving respect because he opens the play saying "no, i won't take advantage of this teenage princess who didn't want to marry me and you're fucking gross if you would. Fuck off"
Also i can't remember if it was mentioned in the play or original to the Irene Papas movie, but the husband sleeping on the floor so she could sleep in the bed alone was really sweet. Dude just wanted to make this poor girl in all her misery as comfortable as he could. He didn't even want her to feel obligated to do chores she wasn't used to. I love that guy. I'd trust him with my life
I know this wasn’t the point but “We could’ve avoided racism if the Greeks had just used primer” sent me 😂😂😂
Me too 🤣
I think Antigone is fascinating because she exists to do two things:
1. Honor the males of her family
2. Die
And yet this woman, demure paragon of humility, stands up to a king and says "come at me bro"
I think this is part of the appeal of Greek mythology. Everyone is so messy 😂
Antigone is the real thing..not crazy medea or lying phedra!!
Antigone is amazing!
I haven't watched fully yet, but just yesterday I remember seeing a post about someone being over "feminist" versions of myth coming out, and as someone who's tired of seeing feminism used as a marketing tool I agreed with their points. To me in order to gage if an allegedly updated tale is worth reading I'd need to know what the writers idea of feminism is, what they thought was not feminist about the original story, and lastly what they believe they made feminist about the story as a result. Book descriptions alone rarely tell me that.
It's incredible how much ancient sexism and modern sexism are not that different.
Lol, the Medea section gave me flashbacks to a college course I took. My classmates probably thought I was nuts, because I was trying to say it's interesting that a female character got to live (relatively punishment free) after committing what both back then and now would be considered the ultimate sin, which is killing her own children. As they would be seen as her husbands property getting rid of them granted her the ultimate freedom from him.
Sorry for so many replies but I have ADHD and long videos are my kryptonite (though I love them). I think ultimately like you said having more options is better than having none. I just wish we didn't automatically equate a woman author with feminist principals since they can replicate sexism too. Also on a personal note as an Aphrodite fan I think she still gets done dirty most of the time, even Lore Olympus (to me) dropped the ball with her.
i honestly prefer more accurate and objective translations/modernizations over feminist retellings. i like to analyze the way that women in the stories are treated and described by their original authors because that can tell you more about the societal norms at the time and the views of the authors. a feminist analysis does not mean rewriting a story to give it a feminist message but instead understanding the ways in which the female characters are treated by the narrative and society as a whole
of course it’s impossible for any translations to be completely unbiased just because every author subconsciously brings their own biases with them
@@CostumedFiend_AudioBecause low IQ never changes, it's oonga buunga logic from the caves. Woman bad, me strong, grr.
Interestingly, women in Sparta actually had the right to own and inherit property. Since the men often went off to die in wars, this led to some extremely rich and influencial women who held a lot of land.
i thought all the land in sparta belonged to the state, just like the slaves
@@devforfun5618 Perhaps, but you can't exactly have the state directly administer the entirety of the land directly, can you?
That must have been very nice for a very, very small amount of women.
How did they treat the rest of them?
@@Chrischi3TutorialLPs which is not the same as owning land, since owning allows you to sell, which a public administrator cant do
@@UsenameTakenWasTaken You mean the slaves that formed ~90% of the population? Badly, same as the male slaves. Sparta was awful. Just the worst, in so many ways. It is interesting, however, that sexism is one very common bigotry they did not seem to cling to, at least not to the degree of the rest of ancient Greece. Focusing on that one aspect would of course give a warped impression of Sparta, but it is still a fascinating nuance of an otherwise monstrous society.
In general I'm in favor with reinterpreting mythology for the modern day, but my issue with a lot of current female-centric retellings is that they too often lack creativity and nuance. There's a lot to explore about gender roles and dynamics in the ancient world, but stuff like Ariadne and A Thousand Ships just kinda falls into "men bad, women suffer". Ironically, despite their best efforts, the female protagonists feel sapped of agency and interiority. Even one of the most acclaimed works in the genre, The Penelopiad, left me cold because it dwells way too much making every part of Penelope's life miserable - even ancient women had moments where they were happy, right? (Not the mention the way Atwood writes Helen is...questionable.) It doesn't help that since it's become a hot new trend, too many of these books feel interchangeable. If you want a retelling that feels interesting and unique, Circe by Madeline Miller is the baseline that so many want to rip off, and Lavinia by Ursula K. LeGuin does a great job as well. I also hate to say it, but one of the best female-centric retellings was written by a man, and not just any man, but C.S. Lewis. Don't let that put you off, because Till We Have Faces is something really special, with a realistically flawed female protagonist and unreliable narrator, and a profound examination on faith.
Really C.S. Lewis
yeah despite there being a lot of questionable aspects to his books, C.S. Lewis did have some surprisingly entertaining female characters once in a while, like Aravis (although the horse and his boy is extremely orientalist)
I actually just read Lavinia and I was kind of disappointed tbh. Generally, I like and often love Ursula Le Guin's texts, but I found her Lavinia to be bland and her portrayal of various male figures equally dull, her world strangely white. Meanwhile the meta element of Lavinia's communion with Vergil broke my immersion and kind of muddled the story for me - Though I can imagine that aspect maybe working in a short story format more condensed and focused.
Til We Have Faces is genuinly a masterpiece. I think what a lot of retellings miss about myth is that this was religion, with all the baggage that entails. I also think a Lewis has gained a reputation for being some kind of propagandistic evangelical Christian, which is frankly inaccurate. As someone who's never been religious, Faces made me understand the philosophy of faith in god(s), but it's not a book out to convert anyone, just use myth as a framework of exploring theology in a really natural and intesting way. Plus, it does function as a feminist retelling, without being dependent on rape as a source of drama like far too many others, and rather focusing on a woman's complex relationship with her sister. ( Also I learned that a lot of the book was influenced by Lewis 's wife who was a first wave feminist.) So yeah, glad to see someone here mention Til we have faces.
Circe is definitely peak imo, the story references every myth she's mentioned it but spins them to make a cohesive narrative and character arc. Circe is a deeply flawed but genuinely kind character that feels so whole and human despite literally being a god. I tried reading the Penelopiad because of how much I loved Circe but it felt.. like it was reveling in the misery of her life.
Like yes, women should be able to tell their stories and not have to pull their punches, but the idea that every woman's life prior to modern Western civilization was unfailingly dismal and bleak feels like an incredibly limited view of history and the world. I don't wholly disagree with Atwood's methods of focusing on Penelope but I also think that its a very white feminist approach and was almost gratuitously violent. It wasn't for me, but I think it's meaningful that it exists
So happy Euripides gets the credit he deserves for this. Ironically I think I felt more for these characters from him than from any retelling. Also shoutout to Cassandra’s monologue in Agamemmnon. Aeschylus is a dick and a misogynist still, but Cassandra asking to be avenged in that show is absolutely heartbreaking.
Nietzsche identified Euripides as the first sign of the degeneration of the Greek theatre
I mean I suppose he’s not wrong - Euripides was evolving the medium in some pretty interesting and subversive ways that were by no means ‘pure’. (See: Alcestis’s genre problems). In my opinion, that’s in large part why his work remains so powerful to this day!
Apologies in advance for this absolute behemoth of a comment, I’m very excited and have a lot to share!
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I am a classicist and archaeologist (beginning my senior year) and was excited at the title :) I think this is a comprehensive approach, and I like the consideration and time put into the video!
If it’s alright, I would like to add a couple notes/cool points to expand on what is touched on in the video-I will preface this with I am primarily a Latinist rather than a Hellenist (I study Rome more than Greece, and within that really more mid to late Roman Republic), so please forgive me for discrepancies. I will also add that I have not read a lot of recent modern retellings, so I’m mainly going to be discussing the classical history and literature which I’m more familiar with:
-I like the discussion about how big the geographical scope of the ancmed sphere is! I would add that when taking into consideration trade routes and colonization, the scope of the classical world extends even farther to India, sub-Saharan Africa, and northern Europe! It is a lot larger and more diverse than some reception takes it to be. There are multiple discussions of skin color in myth and in other sources as well. (Example-Architect Vitruvius posited that skin color varied due to how close someone lived to the sun, ie folks closer to the south would be closer to the sun…which, when considering the equator, is kind of vaguely right? He’s confused but he’s got the spirit. He then talks about how geography can affect the pitch of someone’s voice, though, so, yknow, can’t all be winners.)
-Hesiod, God I hate him. It is worth noting that even for Athens (an already pretty misogynistic society), Hesiod is noted at being, like, Extra Sexist in modern study and even in ancient considerations. He’s generally an asshole. There are definitely more comprehensive women characters out there, and while Hesiod’s works are important due to them being earlier, I definitely agree that Euripides’ works elevate women to a better light and can give us a wider view about what life as a woman in Athens would’ve been like. Hesiod is definitely not and should not be the end-all-be-all. I do like the discussion of him in this video, though, as his works often get kind of forgotten about.
-I love Medea so much. Super interesting to think about how it was performed in a masculine space, with the theater being only accessible to Athenian land-owning men.
-(Hesiod’s name is technically pronounced hee-see-id but he deserves absolutely no respect)
- (very worth noting, also, that Greece is Not One Big Thing until much later-Athens is different from Sparta is different from Thebes, and so forth. This video addresses that pretty well)
-(also very worth noting-though we don’t know much about Minoan and Mycenaean culture, the prehistoric predecessors to the classical era, it is notable that the Minoan frescoes we do have do feature a lot of women in different contexts (saffron gatherers, goddess fresco, bull jumping fresco, etc) which is intriguing.)
-Many modern (by modern in this case I mean medieval and beyond) tropes (particularly those regarding Zeus/Zeus’ assaults/infidelity) come from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, one of my favorite texts that goes through a lot (A LOT) of myths in a shifting genre (comedic, romantic, epic). Ovid is interesting in how varied his works are and how much we learn about love, sex, festivals, religion, and women in the early Roman Empire. (I’m super biased, my faves are like, him and Catullus, lmao.) Not gonna go into detail because i don’t wanna make this longer than it already is, but the contrast from his Ars Amatoria (a poem about picking up women, intended as comedic/satirical but also very rough to read and what got him exiled) to his Heroides (poems in the form of letters from mythological women to their lovers, like Penelope to Odysseus for example) is stunning and gives a lot of insight.
-EMILY WILSON MY BELOVED!!!!! I am super excited for Wilson’s upcoming translation of the Iliad (it comes out in September!!). I had the amazing opportunity of attending a guest lecture from Wilson where she discussed how modern perspective affects their translation and what modern retellings have to offer. I think modern retellings as a way to re-examine both the diversity of the ancient Mediterranean and the varying role of women throughout not just classical history but history as a whole is valuable. Really my only main response to the trend has been some concern of disregarding the complexity of the myths-for example (I will def have to watch your Persephone video, because I assume you’ll note in there, too, about) how the story of Demeter (which is Very Much Noted in the Hymn to Demeter as well as in the Metamorphoses) gets somewhat glossed over in favor of solely elevating Penelope. This isn’t a thing unique to myth retellings, though, as much as it is the general thing of (can’t think of a better word so I’m gonna go with) girlbossification.
Overall I love how your video points to the diversity and size of the ancient world, and I deeply appreciate the meticulousness of the video! Apologies for this being so long, I got excited and couldn’t stop typing, lol. I haven’t seen your Persephone video yet but I’ll have to give it a watch!
Here is a closing list of orgs that support inclusion in Classics and Archaeology:
-Pharos: a project from Vassar documenting the use of classics within white supremacy, particularly in the modern Trump/Post-Trump sphere
-Sportula/Sportula Europe: microgrants for classics/ancmed students, with priority given to low-income, non-white, and queer students
-Black Trowel Collective: anarchist archaeology collective; microgrants for archaeology students, with priority given to students with backgrounds in working class and historically looted communities
-Res Difficiles: a conference in classics discussing racism, white supremacy, oppression, and other intersections in classics
-there are plenty more out there as well that I’m forgetting names of
What a wonderful comment!! Thank you for sharing your knowledge and perspective 😊
Thank you for your insightful comment! ❤
That was such an amazing comment! The enthusiastic love of learning just shines through and it is GLORIOUS!
Thank you for this behemoth of a comment. It must have taken forever to type up, and I really appreciate it!
"the hozier of the ancient world" lmaooo princess, not only is this video amazing, but your deliveries are pure gold. you are killing it!
I just finished reading Atalanta and it SLAPPED.
I love reimaging ancient tales from women's perspectives. Imagine Shahrazad after a lifetime of having her stories extracted from her by threat of death, only to wander now as a bitter ghost stealing the dreams of men.
Circe >>> TSOA is absolutely right!
I love myth retellings, but I don't necessarily love how a lot of authors tend to sand down the rough edges to make certain stories more palatable. If you wanna turn Persephone and Hades into a ~spicy~ dark romance, instead of a kidnapping/rape/abuse, fine, but don't frame it as a feminist revision. Especially if you're centering their romance over her relationship with her mother, which is arguably more of a focal point in the original myths (and dare I say, a way more empowering story).
I'm currently reading "Children of Jocasta" by Natalie Haynes, and it really excels at delivering both the impending sense of doom and the cyclical tragedy. I'm only halfway through, but I'd definitely recommend it.
Yes, I love Lore Olympus as much as the next basic b lol but it's still.... very very weird with her relationship to Hades and all the problematic other relationships they have
And my only problem with The Song of Achilles is how Patroclus is framed as this... soft boy healer, meanwhile he is part of an invasion force. It just doesn't really click for me
If people want a forbidden romance story where the mother of one of the leads is the main antagonist, and lends itself to feminist retellings, then Eros and Psyche is a significantly better choice than Hades and Persephone.
“She’s after your barn” is the funniest shit I’ve ever heard ngl
A modern incel could say almost the same thing and you wouldn't even know the difference.
Maybe she's not into you, maybe she's just into your barn
I've not so organically been pushed to classics because my mother is Greek. I majored in Hellenic studies at university and took some classics courses to support my major and boy, those departments don't always compliment each other like you would think.
I was pretty stunned to discover how heavily the teaching of classics leaned towards making it make sense for Northern Europeans. The pronunciation of most letters and words resemble the pronunciation of the Latin alphabet and English words and don't resemble actually spoken, modern Greek. I hadn't realised that for hundreds of years Greeks had non- Greeks telling how to pronounce ancient Greek. It would be like me, a Canadian, correcting a Brits English pronunciation. Colonialism at work.
Hilariously, the only place that still speaks a dialect of actual Ancient Greek is in Italy.
@@bewilderbeastie8899 Is it in Sicily?
@@bewilderbeastie8899Every Greek language and dialect today comes from some form of Ancient Greek, unless you mean it resembles the most? If the latter, how do you figure Griko retains the most features?
_"It would be like me, a Canadian, correcting a Brits English pronunciation."_
based you should
this makes me think of this one documentary I watched about a scholar of the classics and classical music (put a pin in that) were attempting to reconstruct what songs from ancient Greece would've sounded like, and the song they kept using as their selling point, from a tragedy by Euripides, resembled absolutely *nothing* of the musical traditions of the region
because these were classical musicians, they did not factor in the ethnomusicological aspect of reconstructing ancient music, and ignored the fact that in order to achieve something maybe not fully authentic but coming close to it, one not only had to look at the instrumentation and the modes that were common in the compositions, but also the common rhythm and performance style - in other words, they had to interact directly with any successors to the ancient tradition to get an idea of what could've come before it
I saw a comment on the documentary video from a Greek person who said that Ancient Greek musical tradition (at least the kind used in cultic practices) was inherited by Greek Orthodox chants that followed it in the medieval era, and I'm much more inclined to believe them over scholars of the Greek classics who didn't even interact with the contemporary folk culture of the period they were trying to revive - musicians and ethnomusicologists from the region especially
I wished people talked more about Medusa from the Theogony. She was the daughter of sea gods, and she and her three sisters were The Gorgons, a trip of monsters. She was never a human, she was never helpless. She was a badass, she was a monster.
My degree was in classics, and as another member of Euripides fan club, I would like to present another interpretation of Euripides Medea (which fits alongside the sociological one). Medea is often considered an aspect of the triple goddess (along with Demeter, Hecate, who is sometimes her mother, various forms of Persephone, sometimes Artemis), along with Circe. The triple goddess is basically a life-cycle divinity, maiden mother crone, etc. But also a "men ain't shit" revenge divinity sometimes. So if you read the play as a typical hubris tragedy, then the end of the play is not so much a dea ex machina, but an understandable conclusion. Jason is the hubristic hero, Medea is the divinity he has offended, and the chorus, thinking they know how these plays usually go, are bloody confused when Medea says "No EYE am the drama" and flies off with ne'er a blood befoulment to be found. Essentially, the play is Jason forgot who the fuck he was talking to and paid for it. But it's rare to get a really full-bodied divine perspective in hubris plays, excepting like...The Bacchae another Euripides banger. (I would also say that Sophocles often does nuance for female characters too, like Antigone is amazing. Aeschylus much less nuance, but the Oresteia is so interesting for both Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Electra, like Clytemnestra gets a whole murder speech and then comes BACK two plays later as ghost to literally wake up the Furies...queen shit).
Honestly my problem with feminist retellings is that some of these authors aren't engaging with the society they're claiming to upend. It's great to change myths because you want to, that's somewhat the point of them, but you gotta do some research before you claim that the Greeks don't tell women's stories, when part of the problem is literally that we don't have many surviving works.
Your point about not having many surviving works is so important because we also have to look at who had the funds and status to want to/be able to preserve these works. Archives were often in religious or royal buildings, especially after the Roman and Greek societies gave way to the Holy Roman and Bysantine Empires (i.e. Christianity) who would have disapproved of these 'pagan' (i.e. non-Christian) stories, especially those that disagreed with their attempts to created a unified and uniform Christian society.
Celtic mythology is a great example of this as many of the sources we have come from Christian monks in Ireland writing down the folktales centuries after Christianity had spread through Britain. The previous cultures were oral and so didn't write anything down and it is likely that these monks used a Christian frame of understanding/interpretation/RETELLING which has warped the modern versions of these tales.
Ive read interesting analysis about how the myths resonating w women in antiquity is important to keep in mind. The story of Persephone would be something both mothers and daughters would relate to and that might be why there was longevity in her story. A mother separated from her daughter by a man who everyone claims isnt cruel but who did trick her daughter away. Hell it even resonates w me as a moroccan american because thats the story of my grandmothers, both of them. Separated from their family and villages.
I do want to push against the notion that Athena doesn't defend women because she does. There are stories about how she saves women and helps them get back at their abusers. That being said she does turn them into animals to save them so it's not ideal. I do wish we could understand how women saw the goddesses because most of them did the female population dirty so I am curious how they saw them.
I really enjoyed this video on Nebula! Please do more revisits of mythology it pleases you, there's so much you could cover.
agree! It's very cool to hear about the modern takes of ancient stories, and reminder that creators should be allowed to enjoy their own content :3
The fact that "Shout out to Virgil" is a perfectly natural thing for you to say is one of the reasons I love you ^^
I’ve heard the idea of Medusa being raped by Neptune and transformed by Minerva rather than just being another gorgon with gorgon sisters (as in the eastern Greek version) was already a reimagining of the myth by Ovid who deliberately wanted to play up the irony of her similarity to Andromeda who Perseus saved. Spencer McDaniel has a great blog post on this.
Note: yes a million others have made this point but my big thing is I want a Princess Weekes Spencer McDaniel collab if possible. The two of you have a lot in common.
I also love feminist retellings too.
My only problem is that sometimes authors just seem to slap on the word "feminist" on the cover to make some money from the trend.
Like, the first book that comes to my mind is "The silence of the girls" a retelling of the Iliad from Briseis' perspective. like I was so excited about reading from Briseis because in the Iliad both Achilles and Agamemnon treat her like a thing, and the only one that treated her like a person, Patroclus, died. So even after losing her family and her freedom, she then loses her friend.
And then I buy the book and... Briseis doesn't do anything, more than that, at some point the narrative kicks her out completely to focus on Achilles and Patroclus! (If I wanted to read about Achilles and Patroclus I'd read the song of Achilles, I wanted Briseis!)
And she doesn't have any meaningful relationship with any other enslaved women, like her most important relationship in the book is Achilles!
Iphis, the woman Achilles gifted Patroclus, is mentioned as one of her best friends, and she appears like twice in the whole book!
At some point I remembered reading a part where Briseis thinks about just how much influence Patroclus has over Achilles, and I thought "Great! Maybe the story is going to be about Briseis manipulating Patroclus so he could convince Achilles to treat the women better!" Nope, she doesn't do ANYTHING!
Like, Andromache in the Iliad barely appears, and I swear to God she does way more than Briseis did in "the silence of the girls"
Yes, this was just about me venting because that book was really disappointing
I never understood why Medusa was a feminist icon, I always felt Atalanta was more fitting of this role.
This mostly because I view Ovid's Medusa as victim who has nothing but bad rhings happen to her and Hesiod's Medusa was a monster who harmed people.
Meanwhile Atalanta was a capable warrior who was mistreated from birth because she was a woman. Her father abandoned her to die, several warriors refused to acknowledge her as their equal and her expressing herself sexually with her husband led to them being turned into lions so they may never be together. Her story was one of perseverance till the end where it became a tragedy and things were taken from her control by beings she had little connection to.
I feel there are so many great greek women who can be made feminist icons, some who came out not to badly despite a holes like Hesiod's extreme sexist writings. But Medusa is not one of them
been rewatching this regularly on Nebula, love the love for my beloved Medea.
My problem with the Medusa statue is that, for Perseo, killing Medusa was the most important day of his life, for Medusa, turning a man into a stautue is just another Tuesday
Would love to get a rec list of your favourite classical retelling books. This was a great video ❤
Frankly I think the thing many don't consider in the discourse about whiteness in Greek and Roman mythology is that in popular culture, art and media in general it's almost always some kind of north-european hyperwhiteness, they don't just choose to represent historical or mythological mediterranean characters as simply white, they tend to look very wasp-y often with only a hint of often fake tan.
Like, I live in a touristic place in Southern Italy, the easy way to spot (most) foreign tourists at the beach is to look at how zombie-white they are or how their tan makes them look like boiled lobsters and they seem to almost always choose *that* type of white people for *some reason*. 🤔
IT'S SO ANNOYING. When I heard they cast freaking Joe Quinn as Caracalla for the upcoming Gladiator movie (especially when they have Pedro Pascal in the cast, who looks like every second man in South Italy) I was just... mad.
Would be cool if they cast people that actually look like they're from the Mediterranean. Like I'm from Portugal, and you do get people with fairer features here, yet they still don't look like they're Northern European.
@@brainwheeze6328 Exactly! It's not like there aren't multiple people in Hollywood that look Mediterranean. It's not like there aren't people of Italian and Spanish descent and white Latines. We're not /rare/.
You mean Hollywood not wanting to cast actual Europeans in Southern Europe for these mythologies? Wow, I’m shocked!
Greek viewer here! Excellent video! There are so many points about these myths and topics that were presented really well and I loved hearing about them from another perspective! Also in 16:00, the pronunciation was pretty good!
Sorry this video isn't doing well, but as a classicist, I'm really glad you made it!
If anything, I feel like current retellings aren't pushing hard enough, digging into the messiness in the original texts. For example, I was really disappointed in the Song of Achilles because the central conflict of the Iliad (Achilles and Agamemnon's beef) is barely given time to really breathe and make us as an audience question our preexisting affiliation for Achilles. Agamemnon is 100% a shitlord, but a big part of the pathos of the Iliad is that the worst guy ever might have a point. It just doesn't seem interested in commenting on that aspect, which is totally its prerogative, but I think it's a Huge missed opportunity.
But hey, here's to even more radical retellings to come!
I'd also like to point out that this all gets even more complicated when you look at the Orphean myths, which basically posit Zeus as an illegitimate ruler of the world, Gaia as the mother of life and all of the underworld deities as the actual good guys with our boy Zagreus (you know, the one from the videogame everyone likes) as the one who can transcend death and redeem us all. Orphean myth tends to be way more willing to have women as more than victims and prizes
Zagreus inspired Jesus maybe lol
@@skydome5481 Its more like the cult of Orpheus and the group that would become Christianity had exchange between their theologies. Bits of Jesus are in that version of Zagreus and vice versa. You see this with a lot of religions from the time by the way because the False Ruler and the True Redeemer narratives emerge in theology and expand in popularity during times of political strife and disillusionment with the way of things.
The ending Euripides' Medea always stuck with me especially when I learned more about the history Greek theater, culture, and narratives. The fact that she is on the skene (a place held for the gods), has a chariot from her grandfather Helios the Sun, and is able to ride off with her children's corpses in the end sends such a powerful statement to the patriarchal cultures. And I remember in college writing about how I thought Euripides used Medea to speak on patriarchy/misogyny because she was considered a foreigner.
As someone who is dating a classics PhD student I really enjoyed this video! My gf and a lot of her friends are exploring a lot of interesting things with gender and sexuality and trying to expand and diversify the academic space.
I remember reading "House of Names" (about the Curse of the House of Atreus), and just wondering why Clytemnestra was basically just portrayed as crazy. "Elektra" by Jennifer Saint takes the same story, and doesn't even change that much. It just takes the space that was there to portray Clytemnestra as a traumatized and furious mother, who saw her husband slaughter her daughter in front of her. I liked that version much more, simply because it takes the same events and humanizes the characters so much more.
Claire North's "Ithaca" also paints an interesting portrait of Clytemnestra. The whole darn book is brilliant, with Hera, the oft-vilified goddess, as the narrator.
I haven't read "Clytemnestra" yet, but I''m eager to.
So, I loved this video and it's great to have a few more books to look for in the future. Reinterpreting stories is how we get "Hadestown", "Oh Brother, where art thou?", the PJO books and so much more that I'm too distracted to remember.
The credits music. Every time I watch one of these videos I hear it, and from then on the song lives in my head for hours. Which is annoying, because I have no idea about its name or who made it.
omg i love o brother where art thou
For me, I have to remember Indian and Western Classics. So much literature, too little time.
“She is after your barn SENNNT MEEE
Great analysis, as always!
Also, as a person with a theatre degree, I appreciate the Euripides shoutout (+the Phaedra mention) bc they were plays that impacted me a lot when I read them (Medea just from reading, Trojan Women bc a friend played Cassandra in a production of it and Phaedra bc I had to reinterpret it for a class). Antigone is another interesting one, especially when taking into consideration the role of women in that society and what her defiance ends up meaning for her!
I work at an indie bookstore and we have a whole display of feminist Greek mythology retellings 🥰
Any in particular you'd recommend?
@@christopherb501 I really liked Circe! We also have Jennifer Saint’s books, Stone Blind, and all of the Lore Olympus volumes. Oh and I’ve heard Clytemnestra is good!
@@mglarson5936not Lore Olympus 😭
Oh, that sounds AMAZING. Please be on the East Coast? Please?
@@Rasafrag Blacksburg Books in Blacksburg, Virginia! So, kinda on the coast but we’re pretty far inland.
to be honest, the only book in this adaptational niche I've liked is Christa Wolf's Cassandra, which is from the 80s and German, and it genuinely is about women and the relationships between them during the Trojan war. It is actually, structurally, feminist. It acknowledges passingly the different relationships to attraction and race that would have been held at the time. It's dense but I really do recommend it. I hope to find more books like it soon.
I've been hunting down this brand of retelling specifically because I've found so many of them disappointing -- I think it stems from the idea that a book about women is inherently feminist (which - in some ways it is), but these novels are often not *structurally* feminist. In A Thousand Ships, Penelope's chapters are her summarizing the Odyssey (I am not joking, that is all they are), and somehow this is...feminist? She rarely speaks her mind except to be jealous of other women. All of the women in A Thousand Ships detest Helen for unknown reasons. I even went to listen to Haynes' podcast episode about Helen and found it surprisingly interesting - she explains that Helen is smart and charismatic, in pretty much all sources. And yet her Helen is none of those things. I don't know how Haynes got there.
Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati just kind of dropped Helen as a delicate feminine physically weak white blonde woman and Clytemnestra as darker-skinned, more aggressive, more masculine, and physically stronger at the start of the book, which...yikes, man. I don't think Casati really thought through how those stereotypes might affect the work (and I think this could have been well-subverted by having Clytemnestra be *perceived* as those things moreso than her lighter-skinned sisters, but this was not really dealt with). It really soured the rest of the book to me, which was disappointing, because I love Clytemnestra. I adapt her again and again.
Also, I think a huge part of the failure of these novelizations is that there just isn't that much story to adapt -- which means these authors have to build their own part of the narrative, which fails because often they just can't satisfactorily fill in the gaps. Often they also try to remove any sense of mythology or magic to the story, like Daughters of Sparta, which tried to be an accurate portrayal of Mycenaean Greek life, but, like, it's HELEN and CLYTEMNESTRA. The magic and mythos is the draw. I don't really want to read about how these two amazing mythological women didn't actually hatch from an egg.
Play adaptations miss the mark less often, I'll say. Zinnie Harris' This Restless House is really great. Also, Luis Alfaro's Greek Trilogy, which adapts Oedipus, Medea, and Elektra in modern-day LA. They're great. Iphigenia and the Furies (on Taurian Land) by Ho Ka Kei is so, so good and deconstructs colonialism in Iphigenia among the Taurians, while also being hilarious. It just won the Lambda. Read it, for real.
I feel like Circe did a great job of weaving the mythos in with well written characters to create a narrative that feels like someone is telling you their life story. It also doesn't portray any of the characters as white-- it doesn't frequently mention physical characteristics unless they are plot relevant or revealing of character, but the features it does mention allude to that different understanding of race, including tan or golden skin, dark hair, dark eyes.
I'm somewhat disappointed to hear that Clytemnestra had that stereotypical framing that reeks of colorism. Thank you for the incredible play recommendations, they're now on my list
Iphigenia and other daughters is a good one too!
I loved reading about greek myths around middle school. The rampant inaccuracies in modern reinventions really got on my nerves as a nerdy kid on the spectrum.
Kalon Kakon would be a bad-ass tattoo.
I love how women arrived as a punishment for receiving fire. Kind of works with speculation that women first brought fire home for humankind to use.
When I was studying classics, this is the exact kind of thing I was interested in!!! I did a lot of comparative studies of Helen within different ancient narratives, in addition to her reception by contemporary female authors. One thing that I always joked about with my professors is that sometimes ancient male Greek authors were able to take a more nuanced view about Helen's involvement in the Trojan War compared to say a Madeline Miller or Natalie Haynes. I feel a great degree of respect for these mythological women, as many of their stories came to me during an especially difficult period of my life. It always saddens me to see the way that modern authors sometimes approach these stories as though the source material has nothing of value. I find in some attempts to retell a story, the emotional core is lost in the process of trying so hard to make a statement (or under bad writing *cough* Jenifer Saint).
Hi! Thank you for this video, especially with that powerful ending! I'm a Vietnamese poet currently working on the first ever translation of the Aeneid into Vietnamese. Your point about translators and scholars viewing the classics in different ways *REALLY* strikes a chord with me.
There's just SO many things that came to my mind when I was translating the Aeneid straight from Latin, not just regarding the myth itself but also how other cultures with their own history would come to perceive this piece of literature. For examples, the entire Book 2 where Troy falls reminds me and my beta readers not just of the Fall of Saigon, but also the American bombings of Hanoi in December 1972, i.e. both sides of the war could see themselves there. Or how the Romans' conception of the dead and funeral rites for them are strikingly similar to Vietnamese ancestral worship, which means there are Latin words about funereal ceremonies that just translate perfectly into the Vietnamese because similar concepts exist! Or last but not least, the bond between Aeneas's family and that of Hector (Aeneas's brother-in-law). This kind of extended family dynamics is something that's hard to feel in most English and French translations I've read, but because they're so strong in the original and because my target audience *really cares about* their extended families, it'd be a major omission not to highlight them in the translation. To sum it up, I highly, highly agree with the idea that every new translator from a new culture offers a new perspective on these texts. It would be so great if these texts are not held as solid artifacts that must be seen through the glass in certain ways, but essentially thrown to the wolves, but not any wolves but wolves that have done their research and decided what they wanna change/highlight in the original.
Anyway, that's a long, tangentially related rant. Gotta get back to Book 3 where Helenus is talking a little bit too much and I can't wait to be back to Andromache.
That sounds really cool, I hope it's going well!
Omg I was waiting for someone to do a video about this trend or I was going to make one myself. So far my favorite retellings are Madeline Miller's. I'm glad that the classics are getting a second look from a feminist lens, and I love the fact that we have so many options.
That being said, not all (or most, one could argue) come out smelling like Madeline Miller. I feel like some authors are trying to imitate her, and sometimes it creates something that is really well researched and new. Other times everything, particularly the feminism, is very lazy.
My least favorite feminist Greek mythology authors are Natalies Haynes and Claire Heywood. Heywood just copies what everyone else is doing. She literally released Under the Shadow of Perseus the same year as Stone Blind; I think several people owe her a plagiarism lawsuit.
Natalie Haynes… on the one hand I owe a lot to her. A Thousand Ships introduced me to Andromache, my favorite, and so many amazing heroines. Her nonfiction work is amazing, and it’s clear that she knows a lot about Greek mythology.
But her fiction… Stone Blind is the biggest example of her problem. It hardly focuses on Medusa, or any woman, and spends most of its time showing how big its scope is and how awful the men are. The women are little more than a camera lens, something to see the same story through. And not to say #NotAllMen, but her vilification of Perseus was unnecessary; unlike someone like Theseus or Hercules, his worst crime was killing Medusa, which was to free his mom. There are plenty of asshole men in Greek mythology, but Perseus really wasn’t one of them. It feels like she made him a stupid bigot just to hammer her message, or rather, her own ego, in. Her narration can be rather self-righteous and self-congratulatory, boasting about how she uplifts forgotten women’s voices (which, as was stated in the video, is not a new thing and goes all the way back to Euripides)
A Thousand Ships also suffers from some of the similar problems, particularly with Penelope’s chapters. But I can’t totally write off Haynes. When she actually does focus on the women, it’s magical. It’s insightful. What she wrote about Andromache really got me interested in her character, so much so that I want to write about her myself.
So far, my favorite adaptations were Circe, Song of Achilles, Atalanta by Jennifer Saint, and Ariadne by Jennifer Saint. My other favorite retellings are Hadestown by Anais Mitchell and Percy Jackson.
One that is super interesting is The Memoirs of Helen of Troy by Amanda Elyot, which is from the 2000s and has a lot of the same feminist, sex positive undertones. I don’t necessarily like it (there is way too much sex, including a “romance” between 40 y.o. Theseus and 14 year old Helen, most of the other women are shown to be shrewish and jealous, and Helen can be downright narcissistic), but it is very interesting.
Really appreciated your note re: transposing their ideas onto these myths while Greek people still exist. I'm from a culture that literally billions of people who are Not Us feel absolute entitlement to and ownership of, all while telling us we're doing our own culture wrong (or even think we're extinct!) So important to remember that people are not metaphors, and Western Europe and Western Europeans are not somehow the inheritors of the Greek tradition or descendents of the Greeks in any way. Basically, it just sucks to be written out of your own story.
But Western Europe is AN inheritor of Greek tradition, by way of the influence of Greco-Roman culture first through contact with the Greek classical world and Roman conquest (which also led to the adoption of the Greco-Roman pantheon by peoples from Britain to Iberia), and later by the influence of Classical culture on the medieval Christian world. To say that the modern Greeks are the only inheritors of classical Greece is like saying that only China is the inheritor of classical Chinese culture, ignoring the influence it had in Korea, Japan, Vietnam...
@@MaylocBrittinorum That's not a terrible point. But I think these situations are not really analogous, you're missing the relative balance of power between these players. You don't have people in Korea, Japan, Vietnam, etc., saying they are the inheritors of Chinese culture; you have people saying their cultures were influenced by Chinese culture. Also, frankly, the power relationship between Western Europe and Greece, for more than a thousand years, has been entirely opposite the example you gave. Greece is not the powerful metropole exerting colonial influence on Britain, France, and Spain, it is a relatively marginal economic player in southeast Europe, while western European countries and their "Greco-Roman influenced" cultures have been economically and culturally dominant since at least the Middle Ages. Meanwhile, China remains a massively powerful and dominant cultural and economic force in Asia, as it has been for thousands of years, and continues to exert its power on other nations in the region.
this was such a great love letter to the art of retelling stories and what it can accomplish! I feel like lately I've been seeing some backlash to the whole feminist retellings of myths trend, probably bc as you say it's become so common now, so it's nice to be reminded of how far we've come that this trend can even exist!
My school did lessons in Classics and this combined with a 1980's cartoon called Ulysses 31 which is a sci-fi retelling of The Odyssey is what got me interested in Greek Mythology. Another book I remember reading is The Firebrand by Marion Zimmer Bradley which covers Cassandra's life from her childhood through to the events of the Trojan War.
Watched this very early on Nebula! Hooray! Death to Chronos!
I'm from Greece and I really enjoy your video (as usually) 👏👏👏
OK, this is making me want a retelling of Carmilla. And a genderbent lesbian Dracula.
Anyway, personally the goddess Freyja always resonated with me for transfemme reasons.
That would be amazing
Hi, you should read The Moth Diaries. While it's not exactly a retelling of Carmilla it's heavily inspired by it and has that gothic atmosphere. It's set in a boarding school and has an almost all-female cast of characters! I love Carmilla and I just wanted more people to know about the moth diaries because it's pretty good!
cringe bi erasure on dracula
I studied Classical Studies in high school and university. It's one of my obessions as I adored Greek mythology well all mythology. And I love these retellings. There's also a great historical book called the Lion's Den which talks about women in a pompeli brothel just before the volcano exploded. It's great.
im sure you've read it but if you haven't, i recommend A Thousand Ships by natalie haynes. it's a retelling of the illiad and the odyssey from the women involved. like, SO many. it's really interesting how many stories the author was able to make from names who are barely mentioned in the surviving works
but very cool video! i love this subject and was excited to see you touch on it, sad to see youtube hiding it
would strongly advise all those doing additional (modern) reading to understand the perspectives of the authors! for example, mary lefkowitz famously had a back and forth with another classicist about how she believed that other, non-greek civilizations (ancient egyptians, phoenicians etc.) had little to no impact on the way the ancient greek culture developed, and she is currently a member of a society advocating against diversity in the field of classics. modern intersectionality is very important for a field that has historically been used to do and justify great harm (most notably the trans-Atlantic slave trade) and when reading a socially conservative author it is important to remember that the perspectives of non-dominant societal groups are absent from the narrative. non-white (according to modern definitions of such) perspectives and influences being erased from history by white supremacist groups are absolutely lies, and all cultures that have come into contact with each other have influenced and changed the other in significant ways. the archaic style of greek sculpture was heavily influenced by the egyptian styles but that doesnt mean the ancient greeks did not innovate with it, and vice versa, and that is just one small example. the ancient greco-roman peoples believed in the superiority of their own culture but also exchanged a great deal with other cultures as well, so please beware of modern scholarship that denies as much. for additional reading on intersectionality in the classics i would highly recommend the works of dan-el padilla peralta, who once (according to an inflammatory nyt article) said that “the field of classics should die”. happy reading!
I still have my copy of Edith Hamilton's Mythology. That's how I got hooked on Greek myths.
One of the weirdest experiences for me was when I was my university’s equivalent of a TA for the course “gender and sexuality in the ancient world” and like every classics dude in the class was just ///breaking down////. Like the level of just active ignorance behind the argument “they wouldn’t have thought about gender” still haunts me.
I literally love listening to this and I will be back! Every time the desire hits I start digging into different cultures' mythos and I love hearing people share their thoughts about the retellings or informing people about how the stories have changed over time.
Something that you touch upon your video and which I think about a lot when coming across media based on Ancient Greek history and mythology is how so much of it is an interpretation by people in Western Europe and North America rather than Greek people themselves. A big reason for this is due to just how mainstream Anglophone media is in the world, and how much more likely we are to consume said media versus that which is produced in Greece. But I often get the impression that Greek people are never really considered when people from other places create works based on the former's heritage. Yes, the Greeks of today aren't necessarily the same as the ones from Ancient Greece, but they're still descendants of those people and their culture owes a lot to them. It also doesn't help that a lot of media that takes place in Ancient Greece casts actors that clearly aren't Mediterranean looking, instead going for fair-skinned British people (because RP accent seems to be required by law when making a period piece).
This is only tangentially related to the main point of your video but MAN would I listen to you just ramble about whatever you feel like regarding Hades. I wanna hear your hot takes and favorite characters and stuff!!
Algorithmic punch!
Really enjoyed this thoughtful overview of both the trend of feminist reimaginings of Greek myths, and the flaws of one trying to speak as an expert of all the vast, and absent of documentation, ancient Greek culture.
I think, to try to sum up what you said, the call to action to reference the classics in art and narrative to build the culture we want to have, not the one we are told to have, has a lot of power to it.
I really enjoyed this video and I never even had a Greek mythology phase lol, though I had friends who did in middle school/high school. I feel like you often amplify certain topics of discussion (or specific angles) that are not as widely talked about, and I really love and appreciate that. of course being someone that's not super familiar with classics/Greek mythology I'm sure that many of these discussions are already being had without me seeing it, but in terms of video essays in the mainstream RUclips sphere, I think it's a pretty unique subject. I always come away from your videos thinking about things in a new way, and that's pretty cool.
I remember seeing a casting announcement on Facebook a few months ago for the new Percy Jackson show and it had a photo of the actors who were hired to play Poiseidon and Zeus: Toby Stephens and Lance Reddick (may he rest in peace). There was a lot of outrage because Greek gods were being portrayed by actors who aren't white. I did not see much anger directed towards Stephens who, when I looked it up, did not have any Greek ancestry, or at least had as much chance of Reddick of having a distant Greek ancestor. It kind of illustrated what you said at 6:14 or 32:11 that white get to claim whatever story from Europe as "theirs" even if they have no real connection to it, who would be considered "barbarians" by the very Greeks they feel ownership over.
Similar thing happand when they anouced that Annabell will be playd by a black girl. I'm white and I don't have any problem with it. I'm still waiting for the series. The kid who will play Percy doas not look like the ilustrations of Percy eather, and I don't seen any outrage about that. And Uncle Rick is working on the series too. I'm on board with a Percy Jeckson adaptation no meeter who plays who as long, as Rick has creativ control unlike with the case of the movies. (As Rick said "there are no movies")
And well I think it would be good to see a retelling that involvs Greeks (I don't know why) in the making of the show. I remember having an idea of a show that is a Greek mythology reteling centerd around a specific god, the character disgns are based on Greek statues, and the cast is all Greek, and a lot of the writers also ara. Similar with Egyiptian mythology. It would be instresting to see shows like that with multiple mythologies from defrent countries.
Sorry for the gremmer, and spelling mistakes, English is not my first laungvige.
I was looking for book recs for my warehouse job, so thank you!
I just finished Stone Bind! What a refreshing and illuminating RUclips creator. Thank you so much! And thanks for including maps! I think the algorithm sent me to you after watching the free Gresham College lectures.
“Why would Athena and Hera be showing puss on the main?!” 🤣 honestly tho, this is a fantastic video. I’m GRIPPED
This was a nice discussion! Lots to chew on, and one thing I'd like to point out is with Greek myths is that many of the Greek myths are actually much older than Greece---they probably come from what we'd today call Mesopotamia; they're inherently not "western" stories. The conversation about Médousa coming from Ovid---that's like basing your perception of Jeanne d'Arc on her portrayal in anime. It's many times removed from the source. And we know that the stories of the war at Troía and the labors of Hēraklḗs are much older and have much more hidden origins, in the same way that divinities like Diónusos and Hekátē are pre-Greek but we can't pinpoint from where exactly. Even Aphrodítē is clearly a "Greekwashing" of the Egyptian Isis or the Sumerian/Babylonian Ištar/Inanna. Lots of Greek works probably have Phoenician or Sumerian/Akkadian ancestors---the obvious example is "the sea" ἡ θάλαττα hē thálatta clearly comes from the Akkadian name for Tiamat, tiāmtum, which is also the word for "the sea" and refers to the primordial goddess from whose blood the stars were made. Fun fact---Tiāmtum is also cognate with the semitic word in Genesis 1:2 often translated as "nothing" or "abyss", ṯəhôm or תְּהוֹם, from which God created everything.
Mḗdeia is another interesting one, and I think one of the reasons she's such a controversial figure and subject to so many differing interpretations is that we don't have all the tools and knowledge of her context to understand her. Euripídēs gives her a reason for everything she does in the play---she's by far the most rational person there---and her actions there are consistent with her history in myth. I actually view her as one of the first, like, 'colonized person revolt' stories. (Somebody pretty up that language.) She looks the Greek patriarchy in the face, spits in it, symbolically negates the Argṓ story of her colonization (she was basically soul-r*ped by Érōs's arrow, after all), and confers divinity upon herself by flying off in the chariot of the sun and establishing a cult. Plus, that she goes to Athḗnai---the center of the Greek world---at the end of the play while Iásōn is stuck in Kórinthos---by all accounts a backwater kingdom---is subtextually pretty telling.
Another thing is that the Greeks were a capital-S SLAVE society, and one of the things that really worries me about holding the past up as some kind of ideal is that there was a lot of stuff going on that today we would pretty universally agree is Not Acceptable. The Greeks were always at war. Much of the population of Athḗnai was slaves. So feminist retellings are important, and the majority of women in history---not just Greek history---never had their names recorded or their stories told, but what we have from the Greeks is the product of a slave society and colonialism. I'm not here to say that was good or bad in its original context---it was the past; it is what it was---but it's something I wish we were more mindful of as we begin to reacquaint popular knowledge with these ancient stories. That history is part of us too.
Since we are talking about Medusa, also shoutout to Andromeda, an unambigously Black woman in Greek mythology.
It's weird how so much art portrays her as pale white when she was a princess from Africa
“Circe” is my favorite of these retelling. What a beautiful story.
Your conclusion rocks! The ancient greeks were misogynistic but also multicultural. Our current historical understanding seems VERY different from the modern/cultural interpretations. You hit this one out of the park… so to speak.
"Reception," which my advisor studies and so I hope to explain it well, is a concept in classics that many of my fellow classicists in the comments have mentioned, so I just want to define it. Instances of Reception are based mostly on looking at these modern 20th-21st century retelling of old stories, where the backbone and arc of the story is reinterpreted through a modern lens with modern values. Although this is heavily focused on modern pop culture retellings, the concept can be applied to anything that pulls from another source (this requires nuance). So just as Circe is Reception, so are Shakespeare's history plays, the millions of retellings and kid versions of religious texts, movie remakes of old books like the Great Gatsby, and you can argue that these "original" texts by Hesiod and Euripides are also Reception. These ancient texts, imo, should be interpreted with the same scrutiny as modern retellings (like you mention in this AMAZING video), especially since when written they are referring to stories that are generally +100 years old. It is also what makes these modern day retelling so fascinating, cause they are receptions, of receptions (multiplied probably).
Now dropping the professionalism, a "fun" thing about this is how modern copyright law fucks up this literary tradition. There is no copyright law on the stories of Medea and the Iliad (although some people have tried) which allow us to constantly receive and reinterpret, but because of copyright law (heavily pushed by Disney) we can't do the same things with like Olive from Popeye or Minnie Mouse, at least not at the high profile level of these books. The internet allows us to get past this and erode copy right law's power, but I do sort of see these modern retellings as a punk rock way to say "you won't let us work with these new characters? Fine, we'll just take your cherished Origin of Western Civ" lol
Also shout out to Antigone and thank you so much for your awesome video!
When I saw the thumbnail with Medea with the title "Why We Needed To Relearn The Classics" I thouht you were about to try and convince me that Medea is a Classic movie series and needs to be rewatched for its timeless messages and I don't know what I was about to do.
four minutes in and i've already got a nostalgia whiplash - three seconds of the Xena intro is enough to send my brain back in time but then you added that Loose Canon throwback! whewf. no idea what year it is or how old i am but i know my neck hurts. 😅
I love it that Herecles means "Glory to Hera!" Thank you for sharing what you know.😃
this, and the comments and discussion, are much needed and appreciated!!!! i dont have much to say i just wanna listen and engage :)
oh dang i loved watching this on nebula! as someone who has had an interest in ancient mythology for a long time this is a very interesting watch. i love the new perspectives women are bringing to these stories:)
i think it's safe to say that The Song Of Achilles is what really ushered in this age of classics retellings, but my favourite came before that- Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin. Le Guin is of course a brilliant fantasy and feminist author. Lavinia is a retelling of The Aeneid which follows the titular Lavinia, the third and final wife of Aeneas who a war is fought over. in the Aeneid, Lavinia never speaks, only cries, but in this book she is intelligent, brave and opinionated, without ever feeling unrealistic for a young woman in ancient times. the writing is also brilliant at bringing to life an immersive vision of pre-Roman Italy and it's culture. and the book does some really great meta stuff with Virgil. honestly, i can't recommend it enough.
The idea of absorbing the classics with modernity already within them is so central to much of our interpretation and representation of the world. Not only are mythological stories contextualized by the societies that created them, but the very movement of these tales through time and the changes in their form and content must be appreciated by any truly critical perspective. More than that, this analysis actually demonstrates the contradictions in analyzing itself, the shortcomings of our conceptualization of the world and, most important, the path forward to truly understanding the existence of these stories and the humans that reproduce them.
Thank you kindly for putting together a video on such an essential procedure!
I really enjoyed your take on this trend! It's interesting to see the new ways in which this has been developing. I personally have some very double feelings on these feminist retellings because I think they are in a way whitewashing a cultural heritage that is quite honestly (as you discussed) quite awful to women and anyone not adhering to its own cultural norms, and not always examining what is underneath their coat of feminist paint and what history it is obscuring. At the same time I'm very glad to see some of these stories reclaimed because I'd rather we reclaim them than that they end up becoming a dangerous tool in certain other political ideologies, as we have also seen in recent years.
I would also like to point out (while understanding obviously that you are speaking from an english/american perspective) that next to, like you state, the odyssey and ilias have been translated in other languages by women before this new english translation came out, and I understand that Song of Achilles changed a lot in Achilles' queer reading in English language discourse,here too this has been a very common and standard reading in my own culture for quite a long time, as well.
One of my favorite movies as a kid (around 3 years old) was Clash of the Titans (the good Harryhausen version) and I WAS HOOKED on greek myths.
I got into Greek mythology when I watched the cartoon Class of the Titans. Before that I only knew of their Roman counterparts when I first read the explanation behind the names of the planets.
There is a wonderfull retelling of the Trojan War story from a womans Perspective: "Cassandra" by Christa Wolf (published in the 1980ies). Cassandra is the narrator of this story, and we follow her memories (non linear) while she waits to enter Mykene (where she will be murdered by Klytaimnestra). It is inspired by the authors own experiences, as a woman in east Germany watching her country becoming a police state. Don´t expect Gods or magic in this story though. This is a classic in German Literatur, and the original is very well written. I don´t know how good the english translation is, though.
That Medusa state did Perseus so dirty when you consider that Perseus is usually the least problematic Greek mythical hero 😭 Like bro Poseidon is the problem in the Ovid version of the myth, not Perseus who's just doing his job
I feel like such a nerd but I'm genuinely excited for Emily Wilson's translation of the Illiad to come out. I've read the Odessey three different times due to school, but I have only ever enjoyed it when reading hers. So I'm super excited for her translation of the Illiad to come out since I have never read it in full.
this was great. i would love to here your take on Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons.
I study ancient history and biblical literature, and its really eye opening to learn about how much of 'classical' culture has been misunderstood, selectively revised, or invented whole cloth by early modern european scholars to reflect their loathsome sensibilities. There were so many versions of these deities and these stories that individual cities and regions all had their own versions. The ways the ancients interacted with these stories was closer to how we use psychology today then anything resembling religion or a literary canon.
Most people also don't realize that after the alexandrian conquests, Greek stopped being an ethnicity and became a socio-political identity (Alexander and his generals were macedonians after all -- looked down upon by the athenians and spartans who became their vassels ). During the Hellenistic age of the mediteranean world, cities and groups sought to gain Greek status as a way to integrate into the global economy. In Egypt the Ptolemies employed Jewish mercenaries to such a degree that in egypt being a Jew meant you were automatically Greek by virtue of being a Jew.
I also recently learned that one of the defining features of the Ancient Greek Novel (and the ancient Jewish Novels produced during the Helenistic period) is that they tended to involve heroic female protagonists (think book of esther). This is an almost universal feature of the genre, so to pretend that ancient people were not interested in female characters is willful ignorance. Female perspective centering mythology fan fic has been around since way before the Roman Empire or Jesus and more people need to know this.
I have always loved the idea of retellings and analyzing old myths from different cultures, and of course, ancient Greek myths have always been my number one! It simply a passion to explore the oldest/original texts or sources to understand how life was back then and what we can learn or unlearn from it.
Lately, I have been delving into biblical narratives and even listening to the podcast "It's In The Book," which offers a fresh and queer perspective on the Bible. It made me reexamine the story of Adam and Ḥawwāh/Eve for example. Like that Eve was originally referred to as Adam's "savior" in the ancient texts, unlike the English translations that changed the word to "servant." or when they want to feel nice "helper". OR the concept of gender was created by God ripping the "Adam" in half to make man and woman, rather than simply taking a "rib bone" as commonly depicted in the English versions.
I have also trying to find retellings stories from the bible such as "The Prince's Psalm", that is a romantic retelling of the story of David and Yehonatan. At first, I was confused by the lack of discussion/interest about their relationship, heck as well as other relationships like Judah & Shua and Daniel & Ashpenaz. However, I soon realized that there are ALOT of people that tend to pushes a narratives they are personally "comfortable" with. And if someone makes a feminist and/or queer retelling like The Prince's Psalm or and even The Red Tent, they tend to get reviewed bombed and hushed out. Because of that, there isn't much of that type of content. It bugs me out so much! Let me read my retelling stories gawdammit!!
I have loved mythology as long as I can remember.Ten years ago, we moved in with my grandfather to take care of him, and I found an old set of the Junior Classics with various mythologies' sanitized versions within.
Circe is the best. Also shout out to Louise Gluck’s 1996 poetry book Meadowlands, about Penelope and Odysseus’ crumbling marriage.
I'm so glad you made this video! When I was a sociology student a few years ago, I was DESPERATE to write an essay about a topic like this but didn't have enough time to find sufficient academic sources 😭
Also; Madeline Miller is simply incredible. TSOA is my favorite book, I have two tattoos for it 😅 And I love Circe so much too! I'm so excited to see what she does with her Persephone retelling. Based on what she did with Circe, I'm sure she's gonna give Persephone her own voice separated from Hades and I SO LOOK FORWARD TO THAT 🙏🏻✨️
OMG I just read the title and I‘M ALREADY HYPED!!!
I haven't been getting the notifications for your videos so thank you for posting about it! Of course I didn't get a notification for what u posted 😒 I just happen to be scrolling in my subscriptions feed. RUclips really had the nerve after I went in to check I was signed up for all notifications (I was) to send me a push notification about this video smh ANYHOW U SLAY AND UR PERSPECTIVE IS VERY THOUGHTFUL AND INSIGHTFUL!!
So I used to watch all the old Claymation movies and Jason and the Argonauts was my favorite. Hera became my goddess and the rest is history. I never heard Medea or read it, so I just knew that much about it. I am sure Hera was done a massive amount of dirty but again, She was expected to stay good and loyal and subservient or else she was the "bad guy". I read comic books and saw cartoons where she was venerated and I took it to heart. Others took away the negative, and I only took away the positive. I learned the crazy bad azz things she did in Myth. That she stood up to her husband and while he was the King of the gods, she was the Queen, and she did not let him get away with his shenanigans. I learned eventually she was a triple goddess and one of the first Gods worshipped in Greece. She was connected to Egyptian gods, and the Apple and the serpent started with her. She hat a tree of golden apples guarded by a serpent of knowledge. She protected those who were loyal, or at least tried to help them, from what I saw. There was so much bad, but the people writing down these stories were men, and as you say, thought women were the ruination of all man kind. Gods or not. I Loved her depiction in so many things, where they come ever so close to my idea of her. I have since gotten more and more myths from all over about different Greek Myths. From Hamlet, to Xena, to Roman myths. It's just one of my favorite topics. I was sad the only mention of Hera was a bow in Hades, but you better believe I caught the reference to her snatching Artemis' bow and turning it on her. It brought me some real joy. Maybe we will see her in the next one. I do like the over lap that seems to happen where every myth basically is the equivalent to a myth from another region. Thanks for this vid, there was some books I will have to check out, and I will for sure be picking up Medea to read how Jason lets us down.
Ray Haryhausen
Banger vid as always! I loved every bit of it! I cheered when I saw your copy of Emily Wilson's Odyssey and pointed at the screen like the Leo DiCaprio meme
I had an obsession with mythology back in 6th grade and I'm very certain every middle schooler in the 90s had that phase.
Of course, I never outgrew that phase!
I became interested in Greek myths when I was nine because I got a book called the top ten Greek myths at the Scholastic book fair. I ended up studying classics in college so it really stuck with me. This was a wonderful video, as always!