-... I Will Comb Myself Into Chains...-
I don't do shit for a week and then suddenly everything gets intense. My apologies to all the new names on my F-List. *Waves*
Mostly I've been doing frantic last-minute studying for my last exam today; I'm not exactly thrilled about my effort, especially since I almost fell asleep on the desk, but at least the course is over now. It's... a bit sad I suppose, because it's really been something I've enjoyed, but at the same time I feel I've never been at my best. So it'll be nice to hopefully move on to a subject I'll be studying for the next three years rather than something I feel is just a pit stop on the academic road.
Actually had a night out yesterday for the first time in... I don't know how long. If you can call an evening with my sis and mum plus her friend and her daughters a "night out". We went to Stadsteatern and watched West Side Story.
Let me begin by saying I am one of those people who don't consider Romeo and Juliet the greatest love story of all time. The concept of Love At First Sight never rang true to me, and the limited time scope leaves no opportunity for any interesting... anything on behalf of the dooomed lovers (really, all they talk about when they're together is how much they love each other and how they'll never want to part).
It is, in my opinion, a better story about hate.
As I've never been able to become really invested in the romantic aspect of the play that's always been what gets to me instead. Tragedy is often in the preventable, the wrong choices we make or the right choices made at the wrong time; Romeo and Juliet are as fervent in love as their relatives are in scorn, and it is that family feud which is the fundamental driving force behind the play. A feud which we are never actually given any concrete reasons for.
West Side Story, on the other hand, has a slightly tweaked setting that nonetheless has a huge impact on how the characters are presented. By turning the family feud into street gang rivalry laced with racist and classist tension, the story suddenly becomes a lot more real-- not because of the update in environment per se, but because of more concrete and realistic reasons for New York's "Montagues" and "Capulets" to be at each others' throats.
Add to that the fact that while in the original play, the two houses definitely belong to the upper class, and their feud has negative effects on the common citizens of Verona, West Side Story presents two immigrant gangs who both suffer from poverty and prejudice from the establishment and public at large (albeit in different ways) which makes the characters more sympathetic. They all make wrong decisions and do terrible things, but they're also all victims of a classist and racist system. The tragedy that leads to Tony's death and separation from Maria is not restricted to the gang feud but is a symptom (and critique) of institutionalised problems. To me, that made the aspect of the play I already found the most compelling even more effective.
West Side Story may have been first put up in 1957, but the way it handles updating Shakespeare's play is a rare example of a remake that actually adds to the original rather than take from it, and in some respects become stronger for it. In this era of an increasing market for remakes, whether they be of old or foreign making, I wish this was something movie makers would take to heart more often.
Production-wise, I don't really have much to say; I'm not exactly a seasoned theater-goer, but the cast performed well and I enjoyed the music and choreography. I think the only thing that felt off was the fact that it was in Swedish, but this is hardly a problem in itself or exclusive to this musical. It's just odd when certain acts can't be properly translated, or are perhaps just so iconic that they aren't ("America" and "Somewhere" were both performed in English; likewise, most songs in Spamalot and We Will Rock You were in English in the Swedish productions I've been to-- I think the only musical where I haven't reacted to this was Cats).
After the exam today I had to walk to the underground through the rain, and the rain kept on until evening. So I spent most of that time watching TV and finished reading Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad.
There was a very good quote by Junot Diaz floating about Tumblr a while back about the importance of minority representation (paraphrased): [...]if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.
When we read, or watch, or listen to something, we take the words (and performance, and score, and directing, etc.) to our heart and interpret them; sometimes as the writer intended, but perhaps more often not. Reinterpretation, by contrast, is a conscious effort to bring out a new side to an already established narrative and make us re-think our opinions of said narrative. As such, it's a powerful tool for those who want to increase representation and challenge the traditional public view of well-known stories.
Greek literature is particularly appealing for a number of reasons. Few stories are as deeply ingrained in western culture, its art and literature, as the Greek and Roman myths, plays and poems. You can't take a stroll down the streets of Old Town without seeing Ionic columns or streets named after the Olympians. Ancient Greece is associated with culture, higher education, but also power; in other words, areas dominated by straight white men. As such, reinterpreting these narratives is to claim them-- whether you're doing so by making Euripides' Medea about xenophobia, emphasising the homoeroticism of Achilleus and Patroclus or giving Persephone a new voice and agency (Vivat Regina was one of my favourite fics for Yuletide 2012, jsyk).
The Penelopiad is, as the title implies, a refocalisation of the events of the Iliad and the Odyssey as told from the perspective of Odysseus' wife Penelope. In first person, she narrates the story of her own life from childhood to the days after Odysseus' return to Ithaca from the Stygian shore; interspersed between chapters are poems, chorus lines as if written for a play, sung by the Twelve Maidens, the maid servants of Penelope that are slain by Odysseus and his son Telemachus near the end of the epic.
(You know, they're not spoilers if they're almost 3000 years old...)
Atwood's choice of heroine is perhaps slightly unorthodox, but also fitting; Penelope's claim to fame is her feminine virtue, that of the faithful wife who waits patiently for twenty years until her husband returns. It is a passive role, restricted to the domestic sphere; as that was the only domain women could be said to have in ancient Greece it does seem appropriate to shine a light there. Penelope may not be battling Cyclops and Sirens, but her struggles to maintain a working household is in itself a task, and gradually she also engineers her own personal tragedy.
It is not a traditionally empowering novel, and far from a happy one. The atmosphere of the book frequently struck me as melancholic, although Atwood's prose is frank and fresh; Penelope's life is fraught with isolation, surrounded by people who seem to either want her harm or want nothing to do with her at all. Despite persevering through obstacles to the bitter end, her side of the story is quickly forgotten - and she carries her regrets in life into death.
As I mentioned, Penelope is not a conventional heroine; her role is often (but far from always) passive, at the mercy of the men and senior women in her life. You get the impression that by giving her a voice Atwood is not elevating Penelope herself as much as every Greek woman, and the history of women that came after her; all the ones whose indispensible efforts in the shadows of men have remained unappreciated and unsung. Despite this the actual book doesn't feel heavy or depressing; partly because of the engaging prose, partly because it's a fairly short read (roughly 200 pages).
It might be an effect of the first person perspective, but the other people in Penelope's life often seem quite distant. This is in part because of their dismissive attitude towards Penelope herself; the two most prominent characters besides her is Odysseus, who despite being absent for the most part casts a long and ambiguous shadow, and Helen, who is perhaps the closest the book has to a proper villain not only in that she gets the blame for the Trojan War, but because her beauty turns the head of every important man in Penelope's life.
While I greatly enjoyed the book, that aspect of it might've been the only one that bothered me. And it's not even that it's badly written, or doesn't make sense; Penelope and Helen are an early example of the Madonna/whore dichotonomy. One is virtuous, respected and barely remembered, the other stunningly beautiful and a danger to the people around her; in short, the things that men fear and desire in femininity. To have their lives intertwined makes sense, but there's something that bothers me about making Helen a typical "vapid bitch" who uses her beauty and doesn't care who suffers because of her ill-considered decisions.
Here's a story: the first time I read about the Trojan War, it was in a comic, in a collection of myths for children. It recounted Paris' encounter with Athena, Hera and Aphrodite and the events that led to the war; one panel that still stands out to me is that of Helen, white in the moonlight standing on Paris' ship, veil pulled back and hair blowing in the wind. She had a closed, unreadable expression and the caption read: but what fair Helen thought about it all no one cared to ask.
Helen was, and still is, in the realm of art and literature, an icon of beauty. Her mere existence is enough to make men kill for her, go to war to win her; yet she herself is hardly given more of a voice than Penelope. The way we commodify women and their bodies, today as well in the past, I have never been able to shake my sympathy for her.
(Catherynne M. Valente's interpretation of Helen in her poem Helen in the Underworld strikes me as much more emotional, and achingly likely, than Atwood's.)
(Then again Penelope is biased, and there are already some hints that she might be an unreliable narrator herself.)
The Penelopiad is a story about a woman. It is also, in the story of the Twelve Maids, a story about how history and the men who write it trivialise their own violence against women. In the end, whatever you personally take away from the book, it's a well-written and interesting reinterpretation of one of the greatest works of western literature.
This entry was originally posted at http://regndoft.dreamwidth.org/203934.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Mostly I've been doing frantic last-minute studying for my last exam today; I'm not exactly thrilled about my effort, especially since I almost fell asleep on the desk, but at least the course is over now. It's... a bit sad I suppose, because it's really been something I've enjoyed, but at the same time I feel I've never been at my best. So it'll be nice to hopefully move on to a subject I'll be studying for the next three years rather than something I feel is just a pit stop on the academic road.
Actually had a night out yesterday for the first time in... I don't know how long. If you can call an evening with my sis and mum plus her friend and her daughters a "night out". We went to Stadsteatern and watched West Side Story.
Let me begin by saying I am one of those people who don't consider Romeo and Juliet the greatest love story of all time. The concept of Love At First Sight never rang true to me, and the limited time scope leaves no opportunity for any interesting... anything on behalf of the dooomed lovers (really, all they talk about when they're together is how much they love each other and how they'll never want to part).
It is, in my opinion, a better story about hate.
As I've never been able to become really invested in the romantic aspect of the play that's always been what gets to me instead. Tragedy is often in the preventable, the wrong choices we make or the right choices made at the wrong time; Romeo and Juliet are as fervent in love as their relatives are in scorn, and it is that family feud which is the fundamental driving force behind the play. A feud which we are never actually given any concrete reasons for.
West Side Story, on the other hand, has a slightly tweaked setting that nonetheless has a huge impact on how the characters are presented. By turning the family feud into street gang rivalry laced with racist and classist tension, the story suddenly becomes a lot more real-- not because of the update in environment per se, but because of more concrete and realistic reasons for New York's "Montagues" and "Capulets" to be at each others' throats.
Add to that the fact that while in the original play, the two houses definitely belong to the upper class, and their feud has negative effects on the common citizens of Verona, West Side Story presents two immigrant gangs who both suffer from poverty and prejudice from the establishment and public at large (albeit in different ways) which makes the characters more sympathetic. They all make wrong decisions and do terrible things, but they're also all victims of a classist and racist system. The tragedy that leads to Tony's death and separation from Maria is not restricted to the gang feud but is a symptom (and critique) of institutionalised problems. To me, that made the aspect of the play I already found the most compelling even more effective.
West Side Story may have been first put up in 1957, but the way it handles updating Shakespeare's play is a rare example of a remake that actually adds to the original rather than take from it, and in some respects become stronger for it. In this era of an increasing market for remakes, whether they be of old or foreign making, I wish this was something movie makers would take to heart more often.
Production-wise, I don't really have much to say; I'm not exactly a seasoned theater-goer, but the cast performed well and I enjoyed the music and choreography. I think the only thing that felt off was the fact that it was in Swedish, but this is hardly a problem in itself or exclusive to this musical. It's just odd when certain acts can't be properly translated, or are perhaps just so iconic that they aren't ("America" and "Somewhere" were both performed in English; likewise, most songs in Spamalot and We Will Rock You were in English in the Swedish productions I've been to-- I think the only musical where I haven't reacted to this was Cats).
After the exam today I had to walk to the underground through the rain, and the rain kept on until evening. So I spent most of that time watching TV and finished reading Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad.
There was a very good quote by Junot Diaz floating about Tumblr a while back about the importance of minority representation (paraphrased): [...]if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.
When we read, or watch, or listen to something, we take the words (and performance, and score, and directing, etc.) to our heart and interpret them; sometimes as the writer intended, but perhaps more often not. Reinterpretation, by contrast, is a conscious effort to bring out a new side to an already established narrative and make us re-think our opinions of said narrative. As such, it's a powerful tool for those who want to increase representation and challenge the traditional public view of well-known stories.
Greek literature is particularly appealing for a number of reasons. Few stories are as deeply ingrained in western culture, its art and literature, as the Greek and Roman myths, plays and poems. You can't take a stroll down the streets of Old Town without seeing Ionic columns or streets named after the Olympians. Ancient Greece is associated with culture, higher education, but also power; in other words, areas dominated by straight white men. As such, reinterpreting these narratives is to claim them-- whether you're doing so by making Euripides' Medea about xenophobia, emphasising the homoeroticism of Achilleus and Patroclus or giving Persephone a new voice and agency (Vivat Regina was one of my favourite fics for Yuletide 2012, jsyk).
The Penelopiad is, as the title implies, a refocalisation of the events of the Iliad and the Odyssey as told from the perspective of Odysseus' wife Penelope. In first person, she narrates the story of her own life from childhood to the days after Odysseus' return to Ithaca from the Stygian shore; interspersed between chapters are poems, chorus lines as if written for a play, sung by the Twelve Maidens, the maid servants of Penelope that are slain by Odysseus and his son Telemachus near the end of the epic.
(You know, they're not spoilers if they're almost 3000 years old...)
Atwood's choice of heroine is perhaps slightly unorthodox, but also fitting; Penelope's claim to fame is her feminine virtue, that of the faithful wife who waits patiently for twenty years until her husband returns. It is a passive role, restricted to the domestic sphere; as that was the only domain women could be said to have in ancient Greece it does seem appropriate to shine a light there. Penelope may not be battling Cyclops and Sirens, but her struggles to maintain a working household is in itself a task, and gradually she also engineers her own personal tragedy.
It is not a traditionally empowering novel, and far from a happy one. The atmosphere of the book frequently struck me as melancholic, although Atwood's prose is frank and fresh; Penelope's life is fraught with isolation, surrounded by people who seem to either want her harm or want nothing to do with her at all. Despite persevering through obstacles to the bitter end, her side of the story is quickly forgotten - and she carries her regrets in life into death.
As I mentioned, Penelope is not a conventional heroine; her role is often (but far from always) passive, at the mercy of the men and senior women in her life. You get the impression that by giving her a voice Atwood is not elevating Penelope herself as much as every Greek woman, and the history of women that came after her; all the ones whose indispensible efforts in the shadows of men have remained unappreciated and unsung. Despite this the actual book doesn't feel heavy or depressing; partly because of the engaging prose, partly because it's a fairly short read (roughly 200 pages).
It might be an effect of the first person perspective, but the other people in Penelope's life often seem quite distant. This is in part because of their dismissive attitude towards Penelope herself; the two most prominent characters besides her is Odysseus, who despite being absent for the most part casts a long and ambiguous shadow, and Helen, who is perhaps the closest the book has to a proper villain not only in that she gets the blame for the Trojan War, but because her beauty turns the head of every important man in Penelope's life.
While I greatly enjoyed the book, that aspect of it might've been the only one that bothered me. And it's not even that it's badly written, or doesn't make sense; Penelope and Helen are an early example of the Madonna/whore dichotonomy. One is virtuous, respected and barely remembered, the other stunningly beautiful and a danger to the people around her; in short, the things that men fear and desire in femininity. To have their lives intertwined makes sense, but there's something that bothers me about making Helen a typical "vapid bitch" who uses her beauty and doesn't care who suffers because of her ill-considered decisions.
Here's a story: the first time I read about the Trojan War, it was in a comic, in a collection of myths for children. It recounted Paris' encounter with Athena, Hera and Aphrodite and the events that led to the war; one panel that still stands out to me is that of Helen, white in the moonlight standing on Paris' ship, veil pulled back and hair blowing in the wind. She had a closed, unreadable expression and the caption read: but what fair Helen thought about it all no one cared to ask.
Helen was, and still is, in the realm of art and literature, an icon of beauty. Her mere existence is enough to make men kill for her, go to war to win her; yet she herself is hardly given more of a voice than Penelope. The way we commodify women and their bodies, today as well in the past, I have never been able to shake my sympathy for her.
(Catherynne M. Valente's interpretation of Helen in her poem Helen in the Underworld strikes me as much more emotional, and achingly likely, than Atwood's.)
(Then again Penelope is biased, and there are already some hints that she might be an unreliable narrator herself.)
The Penelopiad is a story about a woman. It is also, in the story of the Twelve Maids, a story about how history and the men who write it trivialise their own violence against women. In the end, whatever you personally take away from the book, it's a well-written and interesting reinterpretation of one of the greatest works of western literature.
This entry was originally posted at http://regndoft.dreamwidth.org/203934.html. Please comment there using OpenID.