Classics in Contemporary Culture

Frontier Classics

Aaron Kelson, prompted by seeing two 100-year-old busts in a theatre in Gilbert, MN, contemplates the significance of Sophocles and Aeschylus for early-20th-cen. settlers in the Mesabi Range:

...Their works reveal a profound understanding of human nature. Their philosophies helped to provide the foundation of our own beloved nation. I wondered what Sophocles and Aeschylus would have thought about the production “Casey at the Bat.” Surely they would have been pleased, as Sophocles once wrote, “Whoever neglects the arts when he is young has lost the past and is dead to the future.” This ability to connect the present with the past and the future is critical to humanity. We call the ability to see beyond the present “vision.”

Our region has long been blessed with vision. Just two years ago the city of Gilbert celebrated its 100th anniversary. By 1911, when the city was only three years old, a school literally on the frontier of the United States dared to align itself with the greatness of Sophocles and Aeschylus. I have tried to envision what the presentations of those statues must have been like. Where were they purchased? On what dirt roads were they hauled to their destination? How did students whose families were largely linked to the back breaking, endless toil of logging camps and truck farming have the audacity, the fortitude, the vision to connect their own experiences and education to such notable philosophers? In 1910, Northern Minnesota wasn’t exactly the center of the western world. Yet, last Thursday evening, Sophocles and Aeschylus gazed solemnly at the audience gathered to watch “Casey at the Bat.”

 

Give It Up for Lysistrata!

In a modern re-interpretation of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, the girlfriends of the basketball players of "Athens University" give up "giving it up" to their boyfriends until the latter break a 30-year losing streak...Coming soon (May 2011) to Off-Broadway, it's Lysistrata Jones...As Patrick Healy reports (NYTimes), there's been a change from the original script, in that the women were originally cheerleaders, and now they're to be simply girlfriends:

One factor in dropping the cheerleader angle, Mr. Beane said, was that there was already a major musical looking to come to New York that many people were more likely to associate as “that cheerleading show” — “Bring It On: The Musical,” which was based on the popular movie starring Kirsten Dunst that was released in 2000. “Bring It On: The Musical” is set to start performances next month in Atlanta.

Mr. Beane said that as he thought over his musical, he decided that the cheerleading angle was unnecessary to set up the sexual and power dynamics between the women and their basketball-playing boyfriends. “It’s really about sex and relationships and basketball, not cheerleading,” he said. “Though we do have one cheerleader. And a mascot.”

A review of a prior run in Dallas probed the logic and message as follows:

Their rationale doesn't quite ring true in the update. Does anybody actually know any jocks who don't play to win? Although Beane sometimes creates witty parallels to his model, he's really after something else entirely. Ultimately, this is a dual love story about finding something deeper than sexual attraction in a mate. And about making us laugh, which the show does often and heartily.

Glenn Beck: US and Rome

Under the George W. Bush administration, the "US = Rome" trope as it appeared in media tended to carry an anti-Bush message; under the Obama administration, the trope is still useful, from the opposite perspective.  Glenn Beck recently put forth some thoughts on the subject:

Now, if we knew our history, we would take lessons from once legendary civilizations that fell before us, because they all fall in the same way. The Babylonians, the Soviet Union, Germany, France — France during the French Revolution, hugely important to us today — and Rome.

This is a pattern I highlighted in my book "Broke," in the first six pages, we start go on to Rome because it's spooky how much we are doing like Rome.

Here's the bell curve of history. There's the expansion and the contraction. Regionalization, people come — people start coming together, the ascension into an empire, you start to grow, you mature, you become overextended, and decline, and legacy. It happens over and over and over again, same way.

...

Former comptroller of the U.S., David Walker, explains and he knows because he'd seen all of America's books. In fact, he has served both to Republicans and Democrats and was frustrated with both of them, and that's why he left government service. He said, people have to know the truth. He knows how deep the rabbit hole is. He says, quote, "There are striking similarities between America's current situation and that of another great power from the past, Rome. The Roman Republic fell for many reasons, but three reasons are worth remembering: declining moral values and political civility at home." How are we doing on that one?

...

Wait, is he saying that political civility caused the fall of the Republic? Aha--now I see the grand strategy for restoring the American Republic through the use of vitriolic rhetoric! It all makes sense now!

[Thanks to DPT on Classics-L.]

Dress Modern / Dress Ancient

Just noticed a few interesting pages at the Metropolitan Museum website on the phenomenon of modern fashion adapting styles of dress from Ancient Greece:

• Classicism in Modern Dress
• Classical Art in Modern Dress
• The Chiton, Himation and Peplos in Modern Dress
• Contemporary Deconstructions of Ancient Dress

Fashionistae, take note!

Achilles: Just One of the Girls

A Red Orchid Theatre in Chicago is presenting a novel stage version of the Iliad (until Dec. 19):

Granted, it might sound entirely counterintuitive to create a stage adaptation of “The Iliad” — Homer’s massive epic about the madness and horrors of war — that is specifically meant to be performed by a cast of 13 young girls, a few of whom are still in fifth grade and probably weigh less than 50 pounds soaking wet.

Yet as it turns out, the concept works brilliantly. Just take a peek at playwright Craig Wright’s eloquent hourlong version of the ancient Greek classic (based on work by translator Robert Fagles and Ian Strachan) now onstage at a Red Orchid Theatre — the same company that in earlier holiday seasons presented a memorable production of “A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant.”

 

The girls, members of A Red Orchid’s Youth Ensemble, easily hold their own as soldiers wielding swords and shields and varying degrees of power. And in director Steve Wilson’s spare but evocative production, they impress with the ferocity of their emotions, the sureness of their intellectual attack and the force and clarity of their diction. The fact that you wouldn’t expect the Greek and Trojan warriors of ancient myth to take this form is enough to make you listen to this very adult story in a whole new way. Wilson and fight choreographer Sarah Fornace, were able to elicit surprising things from their young actresses.

It all begins with two “men” arguing over a Barbie doll...

Oh, indeed...

Odysseus and the Cyclops Walk into a Bar...

Joe Goodkin will perform his version of the Odyssey--a half-hour folk-song epic--in Chicago (Schubas) on Dec. 6.  Here's more:

Goodkin, who was a classics major at University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote the Odyssey piece years ago and has performed it more than 100 times, mainly for high school students about to read Homer's poem.

But, the Dec. 6 show will be the first time he's performed it at a watering hole. He knows today's adults don't have great memories of studying The Odyssey as high school freshmen. But, if they keep in mind what the story is about -- a father trying to get back home to his wife and child -- they'll be able to sympathize, he said.

"My take on it is to boil it down to the emotions of the story," Goodkin said. "Hopefully, it gets them talking."

Yea, Though I Walk through the Shadow of Starz...

I shall fear no Latin...

I've been watching some episodes of this latest incarnation of the Spartacus story, the series put out by Starz, and in the latest one I've watched, the lanista Batiatus erected a statue in honor of Spartacus, with the following inscription:

Spartacus Baiulus Pluviae Qui Umbram Mortis Necat

The good news:  no spelling errors, the grammatical relations actually work...but it appears there was just a little too little hunting in the dictionary for the "mot juste."  The word baiulus would not be used in an honorific context, since it means a "porter" or "day-laborer" whose job is carrying things.  So it certainly could be translated as "bringer"--but the effect of using it would be like saying:  "Hail Spartacus, Rain's Busboy."

Solution:  I would suggest the term Imbrifer.

Ancient Drama's All A-Twitter

I've only just noticed another eminently worthwhile service provided by the rogueclassicist:  He's using Twitter to flag news items / reviews of productions of "ancient drama." Seriously, this almost has convinced me to get a Twitter account!  He also has these tweets way down at the bottom of the rogueclassicism page with other miscellaneous feeds (is that the proper term?  hmm...).  In any case, one more reason to visit that site on a daily basis!

Persian Invasion Awareness

Out in hiatus-land, I missed (darn it!) the 2500th anniversary re-enactment of Pheidippides' "Marathon" run (although the "culmination" of the celebration, on 31 October, is still to come) [Reuters--thanks to rogueclassicism].  A humorous take on the event is offered by Mark Remy at Runners World Daily--and it even includes some Greek.  He first sets it up with some flippant skepticism:

As everyone knows, Pheidippides or Phidippides or "P. Dippy" (as he was briefly known) was the Greek who… um… ran 26 or 140 miles to Sparta or Athens or somewhere, and announced victory in the battle of Marathon or else asked for reinforcements or possibly something cold to drink and then dropped dead. Or didn't. Assuming that any version of this occurred at all, which it may not have.

Honestly, everything about this story is hard to pin down. It's like a riddle wrapped in an enigma shrouded in a toga. [sic]

..and then launches into Pheidippides' diary-style "race report"--here's an excerpt:

WOW! That's all I can say. Praise the gods, I finished my Marathon run in one piece. Hooray! Some blisters on my left foot, but nothing major. Not sure if I'll do it again, but it definitely was a Life Experience. At least now I can cross that off my Grecian urn List. Plus, I've raised almost 500 drachmas for Persian Invasion Awareness. Awesome!

Anyway. I was soooooo excited last night, I could barely sleep. I laid out my sandals and my Team Victory Over Persia tunic (see right; no, I didn't run with the sword!), and set my clepsydra for first sun. My room was okay, but a little Spartan.

Etc.

Rachel Weisz Becomes...

Maybe I missed the detailed storyline of the new movie about Hypatia, but...can it be true that "Rachel [Weisz] recently played ancient Egyptian goddess Hypatia in historical epic Agora" [musicrooms.net]?  Is this Euhemerism occurring right before our eyes?

Dīva Potēns Cyprī (er...Sydnī?...mundī?)

Kylie Minogue becomes the original Diva for her new project:

Perfecting every character – a girl next door, a fashion plate and a club minx – with a style of her own, Kylie Minogue is back with a bang in a new avatar for her new album The Australian pop star has transformed herself into the character of the Greek goddess of love, beauty and sexuality, Aphrodite, for the launch of her album of the same name. The sexy lead single, ‘All the Lovers’, officially released this week, already popular with fans.

Rumour has it that she may even tour Australia to promote the album.

“For me, the most exciting part of this is still performing and the energy from that . . . I really want to do a festival,” the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Minogue as saying. The star claims her inspiration for one great makeover after another is Madonna.

“Madonna’s the queen of pop, I’m the princess.

“I’m quite happy with that. Her huge influence on the world, in pop and fashion, meant that I wasn’t immune to the trends she created. But in the beginning, she made it difficult for artists like me; she had done everything there was to be done.” Minogue rocked the stage with her earlier makeovers in ‘Confide in Me’, and ‘I Should Be So Lucky’ and she admits that they came out as an expression of how she felt at the time. “If I parallel my private life to my career, there’s a reason for all of those changes,” she said.

“I was the girl next door, then I was rebelling, then I was vamping it up. It’s all what I was feeling at the time. I can be a little embarrassed about it but that’s part of growing up in public.”

Minogue describes her new album ‘Aphrodite’ as ‘euphoric pop’.

“It is a very lean album,” she said.

“There is nothing spare, nothing unnecessary and absolutely no fat at all. My favourite song is Aphrodite, the title track. There’s a lyric about me being fierce, which I like.”

Thucydides' Gamble Succeeds, or, Herodotus Loses Paternity Suit

As reported in the Paly Voice:

Stanford University history professor David Kennedy made his annual presentation to the Palo Alto High School AP United States History classes on Wednesday, May 19.

Beginning his visit with a light-hearted presentation of humorous excerpts from student essays, Kennedy, co-writer of the renowned U.S. History text book, “The American Pageant,” proceeded to lecture on the nature and origins of history.

“History is not [a] universal law,” Kennedy said. “It is distinguishable from science and it is distinguishable from literature.”

In his lecture, he emphasized the meaning of history and its significance in both philosophical and academic aspects. Kennedy focused his speech on Thucydides’ monumental account of the Peloponnesian war, which marked the first historically accurate recording of an event in human history.

“‘The History of the Peloponnesian War’ is really the first recognizable kind of history,” Kennedy said. “That’s what we’ve tried to write ever since. Before Thucydides, history was more about myth-making than being a reliable account of events.”

Following his lesson on the origins of history, Kennedy addressed the more profound purpose of history beyond academics.

“History answers what it means to be a man...what it means to be a man in this time and place...what it means to be a man different from any other man,” Kennedy said.

President or Pater Patriae?

Gene Healy (Cato@Liberty) writes about unwarranted public / media expectations of presidential responses to such things as the present Gulf oil spill: "...most of the complaints dominating the airwaves are far vaguer: centering on the atavistic notion that just by Obama traveling to the site, the magical force of Presidential Concern might cause the slick to recede." He cites himself citing I, Claudius:

In the BBC production of Robert Graves’ “I Claudius,” Emperor Augustus tells his wife Livia that the Senate had voted to make him a god in the Syrian city of Palmyra, and the people there had put a statue of him in the temple, to which they’d bring offerings in the hopes that the emperor would grant rain or cure their ailments. “Tell me Livia,” Augustus says, “If I’m a god, even in Palmyra, how do I cure gout?”

Augustus’s frustration is all-too-familiar to the modern president. He can no more “manage” the economy or provide seamless protection from all manner of hazards than Augustus could bring rain or cure gout.

Oh, the Humanities!

Stanley Fish reviews some recent books on education. The first is by a proponent of home-school "classical education," Leigh Bortins, who argues that each subject "can be mastered by the rigorous application of the skills of the classical Trivium, grammar, the study of basic forms, logic, the skill of abstracting from particulars and rhetoric, the ability to 'speak and write persuasively and eloquently about any topic while integrating allusions and examples from one field of study to explain a point in another.'" The third, by Diane Ravitch, critiques No Child Left Behind as an elaborate example of 'juking the stats' [not her phrase, or Fish's, but still...]

The second is a plea by Martha Nussbaum for the place of the Humanities for the training of citizens in democracies, within the context of an increasingly profit-driven global educational system...The first chapter is available online at Princeton University Press; cf. also Nussbaum's book from the late 90s, Cultivating Humanity...

[Thanks to rogueclassicism...]

Hyping Hypatia

Alejandro Amenabar's  film about Hypatia, Agora, is opening in the US -- if anyone notices a film about Late Antique Alexandria and its mix of religion and violence, the movie is certain to evoke Pavlovian culture-war reactions from all and sundry...In any case, here's an interview with the star, Rachel Weisz, stressing the theme of opposition to religious intolerance / fundamentalism, and noting (?!) that basically ancient science and acting are interchangeable -- neither one involves telescopes (I know: Totally unfair!):

"What's remarkable is that everything she was doing was imaginary because she was working in the time before the telescope. Everything she was figuring out, she was doing with her imagination. There was some math to back it up - but what she did was imagine things. Which is what I do for a living as well."

And here's a thoughtful essay by Nathan Schneider, generally against the portrayal offered, although appreciative of the lack of sex / the contrast with (e.g.) HBO's Rome series. In particular, some interesting final thoughts:

The best-developed character in Agora, held as a foil against the street riots, is the sky. Amenábar used a starscape calibrated to look exactly as it would have in antiquity, accounting for axial precession. Several times he juxtaposes the stars’ stillness, and the Earth’s roundness, with the chaos below. Like a good Platonist, Hypatia was obsessed with the stars, which Plato and Aristotle held to be demigods, eternal as the universe and its Prime Mover. Contemplating of their order and their perfection is where her philosophy lurked. Unfortunately, other Platonic legacies mar her contemplation in Agora: an obsession with the circle, which blinds her to the elliptical motion of the planets, together with sitting atop a society predicated on slavery and gross inequity.

The Christians turn out to be even worse astronomers, but they do get some things right. The Parabalani—a band of the patriarch’s bodyguards that Agora implicates in Hypatia’s murder—were actually a fellowship chosen from among the poor, principally to serve the poor. They tended to the sick and buried the dead, risking infection in the process. Between violent mob scenes, the movie does at least give a glimpse of what brought so many in the vast Alexandrian underclasses to wear the sign of the cross: bread, freedom, and the good news of the Beatitudes. Hypatia’s slave Davus is, to her, only a slave, albeit a clever one; among Christians, he learns that feeding the hungry is better than fattening the full.

In any case, it's clear that any discussion will be a fruitful venue for centuries of cultural anxieties and antagonisms to be aired willy nilly...