Perseus and Medusa - Feb 28

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. So, let us talk about Medusa for a change.

Why? She is a fad. Let us begin.

Medusa’s origins are vaguer than you might think. In the modern version, she was a human transformed into a monster by Athena. Originally, she was never human, but some sort of a supernatural entity who was slain by Perseus in exchange for his mother’s freedom. Expanding further, we learn that Perseus was a son of Zeus. His mortal grandfather, Acrisius, put both him and his mother into a chest and set them adrift, for the oracle foretold that his grandson – i.e. Perseus – would end him. Acrisius tried to defy fate, but failed ultimately; this part of Perseus’ story is often left out, so let us put it aside for later. What next?

…Danae and Perseus ended on the island of Seriphos, whose king, Polydectes, wanted to marry Danae, but she refused. Since this myth is really a Bronze Age fairy tale, Danae managed to defy the king until Perseus became of age. Therefore, king Polydectes declared that he is marrying someone else and that everyone should bring them a present. Danae and Perseus were poor, so Perseus could not afford one, so the king sent him after Medusa’s head. The rest is known well, except for the death of Acrisius: he was the king of Argos, so when he heard that his demigod grandson was coming to visit, he fled, and lived in hiding for many years, until there were some proto-Olympian games. Acrisius attended them in disguise. Perseus was participating in discus throwing, and threw his discus so hard that it hit the audience stands, killing Acrisius. Therefore, Perseus had to purify himself, and leave Argos for several years – but that is another story. Back to Medusa?

Her role in the story is quite passive, in fact. Whatever her backstory is, when Perseus arrives, she is just there, confident that her deadly gaze will protect her. Since Perseus arrives fully equipped, (in the original, antique versions anyhow), she is slain instead, and – wait.

In the modern versions, Perseus uses Medusa’s head as an ultimate weapon, but originally – he did not. When it came to Andromeda, Perseus killed both the sea monster and her original suitor the old-fashioned way – wait. No, he didn’t… but what original groom?

After slaying the sea monster, (without using the head), Perseus and Andromeda have their wedding, and on the feast in walks Andromeda’s former suitor with a small army. He tries to force Perseus to back down, but Perseus stands is ground, and proceeds to slaughter a lot of enemy warriors, before he does have enough and uses Medusa’s head to petrify all those who remain, including the original suitor. (His name was Phineas, supposedly). Pause. You do not usually see this part of the myth in the modern interpretations either. However, what about Medusa?

In fact, she is a fad. Originally, she was the embodiment of death, a death goddess, the female counterpart to Thanatos, perhaps. Unlike modern depictions of her as a snake-woman, originally she had both arms and legs as well as a pair of wings, so she was quite mobile and could even fly. It goes for Thanatos too, but Medusa did conflict with the Olympian pantheon, especially Athena, and was destroyed; her head is carried either by Athena or by Zeus himself, perhaps signifying that the Olympians are immortal and are greater than death itself. Of Medusa there is just the Perseus’ myth, of Thanatos – slightly more, but not much. Pause.

…If one treats Medusa as a fallen deity that became a mortal monster, then her story does become more interesting rather than just a mortal woman physically mutated into a monster; as a story of victim abuse, Medusa’s modern story is tragic, of course, but also limited; there’s nothing new, no divergence…

Natalie Haynes’ novel ‘Stone Blind’ is just another retelling of the same old story, with some new details, but the focus is mostly on Medusa and her backstory, (here she’s the daughter of Phorcys and Ceto, at least); plus, in this novel the female characters are mostly positive, while the male are mostly negative – must be politically progressive, of course.

Bernard Evslin’s ‘Medusa’ book was written in the late 20^th century, quite earlier than ‘Stone Blind’ was, and this book, while quite slimmer than ‘Stone Blind’ is, manages to make Medusa a tragic character, while keeping Perseus the protagonist, and giving the entire Medusa-Danae-Perseus-Andromeda story an original twist – but Mr. Evslin wasn’t concerned with socio-politics unlike Ms. Haynes is, but we talked about her several times before, and let’s not start again.

So, in conclusion, Medusa’s story became quite limited, as is Perseus’; they are depicted in CGI online, but it is the same story, and as such, it risks to become unfashionable and forgotten; guess that the Olympians are having the last laugh over the gorgons’ after all. However, this is real life. It sucks.

…This is it for now. See you all soon.

Endlings: Thylacine (and the Gorgon) - Nov 10

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about Ms. Haynes’ Medusa-based novel? Pause

In truth, I wanted to talk about BB/Endlings ‘Thylacine’ episode, but not unlike what we had with the Florida panther last month, BB/Endlings found their stride: it is dutiful retelling of Wikipedia articles, including the Thylacine one. When the ‘Wild Kratts’ cartoon series had the titular characters travel back in time to see the Thylacine and its’ extinction, it was actually a more derived take – and ‘Wild Kratts’ is a children’s cartoon!.. Where were we?

Here is the thing. Ms. Haynes positions herself as a progressive person, she talks about the Greek myths from a more feminist/feminine P.O.V., but…

…but these days (mid-2020s) it might not be enough. Obviously, kudos to her for not talking smack about other mythological writers, but it does make her essays – about Helen, Medusa, the Amazons – feel rather flat and one-dimensional: they are dutiful retellings of the depictions of the mythical women in the modern or post-Medieval art, writing and sometimes in other media, such as TV series. There also dutiful retellings of the myths of the mythical women in question; they are broken by sarcastic comments (that do not amount to anything and serve to better depict Ms. Haynes as a person), by rhetorical questions (that are not usually followed up), and by the like. One can imagine Ms. Haynes as, say, a university or a college teacher, who is delivering lectures to her class, engaging them in discussion and conversation, trying to make them think about her subject, and largely forgetting about them once they graduate and leave her class behind. There will always be exceptions, of course, but usually the effort behind those exceptions will come from the other people, not her. Ms. Haynes non-fiction book, ‘Pandora’s Jar’, has the same feeling. It is quite informative, of course, but not particularly progressive – or ‘progressive’; in a Protestant/post-Protestant world of the modern Western culture, this can make the difference between eternity (remembrance) and oblivion…

As for her fiction books… ‘A Thousand Ships’ is based on various Greek (and Roman?) plays about what happened during the last days of the Trojan War and what happened after, including the Odyssey and a few other chapters. Here, Ms. Haynes tries something different, such as Penelope’s personal development, but-

-but what can you do, if you are writing a novel (or another piece) based on someone else’s story, such as the Greek literary works and folk myths, and not your own? Most often, one out of the three: you can dutifully retell the myth such as it is, (Mr. Pullman did in his book of the Greek myths), you can write something that is entirely your own, (aka your own work, which can be argued pro and contra, but it’s yours), or you can re-tell the original story (for example Perseus’ and Medusa’s) with just a few different tweaks ‘behind the scenes’, a sort of crypto-history, put otherwise. In addition, this is how Ms. Haynes’ novels feel like – dutiful re-telling of the traditional myths, with a few comments – sarcastic, poignant, etc., it doesn’t matter – scattered here and there; they don’t amount to anything but to make her novels stand out from the rest and make them more sellable. It is not a bad strategy, it certainly is sensible, but, again, it makes her books, novels and otherwise, a one-hit wonder, forgettable quite easily.

… ‘Stone Blind’ is the telling of Medusa, Perseus, and Athena; Ms. Haynes is being sympathetic towards Medusa, making Perseus a coward, and the decapitated head of the Gorgon eventually petrify Athena, who thus finds peace in death. This is actually quite clever, but the mild, respectful, (and sometimes sarcastic) language of the novel wears away any controversial bits, making the readers of ‘Stone Blind’ feel stone cold towards the novel’s characters. The Gorgons are not bad. Athena is cold. Perseus is a coward, apparently. So on, but currently there is plenty of fan works that drive the same point home; in ‘Thousand Ships’ Ms. Haynes made Penny the Amazon queen suicidal – that is something else, but we’ll talk about it some other time. What about ‘Endlings’?

Same thing that goes down with Ms. Haynes, really. The first episode, about the passenger pigeons was intriguing and thought provoking because there was talk about bringing the avian back (and we talked about it). The second was also interesting, because of the silphium’s ambiguity, (and we talked about it too). However, the next episode – the Florida panther – and this episode – the Thylacine – are straightforward: the pumas are dying out in Florida because (insert your reason here), and the Thylacine is gone because (insert your reason here II). Maybe it disappeared in the second half of the 20^th century, not the first, but it is still gone, and it cannot be brought back (because humans don’t want to, apparently – is it so much harder to bring back the Thylacine than the dire wolf or the giant moa?). Aye, ‘Endlings’ are supposed to be sad – but sad because of the inevitable extinction, not because they are just that depressive and simply-made… Ah well, this is real life. It sucks, remember?

…Well, this is it for now, see you all soon!

'Pandora's Jar' - Nov 5

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. So, let us talk about Ms. Haynes’ book, ‘Pandora’s Jar’, (PJ) instead. Released in 2020, this is a series of essays about the state of women in the Greek myths, and-

-And let us first call a dog a dog – the Greeks (and the Romans) treated their women quite badly, they established the foundations of the more modern misogyny in their ancient times.

Let us elaborate. On one level – biological and anatomical, humans have two sexes that are anatomically very different, to say nothing of the entire issue of pregnancy and childbirth. But when it comes to society and politics, men and women are not so different; since the 1990s, I think, women are playing an increasingly larger role in the global politics, business, and the like…and the human society hasn’t improved/changed too much – when it comes to values and morals, men and women aren’t so different at all. Natalie Haynes?

Ms. Haynes is trying to champion the female cause – her PJ is all about the injustice that the ancient Greeks (and Romans) did to the female characters in their myths, legends, and so on. That is quite so, Ms. Haynes did a great job in PJ, but… this fact is already admitted by plenty of people, she hasn’t quite discovered anything new, uncovered something previously unknown; rather, she dutifully re-told what already was established, while working in the sufficiently safe territory – the Greek-Roman myths, who offend no one and are a part of the Western culture these days.

The language of Ms. Haynes in PJ is specific also – it is professional, weighted and measured, with sources and outsources, footnotes and endnotes, references and insights… It is the language of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, not of Medusa, who was a being of emotion instead.

Pause. Since we are talking about the obvious and the established by now, let us call out Medusa for what she was (also) – a goddess of death, the embodiment of death… Her head is the head of a corpse; her petrifying gaze is the killing gaze, no more, no less… By going after her head, Perseus goes into the Underworld, into the Afterlife – no wonder he needed the help of the Olympians, Hermes and Athena, to succeed… The feud between Athena and Medusa is probably a later addition, when Medusa was re-cast as a priestess of Athena, who was violated by Poseidon, and Athena transformed/killed her on top of the sexual abuse… Fun… Natalie Haynes?

Ms. Haynes dutifully discussed Medusa’s plight in PJ (2020) and later on in her own fictive novel, ‘Medusa’s Story’ (2024). In the latter, she added her own twists and tweaks, but the basic story is the old one; feel free to read it for yourselves to decide on your own; Medusa (and to a lesser extent) her sisters became celebrities only to succumb to obscurity once more… Pause.

No, seriously, Medusa, her sisters, Perseus, Athena, etc. – they were never real, not in the way they are depicted in the stories at any rate. However, the world runs on stories, and Medusa and Perseus’ story used to be good, (still probably is), but now it is well established, rather worn, and people are not influenced by it as they were before. Fame and celebrity is fleeting, and after fame often comes obscurity, as the movie ‘Amadeus’ showed. Medusa is not like Mozart’s nemesis (in ‘Amadeus’), but not unlike him, she was first made famous as a symbol of a strong, independent woman, and now she is no longer needed.

Elaborating. Throughout the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries, Medusa was often used as a feminist icon, but now the feminist movement itself changed. Therefore, Medusa is quietly slipping into obscurity once more, alongside Perseus, Andromeda, and so on. Athena, of course, is doing better, as she is a goddess who figures in many stories, but still…

The difference between gods and demigods is that the gods pop up in many stories, especially if there is a beautiful woman (or a handsome man) involved. Demigods and heroes, (regardless of their gender), usually have only one story to themselves, and once it is done, it is done. Oh, it can be retold, but it is still the same old story, unless you do the Riordan treatment and tell an entirely new one, (but not even Mr. Riordan changed the Medusa and Perseus story) – but that has pratfalls of its own…

Moreover, it is a different story altogether, and we will talk another time about it. For now let’s just point out that Ms. Haynes is trying to dutifully retell the old stories while pretending that she is telling something cutting-edge new (she isn’t), and be done for it. If you disagree with my statement about it, I am ready to listen.

For now though, this is it. See you all soon!