The Problem with Greek Myth Retellings
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- Опубліковано 24 кві 2024
- Video essays are a bit out of my wheelhouse (and well beyond the capacity of my editing software.) Nonetheless, the huge rise of Greek myth retellings I've been noticing in the past few years both interests me and -- to some extent -- concerns me. I want to reiterate: this is not a personal attack against any work or author discussed in this video. I'm interested in examining the trend as a whole, and although I single out and discuss specific books, I only do so in hopes of highlighting broader trends across the sub-genre. (I guess we can call this a sub-genre now?)
Thank you for watching!
Music:
Opening/closing: Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No 2, Evgeny Kissin ( • Rachmaninov Piano Conc... )
All other music sourced from WoodCut Music (www.woodcutmusic.co.nz)
Links:
Katerina Cosgrove on her concerns over Greek myth retellings: islandmag.com/read/who-owns-t...
Jennifer Saint on the purpose of retelling Greek Myths: www.thenovelry.com/blog/greek...
Hilary Mantel on the purpose of historical fiction: www.theguardian.com/books/201...
Madeline Miller on her inspiration for The Song of Achilles: www.theguardian.com/books/202...
Further reading on the history of boars' tusk helmets (genuinely fascinating stuff, I recommend!) www.heraklionmuseum.gr/en/exh...
Hello all! This has got FAR more views than I expected, wow! Thank you so much for the many kind, thoughtful comments. I'm very glad to know I'm not alone in my concerns about some Greek mythic retellings. (This video was also a mission to edit, so apologies for glitches, clumsy cuts and misspellings.)
In the video, I had a section about Katee Robert's Neon Gods, which I've now cut out. I wanted to discuss my concerns about Greek mythology being used as a selling point for books which, when you read them, can't really justify themselves as mythic retellings. However, for a good portion of that section I was pedantically nitpicking the world building and plot, which is a totally unfair way to judge a book which is a loose reimagining, not a retelling.
I'd also like to make an amendment to the final section of the video. I want to be clear: non-Greek writers are (at least in my opinion) well within their right to write about Greek mythology. However, I believe myths should be retold with due respect and care, especially in light of Greece’s history of colonisation. It disappoints me that many recent retellings market themselves as fixing, amending, or correcting myths (‘telling the untold story of so-and-so…’), and yet often seem to misunderstand or misrepresent their source material. Myths are wonderful, magical pieces of history, and to retell them takes not only skill as a storyteller, but respect and inquisitiveness as a historian. My concern is not that Greek myths are being widely retold, but that they’re being retold in a manner that diminishes the complexity and often strong female voices within the original myths. The marketing of many of these retellings depends on framing the women of the original myths as ‘silenced,’ which is often just not true, and seems a particular shame given these novels are introducing a wide new readership to Greek myths. As a writer, I firmly believe that questioning our right to tell certain kinds of stories leads to a deeper, richer and more complex engagement with our subject matter - and so I don’t raise Greece’s more recent history as a reason not to retell Greek mythology, but rather as a reminder that these myths arrive to us with the complex baggage of history, adding another layer of complexity when retelling them. (The perfectionist in me wants to take this video down, as I don't feel I expressed this point well enough. For now I'll keep it up, but thank you for reading this!)
I’m debating whether it might be worth doing a follow-up video to this one, as there’s a lot of stuff I could have discussed in more detail. If there are any topics you’d like me to discuss further, or think I mishandled in this video, please do reply!
I beg you to read “ENNEAD” a Korean graphic novel. Very well-written, complex storyline, engaging plots and twists, range of layered characters that are distinct from each other. I highly recommend it.
The story is about Egyptian gods. I won’t say it’s canonically accurate, but is very well made, has its own entirely different intriguing story.
But it’s a super angsty story with many trigger warnings. Incest, violence, rape etc.
What distinguishes a retelling from a reimagining that makes one more permissible in your eyes? (Congrats on the video btw🎉)
Neon Gods has to be one of the worst books I've ever read.
I'll just drop here that Wiedzmin, the book series that Netflix adapted into their Witcher show, was ripe with literary tropes, many of which were from ancient Greek mythology. It's obvious from the show that they had no idea whatsoever (and didn't care), so what we get is occasional superficial likeness with nonsensical symbolistic relationships.
That was a very mature thing for you to do.
But I still feel as if the claims of cultural appropriation were a bit of a stretch. Cultural misinformation at its worst, but I don't see any of these authors claiming to be Greek or that Greek culture is their own.
And many Greek retellings are just smutty literature meant for fun, not meant to be taken seriously.
I loved your takes on the performative feminism of these novels. I feel like most media is guilty of that nowadays.
This was a good video, but please, in the future, don't throw buzzword terms around so loosely!!!
Demeter is so misunderstood by modern audiences! Like, how ironic is it that so called feminist retellings villainise the woman who challenges the normality of women being kidnapped to become unwilling brides??
Demeter was literally r@ped (and had children with) by her two brothers ☠ like wtf?
I think it's because Demeter is a character who is a mother and frankly a lot of feminists don't like motherhood. The dislike of the traditionally feminine extends to dismissing the concerns/worries of those women.
This is what pains me the most in all this; imagine your daughter is kidnapped, forced to live with the man that took her, you can't even see her, no one wants to help you, then everyone calls you a helicopter parent. Demeter is a mother fighting alone to save her daughter. Making her the villain is the biggest red flag for me
If they REALLY want a modern feminist story about the Hymn to Demeter? Make it Taken. It's a mom going after her kidnapped daughter, and nothing is going to stand in her way. She has a particular set of skills. Male rage over children is lionized but female rage? I haven't seen it that often, and even more rarely done decently.
This is why I love Theia Mania (on Tumblr) because the problematic behaviors are challenged and Demeter is portrayed as a mother in distress who spent all her life trying to shield her daughter from the awfulness of the gods - only to loose her to one of said gods. Granted, the less awfull of the lot but still, kidnapped and stuff. And even Persephone, head over heels for Hades in the first place in this comic, challenges Hades' behavior of kidnapping and stuff. It is not a "modern retelling" tho because it happens all during Ancient Greece but the point of view on the story is modern.
Why can’t people write about Eros and Psyche if they want a ‘feminist’ retelling? This girl literally goes on many trails and tribulations to win her husband back.
There's actually a book about them by Luna McNamara. I haven't read it yet tho
CS Lewis's Til We Have Faces is about cupid and psyche from the perspective of psyche's protective older sister. it's a lovely read and the narrator is a very compelling female character who challenges the gender norms of their society
that's what I'M talking about! I love those two and their myth so much, but NOPE! Hades and Persephone!
That made me remember... not a good manhwa. Ugh.
Hey, that's exactly what I'm writing!
I feel vindicated now. Nice
i NEED writers to let persephone and hades go 😭
no cause lore olympus itself is enough for me to never want to hear those two names ever again
@@Kam_i_ real, but also “a touch of darkness,” even worse than lore olympus.
I’ve been wanting this for years tbh. It’s like they don’t know any other Greek mythological figures lmao.
If you want to do a romance with Persephone, why not have it be between Persephone and Eurydice? Like, have Persephone be the unwilling queen of the underworld, and Eurydice the shade who clings to her identity and catches the eye of Persephone, going from acquaintances to friends and eventually to lovers. Maybe reimagine Orpheus as the deluded ex/stalker, who wants to drag Eurydice back to the land of the living, in spite of her wishes. Maybe take inspiration from IRL Orphic mysticism, and having Eurydice maintain her identity through repeated cycles of reincarnation; by drinking from Memnosyne, she is able to retain her memories of past lifetimes each time she is reborn, but she cannot escape the cycle of death and rebirth (at least, not until the finale of the story). But every time she dies, she returns to the underworld, and she can be reunited with Persephone until the pull of rebirth becomes too strong to resist. Meanwhile, Persephone, trapped in a horrifying marriage with her abductor, is plotting to liberate herself. Maybe even conspiring with Hecate to usurp Hades place.
Pershephone and Adonis, maybe? As for hades, i get he was much better that 90% male gods , but point is, that is low bar. And persephone is still his niece.
My least favorite thing about any and every “retelling” of Persephone and Hades is that they do not think about why someone would make this a myth. They do not think about death taking a daughter too young and a mother so furious she would rage against nature itself to get back the daughter she lost. They do not think about death knowing this young innocent girl should not be here so death will try to treat her as kindly as they can. They think only of the stories but not of the domains that these myths represent. The experiences that had to be for these stories to be here.
they're obsessed with woobifying hades and turning him into an uwu soft goth boy
Ukr i fucking hate that trend so much
@@ManzanaDeMuerte
I'm Greek, I adore this myth for its complexity, and this is one of the best comments about it I've seen online! Thank you
Your comment is beautiful ❤
I'm pretty sure it is supposed to imply the reincarnation of the soul or literally show the seasons, rather than have a telenovela-like plot be the focus.
"a viral tiktok dark romance retelling of the myth of hades and persephone" there is not a comforting word in that sentence
One sentence horror story
Maybe “a” ?
"a" allows room for others. scariest word there!
😂😂😂😂😂
a?
i feel like the reason we see so many greek myth retelling novels these days is because a lot of the people who were kids when Percy Jackson came out are now adults and seem to want a "grown up" version of these books in a sense, but I feel like Percy Jackson worked not only because it was so novel but because it didn't directly focus on the gods themselves and instead their demigod children, which allowed the author to maybe explore some themes without completely changing what the myths were about, as you mention.
i agree! and even though it was targeted towards children, riordan was able to include the complexities of the gods and explore the themes of these stories.
I think classics are just a really popular subject in schools and when mostly women engage in that field and there’s little female protagonists they see a hole to fill. The resulting portrayals then come from a deep understanding of classic literature but a lacking of feminist / intersectional perspectives.
@@beybladefinch7762rightttt! People always seem to forget that the author Rick Riodian was a teacher who taught mythology as a part of his curriculum and I vividly remember learning about Egyptian and Greek history and mythology in primary school long before Percy Jackson was ever a thing. And retellings have long been popular
Yeah, but from a modern Greek perspective I can't stress enough how stupid the premise of Percy Jackson is. Why on earth would you portray *Ancient Greek* gods in an American context other than because of your own fantasies of American exceptionalism? Would y'all eat it up if Chinese gods and their offspring suddenly materialised in England to go on their merry little adventures?
He states that the gods are in America because the USA is the world Superpower and that the gods are drawn to these places. If it was set in the Victorian era they would be in England or France. It is still very USA focused.
Comforting to know that even when our bones are dust and names nearly forgotten, Girlbossification still comes for us all.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 this has me in fits oh my god thanks for the giggle
How is that comforting in any way whatsoever
@@filipadsiekierka5350They are being sarcastic /genuine
Dread it. Run from it. Girlbossification still arrives.
@@Mosstoadsarcastic and genuine?
A club at my school managed to organize a video call with Madeline Miller where we could ask her questions. She explained that, when reading the Odyssey, she was a little disappointed by how Circe was only in a few chapters, so in her book Circe she made it so that Odysseus was only around for a few chapters.
You mentioning how most of the retellings are the women talking about the men in the myths reminded me of how all i can remember about the book Circe is her puttering about the small island she's exiled to and her reactions to visitors and the world outside of here changing. The book is almost entirely about her solitude and I kind of like that a lot
Honestly the point of view of an isolated exile whose only link to the outside world is people who wind up on her island (and who aren't always welcome there) trying to make sense of a changing world she can only glimpse from biased viewpoints sounds like a whole genre of storytelling I didn't know I wanted to exist, like Rashomon was a kind of movie I didn't know I wanted more of.
Miller is the only "modern reteller" who I find myself enjoying reading and I think it is because she understands exactly why the original myth were told and utilises that in her modernization
But she wasn't alone. She was with her son.
She also wrote the terrible achilled novel that completely ignores achilles'actual character
@@rosawernblad4777her achilles is very different about illiad achilles thought
Fantastic video, I also think that part of why all the new Hades/Persephone “love story” retellings miss the point is because for a long time in classical Greece (mainly Athens I think?) girls were often married off very young to older men, something we would consider to be child marriage today. The grief and pain that Demeter felt from having her daughter taken away from her was real to ancient mothers. In erasing her story, it erases the trauma and real story of these ancient mothers and daughters.
I hate the "retellings". Lore Olympus is the biggest offender off the top of my head. Not the only one. It's not a happy story and trying to make it a love story.....that's not feminist. What would be is making more explicit the themes of abuse and maybe even getting her out of there. But nah there's not a lick of critical thought to go with the creativity.
Demeter is a far more interesting character, and yet so many modern stories seek to portray the love story between Persephone and hades and end up turning her into a monster
If anything, the best retellings I’ve seen of this story was two theoretical storylines.
One was an idea to have a modern AU and the winter Demeter blankets the world in is her being a mother on a warpath, searching for her daughter, brandishing a shotgun. (Sadly I can’t remember the op, but I distinctly remember that it was posted on tumblr)
The other was the myth continuing as usual, but Hades realizes how scared Persephone is. So he doesn’t force her into anything she doesn’t want to do, and warns her not to eat anything under any circumstances. He also accommodates her with a patch of land to vegetate and care for until he can convince Zeus to return the bride price he gave for her hand (this was common in Ancient Greece and many cultures; a reverse-dowry, if you will). Side note: the op also felt bad for Hermes having to go back and forth from the Underworld and Olympus with this cus he’s both a massager and psychopomp, and Zeus is very stubborn. Let the poor god rest. This ultimately leaves Hades hands tied where Persephone could theoretically go back, but can’t because of Zeus’s stubbornness in not returning the bride price. Meaning that she *technically* isn’t wanted back in the eyes of ancient society. She notices the frequency of Hermes’ visits and realizes the issue of the bride price was the reason, and she becomes very upset at this. Hades then feels more remorse and comforts her, promising to not force her to do anything she doesn’t want to do while apologizing for the situation. Over the course of her underground stay, she creates the beginnings of her garden and gets to know Hades more. She learns of the advice Zeus gave Hades and how remorseful he feels surrounding the situation, along with his frustration with himself that he sought out advice from Zeus of all the gods, and Persephone grows to forgive him. Eventually they do fall in love and Persephone requests they get married. Soon after that though, The Underworld is swamped with new shades and it’s all hands on deck for the psychopomps. Hades is very confused and stressed, but Persephone notices that almost every shade passed from starvation or illness and is like “oh no… it’s my mom. My mom is freaking PISSED.” So the couple starts to deliberate on what to do while Hades eats a meal prepared by Persephone. But while she’s absent-minded and helping Hades figure out what to do, she accidentally eats a pomegranate seed. The pair realize what happened and start freaking out. But regardless Hades goes to Olympus to explain the situation and tells the gods that Persephone would have joined them if not for the misfortune of eating the pomegranate seed. So Zeus makes a mighty decree to partly free Persephone from her plight, and she will return to the surface for two thirds of the year, but stay in the Underworld the last third because she is now bonded to the land of the dead. Then Demeter and Persephone reunite and spring returns.
I don't understand why these "writers" piggyback on myths. Are they still a good story if they're a standalone story and don't piggyback on myths?
exactly this! the abduction of persephone is a story of mother-daughter love, not romantic love. i'm not entirely opposed to retellings that make it so that persephone goes with hades willingly but it bothers me when people insist that that's the true or "original" version of the myth (there's no such thing when it comes to oral tradition). i also don't like when people insist that this brand of retelling is feminist because how is sacrificing the mother-daughter relationship in favor of a hetero romance feminist? is it just because making persephone in love with hades suddenly makes her not a victim anymore? but then why can't a story about a victim be feminist and empowering too? hmmm
thank you for talking about how modern adaptations of the persephone myth so often villanize demeter almost to prop up hades and it baffles me that there's no 'feminist retelling' of demeter's fight to get her daughter back. what makes this story different from all the others that are being retold?
exactly. it makes for a good story, sure, but I cannot see the groundbreaking feminism in a romance about a powerful, strong man who allows the innocent, sheltered girl her freedom.
@@toingingrn They keep using that word "feminism" I don't think they know what it means... Feminism should be about women working together and for each other, to challenge the power systems into bettering life of womankind. Demeter is much more feminist character, she froze the world in her feminine rage a la "we shall all starve then", until Hades was pressure cooked to let mother and daughter reunite. It's beautiful. The grief, the mother-daughter love and twisting Hades by the balls until he complied, now that's the retelling I'd like to see. Demeter is very sympathetic so it's heartbreaking how zero empathy for this woman is framed as "feminist". She's not "helicopter Karen", she put Hades' male entitlement on a blast. No one seems to wonder what Persephone truly wanted and she was quite happy with her mother before, albeit accepting her torn fate afterwards. But it was not her who initiated being put in a basement of the world and her mother fought tooth and nail for her right to see the sun and flowers again. And she succeeded. Demeter slander sickens me, she was a fantastic mother who loved her daughter and wanted the best for her.
Hades might be better than most male gods, but I'm so tired of worshipping the bare minimum. "Not as big of a jerk as he could've been" in not good enough reason to romanticize him THIS MUCH. I wouldn't call drool fiction about him "feminist" in any way, it's just meaningless buzz word in these circles at this point. Just write your own 50 shades and leave "feminism" and Greek mythos out of it, bastardizing them both.
I saw a modern retelling of the myth the other day that might fit with that (from the blurb, at least). It's called Fruit of the Dead by Rachel Lyon and the summary looked pretty promising
on the one hand, there are ancient texts that show that Persephone knew what the pomegranate seeds meant and ate them willingly.
on the other hand, outside of text, Persephone is likely a little bild older as an entity than Demeter. They were not always mother and daughter. I think many authors include metacontext into their stories.
And another point, of course, is that everyone roots for the underdog and Hades - aside from kidnapping Kore which is a younger myth adapted from a much more ancient Sumerian myth - who is comparably nice within the realm of Greek gods, is as underdog as it gets. He is not evil, he is not god of death, he just had to administrate the underworld.
@@InternetNonsense 100% this. If they want an actual feminist icon man with depth, Ares is a much better candidate. He's been SEVERELY misrepresented. Aphrodite didn't want to marry Heph but was forced to. Ares actually loved her and he was one of the only gods to NEVER force himself on a woman, especially Aphrodite, which, as the goddess of love and beauty says a fuckkkking lot. He guarded his daughters fiercely too, risking Tartarus for killing an assaulter. The dude is only ever made a villain because his part of war shows the brutality and the gore of it. So of course Athena wins every time and people like to say that makes him evil or bad to some degree, those people completely miss the point. Minus those soldiers who respect the truth of war for being ugly and not just glory and victory. It costs. And a lot of soldiers respected that truth. He also greatly loved and valued the Amazons, made up entirely of women warriors (some mythical race but some suspected to actually be a group of genuine women warriors from the east depending on sources). Could he still be cruel? Of course, every god is, but he respected strength, he wouldn't hold your hand but if you needed strength he was absolutely the god to turn to with your fury for injustice. And he actually respected you for it.
I'm only 15 minutes in and I already find it baffling that a book called A Thousand Ships isn't actually CENTERED on Helen of Troy. Like...why would you not????
The ol Bait & Switch. "Modernism: 101". They bvuy the name "Apple" sell you and orange, then get mad at you for noticing.
Because it doesn’t really centre anyone. It goes round and round all the women, except Helen. I enjoyed it, although the points of the video aren’t necessarily wrong.
@@KarlKarsnarkThe book advertising itself as retelling Troy. It does that, there was no bait and switch.
@@MsJaytee1975 The only tale of "Troy" is the "Iliad". More than anything, it's just plain lazy. Fan-Fic. Nothing else.
I haven’t read it but I wish it did include Helen’s perspective. Her story is so inconsistent with no one set canon so there’s so much room to play around and get creative
The Iliad also never blames Helen for the war, Priam tells her it's not her fault, and that if anybody is to blamed it's the gods
If anything, blame Paris.
@@schwarzflammenkaiser2347 Yeah, I fucking hate that dude. After having to read the Illiad for a course, I wound up summarizing everything in the most mundane way possible to make it easy to fit in my brain - and I literally referred to Paris as "fuck boy" and "thinks with his crotch".
@schwarzflammenkaiser2347 he could've had any women in the entire Hellonistic world and he picks the one who he knows is already married.
That is a dick move in any part of history.
Later Greek writers blamed Helen. They had her willingly run off with Paris, and I saw at least one peplum movie that re-cast her marriage to Agamemnon as an unhappy one.
And modern movies make the relationship between Achilles and his _war captive/sex slave_ Briseis into a romantic one. Hell, no. She was war booty just like any gold, silver, or other prizes he had taken on the battlefield.
@@julietfischer5056 "war booty" is one hell of a typo lmao
I think there's also a bias towards medieval history to portray it as neglectful of female voices and want to reinvent it for modern women. A lot might not be as well known as male figures and writers but they won't get anywhere always being a shadow to well known male figures. I'd probably be interested in a story of Penelope having to negotiate with different suitors who mirror the monsters Odysseus weaves through but I care less of her just hearing about what her husband has been doing and then commenting on that over her personal life or getting jealous.
oooh! that Penelope negotiating with suitors that mirror Odysseus' monsters idea is a really cool concept!
Couple thousand years off from being medieval but I like the sentiment
Why do you use the word medieval?
@@annaselbdritt7916 Referring to the time period between roughly 475AD to late 1600s, usually characterized as the time between Roman rule and the age of enlightenment. It also doesn't get a good reputation with "womens rights" either because of simpler standards or just focusing more on later eras or putting more importance on current year.
@@Petrico94 Yeah I followed your train of thought, you were making a comparison
“Though the Greek society was intensely patriarchal, the myths they told centered female characters time and again. It's one of the great dichotomies that lies at the heart of Hellenic history. If women in Ancient Greece were such as marginalized class of people ,why did powerful women figure so large in myth?"
"My worry is that in this flood of mythic retellings, they add nothing substantive but rely on name recognition alone."
When a video essay is worded and hit so well it almost made me shed a tear. Thank you for this.
Tbf that’s every society that has polytheistic beliefs
Pagan Arabs believed angels were gods daughters but they themselves would bury baby girls alive
Same to Christian’s saying god has a son but considers it filthy for high ranked religious figures to have families
J 3 W S believe theyre above god in their scripture but are the first to want help (and then go back to believing themselves above it all)
The second sentence! I agree! Can you make a good Greek-myth-themed story original from your own instead of fanfictioning on existing myths?
I don’t think the first one is a completely fair question. The status of women depended on the city-state. In Athens, women stayed home and seldom left the house. One philosopher said the greatest honor for a woman is to not be talked about good or bad by her husband. In Sparta, women were encouraged to be as active as men and they could even vote. Granted men were still seen as superior.
The fact that powerful Greek goddesses exist doesn’t change the fact that human Greek women were discriminated against
@@pisces2569 Which is such an anachronistic way to look at history. It was not seen by those women as being discriminated against, it was how society was organised. Their lives might not have been public, but they would have wielded power in the household, behind closed doors. Where you go wrong, is that you interpret the question as only concerning Greek goddesses, when the question is clearly phrased as 'Greek women:' Penelope, Medea, Lysistrata. The presenter even mentions a few women by name who were clearly not portrayed as goddesses in the myths and stories.
@@ihintzablue686
Yeah, that reminded me of the first time I read a Romantic novel written by a female writer.
For much of the story, it felt the same as other 19th Century novels, but then, at a certain point and with the same ease, the novel began to narrate a feast being organized, the small negociations, bribes, intrigues and infights of the female love interest as she organizaded the event, how she had to deal with all the sellers, bankers, seamstresses, the wine seller, chose who to invite or not invite, considerations on season, having to negotiate the cold storing of edible central pieces and beer in a tropical land without eleticity, what furnitures had to be moved to storage and why, what pianist to hire, how to organize the flow of music and food, organize the crossing of the mountain passes with guides and peace keepers for guests and suppliers...
Prior to that, all I knew of organizing a wedding feast in the 19th Century was what male writers, who wrote the novels I had previously read, would: "They invited me, I went, I heard this song, that poem was read and then I talked with X, danced and went home". At most the description of how someone was dressed or some thematically relevant object, like saying there was an undescript piano, vases and statues and a list of book titles on the shelves to showcase a refined home.
Parties sprang from the ground, with just a hard cut.
Reading Júlia Lopes de Almeida was the first I noticed what a weird blind spot on the daily lives of the time I had until then, the small battles and domestic policies, WHAT they ate, how it was transported, prepared, stored, kept cold and served and all that my 21st mind takes for a given.
It was, simultaneously, eye opening and strangely... relatable. Put a pause on all the twists and romantic mush to have a fight between the beer seller and the baker for cold storage demanding immediate solution in the middle of a tropical Summer suddenly humanized the whole deal, if it makes sense.
And it made me wonder just HOW MUCH of the past we ignore just because those who wrote the stories that survived, being human, had NO CLUE on what was happening to keep their routines going or how interesting certain aspects of life they didn't live through actually were.
Winter Harvest by Ioanna Papadopoulou is a retelling of Hades and Persephone from Demeter's perspective and very faithfully follows the Homeric telling. It is also written by a Greek author, and hasn't seen nearly enough love. Recommending another retelling may be missing the point of the video, but I wanted to put this one out there.
Thank you! I've never heard Demeters prospective and wanted to more.
@@ayshagayle it's a really great book, I'm glad you're interested!
Demeter is probably the most misunderstood woman of Greek mythology right now...
Thank you for the recommendation!
@@catherine8889 I honestly think where a lot of people become cross with Demeter is the fact that she punishes all of humanity with winter because her daughter was taken to the Underworld- like humans had any say in that, I mean come on that is low-key bitchy.
@@annabaker8137and yet they care half as much seeing the wrath of other gods. Oh no, a goddess (a literal representation of the earth and seasons) caused the seasons. It’s almost like Greek mythology has symbolic explanations to explain things they couldn’t explain. There’s no way I’m calling a grieving mother ‘bitchy’ when her famine is what made Zeus listen in the first place.
As a lifelong fan of Greek Mythology writing a thesis on the topic for my history focus, please reupload this. It is a phenomenal video, and I’m unsure why it’s become a listed video. You’ve done fantastic research and make incredible points
I knoew we had too many greek retellings when that YA author who sold her retelling of The Odyssey to Harper Collins admited she never actually read The Odyssey before... sorry but how do you plan on retelling something or saying something new if you don't know the source material? I don't know if it was anti-inctellectualism or just laziness but it was too much
Who was the author?
@@CsnvLsRnst Sarah Underwood
WHAAAT??? how. how. how. i- good gods above.
@@CsnvLsRnstThe book is Lies We Sing to the Sea by Sarah Underwood
IIRC it wasn't supposed to be a retelling of The Odyssey though? Just a very very small segment of it focused on some extremely minor characters, but her publisher marketed it as one anyways. I also think her interview said she never read the *entire* Odyssey, not that she'd never read it at all
"The women who are truly silenced are the ones we don't hear about." Wow. That hit hard! Fantastic video, I'm so glad the youtube algorithm actually recommended me something good!!!
Yeah, I really liked that part. And those voices who are actively being forgotten as well, I would argue. Such as Native women, or even the Palestinians.
@@all1764We hear plenty about the Palestinians 💀 the natives I can agree with
@@lexfushi8504care to elaborate on that?
@@Gurianthe I mean that what’s happening in Palestine is already well known information
@@lexfushi8504it may be well known to you but it’s true that much of mainstream media is silencing the true + complete stories of the atrocities
I thoroughly enjoyed this, it's a topic I've had on my mind quite a bit lately. I hope you make more essays!
Hey, Greek writer here. Thanks so much for articulating a feeling many writers over here have about retellings and our country's colonization. More and more we are becoming a cultural icon that people only perceive as being in the past, with modern Greece being remembered only when people come here for tourism in the summer.
+1
man if you even ask half of our compatriots if they know about our colonization they will say no. They truly be buying the story we were fed.
People don't even know about Cypriot colonization and the execution of students protesting it.
Insane.
🙌🙌🙌
Skill issue
:)
Penelope hearing a 100% accurate retelling of Odysseus' travels undermines so much of her character and of the Odyssey itself.
Most people when asked about the Odyssey could maybe tell you maybe about the cyclops, lotus eaters, the underworld and such. Those are the juicy bits, the actiony stuff that ends up in most adaptations. I was among most people thinking those juicy bits took up the majority of the story, with Odysseus reclaiming his throne as an afterthought. In reality all those iconic scenes are flashbacks near the middle, character backstory to explain how Odysseus got to where he is.
The Odyssey spends the bulk of its time on Ithaca, it's more a political drama than anything and Penelope is at the center of it all. The burden she bears is that she gets to decide who the king of Ithaca will be. If she remarries than that man will be king, her son will be killed, Odysseus' legacy will be destroyed, and she loses any power she once wielded. If a man comes to Ithaca claiming to be Odysseus there is an immense amount of pressure on her to make sure it's really him. For her to falsely recognize an imposter would be just as perilous as giving the throne to one of the suitors. The fact that she truly does not know what happened to Odysseus and cannot know for certain if the mysterious stranger who arrives in the palace is him drives the tension for the third act. For her to hear what her husband is up to as it is happening flies in the face of all of this. The heart of the story is lost for the sake of modern commentary.
This got me too, I always thought the real strength of Penelope comes from the fact that she has no idea where her husband is anymore but remains faithful anyway, stalling for literal decades to keep herself and her son safe and hoping for his return. Even knowing he is alive at any point completely undermines the dynamic of mutual faith and loyalty, and shifts it to one of patience. It’s still powerful, I suppose, but it lacks the punch that the idea of waiting for someone WITHOUT knowing they’re alive has.
@@willmungas8964 Also, doesn't Penelope remaining faithful despite not knowing whether Odysseus is alive or dead also parallel the situation Odysseus himself is introduced in, with him having been on Calypso's island for about a decade but constantly remaining faithful to Penelope even if he sincerely believes he might never see his wife and son again? (Which I'd argue is also a perilous situation in its own right, since Calypso is a goddess, and by this point in the story Odysseus knows full well what a pissed-off deity is capable of.) That could be a modern perspective on the structure of the epic, rather than something intended by the Odyssey's ancient authors and editors, but I still noticed it when reading and I find it kind of neat.
@@chansesturm7103 Odysseus was everything but faithful to Penelope...
btw i never understood this, why wouldnt she recognise her own husband? Even if many years passed, unless he got his face disfigured in war, people dont really change that much.
@gergokun7154 Pretty sure Athena disguises him, so there's probably some godly magic shenanigans going on.
Isn’t it funny how all the “feminist” retellings completely ignore the actual feminist messages you can occasionally pull from the stories and either make these ancient heroines rude bitches or just give them a hot powerful man to vicariously feel powerful through
Medea came to my mind when I read your comment. I've read a few plays, including the famed play by Euripides where she's featured predominately... and she's amazing in that depiction. You really see her as a character. It's just a shame that we only have a single part of the trilogy where we probably would have seen more of her. A lot of the ancient Greek playwrights are amazing with their women characters.
Sure, they are outdated by today's standards. Their stories and the world they lived in are world's apart from ours, but I agree with you when you say that there's definitely a lot of feminist messages that you can pull from their stories.
Books are just feminist Prn.
Ita when women have read too many "men writing women" stories, to the point where they are addicted to shallow heteronormative romance so they end up writing women the same shallow way bad make writers would
@@TiffWafflesWhen Medea kills her children and Jasons bride is that feminist messaging?
Wow, what an incredible video essay! Changed my mind about several things, solid arguments all around.
One thought: the concern about "age gaps" in romance stories is a very old one. "Should fiction be a representative moral reflection of life? Or is it escapist fantasy that seeks to inflame?" I think you would really like Contrapoints' "Twilight" video. She deep dives into the history of romance, what attracts readers to it, and why so many romance stories from the past centuries include tropes like age gaps.
Also, small audio criticism: is there a way to eliminate the mouth "clicks" ? It can happen with a dry mouth, but I believe there is a way to process it after the fact to smooth it out. I have misophonia, and it can make parts of the video tough to listen to. Thank you! You got a new subscriber 😊
Great video, and I'm glad people do see it the same way. It always bothered me how people took Greek culture and ran with it, like it was some media franchise fandom. I am Indian, so my immediate comparison is if people outside India started writing the same kind of stories for Indian mythology. Which to be clear does happen, and even in parallel with historic hellenophilia...there was a a fevered interest in Indian culture in Europe around the same time, some of which gave rise to international Indian cultural perception today (ie hippies).
Anyways, my point is that, as an Indian in the modern day with a passion for the Indian classics, I want to be able to engage with those classics in a healthy way (no nationalism, religious dogma, etc.). But I also want to avoid the exploitative vibe of modern engagement with Greek mythology. This video helped clarify some of my thoughts here. Thanks!
I don’t know how this ended up on my feed, but I am so pleased it did. It’s such an insightful analysis that gives voice to a lot of the feelings I have when reading these retellings. Great video!
So glad you enjoyed it!!🥰
Oooh this just put into words everything i've been thinking about the retellings and "new takes" of these myths and stories. I genuinely feel these come from ignorance and just, not knowing the actual myths but knowing the general plots
Omg YES this exactly!!!!!
I'm not gonna lie, considering the video explicitly points out that many of these authors are literal classisists, who have both read and studied the original myths for years if not decades before writing their novels, this feels like a very oversimplified and just... incorrect take. Clearly, one can be *very* knowledgable on the classics and still write a flawed retelling. Idk, it might be true for lore olympus (though i don't know enough about its author to say for sure) but every other book discussed here clearly comes from a point of extensive knowledge, and is yet flawed.
@@evi6629 maybe it’s that the classicists feel more free to play with or interpret or have a dialogue with the original material, but the problem with that is when it gets marketed for a broader audience that may or much more likely may not get what’s going on with those conversations. Then it gets picked on as ignorance rather than as a choice for either the sake of dialogue with the original or simply for the sake of entertainment (although personally having attempted Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey I do think it’s fair to say that classicists can make dumb choices despite their education or degrees)
@@evi6629bruh but retelling is just stupid and unneeded imo.
Pat Barker lost me on a word 'okay' in a f*cking ancient greece. I'm not even a native english speaker but I know this word did not really exist till 16th century or so. Also, using verb 'to f*ck'. Her 'Silence of the girls' feels like bitter rumbling I can't even force myself to finish. Briseis doesn't feel like nobility. I really hate this 'feminist' depiction of strong women as bitter and angry nags.
I liked Circe though, the tragedy of unrequited love of main character and loneliness resonated with me so much that I cried. She feels more like a 'strong woman' without being an absolute killjoy.
This is the best video essay i have ever seen, you explain something in such a good way.
I went to the eleusinian mysteries temple last year in August, and was my favorite place in all athens. I hope you can go again, since it was such a great experience for me
I don't remember who said it (maybe Harold Bloom?), but I remember a quote along the lines of "a feminist or marxist critique of Shakespeare can tell us a lot about feminism or marxism, but it tells us very little about Shakespeare."
These books tell us more about the preoccupations of modern society than about the works they're based on.
The genuinely good ones that transcend their times will hopefully survive on their own merits.
I mean isn't that the point ? Most of the source material is myths, not written stories.
Isn’t that the point or retellings? I’m not reading Circe to learn about the source material. If I wanted that, I would read the source material.
@@washada you probably should read the source material.
It used to float around my head everytime I would hear stuff about feminist readings of classical works.
Most of the time, it's not really connected at all to what happened in the works, but just someone's perspective bleeding into a story. their perspective is fine, but it's got the same level of validity if I just went through Hamlet under an antisemitic lens lmao. it's all just subjective blah blah blah.
Only time will tell which of these retellings will make it. Kind of hope that someone retells hephaestus's story and life, he's my favourite greek god and arguably one of the most compassionate.
@@washada So... You just want a fantasy story that you know is vaguely connected to something that came before, perhaps one in the current zeitgeist, and you do not care if it follows the source or even respects it?
You are Netflix Witcher fan, aren't you? Perhaps you thought Rings of Power was 10/10?
36:06 when you have some knowledge of how marriage worked back then it’s also just incredibly heartbreaking and bittersweet
This is at least one mother/daughter duo who was actually reunited
Not so old. There's a Greek story from last century about a groom's mother who told him to just punch his new bride to shut up her crying on the wedding night. It is not so unusual that women's feelings mattered as much as the livestock's.
@@Badficwriter that’s terrifying. My comment was more about how when a woman marries she never sees her first family again typically
*Greek Mythology lover here!!! Here are some things to consider about Hades and Persephone:*
1- The original hymn to Demeter goes on its way to relieve Hades of all responsibility and puts all the blame on Zeus, since he was the one who arranged the marriage between the two without informing either Demeter or Persephone.
2- Hades' actions in this story are all in line with what would be expected of a wedding in ancient Greece:
Ancient Athenian wedding preparations began under cover of night with the bride being ‘abducted’ to the groom’s house in a chariot. The groom would give the bride gifts, and the families would feast together. During the ceremony, the bride would eat a piece of fruit given to her by her husband, to signify that her needs were now going to be provided for by her husband. Later, after the ceremony, the marriage was consummated.
3- The reason why the whole thing is treated as a kidnap is because neither Demeter nor Persephone were informed about the marriage. That also explains why Persephone was so scared and confused when it all happend.
4- There is no real evidence that Persephone was ill-treated, abused, raped or in general badly treated by Hades; in fact, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter directly mentions that Persephone was a guest of honour in Hades’ household.
5- In the Claudian poem "De Raptu Proserpine", while Hades is driving to the underworld, Persephone cries and complains for her fate. Hades feels sorry about his action and comforts Persephone by wiping her tears, and then promises her royal power and a good marriage. After that, we are told that Hades is no longer a gloomy frightening figure, but a smiling kind god.
("The tears he wiped away with his murky cloak, quieting her sad grief with these soothing words: Cease, Proserpine, to vex thy heart with gloomy cares and causeless fear. A prouder sceptre shall be thine, nor shalt thou face marriage with a husband unworthy of thee.")
6- When Hades gets informed about the famine Demeter was causing, he allows Persephone to return to her mother while also proposing to her. He promises her he'll be a good husband and offers her equal rulership over the underworld.
("Go now, Persephone, to your dark-robed mother, go, and feel kindly in your heart towards me: be not so exceedingly cast down; for I shall be no unfitting husband for you among the deathless gods, that am own brother to father Zeus. And while you are here, you shall rule all that lives and moves and shall have the greatest rights among the deathless gods: those who defraud you and do not appease your power with offerings, reverently performing rites and paying fit gifts, shall be punished for evermore.")
7- After his proposal and before Hermes takes Persephone away, Hades stealthily gives her pomegranate seeds to eat. She eats them, consummating their marriage. (Obs: We can infer that she did this willingly since the Hymn calls Persephone "wise / high-minded" and Greek mythology says that gods don't get hungry and don't require food such as mankind does.)
8- Persephone herself says later that Zeus had given her to Hades with "métis" (wisdom), showing that she was transformed by her time with Hades, and now believed him to be a fitting husband.
9- Many ancient sources support the idea of Hades and Persephone loving each other:
(Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 29): "Plouton (Hades) fell in love with Persephone."
(Virgil, Georgics 1. 36 ff [Roman bucolic C1st B.C.]): “Tartarus hopes not for you as king, and may such monstrous lust of empire never seize you, though Greece is enchanted by the Elysian fields, and Proserpine reclaimed cares not to follow her mother.” --> Persephone prefers to stay with Hades than returning to her mother.
(Lucan, Pharsalia, VI): "[...] to Persephone who shuns her mother in heaven [...] I shall tell the world the nature of that food which confines Persephone beneath the huge weight of earth, the bond of love that unites her to the gloomy king of night, and the defilement she suffered, such that her mother would not call her back." --> Persephone is directly mentioned to have a dislike towards her mother Demeter and is specifially mentioned to have a bond of love with Hades.
(Ovid, Metamorphoses, X): It is directly mentioned by the character Orpheus that Hades and Persephone are united in love.
10- In the artistic depictions (vase paintings, other texts and etc.) where Hades and Persephone are shown together, they are always shown to be happy. Persephone is never portrayed as a miserable wife and Hades is never portrayed as a cruel husband.
11- Plato / Socrates had this to say about the two of them:
"You see they change the name to Persephone and its aspect frightens them. But really the name indicates that the goddess is wise; for since things are in motion, that which grasps and touches and is able to follow them is wisdom. Pherepapha, or something of that sort, would therefore be the correct name of the goddess, because she is wise and touches that which is in motion and this is the reason why Hades, who is wise, consorts with her, because she is wise." (Cratylus dialogue - Plato).
12- If you read all this, you are a legend!
Unfortunately a number of your points about the Homeric Hymn to Demeter are wrong. There absolutely *is* evidence that Persephone was ill-treated by Hades: the Hymn states that when Hermes finds her in the Underworld, Persephone is Hades’ παράκοιτις (a term for wife that literally means “beside” + “bed”; Gregory Nagy translates it as “bedmate”). When you take this with the following lines 344-345, describing Persephone as “the one who was much under duress, yearning for her mother, and suffering from the unbearable things inflicted on her by the will of the blessed ones”, the heavy implication is that Hades has raped her.
Moreover, we cannot infer that Persephone ate the pomegranates seeds willingly. In fact, the text very clearly states the opposite: Persephone herself says that Hades “compelled me by βία [physical force/violence] to eat of it” (line 413).
I have some further contention with the rest of the points you've made, but since that's more about source interpretation in the context of the misogyny of ancient Greece and Roman, I thought I'd just stick to noting some of the factual inaccuracies in this comment! I’m also interested in your point about Persephone being directly mentioned as a guest of honour in Hades’ household. I can’t seem to find this in any of the translations of the Hymn that I’ve read?
Such a wonderful video essay! You've spoken from and to my heart and I'm very glad it showed up in my recommendations.
this was a really compelling video, thank you for your work and the following commentary on it! it gave me a lot to think about, especially in how i view the mythology, history, and cultures of not only Greece but others around the world. there’s a care and respect that must go into our creative endeavors and in the exchange of these ideas and views that aren’t inherently our own.
People never acknowledge that the story of Medusa being assaulted by Poseidon and unfairly cursed is not the original story. Instead it was written by a Roman guy hundreds of years after the original stories would have been passed around in religious tellings, and he had a real bone to pick with Roman authority and government so he basically wrote a fanfic of Greek mythology portraying the gods as being evil and featuring the abuse of power. In the original story Medusa legitimately just did consensually hook up with Poseidon, in some stories she hooked up with him directly in Athena’s temple, so she got cursed. It’s like if hundreds of years from now people look back on the Percy Jackson stories and say “oh look at this accurate depiction of what the ancient Greeks believed, look at these genuine mythological stories of the gods being evil”
I also heard that Medusa might have even just being something that exists like the other gorgon sisters and was inly made into a cursed human later on. Though the validity of these claims is hard to define.
@@victory8928 Yeah, she was the Gorgon's sister from the start. Her 'curse' was being part mortal.
Wasn't Medusa just a random ass gorgon that was just born so ugly that it turned people into stone? She even had sisters in the version of the myth I know, never heard of her being human at any point before the internet.
I have no idea where you're getting that from. Medusa was around before Ovid's Metamorphoses but she was just a gorgon existing with the curse of mortality. Ovid took the character and gave her a backstory that fit his theme of (and you'll never guess this one) metamorphosis. The backstory just so happened to be violent and unfair. It feels like you haven't read Metamorphoses because there are plenty of stories with the gods being merciful and the humans being purely evil. There are happy endings assisted by the gods. If you can give me a primary source for your 'original story' that tells of a past that resembles the one you have described, I'll happily say I'm wrong.
what roman guy?
This is a fabulous video essay, and it PERFECTLY sums up my problems with this entire "feminist" subgenre of myth retellings. I remember being pleasantly surprised by the amount of voice female characters had in the myths proper, such as Calypso calling out the double standard of goddesses not being able to take mortal lovers, or Circe being a morally ambiguous character who is both harmful and helpful, or Helen chewing out Aphrodite, or Clytemnestra being very vocal even after her death.
Then there's the character assassination! It's not just Demeter, Athena is dragged through the mud in order to make Medusa look sympathetic. Medusa's sympathetic backstory only comes from one line in Ovid. She's become a symbol of SA victims, but the reason Perseus kills her isn't to win glory for himself, it's to prevent his mother from being SA'd by a powerful man.
Also, it's incredibly rare to find accurate portrayals of polytheism in fiction. I loved The Song of Achilles, but I still haven't read Circe because it's mostly about how awful the gods are. The gods are too often portrayed as fickle and petty at best, downright tyrannical at worst, which isn't really how they were regarded within the context of Ancient Greek religion.
It all rings so hollow.
I 100% agree with you, that's exactly what goes on in a lot of these retellings, 'character assassination'! I recently read a Greek retelling that featured Hera and they completely erased character/mythical identity in order to make readers sympathetic to her.
LITERALLY! Yesterday I was so mad because I watched a big youtuber’s video on Athena and her whole takeaway of her was that she was not “a girl’s girl” and a “pick me” all based on Ovid’s Medusa, and because she sided with Perseus and Odysseus, like seriously?! Way of oversimplifying a complex mythic character on completely arbitrary terms LOL Hate when people with huge audiences like that use their voices to paint their biased views as truth. And that seems to have sprung (or the other way around, is a symptom of) a lot of hate and othering of gender nonconforming women and afab people from traditionally feminine folks for being a “traitor” to their gender 🙄 Makes my blood boil.
*editing for typos.
Circe is genuinely a great modern story touching on myth, but I don’t think it was meant to be interpreted as a true depiction. It’s one of my favourite books, because you really see Circe grow into her power as a character. I hope you give it a chance, but no pressure :)
Personally, I loved Circe for its depiction of the gods as unchanging, terrifying beings distinct from mortals in form and function. The book isn’t purely about the gods being awful (and believe me, many in the story are), it’s about how a young minor goddess like Circe navigates their political and personal machinations, carving out a niche for herself in a world that so rarely caters to someone like her. Moreover, within the context of her story, it makes sense why certain gods are cruel and unyielding- why would Helios, the dazzling Titan of the Sun, for example, tolerate anything less than visual perfection in his godly progeny? As one of the last left standing from the older generation of gods, I personally loved the idea of him being a rallying point for the old gods’ nostalgia, while simultaneously bending to Zeus’ influence in the name of convenience. And this is only one example out of many; whatever the case, while the Greek gods have many facets, I think modern readers need to abandon the idea that they HAVE to be morally “fleshed out.” We don’t need backstories for why some of them are horrible and others aren’t- at the end of the day, they’re a reflection of what was REAL to the Greeks, not what was necessarily right.
There are many examples of Goddesses taking mortal lovers. One being Aphrodite and Adonis.
Also many stories of nymphs and mortal men, such as Narcissus and Echo.
You spoke with experience and conviction, a great video! The sprinkle of jokes to keep the tone from dipping too low, while also making sure to keep everyone on the same page about the topics of discussion, with the right amount of explaining. Thank you for your hard work!
If I never see another retelling or story of any kind centred around Hades/Persephone, it will be too soon.
"There is no escape."?
@@Duiker36what’s that?
@@clown-cult96the death screen from the video game "Hades", which is perhaps not very surprisingly a retelling of the story of Persephone and Hades
I highly suggest Hades. I know that this particular myth is overdone (I agree) but that game slays on so many levels.
@@princeapoopoo5787 It's also not strictly about the myth of Hades and Persephone. It loosely uses the story as a framing device to tell its own story about connection, family, purpose, and forgiveness, all while being a general celebration of these larger than life stories and characters. 10/10 will always recommend
I’m all for female representation in fiction, but everything I see a blurb that says “feminist retelling” I instantly cringe, because the way modern feminism is perverted nowadays, it’s reasonable to assume it means “Mary Sue tells off men for being men and ends up with a woman at the end (which isn’t a bad thing but the way it is done is out of spite against the patriarchy).
i remember picking up ariadne by jennifer saint and being so confused and disappointed? like, ariadne is a mortal woman from greek mythology that actually gets a happy ending, yet this allegedly "feminist" retelling actively takes that away from her. also, the conflation of the roman poet ovid's account of medusa's origins into greek mythology specifically will never not annoy me. yes, greek and roman mythology have many similarities, but there are many differences as well, and it's important to make that distinction when it's necessary. and when you have a detail that only appears in roman accounts (that we know of) and not greek, calling it greek mythology is just inaccurate.
Oh I HATED Ariadne. That whole saga is my favourite myth and it seemed that at every single turn, Saint fundamentally misunderstood what the myth was about in order to reduce the story to "men bad," the most boring possible interpretation of a wonderfully interesting and complex myth with many bad men, but many fascinating bad women and other twists and turns as well.
I will defend the more sympathetic backstory of Medusa simply because 1) as you pointed out, it could very well be Greek in origin but any documentation verifying this could have been lost to time 2) there are countless variations to myths and legends so to say one is "incorrect" is absurd, there is no definitive version to oral traditions passed down through the centuries and 3) it's very compelling and frankly a lot more interesting than her just being one particular gorgon.
@@benjamintillema3572 then just say roman mythology. that's my issue here. i'm not saying that it's "incorrect" wholecloth, and i dislike you implying that i did. i'm saying that referring to it as GREEK mythology is incorrect as the oldest extant source we have for that version of events is ovid's metamorphoses. we don't just decide that it's greek in origin because we like the vibes better; every extant greek source that references medusa's origins at all is pretty clear that she's simply a gorgon from birth. human priestess medusa who was cursed by minerva is roman in origin, so people saying that she was cursed by athena are actually incorrect. again, ancient greece and rome have many similarities in culture and mythology, but they aren't the same and the distinction is important.
also, your point about it being "very compelling and more interesting" is subjective.
@@wolf-gh2dz wait Ovid messed with Minerva there too?!?! My pet peeve from the Metamorphoses is the story of Minerva (as distinct from Athena) and Arachne which is in no way, shape, or form a Greek myth (literally its first complete appearance is in the Metamorphoses after appearing as a throwaway line in the Georgics), and in researching about it I read a paper that talked about Ovid’s characterization of Minerva being incompatible with the character of Athena (as in, the values and motivations of the actual goddess Athena), and I didn’t realize that extended beyond the hyper-patriarchal portrayal of Minerva in the Arachne myth. The Metamorphoses is truly bonkers as a mythography retelling (the original retelling, you could say)
Honestly I just think Jennifer Saint is a poor author - Elektra by her was boring, repetitive and just frustrating. Wouldn't recommend
This was a really terrific video, well done. So often when I talk to younger women who profess an interest in Greek mythology I am struck by how superficial their knowledge is - invariably this is because they have never read any actual period works, but are only familiar with modern retellings and with the interpretation of Greece in American pop culture. Something which is particularly lacking is knowledge of historical and cultural context - these tales simply cannot be properly understood without at least some understanding of the world into which they were written, which, as you say, fundamentally differs to the modern world. It is also particularly baffling that in this age of feminist retellings that so many remain ignorant of the works of playwrights such as Euripedes and Seneca, who focus women in plenty of their plays, both as heroes and as villains.
Me: Ugh I’m so sick of stories about Hades and Persephone
Also me: One of my favourite video games is Hades and one of my favourite musicals is Hadestown
those work because they are not centered around them. Hades and Persephone do not work as a lead romance couple. They work as side characters.
You are so real for this comment
Hadestown is about Orpheus and Eurydice ft. Hades and Persephone
Also Hadestown DOES give agency to the women in the myths, which is what a lot of those retellings lack. Persephone is described as having chosen to go with Hades, and their relationship is strained BECAUSE he is trying to strip her of the agency she has in leaving and coming back, because he fears she won’t come back. Same with the Orpheus and Eurydice storyline - there she chooses to go to Hadestown as a means of survival instead of dying by accident. Hadestown generally isn’t trying to just be some sort of modern progressive retelling, it more so modernizes those stories so that their points and ideas are clearer to a more modern audience.
Apologies if you mention this in the video, I’m only about 6 minutes in, give or take, but it’s very strange to me how none of the writers of “feminist” retelling ever focus on a play about women, that could be seen as proto feminist, The Trojan Women.
yes or Demeter. Even Madeline's Miller's next work is apparently focusing on Hades & Persephone rather than Demeter. I just find it so odd.
A thousand ships, the first book talked about, does. the afterword clearly states that trojan women was one of the main sources. Also used are Hecabe, the oddyssey, the aeneid, heroides, the orestia, iphigenia in aulis... I don't think Haynes' writing deserves to be put in the same category as the yassified Greek myths otherwise discussed. It makes me mistrust the rest of the video.
@@grimreapergalTo be fair, Thetis was a major character in The Song of Achilles, even if she doesn’t actually appear all that often. I wouldn’t be surprised if Demeter’s perspective is explored.
Also Euripides Helen? Like I know it is not as ancient and as hence is not considered "canon" myth but someone has definitely tried to show an alternate point of view of the Trojan War from Helen's perspective
What about Antigone. You could just about rewrite the play as a novella, copying the dialogue verbatim, and you would be writing about the most "feminist" story possible. Antigone is a tremendously compelling character explicitly bucking her traditional place in society to stand up for herself, her family and her rights against the king (her uncle Creon) and in the process laying down the foundational case for natural law and the rule of law that remain central to the definition of "western" politics to this day. Add her care for her father in Oedipus at Colonnus and you have a very complex, admirable and sympathetic character.
Amazing video, so many great points! I'll definitely be watching more videos.
This can be done with decent regard to the outlook of the "original" myths and the archetypes. For me it would be in a parallel, not competition, with the myth as familiar (the one we call original, though it can't be, because stories begin as unwritten) AND also rest happily beside something like "Hadestown" the musical, which with its connections to American 20th century musical culture (and history and ongoing issues like poverty and addiction and of course COMPLEX RELATIONSHIPS) was Mind Blowing, and SO moving - maybe because I am my age and have lost and gained people and love and yes, not just in the romantic frame. *The myth holds up.*
I think these authors need to stop using "reimagining of" and start using "inspired by."
and also maybe "reshaping" since they're quite literally changing the story's shapes to fit a modern world
You perfectly summed up my issues with this genre, and your insights were so fascinating to hear and I wholeheartedly agree with them! Fantastic video overall, your argument and analysis were so well said!
Thank you!! So glad it resonates with you💜
thank you for standing up for us
You're right about so much. Thank you for recommending Renault!
Fascinating take! I do wonder what she thinks about the game Hades, which personifies all of the characters (they aren't just cardboard cutouts with functions) and advances the stories of those characters. I really loved it, as the people in the game felt like real people and most of their actions made a lot of sense.
Gosh, I wish I knew more about video games and was able to discuss it! I've only ever heard good things about Hades (one of my lecturers practically built an entire course around it lol.) Maybe video games will prove to be better than novels at retelling Greek myth in a truly unique way.
In a similar way, I knew the video was focused on literature, but I kept hoping for her take on the musical Hadestown because it's such an interesting mix of the topics discussed: interpreting the themes and characters from Greek myths into more modern contexts and with modern concerns in mind vs. respecting the original heart of the stories and the purposes they served, and why they continue to resonate (specifically when it comes to tragedies).
@@katealexandra8960I would say Hades is the best “feminist retelling” (putting that in heavy quotes because it’s not what I would call it, but it’s what others have) of mythology because it actually gives agency to the female characters and documents much of the ugly familial history the gods had together, both male and female. For example, Persephone is shaped out to be someone who wanted to stay with Hades because of the fact she didn’t feel at home on Mount Olympus, but then eventually chose to leave after the presumed death of her son. It erases a lot of the SA connotations of the Greek myth for a more modern approach of estrangement from her husband. Supergiant also went through the effort of making sure the gods weren’t related to each other like they are in Greek myth, since familial incest among the gods was used to justify the same thing in real Ancient Greek culture. (Also it’s just weird)
Especially for Hades II!!!
hades and hadestown are the only greek mythology adaptions i genuinely enjoy lol
really loved your essay! i like how you addressed how ancient greek myth and religion is used as an 'easy' backdrop, without considering the cultural significance of the myth!
that being said, one of my favourite mythological retellings is an adaptation of medea called 'savage beasts' by rani selvarajah. it's set in the mid 1700s where medea is from calcutta and jason is british. it charts their relationship from beginning to end, and it uses the new context to comment on colonialism in india and south africa. for me at least, any anachronism is less glaring as it takes place neither in ancient greece nor the modern day, without losing sense of euripides' intensity.
That actually sounds brilliant as a retelling, and likely keeps the spirit and purpose driving Euripides’ original more than most other retellings would
That book sounds fantastic!! I'm very drawn to mythic retellings which explore the ideas and themes of a myth in a new setting. Adding it to my reading list💛
Bruh that's kinda cringe, not you, but the retelling you mentioned
@@JustAGuySlayingDragons how is it cringe? think of it like hadestown and how orpheus and eurydices story were reframed into a sorta industrial setting. or for non-greek myth examples, the lunar chronicles with fairy tales in a scifi setting. its just another way to retell the story.
Reminds me of the Romeo & Juliet movie with Leonardo DiCaprio where it was pseudo modern and they used handguns in place of swords. Shockingly decent movie
please do make more videos, you’re great - this is so relaxing with the background music and calming artwork (loved that, especially instead of someone speaking at me on camera which is like overwhelming sometimes lol)
Well spoken and a great contribution to the conversation of myth and its place in modern story telling. Great vid
Thank you for this. Being a Greek woman comes with constantly having to reconcile the mixed messages and complexity of my heritage. Yes, ancient Greece was largely patriarchal and Athens especially was really sexist and yes, inevitably that bled into many of the surviving myths and stories. But even so, there's also so much to love about them just as they are. So many of these fictional women are important to me- being inspiring and terrible, human and strangely comforting. It's always a weird experience to pick up a modern version of the story meant to uplift them, only for it to treat them overall less kindly than the original story or for them to feel less human than they did thousands of years ago because they didn't really understand the assignment or cultural context.
When I try to talk about this with people, I feel like I sometimes struggle wording it in a way that doesn't make me sound like I dislike retellings written by non-Greeks BECAUSE they are written by non-Greeks. It's just... these stories are very personal to me and I feel like more often than not there's no room left for me in them anymore. They are very clearly about some other people, some other culture. When they are brought to modern times, they take whatever Greek thing of interest and bring it to America, involving few to no Greek people. When they take place in ancient Greece, it's often a Greece that I can't recognize. And don't get me started on the christianized nonsense. Like how Hades is made to be a mustache twirling villain because to christians he's the closest thing to a Satan equivalent (EXTREMELY inaccurate) or how 90% of Hades and Persephone retellings these days are just "virginal, repressed woman escapes puritanical environment and has to fix a sad man who liberates her with s*x". Like. Y'all can write christian mom erotica and leave our myths out of it, thanks.
Anyway, thank you for tackling this issue and its effects with so much empathy. Westerners are so used to this narrative that by virtue of being European or American they share some sort of inherent connection with (and therefore have some kind of ownership over) Greek history and folklore that it's a pleasant surprise to see someone who isn't Greek call it out for what it is: cultural appropriation and exploitation. Even more so for acknowledging our long, long history of being colonized.
As someone who studied primarily ancient Greek language and culture and as a lover of Greek language, culture, and history to the modern day, I agree completely about the cultural appropriation. I am not Greek, so my taking on of the myths and stories comes from a distance no matter how much I immerse myself. This is part of what makes reception studies in classics so interesting to me, which reminds me of a book review I read where someone was upset because a retelling of the Odyssey “missed the point” of the Odyssey simply because it was set during the Greek Revolution and the reader (an American) didn’t understand what that meant. We (as in, Anglo-American literary culture people) do not get to dictate how a country or culture receives its own history (obviously) (it was a super dumb book review tbh)
I'm not Greek (I'm from another Mediterranean country), and I only studied Greek a couple of years, so I'm no expert at all, but often, when I read these "retellings", I can feel how fundamentally American they are (so far they've all been from authors from the USA), and I'm kept wondering why. Why take myths that aren't yours and twist them to fit your own culture in such a bizarre way? Why the female characters feel more one-dimensional, are often talked badly about or made antagonistic or down right villainous in the supposedly "feminist" retelling?
I'm not saying these books shouldn't exist, but they're profoundly alienating for me and they keep me wanting something else.
I can only understand a minimal fraction of the frustration you may feel, but I guess I just wanted to show you my sympathy, because when I've tried to talk about the appropriation angle and such, I've always been faced with disbelief, and being a non-Greek I was feeling that maybe i'm just imagining things, but your comment shows that no. It's actually important to not use other's peoples cultures and histories lightly.
Sorry if I'm rumbling too much. I'm sleep deprived 😅. Take care and thanks for sharing your perspective!
@@BigBadWolframio it’s because generic Americans (not native or indigenous peoples, just generic Americans) don’t have legends or history (beyond “founding fathers american revolution Hamilton the musical” type stuff), so they latch on to all kinds of other things. I suspect that the popularity of anime or samuri movies holds a similar appeal to Greek myths if you look at it that way
Greek culture, history, language, etc has never been afforded sanctity. That’s been our problem over and over, we are never allowed to keep our things sacred
@@BigBadWolframio Thank you for the kind words ❤️ I wanted to make clear that I don’t think those books shouldn’t exist either because I didn’t really mention it! I’m even fond of some adaptations that don’t really have anything to do with accuracy to the original text or culture. I’m just trying to explain why retellings are so often not for me as a Greek person and why that might be an issue if you look at our history. That being said, I’m not wishing for any of these authors’ houses to burn down lol.
Also, your experience with trying to talk about this to people rings true to mine. It’s not uncommon to be dismissed and shut down unfortunately. When trying to explain that we have centuries worth of history being culturally appropriated and exploited by Europe (and later America) as well as colonised by several different powers one after the other I’ve gotten the “sis, white people aren’t oppressed lmao” treatment. For a lot of people we are too white to have the right to be a part of discussions about colonisation and cultural theft, meanwhile hilariously for some Europeans (Western Europeans usually) of certain political beliefs we aren’t white enough to belong with them, so they’ve been appropriating our stuff while simultaneously inventing reasons why we aren’t “real” Greeks and why they have more of a claim to our history than we do.
Anyway, sorry for the tangent. Appreciate all the empathetic, insightful comments. You take care too ❤️
"Feminist retelling." What was once an interesting idea on subverting old tropes is now a cliché trope itself for the writer to turn their AO3 stories they wrote while in college into published novels. Nothing against AO3 as a lurker 👀 for the site. I've just read enough stories on there to be able to spot the similarities between them and these BookTok Greek retellings.
Where the heck did you come from? Well done!
Now we need yo hear your thoughts on Dan Simmons' Ilium and Olympos.
I hate how Demetor is villanized for being heartbroken that her daughter was kidnapped and forced into a marriage.😢
Peraephone is a godess. Meaning she is immortal and doesnt need to eat. Therefore she ate those pomegranates willingly. Therefore she wanted to stay with hades.
@@LynnHermione just because gods don't need to eat doesn't mean they don't feel the urge to and don't get hungry. Or simply eat for the pleasure. Immortality doesn't mean you're never hungry or thirsty. And there's plenty of stories of the gods dining and drinking. So miss me with that bullcrap.
Or maybe she just wanted a damn pomegranate. @@LynnHermione
Still a Villain (for the purposes of this story) as she knowingly killed thousands of people by withholding spring. She had legitimate reasons to be upset of course, but "my daughter was kidnapped, so I'll kill most of the worlds population," is not the thought process of a hero.
This is a wonderful video, but the point about cultural appropriation is a little weird to me. Greek mythology isn't closed to just Greek citizens. The problem comes when people don't understand or fully respect the source material/historical context, which most authors "retelling" the myths don't.
HIII. Loved the video. I really like Lore Olympus but it's true that it has some problems, and it shouldn't really be considered a retelling, more like mythologically based fiction.
ALSO, you should talk about EPIC The Musical once Jorge releases all the parts. Maybe talk about how accurate it is, while exploring the more modern themes and the retelling, how modern sensibilities change the myth and how good of an adaption it is
Incredibly well done video!
Classicist Jean menzies (on UA-cam as Jean's Thoughts) has a great video essay about the origins of the modern perception of Hades and Persephone as a romance trope came from I loved especially how she traced back the history of the way that story has been told and retold across the centuries.
She similarly takes umbridge with the way Demeter is flatted to shrill helicopter mom in modern retellings.
name of video please!!
edit: I think i have found it but still let me know in case if you see this
Yeah she got kidnapped and raped by hades and then tricked into having to stay married to him and to visit him every year for months at a time
@@grimreapergal It's called "Why Hades and Persephone Aren't The Cute Couple You Think They Are"
Will check that out thanks even if I probably know a third of it already.
@@grimreapergal is shit video to be honest! she doesn´t mention that Persephone his the biggest dedicated to mariage, none of the sources of relationship after the marriage like Lucian Dialogues of Dead, she just said what everyone knows
Thank you for this! I remember reading the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and was struck by how powerful it was. As you said, it really is a story of women helping women, such as Hecate supporting Demeter throughout her search and the mortal women who comforted Demeter without even knowing she was a goddess. It's also interesting how the whole root of the problem was caused by a father (Zeus) deciding on his daughter's marriage without consulting or even telling her mother. And although bittersweet the ending is mostly a happy one and a victory for Demeter and Persephone, because often women were effectively cut off from their birth families when they married but Persephone gets to stay with her mother 2/3 of the year.
I think Demeter's character assassination in modern Hades/Persephone stories is a classic case of the Death Eater Ron Trope, in which an originally benign character is turned evil in fanfiction because the author wanted to turn an originally villainous character into the hero/love interest but needs another villain to achieve that purpose. (also they might simply dislike said benign character) The mysterious and dangerous older rich man/innocent virgin trope has always been popular after all, but since readers don't like to be confronted with the obviously rapey connotation of the Hades and Persephone myth (I mean it was rape even by ancient standards) Demeter has to be vilified, for it was her fury and journey that is a clear reminder that the abduction was anything but consensual. Also possible is that teenage/young adult women are deflecting issues against their own mothers on Demeter, which I guess is a choice but not really fair to the goddess.
If you're interested in more thoughtful interpretation I recommend Stray Gods, which is by no means a perfect game (like why does it have such unmemorable music when it's supposed to be a musical game and the protagonist is a Muse?😭) but I do like the thought and artistic choices put into interpretating Greek gods and how they would survive in a modern setting. With Persephone in particular there seems to have been a deliberate attempt to move away from the popular Dark Romance yassification.
Most of the problem is that writers started applying the logic of Grimm's Fairy Tales to the Hymn to Demeter which completely changed the expected protagonist to the 'Princess' type. Then nobody bothered reading the actual Hymn because its not that kind of story at all.
The brother's Grimm were obsessed with proving that Germans and Greeks once had similar cultures and that German folk tales were evolved from Greek-like myths but modern narratives seem to demand the opposite and read Fairy tale archetypes into a completely different story telling tradition.
My thing is is that the roots of people's quote on quote beef with Demeter is the fact that her creation of winter is viewed as an unfair punishment against the broader span of humanity because like you said even though she was helped by other Mortal women she still punished them alongside their husbands and countless generations of their children with cold and bitter Winters; in the ancient and Medieval World, winters were extremely brutal as they were oftentimes seen as life or death.
So I believe the general dislike against her often is rooted in the fact that we resent the fact of winter time coming and that we cannot enjoy spring and summer eternally.
the music in Stray Gods rules >:0
@@annabaker8137 Demeter doesn't create winter that's a misreading.
Bitter cold winters don't occur in Ancient Greece and have nothing to do with mediteranian climates. In the mediteranian the Winter season is the wet season required for growing crops latter in the year.
The dividing up of the year due to the pomegranite seeds is about storing and planting crops the seasonal element is secondary.
The Homeric Hymn is about the institution of Grain agriculture its not a seasonal myth that's a Victorian attempt to make all myths into protoscience.
Ancient calenders show that the part of the year Kore/Persephone spends in the underworld is non-contiguos it doesn't represent winter. Kore enters the underworld first when the seeds are planted, returns as harvestable corn, is harvested and returns to the underworld as corn stored in granaries and then returns to be consumed.
Since the granaries are emptied precisely to help farmers survive the parts of the year without food Demeter doesn't 'withhold' food during that part of the year. The hungry always rejoice WITH Demeter at the sight of Kore they don't blame her since without her grain was never planted in the first place.
@@AC-dk4fp will I understand where you're coming from I quite frankly disagree with you Demeter's part in this tale is to teach women how NOT to behave when their daughters are married off (AKA sold off) to older men that was predetermined by their fathers and grandfathers without the say or consent of the mother oftentimes within Greek society; especially among Athenians, girls who were married off oftentimes never saw their mothers again.
The point of the myth of Hades and Persephone, as I see it is to teach girls to accept their transition from maidenhood to Womanhood.
One of the earliest myths has Hades and Zeus deciding about who to take Persephone's hand in marrige the beginning of the story; with Zeus agreeing to allow Hades to pursue her without consulting Demeter or even Persephone herself; as is what happens in real life especially in the Hellenic world- mothers were rarely ever given the opportunity or chance to see their daughters again especially in where Homer is from, Athens.
I’m really glad this video exists.
Euripides: the Bacchae is the backdrop of ASOIF
The Hamiltoninification of history
I really appreciated the video. However, I struggle with any assertion that story belongs only to the culture in which it was first told. Writers tell stories because they are human, not because they are in love with their own culture and need people across the world to authentically understand it.
I’m far more deeply perturbed by some comments that advise people not to engage creatively with stories from any other culture than ‘their own’. I don’t believe it will do us any good as a species and as a global community to erect echo chambers above ‘our cultures’ and insulate them from each other. For a start, doing so is inherently prescriptive and risks flattening and, actually, self-colonising whatever one perceives to be one’s ‘own culture’.
That the big business of profitable storytelling is in the hands of relatively few people on earth, many of whom come from a handful of linked urban centres built upon the establishments which colonised the world, is certainly a big problem.
I think it is down to people like this video’s creator to point to that, and down to everyone to learn authentically about stories from elsewhere.
I do *not* think that, once we’ve learned about those stories, we should never engage with them, propogate them or use them to advance our and others’ understandings of the world. That sort of cultural tribalism will wreck our sense of shared humanity.
Don't take the video down. Too much good discussion, even amid all the snappish reactions in the comments!
This is such an amazing video, thanks for sharing it 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻💙
Note to self: if they have to point out how feminist it is in the description, it really is not that feminist 😭🙏
Wow you were able to say what I’ve been trying to put into words for so long in such an insightful and interesting way, I loved this video!
I'm so glad! Thank you so much💕
Really good video essay.
This is an awesome video! I knew I was in for a good watch when you cited the translator’s notes of all things. I love the analysis of Homer, as well as the classical retellings. Very perceptive understanding of women in these texts. I also enjoyed the point about colonialism at the end of the video. Great work!
Because Hades is a tumblr sexy man.
He is dark, brooding, mysterious, emotionally distant, vaguely goth, probably tall and skinny.
Like hades would just be your local hipster goth sadboi that’s somehow the king of the underworld.
Don’t get me wrong I like Hades but the Persephone/hades story is popular because it’s hits the lord Byronic sadboi tropes like a wrecking ball.
It’s the same reason Loki is popular, or why Draco Malfoy and Snape are popular.
The main issue with the genre is as you pointed out, the rampant cultural exploitation of ancient greece, and in similar vein, norse mythology as well. Our modern views cause us to lose our perspective of the reasons behind these ancient myths and we start to view them as an continuation of our own culture on which we can impose our ideas. We feel like these ancient European cultures are ours to be done with as we will, even though there are little actual connection between the cultures.
An excellent, thought-evoking video that touches on the hypocrisy of mythological rewriting, without attacking the authors at all. A fresh breeze for sure in a normally very polarized genre.
To be fair, that's always been the history of mythology. The Ancient Greek playwrights were 'appropriating' their culture's oral religious myths. In turn, the Romans reinterpreted the Greek myths to suit their purposes. The Medieval world did the same, then the Renaissance, and so on. Modern women writers are following a long and time-honoured legitimate tradition.
Could you explain what you mean when you say hypocrisy? In what way have they claimed something they don't live up to? They have not claimed to tell the ”true” story in any way, just their own version.
@@aliciabergman1252 I can't answer the specific question you asked, but I think that there's a problem when the retellings are the only version that we're exposed to. There's a risk of reinterpretations becoming the originals, and knowledge being lost over time. For example, I grew up with a version of the Persephone myth where Persephone picks a flower in a field that opens up a stairwell into the underworld and she willingly descends, becomes trapped after eating the pomegranate seeds, and becomes a powerful Queen of Hades and goddess of her own. I've seen this retelling and similar versions around the internet claiming that they're older versions of the myth and that the abduction part was added as Ancient Greece became more patriarchal; I haven't found a single modern academic source arguing for this though. I haven't found an Ancient Greek source for that version of the story either-- it's very likely that this version of Persephone's abduction was created during the mid-20th century as a feminist reclaiming of myth and history. These recenterings of women in myth were important for empowering women and it's a great story about claiming your power in life's darkest circumstances, but now 50-60 years later we're repeating it as if it's a fact that this is an Ancient Greek story.
@@perilouspigeon6613 isn’t that just the nature of stories, changing over time? For those wanting to know the originals they are available but overall stories change to reflect the time we live in. It’s a whole other thing entirely claiming to show ”the true story” of a historical event or person imo. The older version of Cinderella had very dark parts that have been cut out from most of the adaptations, they serve a purpose (mainly punishing the stepsisters) but are today viewed as too disturbing for children. I see nothing wrong with that so long as the original is available. As long as you’ve saved the family recipe that’s been passed down for generations nothing is lost by changing some ingredients when you want to make it💕
@aliciabergman1252 Family recipe??? Girl that's not your family though? And that's the point
May our stories never be retold after we’re gone.
I think one of the biggest problems with 'retellings' is that seem to separate mythology from history. When I took courses in university that involved mythology or prose or anything that the Greek used to express themselves, we learned the historical context as well. When we looked at pottery, we also looked at where the pot was found and how it may have been used, as well looking at the mythology featured on the pot. Mythology and history and intertwined and I think some retellings don't understand that.
As a Turkish woman studying Literature and has a hope to further her studies in Classics I don’t think any one culture or nationality as we define them today. I studied Norse mythology last fall. There aren’t as many sources as there were for my Greek and Roman mythology studies. And yet the similarities are there. In my final I argued that mythology belongs to humanity because if you look closely enough even in the cultures that differ the most there are mirroring. And with the state of extremely over-connected world no one, human or nation has a right to claim ancient mythology and say that only “they” have the right to produce work about said mythology. WITH THAT SAID exploiting any kind of source material is wrong but it is done. But putting cultural appropriation into THIS subject is not realistic. Because what’s happening is not cultural appropriation but something like exploiting a specific culture’s mythology. I see them as two different things.
I also wonder what the Greek writer Katerina Cosgrove (I have shitty memory I’ll edit her name in after I post) would be fine by me writing a Greek mythological retelling? After all I breathe the same sea and grew up in a relatively close culture, do my best to learn about the ancient language and actually study it.
Basically to say that these stories belong to and can only be retold/reimagined by their respective ancestors is well an invitation to extinction. Because put culture/stories etc in a vacuum and it’ll all die out eventually.
Edit: the writers name is added
Noo, why is this video unlisted... Pls don't do this, *this is a great video everyone should see it*
It founds its way into my feed, so I think it's not unlisted anymore
Came for interesting video, stayed for Rachmaninoff 2nd piano concerto
No rep for my boi Euripides? He was doing this before it was cool
Medea, Trojan Women, Helen, Iphigenia, etc (my favorite Euripides factoid is that we have a lot of his Η-beginning plays, which is the feminine definite article, because of the fire in the library of Alexandria and that one shelf being saved)
He is my boy
@@citrinedreaming Really? I haven't heard that. I try to be distrustfull of any Library of Alexandria narrative, seeing as most of it is so distanced and interested, but please let me know your source.
I think you make excellent points here that must be considered and understood by responsible readers. I do also, however, think that "reclaiming" the voices of "lost" women isn't so much about filling in the blank for narratives that never were (because, as you point out, they WERE there all along) so much as it is a reclamation of the myth teller's identity. I'm coming at this as a folklorist, not a Classicist, so bear with me because I approach them from a different theoretical framework.
If retellings now are entirely too feminist, then retellings in the postmodern era have been entirely too patriarchal because these ancient stories have been told primarily by men in the past several centuries. Pat Barker isn't writing in response to the ancient source material, she is writing in response to how Achilles has been adapted and his story retold by 20th and 21st century men. This inference is strengthened by the fact that the majority of her novels are not Greek retellings at all, but novels written in or about the 20th century. She is clearly a feminist author whose agenda is to claim the right to tell old stories in a way that represents her ideas, but in that regard she's cut from the same cloth as Margaret Atwood. Basically, from a folkloristic framework, feminist retellings are totally justified so long as they are genuinely intended to convey some truth that informs the audience about a communal identity and value system.
Madeleine Miller, Natalie Haynes, Jennifer Saint, etc on the other hand are all authors who deal almost entirely in Greek retellings. They all benefit from each other's works and haven't deviated from their focuses because Greek retellings are their bread and butter. Therein lies the rub. While some of these authors are really good, it's pretty obvious between their debuts and their follow up novels that they are writing feminist retellings because that is what publishers want to sell. I'm thinking of the difference between Song of Achilles and Circe, the latter of which didn't seem to have the same passion as the first (I have not read The Women of Troy by Barker yet, but it may also disappoint). There is no dearth of mythological characters to pull from, and I imagine that re-imagining these narratives from their perspectives is endlessly fascinating as a writer. But... eventually this means the narratives are voided of any meaning. They cease to offer opportunities for perspective, whether that is an 8th century BCE or 21st century CE perspective, because "feminist retelling" is what sells and what publishers demand even when it contradicts the original myth, the values of the readers, the intent of the writers, or disrespects the culture of origin. This brings up the next point: is it ethical to profit off these stories, or are they so old that they're truly ubiquitous?
I think this is a great question, but I don't think it's all that simple to answer because our conceptualization of colonialism comes out of postmodern thought and while useful, is problematic in its own right because it disregards (at least in this case) the long history of cultural/ethnic dissemination in Europe. I 100% agree that authors from Greece should be at the forefront of the genre. I also 100% agree that Victorian Hellenism was SUPER problematic and that Greece has been torn to shreds in the name of misappropriation in the modern era. However, I feel like we're veering dangerously close into essentialism if we're going to dismiss all Greek retellings that aren't written by Greeks because we can't pinpoint the exact motivation behind the dissemination of Greek culture to non-Greeks. Was the Greek teacher enslaved in Rome wrong to teach the Roman children about his culture, or were the slaves who heard the stories wrong to pass along those stories that they overheard from a fellow slave?
The fact of the matter is that these stories have existed in the European psyche for so long that we can't fairly project a postcolonial interpretation on the intent of ancient people whose histories and narratives are incomplete (I mean, I would KILL to read Euhemerus or Pytheas of Massalia). It's really impossible to parse out what has been taken and what has been offered in good faith. I think the conclusion of Cosgrove's article leaves us with as few answers as we started with, but a fine compromise to consider, "we should be thoughtful and humble, listening and approaching any culture’s myths with a healthy dose of respect, even dread and wonder." I think these authors do that, but I think it's fair to place responsibility on them and their publishers to draw attention to Greek writers, and we as the audience need to seek those authors out.
Anyway, seriously... great video. I'm only sending you an essay because I think you've posed an intriguing argument that got my little myth-loving heart racing and I love the dialogue.
My biggest problem with so-called feminist retellings is that they are often less feminist (or perhaps more accurately, less pointedly and specifically critical of specific issues) than the source material, particularly regarding the epics and plays. Euripides wrote incredible women, and the power of Medea’s Corinthian women speech will remain unmatched by retellers (imo) because he wrote something that resonates 2500 years later
@@citrinedreaming Oh, no doubt! But what we define as "feminist" also changes over time as we critically reconsider its basic premises and found new schools of thought. I think it's fine to call things out and debate whether something is beneficial from a universally feminist approach, I suppose. It's also fine to suggest that ideas from a bygone era are are feminist even if the source of that cultural artifact would not understand the concept and may even argue against it, but then feminist criticism also has to come on a case by case basis and disagreement in method needs to be acknowledged. Discussions like this are great because they're based on ethics and not objectivity.
@@lemueljr1496 absolutely! I agree completely. This comments section has been fun for that reason 😊
Love your thoughts here.
I’m an ex-medieval historian and have read plenty of medieval re-tellings of Greek myths, and they are all reflections of the values of their respective times and cultures. The same goes for these stories. They’re flawed in their own ways and although many readers probably won’t go on to seek the original material, some will. I think they’re a brilliant gateway.
This is an excellent comment, thank you so much for that interesting read!
This is beautiful.
As a French woman, these modern retellings are fascinating to me. In my country, we have many authors, sometimes dating back to the XVIIth century or earlier who wrote retellings of Greek mythology, especially from a woman's point of view (Jean Racine wrote plays about Phaedra or Andromaque for example), and these books are often mandatory readings in middle school and high school. Many of us grew up with these stories. I dare you to find a french student who hasn't read Jean Anouilh's play about Antigone for example. My personnal favourites are the plays of author Jean Giraudoux who wrote about Electra, and the Trojan War, and XXth century author Henri Bauchau's books about Antigone. Give it a read if you're interested, it's beautiful.
The women in Greek myth did have voices. Their voices did not match our modern standards for feminism, but they were absolutely there, and by pretending they didn’t exist, and writing books that give these women new voices, we have been the ones to silence them.
I am actually so sick of the "justice for Hades, he was actually amazing" campaign going on. They idolize a man who is not better than any other greek god and make his marriage with Persephoné a beautiful, romantic love story, which is false.
The only myth I can think of that he does something bad is the Persephone myth. Compared to most of the other gods, he's downright saintly by sheer volume.
I disagree, he is by no means as bad as the rest of the gods
The worst he did was beg Zeus to marry his daughter Persphone and Zeus said yes. It was an arranged marriage and Hades took her against her will but it was an arranged marriage and against your will is kind of the point
But line him up against Zeus, Posidon, Ares, Hermes and the rest by god he is much more of a stand up guy
@@cameronfield4617 Ares?
@@thebcwonder4850 God of war
@@thebcwonder4850 Kratos)))
Fantastic video. I'd never considered Greek mythology that way before.
love listening to smart people talk
I think a conversation around how Greek culture and history has been coopted to promote a government or empire's legitimacy since the Romans would be a worthwhile one, but equating Lord Byron carving his name into Greek ruins to retelling of Greek mythology is disingenuous. Greek myth is so popular because the West (i know, i know) has, like Rome, used ancient Greek ideals and optics to promote itself, and most people end up being born under the umbrella of its influence. I don't think you can go into a single town in America where there isn't a rendition of a blindfolded Justice in a courthouse. Greeks ("Greeks") colonized a lot of the Mediterranean and brought Greek myth to a lot of these places themselves, and a lot of the time we wouldn't have nearly as much information on Med. cultures and religions without Greek documentation of equating a local god to Ouranous, or Zeus, or Aphrodite, etc. Again, I just think that comparing Greek myth retellings to Elgin stealing the Parthenon Marbles isn't a fair comparison in the slightest, no matter how I personally feel about the nature and quality of the retellings that are popular right now.
I feel that the insistence that Greek myth remains insular and that anyone who is not Greek is participating in cultural appropriation by using motifs and stories that have utterly inundated our cultures is equivalent to the panic that people have around Rapunzel being cast as anyone who isn't white and blonde. Greek myth isn't a Disney property, mythology and fables and fairytales have been retold for millennia. It's kind of our thing as a species, to hear stories and repeat them with our own flair.
also Lord Byron helped us fight for our freedom so imo he kinda gets a pass as a real philhellene
Europe remembered the ancient Greek myths in the 15th century, which is a long time since antiquity. And the way they divorced these myths from Greek culture and Greek people and used it against them is peak appropriation.
bizarre that small yet relevant to interests video was shown to me by the vile yutub spirits but you are a good analyst, Ms. Alexandra. I do not feel misled.
haha, glad the algorithm's working well! Thank you so much😊
thank you for talking about anachronism and also the king must die! i think there's so many interesting contrasts between recently published retellings and the king must die... for example , i felt like the characters' belief systems felt so real for their day to day (even with something like characters claiming godly parentage), without the literal appearance of gods. is this book more faithful to the "original" or "true" story? who knows! but i like that it didn't pretend to be a more moral story or more "accurate" to some alleged one true version of the myth. a lot of modern retellings imply that they are the "correct" story which really is spreading misinformation... I often see people claiming now the REAL story of medusa or persephone was the ones in these ~empowering feminist~ novels, because it fits modern principles. the king must die is definitely not a perfect book, but really i feel like it is really valuable to read because it is such a stark contrast to what i see in more recent works.
I also think your analysis of TSOA was excellent; there's so many issues with asserting modern ideas about feminism and queerness onto the past, and trying to make the main characters more sympathetic to these ideals is actually doing more harm. in tsoa Briseis is friendly with patroclus and achilles so as not to make them look like villains, but then we lose her actual experiences of being a sex slave. the whole plotline of achilles picking girls out of the war spoils to save them rather than the reality of rape is honestly so vile to me.
There's a great paper by Edith Hall that discusses why there were so many women in Greek plays(~3:1 women to men) in spite of them not being able to attend the festival. Called the Sociology of Tragedy
Loved this! Wasn’t expecting to get such great insight and perspectives tonight from what was to me a random video on my feed from a smaller channel. Got hooked by an interesting title and enjoyed every minute of it. I really hope your channel blows up.
Wow, thank you so much! So glad you enjoyed it💛
this deserves many more views. as an actual greek person thank you for being respectul and actually knowledgeable about our history. i loved your video so so much. the last quote made me cry
wow, this means so much💜💜 thank you so much, I'm so glad you enjoyed it
I’m half Greek and this video helps to decide what book to read.
Greek mythology retellings take a special place in my heart. The first published work written in modern Ukrainian language was an Aeneid retelling (very humorous and filled with our culture), we are taught it in schools. Very important work.
The one question i have about the idea that the owners of the greek myths should be the greeks is.. who are the greeks? If the link is to the land, if that is the cultural core, are the turks inhabiting anatolia not just as valid inheritors? If its in a people continued and inhabiting a place where these concepts developed, arent the people of marseille, odessa and syracuse holders of this?
Theres a culture at the heart of every place, folklore pervades anywhere not recently emptied of people, and there are local nuances to stories which mean those version of those stories belong to those who live there. I feel very strongly that anyone uninvested is perhaps doing something colonial if they draw haphazardly from myth to market a book. But i feel that is an attack on the past, not on a modern people. Someone is obviosuly doing that if they choose to "retell" a local variation to their own advantage. But i take some issue with such a broad and variable concept as "greek myth" being drawn into ownership based on modern national boundaries.
Obviously the people with the closest links to the ancient greeks are the modern greeks, and they have a great claim to it (and certainly a more valid ine than anglophone empires who like neoclassical pillars on their museums) but ancient greek culture did not just become celebrated because of modern colonialism- it thrived because it *was* colonial, in an ancient sense, and consequently its seeds were all over europe. I'm definitely not arguing that ancient greek culture should be considered the inheritance of "European" or "western" culture in general, but that transference of ancient greek culture onto the nation of modern Greece is valid but too exclusive - it's definitely also the valid inheritance, in part, of everything from politics in the west to Buddhist philosophy.
Modern greece is full of its own cultural inheritance, much of it part of the body of greek myth, much of it more recent. Kandahar is an Alexandria. Perhaps valid heritors of the story of Alexander the Great are the people of Afghanistan? How about *specifically them and not anyone else*?
Ah yes:
The Yaas-sification of Greek myths.
One reason I adore the Hades and Persephone (original) myth is because it can, and should be, interpreted as unfair. Hades took a daughter away from her mother, just how death does in the real world, suddenly and without explanation. It's a story about a mother's grief, and the lengths she will go to to get her child back. It's not a booktok forbidden romance, and I feel like the themes being ignored so blatantly (especially by Lore Olympus, which as a Greek, apparently my opinion toward it doesn't matter) is a real shame.
Anyway, thanks for such a great video and thank you for speaking out about this issue as it's becoming more and more prominent. Excellent essay!
Whilst I like your sentiment I disagree with your symbol interpretations.
It is unfair because Zeus arranged the marriage of Hades and Persphone after Hades asked. And Hades isn't the god of death as there is a separate god for death so I wouldn't say Hades represents death
The story I think is more to reflect how Greek women were forced into marriage or kidnapped and their mothers were left alone
It's a nice sentiment but Hades never is a representation for death and I wouldn't equate an arranged marriage as the same as death unfairly snatching away your child. If that was the case it would be like if death spoke to god and asked for his permission for you to die
@@cameronfield4617 Hey, I'm Greek and we actually study the meaning behind our ancient myths in school and this is how it is widely interpreted. Our ancestors closely connected Hades with death itself, which is why he was a lesser worshipped entity.
@@iiredgm Oh perfect! From your perspective what role does Thanatos serve since he is the personification of Death? If you are taught in school that Hades is closely connected with death (which he is and I was not trying to imply he isn't, just that there is literally another character that personifies death), what role does Thanatos play if not death itself?
This isn't an attack btw, neither was my first comment. I am not saying you are wrong, I am just disagreeing with how you have interpreted the symbols. It's opinion and it's interpretive. Greek Mythology is taught professionally around the world and we all tend to gravitate to the opinions and interpretations of those who taught it to us. Being Greek and taught in this does make you have a keen insight that my western professors didn't have of course! But also doesn't mean every Greek person is above western professors and their views are the 'only, correct' interpretation. A random Greek person's opinion, who hasn't studied the primary sources, isn't autiomatically more correct than an American, Britain or Australian who has studied the texts all their life.
For instance, I am a Australian Historian, but I am not an Australian History Historian. I know very very little about my ancestors history but just because I am Australian I wouldn't say that an American who has studied my ancestors' history all their life shouldn't have opinions or interpretations different from mine just because I was born there. I am not saying you are this kind of person, you clearly are educated in this subject, I am just saying that being Greek doesn't make someone the utmost authority on Greek Mythology. That dangerous thinking leads to the hellscape that is American's interpretation and obsession with their own history. I can't tell you how many people have told me I am wrong about actual events in American history despite my years of study because they were born there and not having studied their own history. It also gatekeeps the wonderful history and culture that international folk want to learn more about. If we all said no one can have an opinion on our culture we come from because they aren't from there, then why bother learning about other people's cultures? Again not saying this is what you're saying but just needed to get that out there.
But all that aside, since you have an insight into the culture given that you are Greek which I don't/never can have I am very interested in your point of view on the role Thanatos played. How did he come up in conversations and discussions around death if you were taught that your ancestors closely related Hades to death as opposed to Thanatos?
One of my favorite books is a retelling of Eros and Psyche from her jealous sister's perspective by C.S. Lewis. Its called "Till We Have Faces" and I genuinely adore it and its characters.
I don’t think I’ve seen a video that deserved an instant subscribe in a long time, but THIS IS CERTAINLY ONE OF THEM. From research to analysis to presentation, this is magnificent! Thanks for making it!
I read feminist retellings back in the 90's. MZB wrote a retelling of the Illiad, and Kerry Greenwood (the Phryne Fisher author) wrote a series of feminist retellings that included books based on Medea, Elecktra and Cassandra. There were probably feminist retellings before then, but I went to uni in the early 90's, so that's when I first read them.
and some much better than the current crop :) I did read Firebrand but not Kerry's.
MZB did a feminist retelling of Arthur too that was heavily marketed for a decade. But the modern retellers are smart not to bring her name up lol