Medea and other rants
Recently, I had cause to go back and watch Euripides’ Medea and consider the issue of misogyny. Also recently, a spotlight was shone onto a quagmire of nasty misogynistic behaviour behind closed doors at the highest level of power in the country. I am not saying that what is being played out in Canberra today is what Euripides presented on stage in 5thC BCE Athens. Rather, I suggest that we haven’t moved very far in terms of attitudes to women and power. And that makes me as angry as Medea.
As a teacher of girls, I educate and send young minds out into a wold that has been constructed by the patriarchy over millennia. I have watched powerful and ambitious women being demonised and bullied, paid less for the same work and criticised for speaking about the inequalities. We see victim blaming, gaslighting and identity-protective cognition all at work to ensure that the established culture is affirmed while all else is diminished and then dismissed. And they wonder why there is outrage? Medea style outrage!
5thC Athenian men made no apologies for the lack of equal rights for women in society. Euripides’ play presents a strong and fearless character who strikes back against the men who do her wrong. The ending is brutal, even for modern audiences, but we are left wondering: who is really at fault for the ending? And I wonder why a male playwright would choose this material for his play? Was he making a serious social comment about social inequality in 5th C BCE Athens by casting a woman as the lead character? Or was he affirming the established cultural norms about women? I wonder what the audience made of the ending? If ever we needed Gogglebox, it was at the performance of this play!
This rant has no ending until there is affirmative action to address the inequalities that women of all backgrounds confront every single day. Coming to some sort of understanding about Medea also has no ending. each time I watch it, I am more outraged. That out 5thC BCE male Athenian playwright can still hold an audience says volumes for the message in the play and the state of the world today. Why don’t you check it out: Medea by Euripides
Let me know what you think!
