We, the myth.
This piece was originally written as an assignmet for the “Drama Studies” course at UTFPR. The goal was to compare two plays, Seneca’s Pheadra and Sarah Kane’s Phaedra’s Love, while trying to explain the different roles of tragedy in antiquity and nowadays. Maybe I went a little bit off topic…
When analyzing two plays built around the same myths and characters one must first think about why these “re-visitations” happen so often. Why these characters still matter centuries after their conception? Back in ancient times the myths were a form of orature, everyone knew these stories which were passed down from generation to generation. Since they were this early manifestation of artistic culture, they doubled as explanations for the physical world, but also as morality tales. So, when theater and drama came around, it was only natural these stories would be enacted. Everybody was familiar with these stories (before the “novel culture” became synonym with fiction), so when people went to theater, they wanted to see these tales performed not to find out what happens, but to have its emotional power magnified. Trough the years playwrights keep coming back to these myths, they were the basis of western culture as a whole and encapsulated many of the universal feelings and thoughts of humanity. As time went by these characters were kept alive (to the point of becoming more “real” than you or me) because they mean something, they are needed. Each and every time they are revived, they accumulate more and more meanings, more energy, more feelings. The mere name “Oedipus” carries along itself a burden of centuries, every single human who ever wrote or spoke of him built this idea of “Oedipus”. Hercules, Oedipus, Medea, Christ, Superman. These characters are vessels to their zeitgeist, but they last because of their universality of themes. Ever changing, ever remaining the same.
When Sarah Kane revives Phaedra on the verge of the 21st century it’s for a reason. Many authors helped build and deepen this myth. Phaedra is pain, Phaedra is suffering, Phaedra is the eternal fight between emotional and rational, between eros and pragma. Phaedra is many questions left unanswered all these years. Phaedra and Hippolytus tale is one of soft beliefs and hard truths. Humans don’t make that much sense. All of these meanings are inside this little name “Phaedra”, a woman who loved and died for it, or a woman who was obsessed and mad. Sarah Kane recontextualizes these universal anguishes and pits them against a society drastically changed from that of Seneca, or at least looks like it is. Is Phaedra’s story still relevant? What purpose serves the tragedy nowadays? Drama shows us humans pushed to their absolute limit, which we usually don’t see in our daily lives. We go to the theater to see humans perform their humanity to the fullest, to fulfill our deepest wishes, our deepest fears, our craziest revolutions, our greatest happiness, and our deepest sadness.
Phaedra returns after many cycles, after sexual repressions and liberations, after Christian love and “liquid” love, after the rise and fall of moralities, after the fall of truths. There’s no more destiny. There’s no more god(s). There is lust, there is alienation, there is egotism, there is apathy. Hippolytus doesn’t believe in anything anymore; he just doesn’t care. Phaedra isn’t victim of capricious gods anymore, she’s just human, she has desires which she doesn’t fully comprehend. So why keep on living if there’s no more myth to be consumed? No more tail for the snake to bite? Seneca’s and Kane’s Phaedras are different, they love and die differently, but they seek the same answer. Why do we love and suffer? Why do we care? Why do events take their course? Euripides, Seneca, Racine, Swinburne, Bang, D’Annuzio, Unamuno, Tsvetaeva, Yourcenar, Gilroy, Harrison, Espriu, Enquist, Kane, Mee. All of them wanted to tap on the power carried by the name Phaedra. Through art, explore humanity.
If in ancient tragedies the hero defied the gods/destiny and was punished for such, in modernity the scope is smaller, the stakes more commonplace, but still within the depths of human psych. The modern tragic hero acts on impulse, desiring what they can’t have, defying not only metaphysical entities or society’s laws, but themselves. In Euripides play, Hippolytus is punished by the gods for having a “wrong” lifestyle, in Seneca’s the gods are toned down, as they begin to become closer to universal concepts. Seneca’s Phaedra becomes more prominent in the play and we can clearly see her internal conflicts. She is still bound to the same fate as her mother, but now she has a louder voice to scream all of her suffering. She’s a captive of unhappiness, and Hippolytus, in all his glory, seems like the only way out. Sin is the only answer to the prison of her life.
When Kane’s Phaedra comes along, people have already been numbed by television. Capitalism has already fully stripped us from ourselves and we no longer feel anything. Vice and virtue are empty words. Even the meaninglessness of life has lost it’s meaning. Phaedra wants Hippolytus because that’s how the myth goes, or because he doesn’t care about society’s conventions, or because he’s the only man she can’t have. Things happen fast and there’s no time for explanations. These people are rotten to the bone, like us, like everyone. Royalty doesn’t mean anything; morality is a false savior. Why are you watching this? Go home. Go masturbate in your shitty dark den. There’s nothing left to tell. Look no further than the mirror. Kane’s play pokes fun at religion, at the government, at traditions, everything that tries to strip us from ourselves. Phaedra is looking for salvation in the impossible. And as Mark Russel puts in his brilliant graphic novel Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles (about a homosexual playwright in the McCarthyism era) “What is god but the furthest thing from your life you can imagine?”
When reviving these characters each author will pick a few characteristics that entice them and drastically change others. To Kane the core of Hippolytus’ figure is ignoring society’s expectations of him as a “man”. So, this Hippolytus isn’t only a misogynist, he’s more like a misanthrope, incapable of feeling anything. And that’s why, at the end of the play, he embraces death. Something has finally happened in the dullness of life.
In terms of the “tragic mistake” Phaedra and Hippolytus can be seen as a duo of tragic heroes. Their tale is inseparable and one’s fault is the other demise. In both versions Hippolytus is guilty of not wanting what he should want; and Phaedra is guilty of wanting what she shouldn’t want. Both heroes are crushed under the weight of their sins, be it by gods, destiny, or society.
In ancient Greece tragedy served as a reminder of the gods’ power. In ancient Rome one can interpret it as a morality tale, and in the 20th century it is, as Grant Morrison would say, “a bomb that destroys not objects, but certainties” aimed directly at your gut.
And may God help us all, because we surely are doomed.
“HAMM: We’re not beginning to… to… mean something?
CLOV: Mean something! You and I, mean something!
(Brief laugh.) Ah that’s a good one!”
― Samuel Beckett, Endgame
