Theater Of War
December 12, 2017 9:56 PM Subscribe
The Healing Power of Greek Tragedy: Do plays written centuries ago have the power to heal modern day traumas? A new project raises the curtain on a daring new experiment [Smithsonian Magazine lengthy article, lightly discusses PTSD from war or police violence]
There's something about the focus on insisting that the plays are relevant to our interests today that bothers me.....perhaps it's that it tends to normalize our wars by attempting to connect them to something purportedly universal.
posted by thelonius at 11:25 PM on December 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by thelonius at 11:25 PM on December 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
it tends to normalize our wars by attempting to connect them to something purportedly universal.
Just because something is universal doesn't make it right. And just because something is traumatic and universal, but happened in the past, doesn't make it irrelevant. Tragedy is precisely that – tragedy – because we are faced with the reality that we cannot deny it. You can't run away from it, you can't wish it were different, it's there, it is real, and as such it is part of the human condition. Many of the things that lead to tragedy – war, murder, abuse, rape, etc. – are indeed avoidable, or in the case of illness or accidents, random, and that's precisely what makes them tragic.
This sounds pretty healthy: “Seen through this lens,” he continues, “ancient Greek drama appears to have been an elaborate ritual aimed at helping combat veterans return to civilian life after deployments during a century that saw 80 years of war. Plays like Sophocles’ Ajax read like a textbook description of wounded warriors, struggling under the weight of psychological and physical injuries to maintain their dignity, identity and honor.”
Calling it what it is, the tragedy of war, is a good thing. It's a lot more worrisome when depression, PTSD, etc. are shoved aside or treated as something people just need to use their bootstraps for. It is possible to survive trauma, recognize that it was traumatic and tragic, and live life as a whole person. It's much more complex than the victim versus survivor narrative that has somehow gained traction in the past decade (I often suspect as a facile tool to keep power in the hands of the powerful, but that would be a digression).
My favorite stories for that acceptance of tragedy and continuation of life are those along the theme of The Girl With No Hands. Her father sells whatever is in his courtyard to a strange man in exchange for all the gold he wants – except his young daughter is in the courtyard when he does that, and the strange man is the devil. The devil comes asking for his due, and the father tries to give her over (now, one of the keys of reading these stories is to ask yourself, what the hell kind of father would make that kind of mistake and just go along with it – "oh so this is the devil and I fucked up, welp, bye now daughter you'll just have to go with the devil while I get all the gold I could ever want!"). The daughter refuses, father threatens to chop off her hands if she won't go, she starts crying, he chops her hands off (yep), her tears clean her hand stumps. The devil – the devil!!! – says "nope won't take her now." The daughter says a polite version of "piss off you asshole dad I'm leaving" and goes to wander the world, alone and without any hands.
She survives and thrives. That doesn't make asshole dads acceptable. It reflects reality – we women get treated like objects and mutilated and are faced with choices that involve living life mutilated. That's reality. Nothing is done to normalize the father – except by readers who don't ask themselves what the father did wrong.
Always remember that you can ask what could have happened differently to change a tragedy into something else.
posted by fraula at 1:44 AM on December 13, 2017 [4 favorites]
Just because something is universal doesn't make it right. And just because something is traumatic and universal, but happened in the past, doesn't make it irrelevant. Tragedy is precisely that – tragedy – because we are faced with the reality that we cannot deny it. You can't run away from it, you can't wish it were different, it's there, it is real, and as such it is part of the human condition. Many of the things that lead to tragedy – war, murder, abuse, rape, etc. – are indeed avoidable, or in the case of illness or accidents, random, and that's precisely what makes them tragic.
This sounds pretty healthy: “Seen through this lens,” he continues, “ancient Greek drama appears to have been an elaborate ritual aimed at helping combat veterans return to civilian life after deployments during a century that saw 80 years of war. Plays like Sophocles’ Ajax read like a textbook description of wounded warriors, struggling under the weight of psychological and physical injuries to maintain their dignity, identity and honor.”
Calling it what it is, the tragedy of war, is a good thing. It's a lot more worrisome when depression, PTSD, etc. are shoved aside or treated as something people just need to use their bootstraps for. It is possible to survive trauma, recognize that it was traumatic and tragic, and live life as a whole person. It's much more complex than the victim versus survivor narrative that has somehow gained traction in the past decade (I often suspect as a facile tool to keep power in the hands of the powerful, but that would be a digression).
My favorite stories for that acceptance of tragedy and continuation of life are those along the theme of The Girl With No Hands. Her father sells whatever is in his courtyard to a strange man in exchange for all the gold he wants – except his young daughter is in the courtyard when he does that, and the strange man is the devil. The devil comes asking for his due, and the father tries to give her over (now, one of the keys of reading these stories is to ask yourself, what the hell kind of father would make that kind of mistake and just go along with it – "oh so this is the devil and I fucked up, welp, bye now daughter you'll just have to go with the devil while I get all the gold I could ever want!"). The daughter refuses, father threatens to chop off her hands if she won't go, she starts crying, he chops her hands off (yep), her tears clean her hand stumps. The devil – the devil!!! – says "nope won't take her now." The daughter says a polite version of "piss off you asshole dad I'm leaving" and goes to wander the world, alone and without any hands.
She survives and thrives. That doesn't make asshole dads acceptable. It reflects reality – we women get treated like objects and mutilated and are faced with choices that involve living life mutilated. That's reality. Nothing is done to normalize the father – except by readers who don't ask themselves what the father did wrong.
Always remember that you can ask what could have happened differently to change a tragedy into something else.
posted by fraula at 1:44 AM on December 13, 2017 [4 favorites]
perhaps it's that it tends to normalize our wars by attempting to connect them to something purportedly universal.
It shows how war evokes universal negative emotional responses. That's not normalizing war, that's showing how war has been horrible across millennia. That these plays have been around for 2500 years or more and we haven't learned the lessons they provide only shows that what is normalized is the lack of wisdom on behalf of humans as a species.
posted by hippybear at 6:52 AM on December 13, 2017
It shows how war evokes universal negative emotional responses. That's not normalizing war, that's showing how war has been horrible across millennia. That these plays have been around for 2500 years or more and we haven't learned the lessons they provide only shows that what is normalized is the lack of wisdom on behalf of humans as a species.
posted by hippybear at 6:52 AM on December 13, 2017
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posted by grobstein at 10:10 PM on December 12, 2017