strange_complex | Entries tagged with greek religion

I've got a chum coming round to watch films tomorrow afternoon, so I'd better get on top of my write-up back-log first.

This one was a filmed version of this opera, produced by the Radius Opera company, which I went to see primarily because my colleague Emma Stafford provided the composer with her expertise in Greek mythology when he was writing it, but also because I had heard that the music was very Handelian, which I like, and which turned out to be entirely true. The film was premiered at the University of Leeds, which made it easy for me to go to, and indeed Emma, the young man who had played Hephaestus, the music director and the composer all took part in a Q&A led by one of the academics from the School of Music before the film itself began:

I am not actually 100% sure who the director of the film, as opposed to the opera, was, but Tim Benjamin was the composer, so it seems only fair to credit him in the title of my post. It should be said anyway that the film is far from just a film of an ordinary theatrical performance of an opera. It was fully re-staged and re-shot, with a prelude sequence and cameras moving around the characters in a way you couldn't do when also trying to perform for a theatre audience. Indeed, Emma herself featured in the prelude sequence as a refugee after a disaster hearing stories from a mysterious stranger about what had happened on Olympus a few years ago...

The main story is basically the tale of the brothers Prometheus and Epimetheus, and their rather inept attempts to steal fire from Zeus. They appear early on as quasi-Occupy Wall Street or Extinction Rebellion-style activists who have sneaked into Zeus' palace and are looking for ways to cause chaos. While there, they discover his Fire, kept in a jar - to Zeus, just a pretty toy, but they quickly realise its potential value if taken from him. Before long, however, Prometheus is captured and tortured by Hephaestus, who is basically the head of Olympus' secret police with a Naziesque military coat and knee-high leather boots to match

For me, the most enjoyable character was Zeus. He was a big, bearded thundering baritone, playing an authoritarian leader who understands exactly how to manipulate his people. He had a repeated refrain which articulated this perfectly, basically expressing his pleasure at Prometheus and Epimetheus' activism on the grounds that it will give him an excuse to crack down, which it went like this:

A crisis! An opportunity to demonstrate authority,
To reassure the people, and exercise control.
To talk about community, and praise the role of family,
Be firm, be fair, show strength to the prole.

I went round singing that to myself for several days afterwards. :-)

Crossposts: https://strange-complex.livejournal.com/657619.html

Bit of a random one, this - it's an Eighth Doctor audio which I spotted being broadcast on BBC7 a couple of weeks ago, and made the effort to listen to since it clearly involved a hefty element of Classical receptions.

The story is not actually set in the Classical past. Rather, it is an example of what

swisstone dubs 'appropriation' - that is, a story about a fictional society which has consciously modelled itself on a real past culture.

( Spoilery plot summary )

It's a short and fairly simple story, whose basic plot elements are recognisable from multiple other SF stories (Doctor Who and otherwise). Arguably, the Classical aspect isn't doing anything very much more here than it is in Underworld or The Horns of Nimon - that is, lending a veneer of intrigue and sophistication to what would otherwise be a fairly unremarkable story. But I think it would unfair to go quite that far.

For one thing, the use of a Greek setting serves the useful purpose of helping the audience to grasp the relationship between the original colonists and their clones. The plot requires a) that the difference between the original colonists and their clones (or descendants) is clear and b) that we understand that the original colonists have succeeded in establishing control over everyone else on the planet by means of cynical deception. The Greek mythological setting achieves both of these things - casting the original colonists as gods does make their elevated status clear, and offer a plausible explanation for why nobody is questioning or challenging them.

The specific choice of ancient Greek culture to help convey all this makes sense, since it serves dual purpose as a society which did accord great reverence to a multiplicity of gods, but is also associated with great scientific thinking, so that it doesn't seem too weird to find mind-transfer technology incorporated into it. It also adds a valuable extra layer to the relationship between 'Zeus' and 'Hera', the most powerful of the original colonists. They are amusingly snippy with one another, and Zeus has a keen eye for the pretty girls. But for all that, they have been together for centuries, through a succession of cloned bodies. I felt that the Classical veneer really helped to flesh out that idea out by reference to the similar relationship between their mythological namesakes.

So, as an example of Classical receptions it worked for me. Along the way, it constituted my first introduction to Lucie Miller, whom I hadn't met before. She seemed quite good fun - a modern, no-nonsense woman rather along the lines of Donna Noble, who is very ready to question and challenge what other people are doing. Paul McGann seems as good as ever as the Eighth Doctor - and I've used the opportunity to make a new icon in his honour. I look forward to another opportunity to use it once I get my hands on his upcoming story, An Earthly Child - especially having seen The Dalek Invasion of Earth so recently.

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