On Euripides'Medea

"Greek tragedy is mostly about dysfunctional families. Discuss with reference the Medea." -an essay topic from an obscure university that I shamefully call mine

One very late and sleepless night, I was systematically channel surfing and dosing off simultaneously. Suddenly, a screen full of savage, hooting people jolted me from my semiconscious state. I squinted and soon realised I was faced with the notorious "Jerry Springer Show." So I rolled my eyes, and was about to turn off the television when a cheesy magenta caption appeared: "Lesbian lovers confront their mates about recent infidelity." A funny little grimace stole onto my face, and before I knew it, my bloodshot eyes were fixed on the screen as if following the order of some mystical media god. Although, in my logical mind, I knew this was going to consist of typical fighting, rejects calling each other names, recounting their sordid lives as if they were normal, and in the end still not embracing the fact that they are immersed in obscure turmoil. But what can I do? It's interesting to see what they will say next! The fact is, things out of the ordinary of daily routine, like dysfunctional families and their relationships, are what grasps the attention of people. This does not make me or anyone else sadistic, even if I do watch talk shows just to be able to say "My problems are minimal compare to that person's." Upon reflection, this is an old scheme that playwrights have used since the ancient times to produce memorable plays, which have elevated their authors to immortal status in the collective memory. Why is the play "Oedipus" still studied? Why do we find Hamlet so fascinating? Why are people addicted to soap operas? Why are new talk shows being mass-produced like so much baloney? The answer is simple and crude: They are all fucked up, and that interest me more than anything I've done today.

The typical ancient Greek family was not all that of the present day ménage. Their society upheld the idea of a nuclear family consisting of husband, wife and children. A man married in hopes to have legitimate children who will care for him in his old age and inherit his holdings. While the man of the house executes his profession, participate in politics, and met his friends, women had the management of the entire household which includes raising the children, prepare the food, keep family financial accounts, direct household slaves, and weave cloth or make clothing. Monogamy ruled in ancient Greece, with the exception that citizen men could have sexual relations without penalty with slaves, foreign concubines, female prostitutes, or willing pre-adult citizen males. For the female, however, no such freedom existed, and adultery carried harsh penalties and disgrace. Euripides's "Medea" grieved this inequality to women.

So, like today, when a play incorporates family ambiguity and abnormalities, people would be bound to look upon it with as much interest and surprise as they would on the present day case of the Menendez brothers.

Let me point out just how many famous plays of ancient Greece use this element of dysfunctional families and relationships. We have the ultimate buffet of interfamily eccentricity in various works of Sophocles. There is "Oedipus"(407 [?] BC) who killed his father, married his mother, and had four children with her. Closely related is "Antigone" (442 BC), one of Oedipus's daughters. She, after her brothers Polynekes and Eteocles killed each other in battle, buries Polynekes in his homeland against all commands of her uncle Kreon who is now King of Thebes. When Kreon finds out this disobedience, he ordered Antigone to be buried alive, ignoring the plea of his son Aimon, Antigone's husband to-be, who, after his fiancée's death, kills himself. Kreon's wife Euridice, hearing her son's suicide, kills herself too. That is something one doesn't even hear on "Jerry Springer" is it? Later on, Euripides, the youngest playwright carried on the torch of using this element of family breakdown. Among his great feats were three closely related plays "Hecuba" (424 BC), "Andromache" (427-424 BC) and "Orestes" (408 BC). One of Euripides's most exciting plays in study is, however, "Medea" (431 BC) in which more than troubles of the family are exhibited.

"Medea" is one of Euripides's earliest plays, and portrays one of the most amazing heroines in Greek tragedy. Euripides's attempt at telling the rapid downfall of this nuclear family in a straight forward, almost relentlessly demeanor did not make this a very popular play at the time. Medea betrays her country Colchis, kills her own brother Apsyrtos to prevent the pursuit of her father all for the love of Jason with whom she married and fled. For this love, she spilt the blood of her own kinsman. She then helped Jason kill his uncle Pelias who had originally agreed to surrender the kingdom of Iolkos, but did not honor the promise. In a lenient light, Pelias was, at least, not a blood relation to Medea, but is to Jason. So here, it is discovered that Jason isn't exactly a family man either. This lack of family value instilled in both takes a turn for the worst as Jason and Medea drifted to Corinth, and seeing the opportunity, Jason married the royal princess Glauke. But wait, what about his marriage vows to Medea, and their two children? As Jason interprets it, the alliance with the princess was merely "political" and would, in the long run, make life easier for both Medea and he. Medea, blind with rage of love forsaken and vows broken, seeks the blackest revenge. She murders the princess and her father by way of venomous clothing, but this was only expected. But her ultimate plan to injure Jason veered quickly and sharply towards irrationality and rejection of all her instincts of motherhood, womanhood, and humanity -she killed her own children! It does seem to follow the fast destruction of family structure with Jason breaking his vows, taking another wife, and abandoning his children and their mother. And it should be apparent (maybe not to Jason) that, with her evident disdain for family values, Medea would be capable of something so deviant as killing her children when rage and pride prompts her. Medea has extreme irony lavished upon her in that she betrayed her family, and she is, in her turn, betrayed as well. She stripped of everything: home, status, pride, and love, after all the unspeakable things she had sacrificed for Jason. Her children were the products of this lie, deception, and all those things that love should not be based on. They were the quintessential element of reminder that Medea had been foolish trusting Jason.

In the beginning of the play, Medea's nurse is heard to remark:

Jason was the one that instigated this domino effect of the downfall of family principles, and Medea followed through with the rest. She had three very good reasons to kill her sons, albeit none of them rational. Firstly, she was revenging herself on Jason in the most painful way possible, since killing the children would mean no heirs to take care of him in his old age and Medea knew the princess was not going to be alive to bear him any sons.

Secondly, she was severing all ties with Jason and killing all she loved and hated of him, namely the children, of whom these two emotions were symbolic. Jason realized this rather late at the end of the play.

Thirdly, she was essentially saving her children from a life of illegitimacy, and the pain of being without honorable status. In the following quote, Medea is saying that she will be saving her children from the misery that she shall suffer by living on.

But Medea's capabilities to actually personally slaughter her children with her own bare hands make her an extraordinary, almost inhuman, woman. Her ascent in the dragon chariot promotes her to a goddess, thus immortal.

Now, I don't know what the panels of Judges were thinking at the Festival of Dionysus, but Medea is an excellent play in which Euripides displayed exceptional skill at using this classic element of dysfunctional family. The shocking and the grotesque truth "Medea" reveals that no families are perfect might have been a little too realistic for those in denial. The Greeks can't avoid family dysfunction in their daily lives; the gods they worship practice this sort of squalid activity. They fight one another, exercise polygamy, and marry their sisters, why would the mortals be any better? But looking at it from the plot's point of view, logically there would have been no story had Jason and Medea had a normal conceptions of family life. If Medea didn't abandon her father and go with Jason, the story would end with Jason going back to Iolkos without the fleece. If Medea did not pursue Pelias's daughters to kill him, perhaps Pelias's son would not have exiled them, and thus Jason would have stayed faithful to Medea. , and the story would end or take another turn. And had Jason not been a complete inconsiderate sod and abandon Medea for Glauke's dowry, they would have lived on in Corinth as nothing more than famous commoners. But "Medea" is not exactly "Full House," and I'm glad it's not because Bob Saget is a real loser.

In about 30 years, I will be writing my autobiography. I hope by then I will have led a dysfunctional enough of a life to allow my book to be a best seller. If not I wouldn't have something to write about let alone an audience to help me pay the publication costs.