Oresteia - stuff that definitely didn't belong in the book

Still busy again tonight, so I'll tell you a joke instead of doing any actual philosophy. I was talking last night about Aeschylus' Oresteia, which I discuss in the chapter on Euthyphro. I think it would be funny to do a retelling of the story of the Erinyes - a.k.a. the Furies - that stayed as true as possible to various Greek mythological sources, including Aeschylus' trilogy, while bringing you as close as possible to violating the indicia/trademarks for D.C. comics. (Obviously a bad idea for a textbook.) You can start with the wikipedia entry, and probably guess what I'm thinking. If you want to have it spelled out ...

OK, it goes like this. The Furies are these ... Bat ... women. They strike terror into the hearts of evil-doers, those with the blood of the innocent on their hands.They sometimes seem to fly in the night like bats; at other times they are described as falling heavily on criminals in the dark, dragging them down. They are great detectives, tireless and tenacious. They are darkly attractive, lithe, athletic and oddly scantily clad to the point of wardrobe malfunction (just look at traditional depictions of them) yet horrible of visage. Their origin: the murder of a family member - a mother or a father. (You could imagine mom and dad brutally murdered, coming home from the theater, for example. Just for example. An accessorizing mom. String of pearls.) And/or they are, in some sense, simply born out of the darkness.

But wait, there's more. The Furies are transformed from bloody, 'crime doesn't pay' vengeance spirits into rated-G 'good guys' - super-friendly spirits of justice, who protect all the innocent of the city, particularly women and children. They live in sort of a ... Batcavern, I guess you'd have to call it, under the Aereopagus. (No really. They are led down into a 'cavern' at the end of Aeschylus' trilogy. I'm not making this up. That's where they are supposed to set up shop, to protect and take care of those in the city.) But presumably Archon Gordonides can send some sort of appropriate signal when Athens is threatened, something bat-related perhaps. (It would stand to reason.)

So you posit a kind of 'comics code' change, regarding the name: Eumenides. You clean them up, take all the blood and killing out so they're ... safe for kids.

Also, these Bat Women, as it were, in their Bat Cave, as it were, aren't as powerful as the sky gods - that big strong, basically invulnerable guy who flies around; and that woman warrior, the somewhat mannish Amazon-type, you know the one. But these Bat Women are dark and determined and implacable about fighting crime the way they think it needs to be fought, and there are occasional clashes. (Retell The Oresteia as The Dark Knight Returns, basically.)

OK, so now you see why I didn't include any of these jokes in the book. But I do think it's genuinely quite striking the degree to which the elements can be lined up. It says something about how we think about vengeance and justice that this particular story would be reinvented. 

(I was going to do some cartoons for this post, but it would have gotten too silly, probably.)

Comments

[William Bruce]

Impressive indeed. That sounds like one hilariously long Jungian archetype gone on a rampage.

Of course, that evokes the question of whether an "archetype" can be so ...specific.

[jholbo]

I think I would chalk this one up to a rather natural, hence easy-to-hit-on-independently set of ideas about vengeance and justice, plus bizarre coincidence (based on the basic observation that bats are sorta scary). But I do think that writing a mini series worth of 'Detective Stories' tales from the point of view of the Bat Women, fighting crime on the mean streets of Athens, and occasionally interacting with the other gods, would be quite hilarious.

[William Bruce]

I suspect you are right -- and it would be riotous indeed.

Now, to make that snake hair work for you...

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