Medea vs The O.C.

I was recently fortunate enough to spend a few months in Greece soaking up both the sun and culture. As a former classics student, when I made my way to Athens, I could not turn down the opportunity to walk through the famous Theatre of Dionysus. While pacing the stage where actors performed the plays of Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus, I could not help wondering if dramas have evolved in the last two thousand years.

The "surprising twists" of our favourite TV dramas often find their origins in the words of the celebrated authors of the past. TV shows are rife with the family feuds, salacious schemes, and horrific homicides that ancient Athenians would find familiar.

The Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus hits all the high points of drama: adultery, murder and family curses. The trilogy tells the story of the destruction of the legendary House of Atreus. Throughout the plays, members of the family murder each other in a vengeful cycle that eventually culminates in the appearance of the Erinyes. These chthonic deities seek to avenge murder. Often considered the father of drama, Aeschylus's influence on modern drama cannot be overlooked. Even the most far-fetched aspects of the trilogy, the Erinyes aka the Furies, have their counterparts on modern TV shows.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer featured characters beyond the norm, so it makes sense that it would incorporate this deistic element from Aeschylus's famous trilogy. Anya, a bona fide member of the Scoobie gang, is clearly Joss Whedon's equivalent of the Furies. Although she is mortal for a majority of her time on Buffy, her introduction in Season Three episode "The Wish" is as Anyanka, a vengeance demon. Although Anya's niche is scorned women (someone Medea would most likely get on with), Whedon makes it clear that many other vengeance demons respond to other injustices. No doubt in ancient Greece Anyanka would have answered to the plaintive cries for the Furies to exact their revenge. Even so, Whedon's vengeance demon does not appear to be much of an evolution of the ancient story. It seems that we are again obliged to merely recycle the ancient's stories.

Although Buffy is one of the most obvious cases, similar characters have been featured on many other TV dramas. It is clear that many supernatural elements of the ancient Greek dramas are present within our fave TV shows.

Sophocles gave western society one of the most infamous acts of sexual perversion in his Theban plays. Poor Oedipus was destined, according to the oracle at Delphi, to kill his father and marry his mother. Despite his parents' attempts to avoid such a travesty, the oracle's prediction comes to fruition. The sexual relationship Sophocles presented in Oedipus Rex between a mother and son has remained influential on western society. Not only did it inspire one of Freud's most controversial theories, the Oedipal Complex, but it has also made repeated appearances in our social narrative.

Although our society still considers this incestuous relationship taboo, it rears its ugly head in many of popular TV dramas. The third season of Boston Legal featured a five-episode arc with guest stars Katey Sagal and Ashton Holmes as a mother and son with an equally complicated relationship. Throughout the five episodes there are hints and innuendo that all is not right between parent and child. The cringe-worthy truth is revealed in the final episode, "The Verdict," when they share a passionate embrace.

Audiences in ancient Athens no doubt would have found a similar embrace between Jocasta and Oedipus equally upsetting. Although the story has been modified, the fundamental elements of sexual perversion, jealousy and homicide remain consistent.

Euripides' Medea features not only a notorious act of homicide, but also a scenario that would be recognizable to all dramatic patrons. After Medea's husband, Jason, abandons both their marriage and their children for a younger woman, Medea is sent into a spiral of revenge sparked by insanity. She eventually resolves to poison Jason, his new bride, and their children. Her rage-filled madness is like a car crash; it is revolting and compelling, rendering witnesses unable to tear their eyes away from the carnage. The story of a spurned lover remains one of the most common plots throughout western fiction.

Although many of the hottest TV dramas feature bitter and scheming women driven to revenge by the mistreatment of a lover, Julie Cooper of The O.C. fame may be the modern embodiment of the ancient archetype. She plotted many wicked schemes throughout the four seasons of this fave TV drama that could hold their own with Odysseus's wily ploys.

It is her relationship with Caleb, however, that proves worthy of Medea comparisons. In the second season Caleb attempts to end his marriage with Julie, who refuses to take his abandonment lying down. After many intrigues, Julie finally settles on a plan: poison.

Like Medea, Julie Cooper would rather kill her husband than face his rejection. Unlike Medea, however, she fails to fulfill her devious plan to mix sleeping pills with Caleb's drink. Contrary to appearances, this reversal may not indicate any evolution of the familiar account. Instead it may even denote a demotion in the narrative. It is possible that the producers did not want to make an established and central character a murderess, thereby ensuring that even Julie Cooper lost any chance for sympathy. If Julie had committed murder, her plots would have taken a new edge that could have caused her to lose any appeal to viewers, a risky choice for a hot show in its second season.

In the end we must question if we are destined to merely repeat the cycles and stories of the ancients. Although it has been over two thousand years, the characters and narratives of the ancient dramatists continue to be used and manipulated to fit our hottest TV dramas. Has drama evolved at all since it debuted at the Theatre of Dionysus?

Related:

Greek symbolism in The Boondock Saints.

What would the ancient Greeks have made of Spike and Angel's relationship?

Strong is Fighting: BtVS's "Amends"

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B Blom

March 09, 2010

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The Wire

Excellent article. I read this quote in a New Yorker interview with David Simon, the creator of "The Wire," the Baltimore-based crime drama:

“We ripped off the Greeks: Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides. Not funny boy — not Aristophanes. We’ve basically taken the idea of Greek tragedy and applied it to the modern city-state....What we were trying to do was take the notion of Greek tragedy, of fated and doomed people, and instead of these Olympian gods, indifferent, venal, selfish, hurling lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no reason — instead of those guys whipping it on Oedipus or Achilles, it’s the postmodern institutions [of the police and political bureaucracy, crime organizations, media companies]...those are the indifferent gods.”

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