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Thursday, May 13, 2021
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
“Ariadne” by Jennifer Saint is, at
first, a retelling of the Greek myth of
Theseus, but it doesn’t stay that way
for long. Saint has not written another
tale of men performing great feats of
bravery and strength, but a portrait of
the lives left devastated in their callous
wake. The women that fill these pages
are painted with an incisive brush, the
result of which is female characters
that are full of nuance and complexity
rarely afforded to historical women.
Saint takes a well-known myth that
exalts the exploits of men and draws
from it a stunning story of female
resilience and solidarity.
For those unfamiliar with the myth
of Theseus, the basic premise is as
follows: Theseus is an Athenian prince
and demigod who travels to Crete to
slay the minotaur, a monster that dwells
in the labyrinth and feasts on live
human sacrifices brought from Athens.
The princess of Crete, Ariadne, betrays
her father to help Theseus on this quest.
Theseus, having freed the Athenians
from the horror of sacrificing their
children, goes on to become the king of
Athens and a legendary hero. Even for
most of us who know the story, Ariadne
fades into obscurity as soon as Theseus
is no longer in need of her assistance.
Jennifer Saint is determined to change
that — to carve a place for women
amongst tall tales of men’s heroics and
glory.
This book does not shy away from
explicitly feminist themes. The early
lives of the two female protagonists
(Ariadne and her younger sister,
Phaedra) are entirely defined by
the whims of proud, power-hungry
men, from their father King Minos to
Poseidon himself. They feel themselves
to be little more than tools, important
only as a means by which to further
the ambitions and desires of men.
But though they know themselves to
be helpless in the face of the world’s
demands, they struggle to resign
themselves to this fate. As a young
woman, Ariadne swears to never go
down without a fight, to never be the
broken victim she sees in her mother:
“I would be Medusa, if it came to it, I
resolved. If the gods… came for me to
punish a man’s actions, I would… wear
that coronet of snakes, and the world
would shrink from me instead.”
It is this resoluteness, then, that
motivates her to help Theseus. She
isn’t just lovestruck, as is commonly
depicted (though she’s certainly that
too) — she’s also desperate to claim her
own destiny and to escape from under
the crushing thumb of her father. She
falls hard and fast, not just for Theseus’s
handsomeness and bravery, but for the
possibilities he presents to her. And
though she is foolish in her trust more
than once, as she readily admits in
hindsight, she is equally fierce in her
loyalty to her fellow women and her
love and protection of the vulnerable
and suffering. This is her strength,
and though she does not wield a club
to crush monsters or gallivant through
cities parading her godly heritage as
Theseus does, it easily rivals Theseus’s
power in its own, quiet way. Ariadne
develops into a hero in her own right,
and in doing so she challenges our
assumptions about who and what
heroes have to be and want.
Phaedra, on the other hand, is
stubborn and daring; if she had been
born a boy, she would have been the one
slaying monsters. She is determined
to make her mark on the world and
incapable of watching as it passes her
by, even while inexorably relegated to
the sphere of hospitality and childcare.
Just a girl when the story begins, she,
too, finds a way to loosen the ropes
that bind her to her lowly station of
“woman.” But try as they might, and
despite their differences, each sister
will learn in turn that they can never
truly be free of them.
“Ariadne” toys with the heart and
stomach. Horror, dread and anger — so
much anger — are interspersed with
relief and joy in a loop that grinds to a
halt only in the very last paragraph.
Ariadne and Phaedra feel real, even
though
their
life
circumstances
are so fantastical. They are at once
surrounded by gods and magic and
torn by the same forces women across
the world and throughout time have
been burdened with. They know the
unsteadiness of finding one’s own two
feet and the determination to take
fate by the reigns anyway.
What the modern blockbuster can learn from ‘Interstellar’
The current state of the moden
blockbuster can be a bit tricky to pin
down at the moment. Due to the fact
that most big-budget projects have
been pushed back into the next couple
of years, only a handful of blockbusters
have been released over the past year
or so. But those few releases are still
able to key us into where the genre is
headed. Almost all were sequels or
remakes for existing films, and the
reception settled around a consensus of
“it’s good to distract from the world, but
it could be so much more.”
This has been a trend for a while
now. Of the thirty most expensive
movies ever made, just one is not based
on a pre-existing property (though you
could say two if you don’t count the
Rapunzel fairytale). It is very clear what
Hollywood’s money is being pumped
into, and from a business perspective
it makes sense. If you’re going to spend
hundreds of millions of dollars making
a film, you want to be sure people want
to see it, and one of the easiest ways to
do that is by basing it off of something
that already exists and people enjoy.
It’s worked out well so far for the
studios, as only about three of the films
could really be considered failures (all
by Disney who has more than made
up the profits). They don’t really care
that the reception among critics and
audiences ranges from “that was bad”
to “that was surprisingly good.” As long
as the money keeps rolling in, they’ll
keep putting most of their eggs in safe
baskets.
Not to respark the Scorsese vs.
Marvel debate, but his criticisms
are relevant to discussions about the
medium of film as an art form. Most
of the money in the film industry isn’t
currently going into art, it’s going into
products. Studios aren’t interested in
telling meaningful stories or pushing
the technical limits of film, they are
solely interested in making money. And
when you’re solely interested in making
money, you’re much less likely to take
chances on films that don’t satisfy the
largest demographic possible.
But original films that take big risks
can be very successful. Up until 2019,
the two highest grossing films of all
time were “Avatar” and “Titanic”,
two original films that pushed the
boundaries of what was possible with
film technology at the time. Sure, the
hit rate might not be as high, and the
return isn’t always going to be as much
as an Avengers film, but if invested in
and marketed well, these riskier films
can be very successful commercially
and critically.
Unfortunately, at the moment, these
films and potential filmmakers aren’t
being given the chance. Apart from
James Cameron — who directed the
aforementioned highest grossing films
of all time, and who doesn’t appear to
be working on any non-Avatar sequels
in the foreseeable future — there’s
really only one filmmaker who can get
risky, original, big-budget films made:
Christopher Nolan.
Whether he can still do that after the
pandemic-induced failure of his latest
release “Tenet” is to be determined,
but his track record suggests that the
big-budget features that Hollywood
doesn’t want to make can be extremely
successful at the box office, as well
as thought-provoking pieces of art.
After the success of his Dark Knight
Trilogy, based on the characters from
Batman comics and previous movies,
Nolan was given a blank check to make
whatever he wished. The first was
“Inception”, a heist film that dealt with
ideas of dream states and alternate
realities. It was a smash at the box
office, and it even found itself among
that year’s Oscar nominees for Best
Picture, indicating that despite its large
budget it was able to garner a sense of
prestige not typically associated with
bigger, blockbuster features.
“Inception” is a fantastic film, but it
probably falls a bit more on the side of
“The Avengers” than “Citizen Kane.”
That’s not a bad thing necessarily, and
was probably part of the reason it was
so successful, but despite all of the
interesting things Nolan and his crew
do with structure and visual effects, it
still lacks the emotional resonance of
something that Martin Scorsese might
describe as “cinema.”
MITCHEL GREEN
Daily Arts Writer
“Ariadne”: The woman left behind
BRENNA GOSS
Daily Arts Contributor
Courtesy of Jennifer Saint
Design by Jessica Chiu
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