TRANSFORMING MYTHS
Myths are traditional tales, narratives passed on through oral and written story-telling over the centuries. Roland Barthes defined myth as a system of communication, a message; a mode of signification, a form(1). The power of myth stems not only from the stories themselves, but from recognition of the universal human emotions implicated. Stories indicate common assumptions about the world of experience; as such they operate symbolically to confirm particular sets of values. Understandings shift historically; nowadays the fluid inter-action of Gods, mortals and nature in the Metamorphoses recounted by Ovid is perplexing, beyond the parameters of our accustomed ways of thinking(2). But as interpretation shifts to accommodate contemporary circumstances and attitudes, myths acquire new resonances. From a contemporary perspective, influenced by feminist perceptions, Greek myth belies patriarchal attitudes.
Psychoanalysis is one starting point for Patricia Townsend's engagement with seven stories, all of which are concerned with gender relations and attitudes, and with sexuality. Catholic by background, for Townsend the parable as myth, as rhetorical form, is indelibly ingrained. As a psychotherapist, she is interested in the contemporary resonances of particular stories. As a feminist she is concerned to question ways in which women are positioned symbolically - idealised, marginalised or silenced. Patricia Townsend's work is profound, complex and sometimes distressing in its acknowledgement of discourses whereby femininity and female desire is regularly denied, or viewed as unfathomable. Her recent piece, Ecclesia Mater (Mother Church), explored the relationship between God, Church and the feminine through invoking the idea of nuns, women confined within black habits, who take vows of chastity, obedience, and, in some orders, silence. The 'virgin' birth of the bible renders the 'perfect' woman asexual.
Myths persist through history, acquiring particular prominence in specific eras and cultures. For instance, classical myth was central to the revivalist aspects of the Renaissance (which in other respects was progressive and outward-looking). In A Midsummer Night's Dream , Shakespeare references Greek myths confident that they are familiar to his audience(3). The mechanicals prepare a performance of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe. The buffoonery of their misunderstandings of the myth is humorous because the story is familiar, their mistakes are recognisable. Oberon, fairy king, jealous of Titania, the queen, because of her obsession with a changeling boy, accuses her of loving Theseus and leading Theseus to 'break his faith' with various lovers including Ariadne. In Ovid's Metamorphosis, Ariadne, abandoned by Theseus, was fated to lonely existence on an island. This reference, woven into Shakespeare's comedy of gender relations, points to the rights of taking (women) and leaving (women) appropriated by Gods, Kings and Dukes - indeed, men(4).
Symbolic power is retained through myths acquiring ethical and ideological nuances which reflect the diversions, preoccupations and philosophical currencies of specific historical eras and cultures. For example, Marina Warner argues that the myth of Pandora did not acquire its highly erotic inflection until the sixteenth century when the story of the opening of her box became synonymous with the surrender of virginity(5). Certainly by the twentieth century Pandora had become a highly ambiguous sexual figure: writing at the turn of the century the German playwright, Wedekind, introduces Lulu (his Pandora figure) as a 'snake', seductress of men. Pabst's 1929 film, starring Louise Brooks, based upon Wedekind, likewise emphasises Pandora as a figure of sexual transgression(6). As Mary Ann Doane points out, in the court case towards the end of this film, when Lulu is accused of the murder of her seducer 'the sole support of his (the prosecutor's) argument for Lulu's guilt is a reference to the Greek myth of "Pandora's Box" and the disaster unleashed by the woman in this tale. It is symbolic evidence which proclaims her guilt'(7). Greek myth, re-inflected to foreground the erotic and the centrality of woman in the downfall of man, is brought into play to underpin and legitimise contemporary assumptions. As Marina Warner remarks, Pandora, the first earth woman in classical myth, is not identical to Eve, the first mother in Christianity, but the resemblances between them are significant(8).
Contemporary interpretation articulates Greek myth via psychoanalysis. Freud drew upon classical figures to index particular types of emotions and actions, especially those which seem disorderly, beyond the constraints of the social super-ego. The myth of Oedipus, which refers to the paternal phallus, and the adoption of the myth as 'Oedipus Complex' , marking emerging differentiation between the masculine and the feminine, is the most prominent example; his concern with narcissism is also well-known. For Freud, myths, like dreams and jokes, are signifiers of that which lies beyond rational discourse. For Jung, myths represent the collective unconscious; he viewed myth as containing universal truths somehow over and above the specificities of Western culture. Within patriarchy, women are de-centred, viewed as 'other', for Freud, an incomprehensible 'dark continent'.
The rewriting of myths is a part of the struggle to influence cultural assumptions relating to gender difference. Hence feminist concerns to re-present particular narratives from alternative points of view. Discussing women's rewriting of classical myth, Diane Purkiss stresses the need not only to transform specific myths in ways which question the
implications of the particular story but also to challenge the status of myth as exemplary symbolic discourse(9). As Luce Irigaray remarks
"...what I want, in fact, is not to create a theory of woman, but to secure a place for the feminine within sexual difference. That difference - masculine/feminine - has always operated "within" systems that are representative, self-representative, of the (masculine) subject....In other words, the feminine has never been defined except as the inverse, indeed the underside, of the masculine. So for woman it is not a matter of installing herself within this lack, this negative, even by denouncing it, nor of reversing the economy of sameness by turning the feminine into the standard for "sexual difference"; it is rather a matter of trying to practise that difference"(10).
Townsend's transformations of seven stories, all about young women, and variously concerning the denial of female agency in terms of sexuality, together effectively interrogate patriarchal attitudes. Selecting seven figures is in itself assertive: seven is an indivisible number. The Christian God allegedly created the world in seven days, significantly, one quarter of the cycle of the moon with her influence over the rise and
waning of the tides. Seven deadly sins, variously implicated as motives for the behaviour of the Greek Gods.
Patricia Townsend's poetry, assertive rather than strident, invites identification and empathy with her female characters. Ovid was not concerned with narrative continuity, instead offering a series of mini-closures in which women are left or ignored by the gods, by their fathers, and by their lovers, often transformed or absorbed into some aspect of nature: Daphne becomes a tree, Scylla becomes a dangerous rock. Bacchus, on finding Ariadne deserted by Theseus, removed her crown and sent it up to the skies where it became a group of stars. Accounting for Ariadne simply as a source of a constellation, Ovid moves on. Townsend's metamorphoses take Ovid's stories as a starting point for more extended contemplation of ways in which women are positioned, articulating discourses on nature, art, femininity, the female body, and reinterpreting myth in terms of repression and desire.
Patricia Townsend is not precious about her imagery, about pictures per se. Rather, she views her portfolio of photographs - whether constructed through double exposure in the darkroom or through digital manipulation - as images which are potential elements within a complex symbolic lexicon. For instance, Scylla, as seen here, is a refinement of an earlier version(11). Each of the pieces in this group of work operates on many connotative levels; in this respect meaning is unpredictable, drawing upon resonance with subjective experience within interpretative processes. As Barry Taylor has remarked in relation to her work, nothing in her imagery 'can guarantee the reading that will emerge: the silence of the photo will always enfold the risk of reading'(12). Sometimes it is the visual image in itself which first arrests attention. Daphne imprisoned within the tree trunk, peers out through the splinters. Sometimes a phrase captures imagination. For me, Ariadne's statement that "the colour of your gaze ran into me" is heart-stopping; it stirs strong memories, reminding me of the physicality of such moments. As Roland Barthes insisted, elements within the image may shoot out, stinging, piercing, bruising or wounding with great affective force(13).
The use of space within the pieces further contributes to their impact, whether this be the symbolic implications of layering within the frame and inscribing writing on the glass, or whether it be the physical nature of the installations. We actually stand on the lips of the crack in the earth through which Persephone descended in pursuit of pleasures previously denied. Ovid tells us that Hades, Lord of the underworld, abducted Persephone with the consent of his brother Zeus, her father, but against the will of her mother. Ovid makes no comment on how she feels about this, choosing to follow her mother's search to reclaim her daughter, rather than the daughter's own story. Children learn to play hopscotch, to jump the cracks. Townsend's Persephone embraces the crack, enjoys the lure of pomegranates.
Likewise, in considering the story of Echo and Narcissus, we consider the scene from Echo's point of view. Echo had been punished for detaining the goddess, Juno (Hera), in talk so that she would not catch Jupiter (Zeus) dallying with nymphs(14). Her power of speech was limited so that she could only answer back through repeating, and what's more, was destined always to do so. In effect, her position as a speaking subject was denied; she was silenced except when taking on the discourses of others. Echo desired Narcissus but was unable to express her desire; moreover, had she been able to speak no doubt he would not have listened. Here, although we are literally placed with Narcissus, self-absorbed, gazing into the glass/pool, as we turn on the light hoping to see more clearly, it is her whom we see looking back at us. Our own reflection is denied. Echo voices her frustration at Narcissus' disinterest, and at no longer being able to initiate conversation. Her sense of her own transparency is quietly stated. In the myth Echo, as woman, is clearly sidelined as 'other'. Here, however, simple binary equations between self-absorption/ male/masculinity and marginalisation/female/femininity are refused; the transition from narcissistic self-focus to contemplation of Echo reminds us of what it is to be unheard, marginalised, not the object of someone else's desire. Although clearly this resonates for both men and women, some differences of positions of identification are brought into play; gender - the sociological - interacts with more subjective memory, psychic fears and insecurities.
Four of the images are wall-hung, contained more conventionally within frames, an extract from each poem etched upon the glass. The framing places a barrier between us and the picture, which both holds us at an objective distance in that, unlike the three installations, we do not share any part of the physical space of the image. Here the primary interaction is between the central portrait, the side-settings locating the young woman depicted, and the evocation of the written phrase. Yet looking at each image we create connections within the multi-layered references offered. Daphne, confused by Apollo's lust and by her sexual awakening through the warmth of the waters of her father, Peneus, the river god, peers out from her tree, through a lattice of splinters, fragile as stalagmites. The tree comes to seem so much a second skin that the twin profiles of gnarled knobs and texture of the bark come to suggest de-sexualised breasts and stomach. Likewise, Ariadne in protecting her head with her arms appears simultaneously as an image of despair and as a silhouette of a bull's head, the bullishness which she has been forced to relinquish as she is abandoned on the sands of the island. Ariadne was pursued then abandoned; Daphne was pursued and resisted the pursuit, albeit, possibly subsequently regretting this. Both Daphne and Ariadne are withdrawn into the most internal section of the picture, perhaps symbolising surrender accepted and internalised.
The containment of Daphne and of Ariadne seems coherent, perhaps because we are
accustomed to looking into images receding centrally within the frame, wherein depth of field and vanishing point synthesise. By contrast, Scylla and Aglaurus are foregrounded within their rock face settings. Here the relation between form, the triptych within the frame, and content, the reference to each particular myth, is not synthesised aesthetically. This discomforts. Each female figure sits dislocated in front of, yet partially integrated within, the rocks which ground her. In her poem about Aglaurus, Townsend references the B movie, suggesting that these stories are more melodramatic. Both Scylla and Aglaurus were cursed by other women, in the case of Aglaurus, as a result of her jealousy of her sister. Dislocations within the frame reflect the emotional dis-ease of these extraordinary stories.
Finally the enigma of Pandora, her jar full of troubles, unleashed when opened. According to myth, Hope was imprisoned when, in panic, Pandora resealed the jar. Ovid presents Pandora as an unwitting agent of destruction, mistress of malicious forces beyond her control. Eventually, Pandora was persuaded to overcome her fright and reopen her jar, thus releasing Hope. Townsend's rendering of the tale is considerably more complicated in its integration of psychoanalytic reference and photographic materiality. Impressively, this installation integrates the fundamental elements of photography as a medium with conceptual and spatial responses to the myth; thus, play between the literal and the symbolic draws upon the reflective nature of photography as a medium, reflection being both literally through the mirror and metaphorically in term of self reflexivity. The 'eye' of the camera becomes synonymous with the 'I' of the viewer. In this context, Pandora's box of troubles equates with the unconscious and the repressed, returning our monsters to us as we look at ourselves being looked upon. We are reminded of the weight of the unconscious that she/we carry around with us. Psychotherapy proposes growth through reviewing our most repressed cares and fears. Irigaray suggests that we need to explore the feminine as a positive. Townsend's transformations of myth effect a shift in this direction through both provoking contemplation of the ideological nature of traditional tales and inviting us to reflect upon ourselves. Herein lies Hope.
1. Roland Barthes (1972) Mythologies. London; originally published in French, 1957.
2. My principle source is the Penguin edition of Ovid’s Metamorphosis translated by Mary M. Innes, 1955.
3. Written in 1594, the play was created as entertainment for English noblemen and women; their world is recast within a drama notable, notionally centred upon the court of Theseus, king of Athens, a reference which indicates Greek revivalism within renaissance culture.
4. this notwithstanding the fact that the play was written towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth 1st who, as queen, in many ways stood for and acted as a masculine figure.
5. Marina Warner (1987) Monuments and Maidens. London: Pan Books p 213ff. First published 1985.
6. Pandora’s Box (Die Buchse der Pandora) directed by G.W.Pabst, 1929, based upon Frank Wedekind’s ‘Lulu’ cycle plays, Earth Spirit (Der Erdgeist) 1895 and Pandora’s Box, 1904.
7. Mary Ann Doane (1990) ‘The Erotic Barter: Pandora’s Box (1929)’ in Eric Rentschler ed (1990) The Films of G.W. Pabst. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press.
8. Warner op cit p220.
9. Diane Purkiss (1992) ‘Women’s rewriting of Myths’ in Caroline Larrington ed The Female Companion to Mythology. London: Pandora Press.
10. Luce Irigaray (1985) The Sex Which Is Not One. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, originally published in French, 1977.
11. Shown in the exhibition, Viewfindings, Women Photographers. ‘Landscape’ and Environment. (1994/5).
12. Barry Taylor (1999) Palpable Signs: Contemporary Women Photographers in Dialogue with the Body. London: Scarlet Press, p8.
13. Barthes used the term ‘punctum’ to describe this impact and affect. See Roland Barthes (1984) Camera Lucida London: Fontana, p27, first published 1980 as La Chambre Claire.
14. Ovid uses the Roman names for the Gods, although re-telling stories of Greek origin.
© Liz Wells 2001. Please do not quote from this essay without first obtaining permission from the author. Liz Wells can be contacted at ewells@plymouth.ac.uk
 |
