#The Electra

[ilions-end]

ayyy euripides' electra time (ian johnston transl.)

i really feel i approached the three electra plays in the perfect order. the libation bearers to get me hooked, sophocles to make me frustrated and want more, and now euripides to fullfill all my secret fantasies

that is to say WOW what an initiative electra!! like in aeschylus, her path is so much clearer to her than orestes' is to him, she carries all her hate and resentment on the outside, but while aeschylus only lets her put the plot in motion and then retreat into the shadows, THIS TIME SHE PARTICIPATES. this time HER HAND IS ON THE SWORD!!! oooh delicious

i think this one also balances the weight of both murders (clytemnestra and aegisthus) more evenly than the others. personally i really like how aeschylus underlines how insignificant aegisthus is even as he dies, but now this is kinda my second favourite portioning of revenge

i DON'T MEAN TO COMPARE THE PLAYS SO MUCH, it's just i'm starting to develop LAYERS OF UNDERSTANDING here. whoops

also euripides MAKING FUN of aeschylus' electra comparing her footprint to orestes', by making her go "pshh obviously his footprint would be a different size to mine"?? i want to go back in time and tell euripides "did you think when they said their footprints were alike they were talking about SIZE? bro. omg." i am so annoyed by an ancient playwright misinterpreting another's play it's actually embarrassing.

i did enjoy euripides throwing in "hey, this might be crazy but uhh have we considered that maybe poor people can be noble and rich people can be morally corrupt" every other scene though. i bet that blew the mind of the upper class athenian audience

electra going "you dare imply that my brother would SNEAK into argos and our father's burial place like a COWARD? like a fucking LOSER with NO GUTS?". priceless

WAIT WHAT, that one-line reference to castor once trying to seduce electra. that took me by surprise. EW EW EW THAT'S YOUR SISTER'S DAUGHTER, DUDE. i'm not usually surprised at incest in greek mythology but i want to bap his nose with a rolled-up newspaper. YOU'RE A DIOSCURI, ACT LIKE IT.

yesss we love a despicable aegisthus. the vicious insecurity, the effeminate coding. myrtle flowers in his hair. electra saying whenever he gets drunk he goes to agamemnon's grave to throw stones and kick and shout abuse. oh little man you feel your own inadequacies so strongly, don't you.

but also mmmmm how this version makes the most of out of orestes' abuse of the laws of xenia. he is invited in as a friend! he's honoured with sacrifice, and turns around and commits murder with the sacrifical tools! he does the honourable thing in the most perverted way, OH it's so crunchy

i'm so emotional about electra speaking her grievances, both directly to her mother, and also how orestes encourages her to vocalize all her anger at aegisthus' corpse.

she yells at dead aegisthus what a fucking IDIOT he was to think he could seduce a married woman, marry her, and expect her to be faithful to him. it's so true it's so true

clytemnestra continues to have a point about everyone making a big to-do about her infidelity, when her husband brought back cassandra and was just gonna be like "yeah i'll have two wives (one a mad, enslaved priestess) it's fine it's normal why are you judging me".

augh how electra and clytemnestra's big confrontation made me nauseous, it's so realistically a portrait of an abusive mother who CARES about her daughter, as if that excuses the way she treats her. as if all the abuse is the fault of the child. "Why do you let your husband be cruel to me?" "That's how he is. And you have a stubborn nature." MAKING ME ILL!!!

ELECTRA'S HAND ON THE SWORD. FINALLY SHE'S ALLOWED TO HOLD THE WEAPON, TO KILL HER MOTHER.

and then OF COURSE comes the well of emotion, of bitterness, of sadness, of affection. "There. With this cloak i'm covering up one who was loved and yet not loved." AUGH AUGH AUGH IT HURTS SO GOOD

[thesexiestselkie]

How did you recognize me after all these years?

[teenalien-xx]

[xtruss]

Has Amelia Earhart’s Plane Really Been Found? 6 Key Things To Know

A New Grainy Sonar Image Claims to Solve the Mystery of the Famed Aviator’s Disappearance, But Experts Say it’s Too Soon to tell. Here's What We Do Know.

— By Rachel Hartigan | January 29, 2024

Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to circumnavigate the globe in this Lockheed Electra 10e airplane on July 2, 1937. Experts say it's too early to know for sure whether claims that the wreckage has been found are true. Photograph Courtesy PF-(Aircraft), Alamy Stock Photo

With the Release of a Grainy Gold Image, news headlines around the world are trumpeting the possible discovery of Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10e, the plane she was flying in 1937 when she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared during the most difficult leg of their round-the-world flight.

Deep Sea Vision, a new venture founded by pilot and commercial real estate investor Tony Romeo, captured the sonar image during a hundred-day expedition in the central Pacific, the region where Earhart was lost. “It was definitely a surreal moment for all of us,” says Romeo, who sold his real estate holdings to purchase a cutting-edge autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) equipped with highly advanced sonar technologies.

The remotely operated vehicle Hercules is retrieved from the waters off Nikumaroro Island onto the deck of the E/V Nautilus in 2019 after a day of searching for Amelia Earhart’s missing airplane. Explorers have long sought to solve the mystery of the famed aviator's fate. Photograph By Gabriel Scarlett, National Geographic Image Collection

Still, it’s too soon to say whether this discovery of an object 16,000 feet deep means one of the great historical mysteries has been solved. Here’s what we do know.

1. Sonar Images Have Limitations.

Sonar images are not photographs. The sound waves sent by sonar are at a low frequency, which translates to low resolution.

“The sound wave, because it’s so big, can’t see fine detail,” says David Jourdan, an engineer whose company Nauticos has led three expeditions in search of Earhart. “It can be distorted by reflections, like taking a picture of a mirror.” Promising images, on a second look, sometimes turn out to be something else entirely, like a geological formation.

Amelia Earhart is shown in the cockpit of her autogiro on April 8, 1931, after setting a new altitude record for women in planes of this type. Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images

2. Deep Sea Vision Didn’t Confirm The Object’s Identity.

Romeo and his team found the image in their data storage files as they were transitioning to another expedition. They thought that data from one of the AUV’s earlier sorties had been corrupted. When they discovered it wasn’t—and that they had a potential blockbuster find—it was too late to return to the site.

“We were out of time. We were out of resources,” says Romeo. “And we didn’t have a camera on our [AUV]. It broke really early in the expedition.” Returning to go over the target again with just sonar didn’t seem worth the hundreds of thousands of dollars he estimated it would cost. Deep Sea Vision plans to go back to the sonar image site this year, this time with an operational camera on the AUV to confirm the finding.

National Geographic Explorer at Large Bob Ballard, pictured here in the control room of the E/V Nautilus, led a major expedition in 2019 to find the remains of Amelia Earhart's airplane. Photograph By Gabriel Scarlett, National Geographic Image Collection

3. Some Experts Say The Plane, If It Is A Plane, Doesn’t Resemble The Electra.

“The proportions aren’t quite right,” says Jourdan, pointing to the way the wings are swept back rather than straight across, as the Electra’s were.

Others are even more skeptical. “For the wings of an Electra to fold rearward as shown in the sonar image, the entire center section would have to fail at the wing/fuselage junctions,” according to an email blast from The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), an organization that has put forward the theory that Earhart died a castaway on an island to the east of the sonar image site. “That’s just not possible.”

Romeo dismisses this criticism. Both the wings and the tail look swept back due to distortion caused by the AUV moving through the water, he says, pointing to the twin fins on the back of the plane instead. “That’s very distinctive of her aircraft,” he says. “There’s only a couple of planes that’ve ever been made like that.”

Amelia Earhart is photographed with her Lockheed Model 10-E Electra, the aircraft she used in her attempted flight around the world. Earhart and the plane went missing on July 2, 1937. Underwood & Underwood/Alamy Stock Photo

4. The Object’s Location Is Roughly On Earhart’s Flight Path—But Beyond The Range Suggested By Her Radio Signals.

Earhart and Noonan disappeared on July 2, 1937, flying from Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island, a one-and-a-half-mile long island some 2,500 miles away. After flying 20 hours, Earhart thought they were close and radioed the Itasca, the Coast Guard ship awaiting them at Howland, “We must be on you but cannot see you.” Her voice was so loud, the Coast Guard radiomen thought she was very near too. She wasn’t, but the strength of the radio signals suggest that she was just beyond visual range.

Deep Sea Vision’s search area was roughly a hundred miles west; Romeo won’t reveal exactly where to avoid someone else making the crucial find. But he does acknowledge that they were guided by a theory that Noonan had failed to account for how the International Date Line would affect his calculations. That theory, however, doesn’t account for the strength of Earhart’s radio signals.

A deep-sea exploration company has captured a sonar image of an anomaly on the ocean floor that resembles an aircraft. The team believes the object could be Amelia Earhart's Lockheed 10-E Electra that went missing nearly 87 years ago. Deep Sea Vision/PR Newswire

Tony Romeo holds a model of Amelia Earhart's plane, which resembles sonar images he and his crew captured with high-tech equipment. Tony Romeo/CEO Deep Sea Vision

5. Others Have Claimed To Solve This Mystery.

Over the nearly 90 years since Earhart and Noonan vanished, many people have claimed to have proof of what happened to them.

Members of the Ballard-led expedition dive in the primary search area just off Nikumaroro Island, an isolated ring of coral and sand surrounding a turquoise lagoon where some suspect Earhart may have been landed. Photograph By Gabriel Scarlett, National Geographic Image Collection

People who believe the Japanese captured and killed the aviators have pointed to everything from a generator retrieved in a Saipan harbor in 1960 to a photograph on a Jaluit dock revealed in 2017. TIGHAR, meanwhile, has claimed various smoking guns over the years but now argues that a preponderance of historical and archaeological evidence puts Earhart on Nikumaroro Island, 400 hundred miles south of Howland, where they believe she starved to death.

Then there’s the simplest explanation: that the aviators simply crashed into the ocean. Elgen Long, an airline pilot who with his wife Marie did the most extensive research into where that might have happened, wrote a book called Amelia Earhart: The Mystery Solved. Over three expeditions, Jourdan has looked where Long suggested (and elsewhere) and come up empty.

6. The Mystery Is Still Unsolved. That Doesn’t Mean Its Unsolvable.

Jourdan’s team believes they’ve narrowed down where the Electra went down based on recent radio signal testing. Meanwhile, when Deep Sea Vision returns to the site this year, they will bring a documentary crew to capture the moment. “This is definitely something that we need to go back and look at,” says Romeo. “We’ve got to get out there before … you know, there is some urgency.”

Top: The Romeo Brothers are planning another Pacific Ocean expedition to get better sonar images to confirm whether they have discovered the ruins of Earhart's doomed voyage. Bettmann Archive

Bottom: Deep Sea Vision believes they may have come across Amelia Earhart's wrecked plane in the Pacific Ocean. Photo: Bettman via Getty Images/Deep Sea Vision

Tony Romeo holds a model of Amelia Earhart's plane, which resembles sonar images he and his crew captured with high-tech equipment. (Tony Romeo/CEO Deep Sea Vision)

[mournfulroses]

Sophocles, from "Electra: A Tragedy," translated by Anne Carson

[dangeroustaintedflawed]

[draigviller]

[hystericwaif]

[specialagentartemis]

in middle school during my Intense Greek Mythology Phase, Artemis was, as you can likely guess, my best girl. Iphigenia was my OTHER best girl. Yes at the same time.

The story of Iphigenia always gets to me when it's not presented as a story of Artemis being capricious and having arbitrary rules about where you can and can't hunt, but instead, making a point about war.

Artemis was, among other things--patron of hunting, wild places, the moon, singlehood--the protector of young girls. That's a really important aspect she was worshipped as: she protected girls and young women. But she was the one who demanded Agamemnon sacrifice his daughter in order for his fleet to be able to sail on for Troy.

There's no contradiction, though, when it's framed as, Artemis making Agamemnon face what he’s doing to the women and children of Troy. His children are not in danger. His son will not be thrown off the ramparts, his daughters will not be taken captive as sex slaves and dragged off to foreign lands, his wife will not have to watch her husband and brothers and children killed. Yet this is what he’s sailing off to Troy to inevitably do. That’s what happens in war. He’s going to go kill other people’s daughters; can he stand to do that to his own? As long as the answer is no—he can kill other people’s children, but not his own—he can’t sail off to war.

Which casts Artemis is a fascinating light, compared to the other gods of the Trojan War. The Trojan War is really a squabble of pride and insults within the Olympian family; Eris decided to cause problems on purpose, leaving Aphrodite smug and Hera and Athena snubbed, and all of this was kinda Zeus’s fault in the first place for not being able to keep it in his pants. And out of this fight mortal men were their game pieces and mortal cities their prizes in restoring their pride. And if hundreds of people die and hundred more lives are ruined, well, that’s what happens when gods fight. Mortals pay the price for gods’ whims and the gods move on in time and the mortals don’t and that’s how it is.

And women especially—Zeus wanted Leda, so he took her. Paris wanted Helen, so he took her. There’s a reason “the Trojan women” even since ancient times were the emblems of victims of a war they never wanted, never asked for, and never had a say in choosing, but was brought down on their heads anyway.

Artemis, in the way of gods, is still acting through human proxies. But it seems notable to me to cast her as the one god to look at the destruction the war is about to wreak on people, and challenge Agamemnon: are you ready to kill innocents? Kill children? Destroy families, leave grieving wives and mothers? Are you? Prove it.

It reminds me of that idea about nuclear codes, the concept of implanting the key in the heart of one of the Oval Office staffers who holds the briefcase, so the president would have to stab a man with a knife to get the key to launch the nukes. “That’s horrible!,” it’s said the response was. “If he had to do that, he might never press the button!” And it’s interesting to see Artemis offering Agamemnon the same choice. You want to burn Troy? Kill your own daughter first. Show me you understand what it means that you’re about to do.

[phartnagle]

[lostl1sbons1ster]

Marina and the diamonds

[ilions-end]

thoughts now that i've read sophocles' electra (hugh lloyd-jones translation):

full disclosure: this is the first sophocles play i've read that hasn't hit me like a semitrailer. some of it is that the libation bearers has ruined me, but also it's just... idk, too flat. did i miss some rich levels of meaning, or is it just... flatter than certain other plays?

MOST OF ALL CLYTEMNESTRA. i don't need clytemnestra to be even morally ambiguous, it's fine if she's horrible, but at least give her some complicated feelings once in a while, you know?

i KNOW it's unfair to keep comparing this to aeschylus' oresteia, but the clytemnestra scenes are so emblematic of the differences. aeschylus has orestes in disguise announce his own death to clytemnestra, who reacts with immediate grief (genuine? pretend? ah what a puzzle she is) while we're allowed to see HIM react to HER in turn... whereas in THIS, an unnamed character tells her, and her reaction is kinda like "huh! well i guess that solves some problems. anyway--"

i love electra's anger. i love that she is already in the act of defying aegisthus' orders when the play begins. i love that she is fully committed to murder even before she's reunited with orestes. that's my girl

clytemnestra's familial "divide and conquer" tactics are a little more evident with chrysothemis there, which i find interesting. chrysothemis, i think, is just as starved of love and stability as her siblings, and tries to elicit as much as she can by being ever-loyal to her mother and aegisthus. what has that cost her through the years?

the fact that clytemnstra throws a party on agamemnon's death day every year is... wow. i really think sophocles makes her too one-note of a villain, and it flattens the drama.

there's a mention of clytemnestra and aegisthus having kids of their own, which i wasn't aware of and need to look deeper into

i'll be honest i was initially confused by the apparent randomness of orestes' fake death being an accident competing in a chariot race, but thennnn i remembered pelops! and i'm still like, is that it? are there actual parallels between pelops and orestes, or is it just "hey remember when our great grandfather did this to his competitors"

as far as center-piece scenes go, aegisthus uncovering clytemnestra's corpse wasn't nearly as climactic as i hoped it'd be.

i did enjoy reading this straight after iphigenia among the taurians just because orestes is forever the baby of the family. electra saying "You were never your mother's more than you were mine", omg i keep thinking about that. it's immediately so sweet but it can also speak of how their family was always unstable and unsafe and that even as a child electra cast herself in an unhealthy parental role to protect him. many thoughts.

[venusplanetofloveee]

[teenalien-xx]

your love is like a studded leather headlock ♡

[cocaineheartz]

i think you’re gonna be my biggest fan

[mistakesitakeoutonmyself]