#and honestly the griffith 1995 staging proposal for the breast-baring scene is even stupider than that | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

finelythreadedsky · 8 days ago

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oh hell yeah clytemnestra's breast-baring the libation bearers as a gesture at the falseness of the theatrical body! her point is 'look at the breast that fed you' but as we hear from cilissa, clytemnestra was not the one to breast-feed orestes as a baby, so she's appealing to a fundamental connection between the body of mother and son that isn't there within the world of the play. and also she's played by a man and does not have breasts.

#and the same goes for hermione in andromache actually!#appealing to a fundamental part of her womanhood (motherhood) that does not exist within the play #by appealing to her breasts which also do not exist #I’m going to get to do some very fun pronoun play writing this section #once again looking at an article from the 80s/90s and saying its proposal for the original ancient staging is batshit and absolutely wrong #but the principle and metatheatrical effect that it's trying to get at is... very real. very valid.#there's a paragraph in my draft rn saying 'now you might think i'm arguing for what [redacted] suggests. which i am! but not literally.'#and honestly the griffith 1995 staging proposal for the breast-baring scene is even stupider than that #mine #oresteiablogging #bodycostume

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