The Trojan Women, Application Essay Example

Introduction

It is inevitable that the classic dramas of Euripides should continue to live on because they represent concerns that are literally timeless. Generation after generation, actresses have portrayed Medea, seeking fresh interpretations over thousands of years. The elemental issues of love, betrayal, vengeance, and gender roles of the play are, in a word, always relevant. The same is true of Euripides The Trojan Women, first performed in 416 B.C.E. (Due 136). In addition to the untold number of stage productions performed over the years, the play has as well been presented several times in film, and the most notable such effort is the 1971 version featuring several of the most prominent actresses of the day. The following focuses on this film, with specific regard to how the essence of Euripides’ work translates through modern film, modern adaptation, and the “star power” of the cast employed.

Dramatic classics, no matter their quality, can never rise above the treatment made of them in each production. Then, given the antiquity of The Trojan Women and the themes it addresses, there is as well the danger that a 1971 version, made in an era when the horrors of war were all too powerfully debated in Western culture, would focus too intently on being an anti-war statement. Similarly, a 1971 treatment may have easily also veered to emphasize the feminist consciousness then sweeping the United States. As will be seen, this film of The Trojan Women is not free of such biases, just as something of an excessive reverence for the project actually detracts from the story’s power. The production at times is heavy-handed in terms of music and cinematography. Nonetheless, it is a tribute to Euripides that the core of his play survives, and the intense tragedy reaches its full effect. While flawed in areas of approach, 1971’s The Trojan Women nonetheless has the effect of bringing to fruition the stunning and daring of Euripides original work as an anti-war statement for all ages, as it powerfully illustrates how women of any age must ultimately bow down before the violence of men.

Statement and Summary

It is interesting that, as in his other plays, Euripides takes an approach in The Trojan Women daring in both theatrical terms and in the context of when his work was first performed. Regarding the latter aspect, the play is inescapably anti-war, at least in one of its themes, and this is believed to have been in deliberate contrast to Athenian ideas promoting conquest. The politics of Euripides’ day emphasized the glory of war and victory (Pritchard 41), and it is difficult to conceive of a work more focused on the devastation of war than The Trojan Women. Then, and regarding the theatrical daring, Euripides here chooses to set his action after the main conflicts that create the platform for the drama. Events will unfold, certainly, but there is a strangely after-the-scene element to the work itself. As in Medea, the tragedy revealed is only one element in a larger cycle, much of which precedes the actual drama.

The 1971 film is true to this form, as essentially it must be. Four women comprise the story’s center: Hecuba, Trojan Queen; Andromache, widow of Hector and daughter-in-law of Hecuba; Helen of Troy, infamous instigator of the war; and Cassandra, daughter of Hecuba and victims of both gods and men. The story is ultimately little more than a waiting game, as each women struggles with the destruction of her life and her world, and anticipates what further nightmares will be brought upon them by the triumphant Greeks. True to classical Greek drama, the women engage in fitful exchanges and reminiscences, each weighing the force of destiny – and of the ruthlessness of men – as they so bring them to desperation. Ultimately, fresh tragedy occurs when word arrives that Agamemnon, victorious Greek, will execute Astyanax, son of Hector and grandson of Hecuba. The death is more than a familial tragedy; with Astyanax killed, the royal line of Troy is extinguished, and this is the final, crushing blow to these women of the remains of Troy.

Review

Perhaps the most striking difference between the Euripides play and the 1971 film is the absence of the gods. In the original The Trojan Women, Poseiden and Athena set the stage, providing the audiences with the divine scheming that essentially brought about the war and its consequences. The film benefits greatly from this loss, however, and in more than one way. To establish the power of the gods as having such force as to completely sway human affairs must, certainly to a modern audience, change the story into something resembling fable, rather than an exploration of human desires and actions. Then, and inevitably, the power of the human characters is then also reduced; they are mere puppets, so responsibility and response are negligible. Finally, it seems that the audiences of Euripides’ day must have had a different perspective on the inclusion of gods in their theater, or viewed those gods in a way inaccessible to modern audiences. Perhaps they made connections between divine representations and human not easily made today, or in succeeding ages, and this is likely simply because the opening exchange between the gods is, to modern ears, nearly comic. Poseidon is, in a word, confused by Athena’s switching of loyalties to suddenly favor the Greeks, which appears to be nothing but an adolescent whim: “I know, I know, I hated earlier but now I want to make the homecoming of the Greek soldiers a bitter experience for them” (Euripides). In discarding this device, the film greatly gains in integrity and power.

That power is evident from the first scenes, as is much else going to both the film’s favor and its flaws. Unfortunately, the film still employs a prologue, and it is a narrated account of the war’s horror, with particular regard to the rapes and abuses suffered by the women of Troy as the city fell to the Greeks. Screams, cries, and burnings open the film, as it is narrated that the women are to be allotted to appropriate victors as spoils of war. The prologue, however, actually weakens the impact of the following scenes. The camera moves over a shattered landscape, taking in debris and wreckage, and it falls on the prone figure of Hecuba. Just as the violence of the opening undercuts the dramatic intensity, so too is the music too deliberately strong. It is interesting that the filmmakers, wisely aware of the need to remove the gods, still do not trust enough to Euripides’ work itself, for all the force of the scene is perfectly represented in Hecuba’s speech.

It is difficult, in fact, to overstate the importance of this scene. It is richly dramatic in terms of layers. There is the barren, burnt arena of the destroyed city, and there is an elderly woman in shrouds and rags, a woman who the audience understands to be a queen. As Hecuba, Katherine Hepburn sometimes does not properly rely on the words she is given. More exactly, she overplays to an extent, when the stark misery of the scene – and Hecuba’s own words – require no emphasis. In fairness to Hepburn, it is argued that the real weight of the entire play exists on, and within, Hecuba. She is more than the unifying aspect of the drama; she embodies as woman and queen the many conflicts of the age (Dunn 101). In these initial lamentations, then, when Hecuba surveys the living nightmare of loss, she is struggling with such loss in more than one way. She is a mother who has lost her sons, a woman who has lost her home, and, importantly, a queen who has lost her realm.

This last role is critical because it links Hecuba to the masculine forces that have destroyed her world, and sets her somewhat apart as more than a woman and mother left with the ravages of war. Hepburn does convey some of this in her later confrontation with the surviving women; they gather around her like broken soldiers surrounding a general, and they fully allow her the lead in addressing the Greek messenger, Talthybius. The film here deftly maneuvers around the play’s original chorus, most of which is a redundant lamenting and questioning of fate.

As with the dispensing of the gods, this is in keeping with the core of the drama, as excessive moaning of the women (or chorus) would undercut Hecuba’s presence and purpose. It would also diminish that martial aspect to Hecuba, very in force in her exchange with Talthybius. Hepburn inquires of the fate of the women known to her with all the disgust of a defeated warrior, learning the fates of valued soldiers.

At the same time, and to the credit of both actress and Euripides, there is a strange fusion between queen and woman. She alternates between regal scorn and maternal terror, and this is most evident when Talthybius reveals her own fate as future slave to Odysseus: “Beat your shorn head, Hekabe! Tear at your cheeks with your nails, Hekabe!” (Euripides). The film’s script keeps near to this translation, as outright rage seizes the queen. She is horrified as both a ruler and a woman, and it is this second aspect that the film, particularly in the first half, emphatically stresses. It is necessary, in fact, to comprehend how Hecuba has fallen as a queen to understand the true power circumstances overshadowing everything else. More exactly, proud queen or old woman, she is still only a woman, and is not unlike those huddled around her for instruction: powerless. This is perfectly captured in the film in that Hecuba’s – and Hepburn’s – intensity of outrage is soon subdued by a squadron of Greek soldiers. There is nothing for women to do but comply in this world, and the film adheres to this core element of Euripides’ play.

The stage is then set, as it were, for the themes to be pursued, and both are expressed throughout the film with absolute consistency. War wreaks havoc and creates victims, and women are always victims. This is true no matter their perspicacity, courage, or, as in the case of Cassandra, divine protection. Mad or otherwise, she comprehends the scenario well and the basics of the tragedy: “One woman they came hunting – Helen – and men by tens of thousands died” (The Trojan Women). Nonetheless, she has a role to play removed from her own will, and Genevieve Bujold plays it well. Less effective is Vanessa Redgrave as Andromache, chiefly because she has the unenviable task of competing with Hepburn in terms of grief. Redgrave has moments of underplaying that work well, but Hepburn’s Hecuba eclipses her simply by virtue of the character’s greater claim to grief. At the same time, however, a further dimension in Euripides becomes evident; as the two women compete in sorrow, the “lesser” wars that only women can wage are revealed. The wars of men destroy everything, and the women fight, not over what is left, but over claims to victimization. Unfortunately, the film goes very wrong in an effort to infuse action, as when Talthybius chases Andromache to take her son away.

Lastly, and following the Euripidean trajectory of following the four central women, the film correctly presents Helen as arguing for her life. Menelaos has come to execute her, and Papas is beautifully imperious as Helen, accusing Hecuba, as the mother of Paris, as the cause of the war. Residual conflict between women is then reinforced, their individual hatreds seeking to account for the destruction that they themselves, as women, had no real part in. In this last and bitter confrontation, the same themes are emphasized, and more so; with each expression of each woman’s helplessness, both the nightmare of war as a thing apart from them and their own powerlessness are amplified. As her grandson’s body is taken away, Hecuba still seeks to resist, but she is overcome and defeated: “Help me, my friends! Help me walk! Come, my friends, let us enter our days of slavery!” (Euripides). Ultimately, then, and even as the film is flawed in certain ways, it may be said that it cannot help but echo the statements Euripides makes in his original drama.

Conclusion

The Trojan Women is a film that nears greatness, chiefly because it very closely follows a great work of the theater. The mistakes it makes are excusable, to an extent, in that it was likely felt that too plain a presentation would not succeed. While the filmmakers wisely dispensed with the gods and the chorus of the play, they nevertheless infuse “cinema” elements, such as melodramatic music, a violent prologue, and unnecessary action to enliven it. Nonetheless, Euripides is all that is required to render the film fine, and he is ably supported by four actresses who inhabit his dominant female characters. As with the film itself, certain points go wrong, as Redgrave’s Andromache is not very well defined, and Hepburn’s Hecuba sometimes overplays. Still, the themes come through and the power of the play is preserved. Flaws aside, 1971’s The Trojan Women reflects the stunning and daring of Euripides original work as an anti-war statement for all ages, as it powerfully reinforces how women of any age must ultimately bow down before the violence of men.

Works Cited

Due, C. The Captive Woman’s Lament in Greek Tragedy. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006. Print.

Dunn, F. M. Tragedy’s End : Closure and Innovation in Euripidean Drama. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Print.

Euripides. The Trojan Women. Trans. By G. Theodoridis. 2008 Web. <http://bacchicstage.wordpress.com/euripides/trojan-women/>

Pritchard, D. War, Democracy and Culture in Classical Athens. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print.

The Trojan Women. Dir. Mihalis Kakogiannis. Perf. Katherine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave,  Genevieve Bujold, and Irene Papas. Josef Shaftel Productions, Inc., 1971. Film.