Since I have a liking for history, I wondered whether there was an actual war being fought or recently concluded between Athens and Sparta at the time this play was written and performed. It turns out between 431 and 404 BC Athens and Sparta were engaged in the Peloponnesian War against each other. So when Kleonike said on page 358, "My husband's been gone for the last five months! Way up to Thrace." and Myrrhine said on page 359, "Mine's been posted to Pylos", these characters were talking about actual nations involved in a war that was currently being fought.
When this play was first performed in 411 BC, Athens was losing the war and the general public probably had the same desire for peace as Lysistrata and the women in the play did. However, it is believed that in 411 BC peace may have been unachievable and the end of the war was going to have major consequences for Athens. By using abstinence from sex to achieve peace in Lysistrata, Aristophanes creates a simple and comedic solution to the Peloponnesian War. This solution would have made the audience laugh at a dark time in their nation’s history, but also reflect their desires for something that simple to end the war so they would not suffer when their nation was defeated.
Because of the simple and comedic way in which a war is ended, Lysistrata is very similar to Quentin Tarantino’s film Inglorious Basterds. The film is set during World War II in 1944 and portrays events that eventually lead to Hitler and the Nazi high command being killed in a burning movie theater. Tarantino, like Aristophanes, ends a war in a simple and comedic fashion. The thoughts of our modern society are very simliar to the Athenians 2400 years ago because we wish, as they did, that something as simple as burning down a building or abstinence from sex could have ended a terrible war in the hopes that not just one nation but the world could have avoided suffering the consequences the war brought.
Wow! I didn't realize Athens and Sparta were actually engaged in a war during the time period the play was written and performed. With this new information it makes sense that Aristophanes would write Lysistrata with so much sexual innuendo and with such a simple solution to the war as you said. The sexual theme of this play seems to now be an easy way to get rid of tension among the people watching it. Since everyone laughs at sexual innuendos and jokes, as proven in last week's class, it is the perfect and most simple comedy that many can enjoy. Laughter is natures greatest healer.
ReplyDeleteWonderful post, good sir! Like Danielle, I had no idea there was an actual war during the time of this play. I also must say that, while I have not done extensive research on Aristophanes' motives for writing the play, I concur with your assumption that this work was comic relief instead of social criticism/commentary (as suggested by Matt).
ReplyDeleteP.S. Great parallel with QT's IB
P.P.S. Penicillin is pretty great, too.
Out of curiosity, I did a quick Google search. It would appear that there is somewhat of a consensus that Lysistrata was political criticism. The idea was that Athens was most likely going to lose and the leaders in Athens did not want to quit the war as readily as the people. This assumption is made because of the political nature of his other surviving works (The Knights and The Wasps for example).
Delete*This info was found on the first page of Google. Nobody looks at the second page...
I'm definitely on board with History being a necessary element in the dissection of any entertainment-text. In this case, as I did in my own post to support my case, you can take the context of the time period in which it was written and apply it to the comedy. If you do this, you can determine a lot more about what's going on in the play itself, and what meaning the playwright probably intended for the audience to take away from the performance.
ReplyDelete