“It is not fitting for her to be so manly and terrifying”: Catharsis and Female Chaos in Pasolini’s ‘Medea’

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1969 film ‘Medea’ was created in the aftermath of Italian fascism, another masculine cult of personal self-sacrifice in the interests of the state. Utilizing the operatic charisma of the legendary Maria Callas in a non-singing role, he harnesses the pitiless woman as an agent of chaos, rebelling against the dictates of the masculine state that urges her husband to discard her, in favor of a politically advantageous match.

Strand-medea


This post by Brigit McCone appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.


Discussing Greek tragedy, the philosopher Aristotle calls for women, being “of lesser character,” to be given a fitting representations on stage that conform to his society’s ideas of typical womanliness, “for it is possible for a woman to be manly in character, but it is not fitting for her to be so manly or terrifying” (Poetics, 1454a). Ancient Athens was a democracy of free men, where slaves and women were silenced. Its epic tragedies were written and acted by men alone, though they might wear the mask of women. Why then, in a society that considered women to be lesser in character and unfitting of “manliness,” should there be so many examples of fierce and violent womanhood on its stage? Aeschylus had the murderous Clytemnestra, Sophocles the pitiless Elektra, and Euripides produced the infanticidal Medea as well as hoards of murderous Bacchae, female followers of Dionysos who tore The Bacchae‘s hero limb from limb. The answer, perhaps, lies in the role of men in Ancient Athens, who were expected to reject emotionalism in favor of logic, and sacrifice their personal interests in favor of the state. The women of Greek tragedy are powerful, therefore, not because women were powerful in real life, but because these fictionalized characters were powerfully and cathartically voicing the emotional and personal causes that the male spectators had been encouraged to suppress in themselves. Female chaos is male catharsis. To our eyes, the violent uprisings of women like Clytemnestra, Elektra or Medea might well seem “manly and terrifying,” but they equally rise up against the self-sacrificing duty to the state and the rationalizing art of “reason” that Athenian men had been trained to consider manly. The male spectator gets cathartic release through the woman’s chaotic voicing of emotional rage and personal vendetta, but can disown it as a feature of her femininity. The woman, in turn, becomes the negative space of male self-image, not an image in her own right.

sacrifice

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1969 film Medea was created in the aftermath of Italian fascism, another masculine cult of personal self-sacrifice in the interests of the state. Utilizing the operatic charisma of the legendary Maria Callas in a non-singing role, he harnesses the pitiless woman as an agent of chaos, rebelling against the dictates of the masculine state that urges her husband to discard her, in favor of a politically advantageous match. Killing his hopes of heirs by murdering her own sons to spite their father, as well as killing his bride and her father, the King of Corinth, Medea murders Jason’s future in punishment for his disregard of her feminine powers as high priestess of a barbarian nature cult. In Euripides’ original, a chorus of women who identified with Medea’s pain, while being horrified by the bloodiness of her revenge, helped to give her context as an emblem of the rage of suppressed and discarded women under Ancient Athenian patriarchy. Pasolini instead delves into the original myth to offer a portrait of Medea’s barbarian homeland and its values as an agricultural society close to the old gods. Opening with the boy Jason being told that he is not the son of Chiron, his centaur foster father, Jason by is initiated by the centaur into a tangled mythology that defines his destiny to recover the golden fleece from distant lands, as a symbol of eternal nature of “power and order.” The centaur gives an enigmatic warning: “The day Nature seems natural to you, it means the end.” A warning to curb his own natural impulses, or to avoid taking the “natural submissiveness” of woman for granted? Jason is alerted that the word is not “naturally” so, but the creation of fickle gods who hate as much as love. With his training by the mythical Old Centaur in the isolation of nature, he is more equipped to negotiate the wild values of Medea than men raised in the city. Yet he is guided in adulthood by a desecrated New Centaur, who takes the form of an clothed man and preaches that the gods are dead. It is when he seeks to assume his place in the city, upon his return, that he will lose his respect for Medea’s primeval power, earning the hate of the high priestess and, perhaps, of her gods.

centaurs

The two Chirons

Medea is introduced in close-up, face enigmatically blank, as she is surrounded both by cricket-chirping nature and by the droning chant of ritual human sacrifice. Her willingness to sacrifice human life is therefore linked to the pitilessness of Nature, that is the flipside of its nurture. Embodying values of nature and barbarism in woman, and political ambition in man, is a rather traditional gendering, but the Medea myth is unusual in showing the woman triumphant as cruel Nature reigning supreme, rather than destroyed as punishment for her “unnatural” violence. The day Nature seems natural to you, it means the end. Feeding corn with the blood of the sacrificial victim and bidding him be “reborn with the seed” can also be read as Pasolini’s allowing his barbarians to echo the symbolically cannibal sacrament and resurrection narrative by which the faithful wed themselves to the Roman Catholic church. Medea’s hands are ritually chained before she prays, representing her weddedness to the order of her society. She collapses at the sight of Jason. In this highly stylized interpretation, not a word needs to pass between them to convince Medea to rob the fleece, or to brutally dismember her own brother with an axe to distract her pursuers. Her violence is unmotivated, except by the logic of myth or ritual human sacrifice, for that is the binding logic of her world.

Maria Callas

Crossing the water to the world of Greece, where the gods are dead, Medea wanders wildly in a state of spiritual catastrophe such as Jason had experienced when swapping the magical Old Centaur for the desecrated New. Medea vainly seeks “foundation” in this new world, pleading to hear the voices of Earth, Sun, grass and stone, just as Jason recognizes that the golden fleece has been drained of its power when taken to a foreign land without true faith, where promises are broken. In some degree, the ritual sacrifice of her sons is therefore Medea’s only way to restore her sacrificial power as priestess, more than a simple act of petty vengeance against her unfaithful husband. Imagining herself restored to her faith as granddaughter of the sun, Medea performs her violence in her old priestess robes with a smile of exultation at her empowerment, mingled with tears because “woman is a weak creature who cries easily.” She thus uses society’s expectations of woman’s weeping weakness as a mask to hide the gruesome seriousness of her real purpose. Medea’s power recalls those societies where the masculine power of kings and warlords existed in balance with the feminine power of a priestess class, such as the Akkadian state which gave us the world’s first recorded author, Sumeria’s high priestess Enheduanna. Women like Enheduanna are examples that can be cited to argue that the “ancient world” of a woman like Medea had channels of specifically feminine spiritual power lost in Judaeo-Christian traditions. In these older traditions, according to Pasolini’s vision, nurture and sacrifice are integrally linked, joined in the figure of the loving yet murderous woman who embraces with her eyes open and her knife ready. Medea’s violence may disturb us, but she serves as a warning that woman’s nature should not be coded by man’s convenience, nor ever taken for granted. The day Nature seems natural to you, it means the end.

[youtube_sc url=” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATQ_Qi5Pzrw”]

 


Brigit McCone loves Maria Callas but isn’t that into opera. Go figure. She writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and wondering what was so great about that Onassis guy.

The Female Archetypes Through the Lens of Roberto Rossellini

The character development of Pina and Marina used by Rossellini shows the influence of the war on Italian life and femininity. The suffering women are the epitome of the country at war.

The devout Pina (Anna Magnani)
The devout Pina (Anna Magnani)

 

This is a guest post by Giselle Defares

Italian neorealism. Who would have thought that a genre that existed for a short period of time–1944 to 1952 to be precise–could have such a significant influence in the world’s cinematic history? The quintessential works of the Italian neorealist directors such as Vittorio De Sica (Ladri di biciclette), Luchino Visconti (La Terra Trema, Ossessione) and Roberto Rossellini (Roma, città aperta) are now anchored in our cultural lexicon. The genre has influenced the work of  famed directors such as Truffaut, Antonioni and Godard. After all, didn’t Jean-Luc Godard state “All roads lead to Rome, Open City”?

Roma, città aperta, the first part of Rossellini’s neorealistic trilogy, is often cited as the prime example of the neorealist genre. In ravaged Rome of 1945, recovering from Nazism and fascist oppression, Rossellini formed a team with Federico Fellini and Sergio Amidei to create two documentaries. Amidei and Fellini encouraged Rossellini to combine the scripts to create realistic fiction. The film was shot on location in Rome on a shoestring budget (mustered with many loans). Rossellini used parts of a 35 millimeter film and the scenes were silently shot–Renzo Rossellini would later post-synchronize the sound. Voilá, Roma, città aperta was born.

The neorealist movement arose as a reaction against the glamorous melodramas that had previously dominated the Italian film industry under the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini. The fascist Mussolini used cinema as a place where the Italian citizen could dream of the lush–unattainable–images and temporarily forget their own harsh reality a.k.a cinema of distraction.

The neorealist directors sought out to present a degree of unfettered realism that wasn’t presented on the Italian silver screen. The films addressed social problems such as the ravages of war, crime, unemployment, and poverty. The sense of immediacy throughout the film–scenes shot in locations where eight months before the city was occupied by the Nazis–had no correlation with any other Italian film produced in the 40s. Upon its release, Roma, città aperta, was received with mixed reactions in Italy. Luckily the rest of the world was transfixed by this form of new realism. The film won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1946. Fellini, Rossellini, and Amidei were nominated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

“Franchesco”
“Franchesco”

 

Roma, città aperta centers around the plight of the core members of the Italian resistance against the occupational Nazi government. We follow Giorgio Manfredi also known as Luigi Ferraris (Marcello Pagliero), a communist and leader in the resistance who’s wanted by the Nazis. His friend and underground Communist newspaper printer Francesco (Francesco Grandjacquet); his fiancée, the widow Pina (Anna Magnani); and the priest Don Pietro Pellegrini (Aldo Fabrizi). The trio will help Manfredi get a new identity. Pina’s son, the young Marcello, has been active in the resistance against the Nazis. In the tumultuous events that follow, Francesco is arrested but later manages to escape. While Manfredi gets betrayed by his lover, femme fatale pur sang, Marina (Maria Michi).

Most research on the film–see for example the work of David Forgacs, Peter Brunette, Tag Gallagher–is focused on the politics of filming, the catholic church, or other neo-realist features. Not much is written on the archetypical roles of the women in this film (bar the work of Marcia Landy. The character development of Pina and Marina used by Rossellini shows the influence of the war on Italian life and femininity. The suffering women are the epitome of the country at war.

Fascism encouraged the rise of the so called New Italian Women (Nuova Italiana). During Mussolini’s reign, Italian women struggled with the dilemma of the lure of modernity versus the rut of tradition. Though their freedom was curbed: no voting rights for women, no female participation in the labor market, and a ban on abortion. The role of the women herein was in essence purely to bring forth children. These contradictions were emphasized by the gap that existed between the traditional Italian society of the First World War and the division of modernity that fascism entailed. In 1933, Mussolini’s stated, “ Woman must obey… My idea of her role in the State is in opposition to all feminism. Naturally she shouldn’t be a slave, but if I conceded her to vote, I’d be laughed at. In our State, she must not count.” Right.

Marina (Maria Michi)
Marina (Maria Michi)

 

In Roma, città aperta we are introduced to two archetypes. First, the headstrong Pina, the rock who supports her husband, yet is allowed to be vulnerable. Then there’s Marina, the “weak” and venal woman who will succumb to all her desires. This dichotomy between Pina and Marina is the classic example of the Madonna-whore complex. Marina is presented as the complete opposite of Pina. Pina can be seen as the new Italian woman. Her whole look and attitude throughout the film is that of an ordinary, disheveled woman. She almost seems stripped of her “femininity.” This is a stark contrast with Marina, who works as a showgirl and enjoys her silk stockings, fur coats, and cigarettes – all the finer things in life. Marina seems like the new embodiment of the earlier femme fatales that reigned in the Fascist cinema–women who lived by no discernible laws and destroyed men who crossed their paths. Although, Rossellini’s version of the femme fatale is portrayed as a frail woman. Marina doesn’t fully embody the vivacious and sexual role the previous Italian femme fatales had. She’s doesn’t sashay her way through life, instead she’s considered weak and unable to deny herself any desires. This is also illustrated by Rossellini’s portrayal of her “liaison” with the Nazi Ingrid (and to underline the “moral depravity” during the war). It’s important to note that while Marina is depicted as the sexual deviant, it is Pina’s motherly and devout character who ultimately comes across as impulsive and irrational.

In arguably one of the most famous scenes, Pina runs after a prison truck while shouting “Franchesco!” as her husband is taken by the Nazis. It’s a quick montage of short takes and one very dramatic tracking shot that underlines the abruptness and finality of death – the scene is inspired on a real life event in 1943 where Maria Teresa Gullace participated in a protest and was shot in front of her husband and son.

Roma, città aperta is one the most conventional films of Rossellini, well, at least in terms of narrative and dramatic structure. Through cinematic codes like shot / reverse shot, mise-en-scene, framing, and continuity montage, directors can reveal gender relations. Critic Laura Mulvey refers to it as the male gaze and states that cinema ideally is meant for the male audience. She divides the term in two: active male and the passive female. The problem lies in the fact that the woman is just a lust object on the screen, but that the male viewer meanwhile still has an irrational fear of the woman.

In Roma, città aperta the gaze shifted in the sense that the role of Pina and Marina is dialectical. The strong, motherly and modest woman knows her weak moments. Throughout the film the gaze lingers on the tired face of Pina. Marina realizes what she did, who she betrays and struggles to looks at herself in the mirror. Through this narcissistic gaze, the viewer is also hit with this realization. Pina is portrayed as the caring mother, and Francesco had found the perfect woman to start a family with. Marina is the epitome of the whore; she’s only there for men (or women) to have sex with, but cannot be tied down or feel true love. This is shown in her relationship with Manfredi. Manfredi’s looks and glances at Marina are nothing more than lustful. His gaze holds contempt for the fact that Marina is so weak, she’s willing to sell herself in order to establish a luxury life. Marina is clearly a passive female, but Pina has a more active stance. Nevertheless, her activity was not accepted and she comes to her untimely end.

Throughout the film, Rossellini leaves room for your own interpretation and strengthens the feeling of uneasiness that the story evokes – see the ambiguous “open” ending. The strength of Roma, città aperta lies ultimately in the images of Rome, the “amateur” actors (see the wonderful Magnani and Fabrizi), and the film’s aesthetic. It all lifts the film to the next level. Rossellini’s film depicts the reality of war and the displacement of women out their stereotypical roles during moments of distress.

Roma, città aperta has brought us some of the most indelible images in world cinema.

 


Giselle enjoys googling random things, late night conversations, and can’t stray far from the impulse to write it all down. She writes on fashion, film, and pop culture here.