Background to Medea
Lars Von Trier, dir. 1988
Roger Macfarlane
Classics
Jason and the Argonauts (1966)
Zoe Caldwell as Medea (1982)
The Golden Fleece
Googlemaps, Aegean and Euxine Seas
Daughter of King Aeëtes
of Colchis
As “other” as you can get
Like other girls from Greek myth
Unlike any other woman in Greek
myth
Euripides’ Medea is supercharged
with sexual tension, frightening
witchcraft, rhetorical verve
Medea escaping, Lucanian calyx, c. 400 BC, Sotheby’s
Hera and Aphrodite cause
Medea to fall for Jason
Pretty dastardly… pawn of the
goddesses
Her help was invaluable to Jason
She ran off with the handsome
stranger … in his prime.
John W. Waterhouse, “Jason and Medea” (1907), private collect
Medea chooses Jason over
family
Helping Jason win Golden Fleece is
tantamount to treason: handing over
the national treasure
By brutally deceiving her own brother,
Apsyrtus, and butchering his body,
Medea seals herself to the Argonauts
Jason presents the Fleece to Pelias, ca. 340 BC, Apulian crater, Louvre, Paris
Jason returns home to
Iolchis with the Golden
Fleece… and a foreign girl
Pelias renegs on the deal…
Medea helps Jason get his desserts
This leads to banishment in Corinth
Medea and Pelias on ca. 470 BC crater, British Museum E163
Glauke is a catalyst for
change
Euripides has Glauke appear only in
limited role
Von Trier amplifies her role
considerably: “Medea and Glauce
cannot both remain here.”
“Glauke” means something like
“sparkling” … “Your name means
“nymph”.
Some versions call her “Creusa”,
which means “princess”
Glauke admires Medea’s gift, Dolon Painter, ca. 390 BC, Apulian, Louvre, Paris
Aegeus, king of Athens,
offers Medea asylum
Medea nearly tricks Aegeus into
poisoning his own son Theseus
Banished finally by Aegeus, Medea
flees to Persia and becomes the
eponymous foundress of the kingdom
of Media.
Eventually, Medea returns to Colchis
and dies.
Aegeus meets his son, Sisyphus Painter, ca. 410 BC, Apulian, British Museum GR 1856.12-26.3
Medea s escape
’
Dramatic conventions
Euripides 431 Medea
• Limited cast
• Chorus comments and
structures action
• Violence occurs offstage
…reported through
messengers
• Female characters are
aberrant … either positive or
negative
• Limited spatial economy
• Deus ex machina
Lars Von Trier’s 1988 Medea
• Spare casting
• Intimate cinematic style
foregrounds violent
moments and obviates
dialogue
• Mobile perspective
Euripides and his audience
• The Athenian audience
knew Medea’s story…
Von Trier and his audience
• The 20th-century audience
knows Medea
• “three corpses”
• “how could she?”
Jason
Jason fights Harryhausen’s skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts (1966)
Jason gets coughed up by the serpent that guards the Golden Fleece, 5th BC kylix, Vatican 16545
Glauke
“Medea Sarcophagus”, Antikensammlung, Berlin
Creon
“Medea Sarcophagus”, Antikensammlung, Berlin
Medea s escape
’
“Medea Sarcophagus”, Antikensammlung, Berlin
Medea
Wm Wetmore Storey, Medea (1864-1868) Metropolitan Museum, NY
Medea s escape
’
Some Questions
Next time I watch Lars Von Trier’s
Medea, I’m going to try to figure
answers to these questions.
• What is the significance of water imagery
throughout the film? Especially in her
contacts with Aegeus, water seems always
to divide and join.
• Why is the film-quality so grainy? Is it a
device to “classicize” the narrative, like
some old B&W artifact?
• Those huge landscape shots: Is Medea
herself larger than the power of the barren
landscape she roams?
• Does Glauke understand the stakes of
seducing Jason? Does Creon? Does Jason?
How does the director convey this tension?
• Is there Abraham imagery in Von Trier’s hilltop setting of the children’s death?
• That horse, those children, the innocent…
Who is culpable? How does the director
ask/answer this?
From the 1988 Danish/German television broadcast.