Dot in the Sky (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dotinthesky) wrote2011-11-16 05:25 pm
dotinthesky) wrote2011-11-16 05:25 pm
Entry tags:
Goddesses
I'm reading at the moment a really great book on the unconscious and the mythological, by Michael Vannoy Adams, called - of course - The Mythological Unconscious. A passage caught my attention:
There she is, walking towards us in her golden armour, like Athena. Wikipedia describes Athena as "the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill... [she] is also a shrewd companion of heroes and is the goddess of heroic endeavour."
So the "girls" she creates are the heroines that will fight during the Drag Race until one is crowned the victor. In previous shows, RuPaul has sat at a judging table (Mount Olympos?) and dispensed her wisdom to contestant, her praise, her encouragement, while they compete against each other. There are always guest judges that help her decision (fellow Gods) and she always visits the room where contestants work on their outfits to see how they are doing (which involves RuPaul climbing down some stairs into the room).
Later in the book Zeus is discussed and how he is related to thunder/electricity. Now, thinking again of Athena/RuPaul as the daughter of Zeus (the other side of Zeus?), check out the video again around 0:50 seconds, when Zeus' power fills the room and rushes through Athena/RuPaul's hands.
And aren't drag queens "virginal" in one sense, just like Athena? Their ubersexuality and sexual language only reinforcing how they are neither men nor women, but a construction (the "droids") - virginal until either a man or a woman chooses to remove their outer drag shell (shells, of course, being related to Aphrodite, goddess of love). Athena and Zeus are myths - images - and so are drag queens, who play up to their own favourite myth-like stars when they create their looks.
The book also mentions the "Black Athena" theory, which I had never heard of before - and which RuPaul embodies in the video: a theory that Ancient Greece is more indebted to Africa and Asia than is commonly known or promoted.
Again from Wikipedia: "The Greek philosopher, Plato (429–347 BC), identified [Athena] with the Libyan deity Neith, the war goddess and huntress deity of the Egyptians since the ancient Pre-Dynastic period, who was also identified with weaving. This is sensible, as some Greeks identified Athena's birthplace, in certain mythological renditions, as being beside Libya's Triton River."
I'm not sure if RuPaul or her producers were aware of the connection when they made the video. Perhaps they weren't, otherwise they would make it more explicitly "classical Greece"? Either way, in my opinion those myths are channeled by RuPaul in the video and neatly embody what she wishes to portray in herself and for the show.
Pallas Athene was the Greek goddess of war. At her birth, she sprang from Zeus's head, with, as Kerényi says, "a far-echoing battle-cry," in "armour of gleaming gold," and "brandishing her sharp javelin." According to Kerényi, Pallas Athene was "a warlike virgin." He notes that the epithet "Pallas" means "a strong virgin, a virago, as she would be called in Latin."I immediately thought of the video I posted yesterday, the trailer for RuPaul's upcoming Drag Race (season 4):
There she is, walking towards us in her golden armour, like Athena. Wikipedia describes Athena as "the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill... [she] is also a shrewd companion of heroes and is the goddess of heroic endeavour."
So the "girls" she creates are the heroines that will fight during the Drag Race until one is crowned the victor. In previous shows, RuPaul has sat at a judging table (Mount Olympos?) and dispensed her wisdom to contestant, her praise, her encouragement, while they compete against each other. There are always guest judges that help her decision (fellow Gods) and she always visits the room where contestants work on their outfits to see how they are doing (which involves RuPaul climbing down some stairs into the room).
Later in the book Zeus is discussed and how he is related to thunder/electricity. Now, thinking again of Athena/RuPaul as the daughter of Zeus (the other side of Zeus?), check out the video again around 0:50 seconds, when Zeus' power fills the room and rushes through Athena/RuPaul's hands.
And aren't drag queens "virginal" in one sense, just like Athena? Their ubersexuality and sexual language only reinforcing how they are neither men nor women, but a construction (the "droids") - virginal until either a man or a woman chooses to remove their outer drag shell (shells, of course, being related to Aphrodite, goddess of love). Athena and Zeus are myths - images - and so are drag queens, who play up to their own favourite myth-like stars when they create their looks.
The book also mentions the "Black Athena" theory, which I had never heard of before - and which RuPaul embodies in the video: a theory that Ancient Greece is more indebted to Africa and Asia than is commonly known or promoted.
Again from Wikipedia: "The Greek philosopher, Plato (429–347 BC), identified [Athena] with the Libyan deity Neith, the war goddess and huntress deity of the Egyptians since the ancient Pre-Dynastic period, who was also identified with weaving. This is sensible, as some Greeks identified Athena's birthplace, in certain mythological renditions, as being beside Libya's Triton River."
I'm not sure if RuPaul or her producers were aware of the connection when they made the video. Perhaps they weren't, otherwise they would make it more explicitly "classical Greece"? Either way, in my opinion those myths are channeled by RuPaul in the video and neatly embody what she wishes to portray in herself and for the show.