Page 14 - GALIET THESMOPHORIAS and Euphorias IV

Galiet & Galiet
bound to do it wrong. For MacDowell, then, this play’s sole purpose is pure entertainment and mockery.
On the other hand, while Taaffe does not neglect the play’s tacit humoristic flare, she realizes it can serve as a metaphor for political upheaval. The Thesmophoriazusae represents a political satire of sorts: it underlies a “threat for social revolution” (76) where it advocates a return to order from the chaos of the festival’s dissolution of family and the separation of men and women to the order of marriage, of life and of civilization in general (76). Taaffe believes that the Thesmophoriasuzae is a political play where men occupy women space instead of women infiltrating male space as seen in Lysistrata. Transvestism, mimesis, parody and themes of role-playing and gender identity fuse with complex concepts of spectatorship: women as objects of vision and desire as in the case of Agathon (in contrast to Mnesilochus’ case). Ultimately, for Taaffe, women are stereotyped and constructed by males as objects of vision and desire, their femininity exploited on stage and their beings misrepresented as “secretive, sex- crazed, tipplers, traitors, gossips, unclean and a great evil for men”4 (89). These theatrical misrepresentations, Taaffe says, are dangerous for they encourage men to mistrust and restrict the pseudo-liberty of Athenian women. For Taaffe, Aristophanes’ triumphs in having men dress as women and having male actors perform feminine roles. Comedy, Taaffe concludes, needs the voluptuous “overlapping of gender”, the male actors in female dress, if it is to be gloriously successful.
Slater not only embraces the meta-theatricality of Thesmophoriasuzae and its gender cross-dressing but also its political relevance as a parody of political representation in Athenian democracy. Women charge Euripides with treason and delegate his punishment to the members of the Assembly for he has plotted against the women demos. Because Euripides poses a serious threat to the women demos (161), Slater insists that this play ought not to be seen only from a purely aesthetic, sexual or theoretical point of view. Instead, it is a running
4 I believe this is not a misrepresentation. It represents a typical, realistic view of how the character of uneducated females raised under the hammer of oppressive or patristic states is negatively constructed by their society (my own experience). It is evident that in such societies men feel threatened by the feminine.
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