Conversations: The Face That Lit a Thousand* Screens, Helen of Troy in Hollywood w/ Ruby Blondell

Published Sep 8, 2023, 7:00 AM

Liv speaks with author and scholar Ruby Blondell about Helen of Sparta, Troy, and the Silver Screen. Ruby's new book Helen of Troy in Hollywood is available in North America now and the UK later this month! Help keep LTAMB going by subscribing to Liv's Patreon for bonus content!

CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing.

Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions.

Oh, hello there, this is let's talk about miss Baby. Sometimes my voice cracks because singing is not my strong suit. But I am your host, elder millennial extraordinaire live, and yeah, that peak millennial bit is fairly relevant today. Today's Conversation episode features Ruby Blondell, who, in addition to being an expert in absolutely countless of my favorite ancient Greek topics, like I got this request to have them on my show, and then I googled them and then yeah, anyway, here they are. And Ruby has written a book about Helen of Troy. Well, actually, they've written a number of books about Helen of Troy, but this one is Helen of Troy. On screen. Ruby knows Helen backwards and forwards. And I'm pretty sure I use their other book on Helen, like way back when I covered Helen in a two part series, because God's what a character who will never get old, not necessarily the ways she's portrayed on screen, though those often leave something to be desired, but Helen herself. Ruby and I talked about Helen as a character in myth but also as a character who's been portrayed in these many, many different ways, And I mean different ways over the course of Hollywood history. And if you're wondering what kind of book it is that they've written the preface with an anecdote about the time Drake and Chris Brown fans injured a basketball star, and when he tried to sue the venue where it happened, his attorney compared Rihanna to Helen of Troy, basically blaming Rihanna for the fact that these two men that she had dated at some point had been the ultimate source of a fight between other people. Obviously, the preface to this book tells that anecdote beautifully, but it's also just a great indication of the type of book that we are talking about. So, yeah, if you're wondering if this book is coming from a feminist perspective and questioning these nastier aspects of Helen's history, he'd better fucking.

Believe it is.

We look at a whole collection of ways that Helen has been portrayed on screen, including a two thousand and three mini series that is not only aimed at teenage girls of the time aka My Personal Peak teenage Years, but actually features so much of Helen's mythological story that even theseus is there, and he's played by Stellan stars Guard. Anyway, if you're wondering whether you will have some things that you might need to watch after this episode, prepare yourselves. I know I've already messaged some friends of the show, nerd friends, to inform that that we will be watching it together. Ruby was such a joy to have on though I'm already rambling about Helen because I just enjoyed it so much. I learned so damn much from Ruby about not only Helen the character, but the ways that she's been portrayed and hell a little bit of extra anger at the misogynist in patriarchal ways that her story has been told and marketed just for good measure, Like, oh my god, there there is so much to Helen in all her different forms thanks to Ruby Blondell. Needless to say, this conversation is seriously good, particularly for where I personally am currently at, like in my head, which is possibly like a new level of angry feminist even for me. I like to think that Helen would be that way too. Conversations the face that lit a thousand screens Helen of Troy in Hollywood with Ruby Blondell so I'm very excited to talk about I mean kind of everything. Sorry, I also have ADHD and I jump around a lot, but it always turns out great. I promise my listeners are used to it. But I'm very excited for this, which is why I'm going to start jumping around already. Because not only does your book Helen of Troy and Hollywood sound fast, fascinating, I only just got my copy a few days ago, so I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I can't wait. But also I googled you and just everything you study sounds like exactly all I ever want to talk about on my podcast. So aside from that book being exciting, I was like, oh my gosh, I absolutely have to talk to them. I am thrilled. So I really would love to talk about kind of anything today. But obviously, you know, ostensibly we are here for Helen of Troy and Hollywood. So I mean, do you want to tell me a bit about kind of what you study broadly? And then also you know why Helen and what you wanted out of this book, I mean, share anything basically.

Okay, Well, let's see. You know, I grew up as a classicist very young and what I've mostly done comes under the umbrella of Greek intellectual history, and I can do that extremely broadly to include all kinds of literature. And I've also always been a feminist, so I've always brought a feminist approach to what I've done, and that would mostly show up in the stuff I've done on tragedy and literature generally. I've also done stuff in philosophy, but that's a bit less obvious. Is not a huge amount of feminism in ancient philosophy?

Surprisingly?

Yeah, But mostly it's literature. I co wrote a book called Women on the Edge, which is translations of plays by Euripides, and that was explicitly from a feminist point of view.

That excited me so much. I'm sorry. So that's the thing. When I googled, I mean, I saw everything that you've worked on and written. But like so, I my running thing in this show is my absolute love of Euripides, because I think he wanted to talk about women in interesting ways, yes and yes, and so I saw that and I was really annoyed, actually, because every play that you have translated in there, I've already covered on the podcast, So I couldn't reasonably use you as a source, but I will, I will use the translations just for my own fun. But yeah, I mean, Euripity is just he's absolutely fascinating. So I was thrilled to see that. In anything you want to say about him, please feel free at any point.

Well, my contribution to that book was a translation of media and introductory materials as well. And like you say, she is a fascinating character.

Yes, yeah, yeah, I could talk about Youripities forever, so I wasn't going to hold myself back. But it's very thrilling to see that book.

So then afterwards, well, I did a lot of philosophy stuff and then I got interested in Helen of Troy. And this started with the movie Troy, which came out in two thousand and four, and I was so pissed off at the representation of Helen. I just thought, no, she's this kind of whiny, wimpy boohoo. And my view of Helen is that she's basically beauty is a superpower, and she is like awe inspiring and dangerous and that's why they need to control her. But the Helen in that movie was just blay masked, and so I started writing about it and poor Diane Krueger. I was really not very nice to her. I wrote an article about that, about Diane Kruger in Troy, and I didn't know anything about movies really then, and that wasn't very nice to her. But it got me started on Helen and then but that led me back to thinking about Helen in Greek myths. So I was like, okay, what is the background here? So my plan was to write a book about Helen in Greek myth and movies, but I quickly got way too much material on Helen in Greek myths, so I made that into a book on Helen in ancient Greek authors. And then the next book was Helen in the Movies, and Helen in the Movies is the one that just came out.

I have to just say to the listeners, I'm going to pull it up, but I just read it earlier. I absolutely loved that the section on Helen in Troy is just called Helen of Abercrombie and Fitch. That's very appropriate.

Well, that one started the first article I wrote about her, which was revised for the book, and I was less mean to her in the book because I had learned more about film but the article was called third Cheerleader from the Left, and both of those titles are quotes from reviewers who were just like really hard on her, Oh wow, for being completely bland and nothing special. And the way in which I got kinder towards her was I realized it wasn't Diane Kruge's fault. It was the way she was chosen and what she was told to do and how she was directed and the script and all of that that made her into kind of a whiny loser. So I was a bit mean to Diane the first time.

Well, I mean, yeah, I understand that too, between her and the treatment of persis in that movie, like, there's a lot to be it's you know, left to be desired, I think in terms of the way they actually both of them appear in myth and like just kind of what both of those characters deserve versus what they got in Troy. So I'm very much on your side.

Yeah, yeah, Yeah, Bersa is annoying in a different way exactly.

Yeah.

They make her into this kind of feisty modern heroin girl and the love interest for Achilles. But in antiquity this is not a very well known fact, but there are traces in antiquity of a relationship between Achilles and Helen, and I think that they made for each other. Really, Achilles is, you know, the most heroic man. He's the best looking, not everyone knows that he's the most beautiful man who went to Troy, and he's the greatest warrior, so he's like the ultimate in manhood, and Helen, the most beautiful woman, is the ultimate in womanhood. So I think they belong together. But if that had happen, there wouldn't have been a Trojan war because there's no way Helen would have run away from Achilles.

Right, Yeah, it's very true, though, I mean there is the Patrick of it all as well, which I know my listeners would be screaming at this point already.

Oh that's right, that's true. In Troy, I thought I like Brad Pitt's Achilles because he's that kind of Hollywood quintessential at that time, a quintessential model of glorious masculinity, which is what Achilles is supposed to be, the betrocolus of it all. In in Troy, they make him his cousin, which everyone laughed at. That actually is a myth that makes them cousins because my everybody's related, you know, not such a big deal. And in Homer they're not explicitly a homoerotic couple. However, from an emotional point of view, they definitely are. Betrucolus and Achilles are more important than any relationship he has with a female person. So all of these things are interpretations and can be done in different ways, and so it's kind of lame that Petrocolus is his cousin. But it's also not not wrong, because there's really no right and wrong when it comes to myths. Myths are it's all fan fiction, you know. You learn these stories. I learned these stories as a child from little books, you know, and that's kind of what got me interested in the first place. And so you tend to think that that's the story. But actually the ancient stories are a huge mess of possibilities, and even the ancient authors got to choose, they could choose from many different options. They could also make up new options. So like, for instance, you probably know this, but it's there's a good chance that Euripides made up the fact that media kills her children, right, So that wasn't.

There's that rumor that like the Corinthians. He was he made it. Now I'm going to forget, of course what the rumor is, but it's something about like the Corinthians killed the children or he did took it away from them.

Yeah. Yeah, there's several different versions about how they died, and so we don't know for sure that Euripides made it up, but either way, the point is he could have. And so so just going back to Achilles and Petrocolus, you can choose how you you know that he has sex with women, he has a very close intimate emotional relationship with Petrocolus. You can choose what strands you want to draw, and you can development, you can change, and that's obviously gone to appeal in different ways of different audiences. So Try was a very mainstream movie, so they tried to be not offend anybody. So yeah, lay mass cousin thing.

I recently, just in June, I dedicated most of my episodes to various Pride themed things. I usually do that almost every year, And I had on a guest, Charlotte Gregory, who's currently doing her PhD. And she's doing it in studying Achilles and Patrick Less in pop culture. Yeah, I was so just fascinating, like all the different representations of them, and you know when they are and are not lovers, or are and are not cousins and so I actually I named that episode like, so are they cousins or not? And then we talked about, you know how mythologically there there are cases where they're cousins, but it doesn't really change anything because I mean, God Hades is Persephone's uncle on both sides like that, that really wasn't a concern for the ancient gree exactly exactly. And the Helen bit you mentioned earlier when it comes to Achilles, you know how they fit really well together. I'm curious. I know there's the I'm going to forget the source on it, but you know there's the idea that they were married in uh you know Islah the blest yes, you know, in the afterlife. Is there more to their relationship than just that reference or pretty much?

I'm actually really impressed that you know about that reference.

I really I know too many things at this.

Point, because that's the kind of thing that I tell most people that this tradition and they're like, wow, but you're really up on it. That's the main one. And there are a couple of other little ones. There's one where they're married in a dream and it's in a really weird, obscure poem that's impossible to understand, so there are hints of it. But I also think that there's this kind of just conceptual appropriateness that they should belong together, but they can't be together because then there wouldn't be a Trojan War. It's like that neither one of them would have a story. You know. The story is that Zeus created both Helen and Achilles in order to cause the Trojan War to reduce the human population. And so there are two factors necessary for the Trojan war. There are Achilles, he's the greatest fighter and he's going to kill all those Trojans. And then there's Helen, who causes the trouble by running off the Paris. So obviously they can't get together, but there'll be no Trojan war.

So, I mean, there's so many different veins of conversation that I want to go in here, and not least as you know, talking about your book. But I'm also so curious, just based on this, what are your thoughts on Euripides is Ellen and that you know that kind of alternate version where she's that idolo on, you know, and never went in the first place, because I absolutely love that take.

Yes, it's really whacked out, isn't it. I have a chapter on that on Euripides Helen in my first Helen book, and also a chapter on Trojan women for Ruberties fans.

All my listeners could or should be Euripides fans at this point. If they're not, I'm doing it wrong.

And Helen going to Egypt is really interesting and I'm interested by the fact that it never shows up in modern pop culture. It does show up in high culture, like in opera, but in general it's not what people think of as the canonical myth. But it was fairly widespread in antiquity, the idea that the gods made an image of Helen and that's what the trojan were, and she was sent to Egypt. And in Euripides play, which is somewhat comic, you have this potential confrontation between two Helen's, the real one and the fig one. And in Euripides Helen she is she comes out as sort of an ideal, approfect woman heard she's the most usually if you're beautiful in Greek, and you're a woman, that means trouble. You know. Pandora, the first woman is a beautiful evil. Beauty and badness go together in women. So on the one hand, they're bad, so you don't want them, But on the other hand, they're beautiful, so you do want them if you're a man. And by the way, Helen is a very heteronormative figure. She's a figure of hetero female beauty. So Euripides takes the idea that the most beautiful woman could also be the most virtuous and good woman, which in most typical Greek ideology is impossible. So he's got Helen as the most beautiful woman, and he makes it completely innocent by saying she was just taken off to Egypt. I think the way it's presented in the play, it's also he also is acknowledging that it's an unrealizable fantasy, that no woman could be that way. It is kind of a fantasy world. What it's not doing, what I'd say a lot of modern renditions want to do, is they want to defend Helen by saying, oh, she was oppressed, she had a horrible husband, whatever. I don't blame her for going to Troy. No Greek author does that. They defend her a lot, but not like that. So you're pretty defensive by saying she never even went to Troy. So she's never defended for using her personal agency and choosing to go to Troy with Paris, and that's what modern renditions usually tried to do.

I also just love what he does to Menelaus in that play, because, like, you know, for all, Helen still gets to be this like perfect woman, but who's blameless, Like Menelaus is just kind of like a dork in a way that is so satisfying.

Yes, Menelaius is always a dork. He's like, you know, like I was saying that Helen really belongs with Achilles, because she would never have run away from Achilles because he's awesome. Menilaius is a permanent loser because she does run away from him, and that's a sign that you are useless as a man if you can't keep your wife. And he's even like his big brother is the one who leads the army. Menelaius is just like lame mast and that I think is true to his character. But on the other hand, you could say that Euripides Helen shows the fantasy that a layme asked man can have a beautiful woman who's good, and that's you know, a very common male fantasy, and that not just a fantasy. In my imaginary movie of Helen's story, Medlaius is played by Michael Douglas and Helen is Catherine z To Jones, you know, that kind of patterning is really really common, right, lame ass, loser man and beautiful exceptional woman.

Yeah, that's I like that. That's that very much suits I Also it just leads me to the thing too, of the Ellen in the Odyssey, because one of my I mean, I'm a big Odyssey fan, and it's just fascinating to me how different she is there, you know, and I think it says a lot about the like quote unquote idea of Homer, but also just sort of interesting speculation on kind of what it happens to her and what she comes back as and how we get this like very different kind of character in that, you know, in the kind of follow up to the Iliad.

Yes, I love Helen in the Odyssey. I love that she uses magic and drugs and generally, and I think that brings to the surface something that's always potentially there, and that is that her beauty is a superpower. But the dangerous power of beauty is often conceptualized as being magic or like a drug that overcomes poor, helpless, pathetic man, right, so they can't function properly. And in the Odyssey you really see that brought out with the drug she administers in the drink at the party, the dinner party, and with my favorite moment is when she basically betrays the Greeks when the Greek's hiding in the Trojan horse and she walks around and mimics the voices of their wives and obviously this is magic, right, so they all want to jump out because they think their wives are there. I mean, that's crazy and it's obviously supernatural. So I really like that. I do think this is some continuity between that and the Iliad, and the continuity in my mind is that I think in the Iliad she's also quite manipulative. It's not presented as magic, but she does all this woe is me, I'm a terrible woman thing. She does that in the Odyssey as well. Bitch Helen or whatever you want to call her, dog face, it's the Greek for dogface the word that's used for Helen, which means basically slut. Yeah, and so she's putting herself down. So I'm like, oh, that's so terrible. It's so terrible. But to the patriarchal Greek male audience, that's a sign of a good woman, because a good woman is one who puts herself down. So I think, I mean, we can't talk about what Helen is really thinking because you're not a real person. But I think that kind of rhetoric of talking about what a terrible person she is is also a way of manipulating men. And you'll notice that in the Iliad, the men she does it too, namely Hector and else does she do it hector on Priam. Those are the two she does it too. They both are they both really like her, and they're like, oh, Helen is not your fault. So I see that as an example of successful manipulation of men by a woman who's in obviously many ways subordinate position.

Yeah. Yeah, I like that interpretation quite a lot. I feel like I probably read it more at face value when I went through it, which was so many years ago now on the podcast, But I love the idea that she's doing it all on purpose and knows exactly what she's doing and what she's going to get out of it.

She's a very self aware character in Homer. You know, there's that bit where she's weaving a tapestry of which shows the Trojan War, and that's kind of a metaphor for herself awareness about the war and her role in it.

Right. Oh, I need to reread the Iliot. I can't wait for the new Emily Wilson translation. I think that's gonna be my time to revisit it after a while. There's just so much to say about Helen. She's so fascinating. So now my knowledge of her in pop culture in movies is Troy, But I know, obviously you're talking about other representations of her, so like, what kind of what exists out there otherwise? And you know what, Yeah, how did you feel about it?

Well? I started with Troy for the reasons I've already given, and what that got me interested in was how do you represent beauty? And clearly there's a big difference between doing that in writing or in a text and doing it on screen, and on screen is going to be a real challenge. So I'm like, if you have a character who's the most beautiful woman in the world, how are you going to show her on screen? And I started with Diane Kruger being a really bad example, but that got me into like looking at other examples, and I ended up with about half a dozen. I restricted it to Hollywood just because there are so many and I wanted to have some kind of a connection between them. The first one is one of my favorites, and that's a nineteen twenty seven silent film. I'll just tell you what they all are and then go back and talk about them whichever ones you want, but she's one of my favorites. Then after that, and I have a whole first chapter that's about early Hollywood and their attitudes towards beauty and representations of like Venus and so on. So that's Stapter one. Chapter two is that's nineteen twenty seven The Private Life of Helen of Troy. After that, I have two epics, and the first is a nineteen fifties epic called Helen of Troy, and the second is Troy, And honestly, those are both my least favorites. Then I moved the television, which I really did enjoy I like doing the television part. There's an episode of Star Trek, the original series, which is about Helen. It's called Elain of Troyos.

Oh my gosh, yeah, I know, right, that's amazing.

And then I paired that with an episode of Xena Warrior Princess, just sure to compare.

Yeah.

And then there's a TV mini series from two thousand and three which was made at the same time as troy which I kind of love. I mean, it was a big flop. It was presented as a kind of a TV special event mini series extravaganza, and it was panned. But I think the reason they got panned is because it's really aimed at teenage girls, and so that became one of my favorites as well. So I can talk about whichever once you like.

Well, I mean, I have to admit I am most intrigued by the idea of one being aimed at teenage girls, not least because I think that, you know, it really says something that it's getting that it gets panned, and that's kind of the connection. And it just doesn't surprise me at all, especially as someone who was fifteen in two thousand and three, and so like I feel like I lived this, and I'd love to hear about that one.

Yeah, you could have lived this. Well. The initial problem actually, I did an interview with the person who wrote it, and that's which was really interesting. It was about what it's like to be a woman writer in Hollywood, and she said she started out doing full length movies and they never got made, so she moved towards to television because it was more female friendly. And this is going to come out. It's going to be published. The interview is going to be published in a book called Women Writers and the Classics or something like that.

I mean that book, thank you.

In a year or two. It's not it's on its way anyway. So that was super interesting. And she did various TV mini series about historical and mythological women and from a point of view, and most of them, she said, didn't even get made, but this one did, and she was disappointed at how much of her intention was taken out of it. But I still thought it came out pretty well. There was a problem with the conflict of genre and content. So the genre is quote unquote epic, which people think of as big fights and special effects, and you normally think of a male hero right for an epic. It's because the whole concept of a hero is one that's hard to apply to women in most eras of society.

Especially two thousand and three like that, that's a very specific time period for women and young women.

Yes, and I put it in that context to the postfeminist context, although the person who wrote it, Ronnie Kern, is the writer and she was definitely a second wave feminist, but in two thousand and three we had third wave feminism, so called. I really don't like the waves thing, but.

Yeah, yeah, I can't pay know much about them, even though like my career is as a feminist, but I just kind of broadly and.

So called postfeminism all that stuff. Just as a sidebar, I have a personal thing about the idea of that feminism or anything else comes in generations, because I think it's used to pit people against each other.

Mm hmmm.

So it's like, you know, boomers are bad because they're old school and new up and coming kids are better because they have new, fresh ideas. Well, back in the day, the boomers were the ones who are having the fresh ideas. In other words, it's not about generations, it's about attitude and mentality.

Anyway, that's just yeah, no, I agree entirely. I think that's important to say too.

It's a way of putting people against each other, divide and conquer.

Yeah, and as if that's not like the exact opposite point of feminism, which you know, especially today, we already have a problem of a subset of quote unquote feminism that is, you know, pitting against other people. And it's just like, yeah, we don't need more of that, we don't.

Yes, So we're on the same page here. So we had this epic framework with its expectation of masculine heroism and all of that, which also it was it's only it's a two episode mini series, so it's really more like a long film, and it was promoted that way too, as this great epic extravaganza. But the story and the sympathy focuses on the figure of Helen, and she's represented as a really kind of at the beginning, a clueless teenage girl, very childish. It's a childish romance with Paris. I mean, the film validates it, but it's very heavily romanticized. For instance, when they first meet, he sees a vision of her at the judgment of Paris, and she sees a vision of him in the magic pond in the mountains. You know, it's very girl girlish stuff, right, and then off she goes to Troy, et cetera. But I read a lot of reviews and responses and it was trash over and over again for being essentially too faminine and quote unquote not not the Iliod.

Yeah, because Troy is the iliod god right exactly.

And Grannie Kane, who wrote it, was explicitly not basing it on the Iliad. She included the abduction by Theseus who you mentioned earlier.

Gosh, really, kilieve, I did not know this thing existed. I am now like obsessed.

Well tell me what you think when you.

Watch it, Yeah, I will. I can't believe Theseus is in there. So yes, I feel like that is a thing, Like it's so my. The running joke on my show is that, like, I'm just like a Theseus hate hour. It's really not. I mean, it is true, but like it's obviously not in every episode. But I do think it is fun to talk about how bad Theseus is as a hero because he's just so bad. And I think the number one example anytime I have a you know, people like to argue Jason or theseus, like who's the worst, And for me, it's like, well, only one of them kidnapped a girl who was at the oldest twelve, so I think it was theseus. So I'm just but I feel like that is so often like left out of things because it does make a man look bad. So I'm I'm fascinated by the idea that that it actually appears in pop culture.

Yes, now, they do soften him up a lot. It's sort of like a frat boy prank, okay, and then he turns into a nice guy. He never actually has sex with her.

Well, I guess that's true to the myth, but you know it because he was like off trying to abduct the Queen of the underworld instead.

Well, right, and they do it. They allude to that too. Really yeah, because what's his name's pers on his way to the underworld. Wow. Yeah, So he does turn into a good guy. But the point is the story she's telling. The writer is telling the story of Helen, so she includes all this stuff that's about Helen that's not necessarily the Trojan War, and so all these people are complaining, and I'm looking at a lot of IMDb comments and they're complaining that it's not Homer, it's not the Iliad, right, And then this most awesome thing for me was I found on IMDb a set of about seventy responses that were written by teenage girls. And that was because their teacher had given them an assignment to write an IMDb review.

Oh my gosh.

I know. The main negative is that they were Filipina and no offense, but they're not you know, Hollywood American a target audience, so that was a problem. But I thought I could use them because their natives, well, they're are very good speakers of English, they were educated in English, and their teenage girls, you know, anyway, they love this film. They all were in love with Paris, who is this like cute.

Boy, yeah, which is very sweet.

They kind of raved about his beauty. And interestingly, whereas usually in most reviews of most Helen movies, you're going to get guys basically measuring her beauty, whether they think she's beautiful enough, and they're usually making jokes about the face that launched a thousand ships, and they'll say things like she's more like the face that launched a thousand lunches or launched one canoe and et cetera. Yeah, and these girls don't talk at all about what she looks like, Yeah, the fifteen year old, they're about age year war. Yeah, and they just go google out over Paris and how hot he is, and the whole romantic message of love and its importance is really resonating with them. So that's the basis for my argument that it's aimed at teenage girls. And if you take it that way, it's a successful movie. It's just that it it fell flat and was scorned by, you know, the guardians of high culture and by people who think an epic should be a masculinist adventure.

That's so interesting. It makes me think of how some things are framed today, specifically when it comes to classical reception, because you know, I mean, it sounds like the issue was more about marketing than it was about the actual show right where. And it's interesting that it's from two thousand and three too, because that was really like the height of I mean, and maybe I'm biased because I was fifteen then, but like it was kind of the height of teenage girl movies, you know, like I would say it's all because of Kirsten Dunce for the most part, but it was. And so it's interesting to me that like that it would get panned like that, and it does sound like it was more about marketing than anything else, because it's like, you know, no one's watching, like bring it on because they thought it was an epic. You know, you know what you're getting. But if it is marketed like an epic, you're going to get that. And it comes up a lot these days, i think, in retellings, books of classical reception retellings, because so often the buzzword is feminism. So oh, it's a feminist retelling of a myth, and quite often with a good handful of the new ones that are coming out now, they're not feminist retellings. They're just retellings that focus on women, but the marketing gets to call them feminist, and then you know, people get mad about that. It's like, well, it's actually not the author's fault unless the author's part of it. But often more often than not, it's the marketing that wants the buzzword of feminism, even if the author is not trying to write a feminist retelling, and Yeah, it's just it's interesting the way those things can like can really affect a piece of art. But also just you know, I guess it's the way they kind of really tie in too. Feminism broadly. I suppose just this idea that like stuff has to be for women, and if it isn't marketed that way, then it's wrong, or if it's marketed it's feminist and it's not, or I don't know. I don't really have a full thought on this, but it's just it's really interesting to see those kind of parallels.

Yes, and it opens the door to people's very different views of what feminism is. I mean, is it a feminist retelling if it shows that women's suffering, or does it have to show the women having agency and taking action. It depends on what you think counts as feminist. And in the case of this movie as well, part of the problem is not just marketing. It's the fact that the film wouldn't get made without the marketing. It can only get made as a TV epic because that's the only way that a studio is going to make a show about the ancient world.

Yeah, it makes you think there was a few ancient world like TV mini series from around that time. There was a adjacent and the Argonauts one, and then there was the Brief like it's kind of like a section of the Odyssey, but I feel like that was more in like the late nineties, but it was sort of a time for that. Just interesting the way there was kind of like a little little collection of.

Them kind of was there was a wave of them. Yeah, I'm sorry I interrupted you just then. No, No, there was a wave of them late nineties and to the last few years of the twentieth century. And if you look at my book, just to promote it for a minute, I have a little charge which shows audience responses. And out of those mini series, two of them were named for women, Helen and Cleopatra. And I did a little I'm not really statistician by any means, but I did a little analysis of the audience reactions just and the two which have female names and female protagonists were much more popular with women, obviously, but they were down played and dissed overall, because shows that are popular with women tend to be disliked by men, and men are more you'll probably know this, but more ungenerous towards shows about women. Women will put up with shows about men.

But because we've been forced to.

Yeah, exactly, So the numbers tell the tale.

I think, Yeah, I mean, none.

Of those films is that great, but I think mine, when i'm might call it mine, my one, Yeah, is as good as any and may be better than most.

And is it just called Helen of Troy?

This is called Helen of Troy. It's available on DVD.

Is that great? I'm going to go find it. I'm really excited.

I think you can actually watch it on YouTube. The whole film great.

Yeah, I can't believe I missed it, honestly because I was also. I mean, I've been a nerd for the ancient world for a very long time, so I'm surprised that I missed out and I'm excited to find it now.

Well, you know, by many criteria, is pretty trashy, so you know, that's what you'd expect. But I have a fun for it, and I think you'll enjoy reading what my teenage girls had to say about it.

Yes, in the book. Yeah, yeah, that's so exciting. So, I mean, just Helen is such a fascinating character, so these representations of her are so interesting. I'm curious about like the silent film of her like that I feel like would I mean obviously would focus so much more on the visual aspects.

Right. That is one of my two top my top two favorites. Yeah, Helen's and the other one is the Star Trek.

One I love her, and.

Then the one in the mini series is the runner up. Yeah, the Silent Movie is lost. There are only bits of it that survive.

That's quite appropriate annoying exactly. I know, it's very fitting.

And it makes it appropriate for a classicist, you know, that's the research that we do, right yea. So there's about twenty minutes of it surviving, but there's lots and lots of publicity materials, lots and lots of and plot summaries and reviews and other materials, so you can get a pretty good sense of what it's about. And it's a comedy and it's all about fashion and clothes. So the Trojan War is started because Helen buys all her clothes from Troy because they have better couture in Troy. That's where the best clothes come from. And the dressmakers in Sparta get annoyed by this and they tell Menelaus that he's got to go off and fight the Trojans because they are dominating the fashion industry.

This is amazing.

Yeah, and Helen runs off with Paris. The pretext, of course is Helen. But Helen runs off with Paris because she wants to do more shopping at Troy because they have better clothes. Sure, and the whole thing is an amazing extravaganza of twenties fashion. The clothes are just fabulous. Yeah. And then at the end, this is I just love the visuals of it. The picture on the cover of my book is from that movie is a publicity still from that way, where she's just scantily clad.

She's wearing a helmet. I'm just going to make she's.

Wearing a helmet. Yeah, yeah, Well, this is part of what I talk about in the chapter, is that there's this meshing of twenties fashion with ancient Greek themes, because our deco was fashionable at the time, and it incorporate tended to incorporate Egyptian but also Greek thematic elements, So you get this kind of blending, which is also a parody because it's a comedy. So she wears a hat, a hat that looks like a helmet on the that's on the cover of the book, but it's also kind of like a closh hat, which was the style of the twenties fami's headwear. And there's some other pictures in the book, but there's lots of stuff like that where it's like, yes, it's a joke and it's kind of a parody of Greek stuff, but it's also like lavish twenties fashion. Yeah. And then another of my favorite things about this version is that at the end, Medlaise gets her back, and at the very end, Telemachus, of all people, who comes to visit them like he does in the Odyssey. Yeah, but she immediately starts seducing him as well. And the very end of the film, Medlace doesn't care. Mendalace just wants to go fishing. The very end of the film, she's getting all set to a lope again with Telemachus.

That feels like a nice full circle moment that n full circle.

And I particularly like the full circle aspect because most of them it's like, oh, they got her back. She went back to Troy and met and she went back to Sparta and after that lived miserably ever after, you.

Know, yeah. It also just sounds like something Telemachus would do. Like I also, I'm not a fan of his. Another running joke on my show is that I refuse to acknowledge that the telegony is a thing at all, Like I just I pretend it doesn't exist, not least because Telemachus is just he's just so much.

Well it works in this film because he's so young. Yeah, she's just like, I don't care.

Yeah, I mean, how at it? That's amazing? I this is okay, it's just so much fun. I want to hear what the Star Trek one too.

The Star Trek one, it's called Elan of Troyus. Troyus is an alien planet and Ellen is a ruler of Troyus. But Captain Kirk et cetera have been told to take her to this other planet to marry this guy. They're called Elasians like Hellas and Alasians, to prevent a nuclear war between the two planets. But she doesn't want to go. So it's a kind of twisted version of the Trojan war story. But she has. What I like about her is, first of all, she's played by this ars biracial actor who I love, and we can talk more about that. But she also has the magical power to make people fall in love with her, so it uses that theme that we talked about that's in the Odyssey that Helen's eroticism and beauty have magical power, which in most sources that's a metaphor she has magical power, but this one it's real. And if she weeps, if you touch her tears, you will fall in love with her. And of course Captain Kirk touches her tears and falls in love with her, so there's a whole romance between them. And the negative on that show is that in the end, she does get subdued and attained, as they put it in ancient Greek sources, and she ends up submitting and going to the planet to marry the other guy. But I've read some fans fiction about it, and she gets rescued by the fans. One of them says, yeah, she stabs her husband on their wedding night and becomes the head of the army and live out her life as a general.

I mean that has some good like roots in Greek myth the Danians. Sometimes you just got to kill your husband on your wedding night, you know.

Yep, yep, it happens all the time.

Yeah.

So yeah, because it's you know, it's nineteen sixty eight. Yeah, it's actually a very misogynistic episode. Yeah, but it's great for reading against the grain. You know, you take the character who is negatively portrayed and you see their strength. Right. She's played by Franz Nuyen, who's super interesting. She's half French, half Vietnamese, raised in France, so she's culturally French, she's half Vietnamese, and you can tell in her appearance. And then they kind of make her look like Cleopatra. I mean, she wears all these alien clothes, but she has like a black wig like Cleopatra. So she becomes this emblem of otherness and therefore, you know, a threat to the straight white male jerk type. Captain Kirk. So I find that all really interesting, and I'm sorry that she submits in the end, but you know that's what fan fiction is for.

Yeah. Well, and you know, like you said, it is the sixties, but that, yeah, I mean's just generally really interesting. I talk a lot on my show about you know, the whiteness that has been ascribed to ancient Greece and Troy God, you know, in pop culture and stuff. So it's interesting to hear of somebody who's biracial playing a character. But then also, you know, something like Vietnam is interesting because it's you know, nowhere near it's still nowhere near kind of the actual regions, but you're still getting this, you know, not white actress, and that's sort of fascinating in itself. And yeah, just like it adds a lot, I think.

Yes, And in the context of nineteen sixty eight, you also represents the.

Vietnam War, right of course.

Yeah, resonances of that as well. Yeah, Captain Kirk, you know, has to dominate this quasi Vietnamese figure.

Yeah, yeah, very There's there's an American miss in that too.

Yeah. She also has awesome clothes. I think clothes are really important. That's my first talent book. I have a line which is the most beautiful women are the ones are the best accessories. Yeah, female beauty is constructed. It's not a thing in itself, it's made, and so clothes are super important to making it. And Elain has she has four different costumes and they're all kind of cool and interesting and they evolve. That's when I argue in the chapter from more alien and confrontational to become like more soft and delicate as she's subdued.

Yeah, I mean it's like, for all the misogyny in that it's interesting kind of in itself to examine it that way of of a Helen becoming like that. Yeah, yeah, becoming more subdued. I mean, if you if you ignore the general horror of it, it's an interesting thing to look at.

Yeah, And it's interesting to see it tracking through clothing.

Hmmm. Yeah, just you saying that makes me think of how you know, in Euripodes is Helen. It's got to be one of the few plays where we have such an explicit idea of what people are wearing. And Medialaus is like wearing a fish net, right, And it just makes me think of, like, I feel like what you said is exactly right, where like Helen we would assume is dressed really beautifully and looks her gorgeous self, and then and then Medalaius is wearing a fish net, and like that's such a perfect contrast, and I think it says a lot about that point of like Europanes is playing with not only a beautiful Helen, but like a kind of opposite in Menilayas he's this sort of dork who's wearing a fish net and just kind of stumbling around, and it really amplifies what Helen is by comparison.

Yes, exactly, and it's kind of already of heroism. More thing I wanted to say about Elan. I mentioned she has Cleopatra braids, so she has dark hair, and that's really rare for Helen, really rare. She's nearly always blonde, occasionally a redhead, because redhead is you know, dangerous. But the black hair that we associate in pop cultural stereotype, it's often associated with danger and badness, and it rarely is attached to Helen. The other example, which is also an example of an interracial actor playing Helen, is in the Zena Warrior Princess episode. This is one reason I find television so interesting. It's much freer it does these you know, it's less bound by stereotypical ideas about oh, ancient Greek beauty. She's blonde, which in itself is kind of crazy because ancient Greeks were not blonde.

Yeah, yeah, that's a lot, I mean, it's there's a lot of Yeah, like I said, I talk a lot about the whiteness that has been put on to that whole region and just the idea, like I mean, the Troy of it all. The level of whiteness that is in Troy for these characters is Yeah.

I talk about that a bit in the Where do I talk about that? Somewhere in this in this book in various places I just touched on race and and that what makes these Helen's distinctive, the racial casting appearance.

M yeah, so so the so the Xena one, because that, yeah, that's generally just so so interesting. So I definitely used to watch Xena back in the day. It's been a while, so what kind of was the portrayal in that?

Well, this Helen is a bit lame. I think the big reason for that, in my view, is because I think Xena is really Helen. She's the one who has you know, although she's like super strong and kick ass, she's also sexy and she was marketed through these magazines and so on to men as a sex object, which was kind of interesting to me to find that out. And within the story she has a lot of lovers and all of that, so that isn't really room well and then there's another possible channel or avenue that they could have taken. Was the way they go with Aphrodite. It's like super girly girl, Victoria's secret pink pink pink and hilarious and I have to say I kind of love her. Yeah, but that doesn't leave really another lane for Helen as the most beautiful woman in the world, right, those two lanes are occupied. So she's kind of and it's interesting. I just she's a bit there, but she is made into like a very average woman, not like super pretty. She doesn't wear lots of fancy clothes. She's just kind of sad, and Paris is a jerk, and Xena comes and rescues her and Zena rescues her in a sort of little second wave feminism message. And at the end of the episode, I mean, this is all happening, and what happened now? I know. Yeah, at the end of the episode, Helen is like, now I can make my own choices and I'm free, you know. So it's got a very clear agenda liberating Helen and giving her autonomy and choice. So you can applaud that, but she's not a super interesting character in herself.

She's overshadowed by Xena's that's so interesting. Yeah, it's just I love hearing about all of these different takes on her because she's just such an interesting character in myth for everything that that she represents, Like you just mentioning Aphrodite makes me think of her as well, because I think, I mean, they're very different, but Aphrodite has always been one of my favorites because of what she represents in that she can had like freedom in a way that other women didn't, and Helen is sort of like it's like sometimes she feels like she has that a little bit, and then other times, you know, she doesn't at all. So it's interesting to see the way people have read that and you know, and put it on screen in different ways.

Yes, and she's very often read as a victim because that makes it easier for people to feel sorry for her, but even in antiquity, she always has agency. Actually, speaking of Aphrodity, one of my favorite moments in the Iliad is when she basically tells Aphrodity a fuck off, you know, And you know, I was mentioning that. I think of Helen and Achilles as being a natural pair. He is the only other character who really stands up to the gods. Yeah, Aphroditi says, now you have to go and have sex with Paris, and she's like, no, you do it. You like him so much, why don't you go sleep with him? For a human being to say that to a goddess is amazing.

Yeah. Well, even earlier when you when you were talking about I don't know what came up, but I it made me think about Aphrodite and her behavior towards Helen because I've never quite thought about it. It being it's quite interesting that that Helen gets to be this most beautiful woman in the world one hundred percent, like that is her status, but Aphrodite net doesn't have, you know, at least something that survives that shows that she, you know, is willing to punish for that, which I feel like is very much an aphrodite thing. And maybe I'm thinking too much about Cupid and Psyche, which obviously isn't indicative of Greek mythology, but it is interesting to me that that that that doesn't kind of feature, you know, even like aphrodity gives Helen, you know, quote unquote gives Helen to Paris during the judgment and there isn't kind of a like jealousy moment or something like. It's almost like there's something there that that lets Helen kind of be at Aphredity's level or forces Aphrodite to accept that she's got somebody, you know, a competition kind of Yeah.

There. Helen, among all the Greek heroines, is by father most prominent, and she's often referred to as a god. So that's another whole aspect of her that she never dies. But let me see what was I going to say? Yeah, the passage I was just mentioning where she confronts Zephyrodity and says, you know, fuck off, you go sleep with Paris if you like him that much. And Aphrodity then shows herself in her full divine splendor, and because she's been disguised as an old woman, but then she reveals herself and she threatens Helen and she says, you have to go sleep at Paris or I won't love you anymore. Basically, And what does that even mean to say everydady won't love you anymore? Well, she is in control of two things, beauty and sex, and so in my imagination, it means, you know, you're being protected by your beauty. That's why no one's killed you yet. And if I abandon you, you will lose that paswer that you have, so it is kind of a threat. Yeah, and Helen does go and sleep with Parispect because you know, what is everdity e fordity is the power of erotic attraction and Helen can't resist it, but she tries to. She fights it, right, which is really rare.

Yeah, yeah, it's I don't know, I mean, obviously I could talk about these mythological characters forever. I'm curious, and this is sort of like beyond the realm of of you know, on the screen and everything. But it's always really interested me the comparison and the kind of relationship that isn't really a relationship of Helen and Clydemnestra. Yes it is, yeah, well, I mean, yeah, it is technically a relationship, but we don't have like there's not a lot of surviving sources that actually talk about them, you know, having much of a relationship. And that's always kind of interesting to me. Let alone the fact that like you know, Helen is the good in her own way, and she's the most beauty and all of these things, whereas Clytemnestra is obviously again for her own reasons, but like villainized. I think about the moment in Odyssey because it's great when when Odysseus is talking to Agamemnon in the underworld and he's like, you know, my wife she killed me, whereas your wife, you know, back at home, and obviously he's referring to Penelope there, which is Penelope in herself is such an interesting character as well for such similar reasons of like you know, womanly virtue and all of that. But yeah, I don't know, it's just the relationship between Helen and Clydemnestra has always kind of fascinated me, and how Clytemnestra doesn't get any of the things that Helen gets.

Yeah, just before we get back to them. My favorite Penelope story is the one that she's slept with all the suitors and gave birth to the god Pan.

Oh my god, yes, I forgot. That's I always ass like, I know the Pan part, but I love, yeah, she slept with all of them. I like the idea that Penelope was just like so different than we think of her from the Odyssey, you know, like either she was just having a great time with the suitors, which is you know, all the power to her. Yeah, there are some hints, well, and you know she's she's great in the Odyssey, but we I guess it's more it's less about the Odyssey and more about the way people interpret it and her and like as this virtuous woman, because I like the idea that she just kind of like, you know, did what she had to or enjoyed it along the way, or you know, a whole host of other things, Like woman had like twenty years to spend her time. Like I'm sure that she wasn't you know, just waiting that whole time. I would have gotten over it. As He's pretty quick.

Yeah, and do you know that the Greek name pan means it all, so that like Aso. It's also a good example of what we were talking about before, which is that there are so many different versions of everything. And I like to think of it that every hero has kind of a shadow self behind them. It doesn't matter what you'll like. So there's this Penelope, Oh yeah, she's the perfect virtuous woman, but this shadow Penelope behind her, who's like this crazy slut and that Killes and Helen. They both had these very strong mythic identities, but there's this shadow back behind them that they actually hooked up, you.

Know, Yeah, yeah, I mean.

It's really hard. You can't just you can never just pin them down properly. No, Well, going back to Clydemnestra and Helen, you're right that there is no rendition of them as sisters, but I think there's a kind of implicit rendition of them as complimentary models of women that you you see especially in Eschols's Agamemnon and the Aristaea overall that, especially the Acamemnon. It's like, I'm into bad women same, there's true kind of like there are two primary ways of being a bad woman. One is to be Clydemnestra, who is the most awesome of them all, and that's when you become quote unquote manly and pick up an axe and whack your husband. The other way to be a bad woman is to use feminine methods, feminine wiles, and that's Helen because she's the one who beauty, seduction, sex, all those kind of stereotypes that are associated with women. And in the Agamemnon, you see although Clydemnester is on the stage but Helen is there backstage, so we see Clydemnestra and we see her performing her manly actions, but it's in the context of mostly in the choral songs, the chorus singing about Helen and the destruction that she caused and how she caused all the death at trial, and then they talk about them as sisters. They say, two women, two murderers more or less, so they each cause destruction in their horror in their own way, so they don't have to be sisters for that, but I think it kind of makes it a closet connection that they are sisters have sisters.

Yeah, you just made me think two of Euripides's orestes where Helen features kind of, you know alongside Obviously Clydemnestra is dead in that, but she like she has a really interesting kind of relationship with her there, which is that she's supposed to be, you know, there to kind of mourn her sister, but she's really hands off and she she like won't go do it herself, but she talks about how that's why she's there, but she's gonna send her daughter instead, and it's sort of a yeah, like they just they are a fascinating pair because they are sisters, and we know they're sisters, but like we have these really interesting kind of I don't know, they're just Yeah, it's such a unique kind of relationship between those two.

I love that moment in the arrest. So that's the one where it's like she's supposed to cut her hair in the morning and she just snips the hands like she cuts off the.

Split it exactly like she's really, yeah, hands off. She won't she's not willing to actually do a lot. She's just gonna do the bare minimum so that she looks like she's like vaguely a good person. But at the same time, her explanation I think for why she won't go to the grave is that she doesn't want people to hound her because she's Helen and they're going to be mad at her. So it's like she wants her image to be really good but not good. Like, yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, I forgot about the hair cutting though.

Yeah, she's my favorite part. Yeah, because hair is also super important. Hair along with with the accessories, it's super important.

Well, and it says so much because like hair is super important for the beauty, but also hair is super important when it comes to mourning, and so it's very like, I mean, obviously it's explicit that it's like, no, beauty is more important, but it's like they hold equal kind of importance in the grand scheme of culture. But Helen's very much like, no, no, I'm picking my beauty over my sister death. No exactly. So I mean Helen in terms of I mean kind of everything even beyond like, are are there versions of Helen sort of aside from kind of the ones that we've talked about, you know, the Iliot and the plays that really I don't know add to her character or just that you want to talk about, because I'd love to hear anything.

Well, I've talked about most of the movie Helen's that I worked on. The other two are the epics, and you mentioned Troy briefly and how I don't like Troy. The other one is a the fifties epic Helen of Troy, which is really has its hands tied because of the Hayes Code and various kinds of restrictions. So she's actually complete figure of virtue. But really it's really not great. Yeah, But going back to your favorite Erbides, Helen is a great character in The Trojan Women.

M I've read that one so many years ago now, and I wish i'd read it more recently. But yes, we'll.

Check out the movie with Irene Pappus as Helen. It's The Trojan Women, and most of it, honesty is kind of a bleak play, just kind of a lot of people weeping and moaning, and I don't think it's from dramatic point of view, the greatest of plays. But Helen has this one awesome scene in it. And in the film, the Trojan Women are all weeping, wailing, and they're all wearing black, and they're miserable and they're being mistreated by the Greeks and it's horrible. And then Helen comes out wearing this fabulous outfit and seduced basically, you know the story that Medelaeus said he was going to kill her at the Sack of Troy, but he took one look at her and dropped his sword, right, So in this one, she comes out and manipulates and seduces Medalaus into into, you know, not killing her. But you know it's there in Euripides, and it's really interesting because it's actually she makes a terrible argument. Her argument is very sophistic, by which I mean it uses methods of the Greek Sophists, who were kind of manipulative arguers, kind of philosophers who who liked to emphasize the power of language to deceive and manipulate people. So Helen comes out and essentially is a Sophist, and she uses all their kinds of arguments, and they're not arguments that would be any good in an Athenian law court if you were a real person. But my argument in the book, and way this is my first book on Helen, is that it doesn't matter because she's her body and her face and her hair and everything about her is so powerful that that is what wins her, wins her her freedom, well not freedom actually, but not being killed. And I think that's another interesting aspect because it develops what I was saying earlier, that Helen is a manipulator, and that, as in many cultures, that kind of manual manipulative power is something that's often attributed to women and also to enslave people and other subordinates, because they don't have the official power of the physical power to get things done, so they have to manipulate and so it becomes a stereotype, and I think we see Euripides in that play developing that in a really interesting way. And I would highly recommend just ten minute clip of Irene purpose it's amazing. You can find it on YouTube.

Yeah, yeah, gonna, I'm gonna go look for that because it's I think it's probably been at least four years since I've read that play.

She had the best outfit. It's awesome, wonderful.

I mean that does matter so much, Like you know, it did in the ancient world, but it does today, Like yeah, yeah, so okay. I would also like we talked about Troy to an extent, but like I'm curious. I mean, I'm certainly not one to defend the movie Troy, but you know what, what was it that you really think, Like, I don't know, I don't want to make this like we're not you know, we're not obviously insulting Dan Krueger, because like you said, it's really about how the movie wanted her to play it. But like for me, she just is kind of in the background. Is my big kind of complaint about her, Like she just doesn't really like do anything. But I'm curious if there's kind of anything else that stands out to you about like why she is just so like not the Helen you know from the ancient world.

Well one of her characteristics and I you know, I read a lot about the film, and I read interviews and so on, and she was directed this way to be sad when she's with metalaists, she's sad and MOPy all the time. And you don't need science to show you this, but science has shown this that tears are not sexy. You know, she's just like not erotic. Yeah, I don't care for her looks, but that's you know, either beholder and all of that.

I mean, she's very blonde, like I think that just needs to be said. She's very like the I mean she's from Like'serman.

Yeah, German. And also the director is German Peterson, and his movies tend to be very masculinist. And you can reading around the film the interviews with the director and so on. He's really interested in the man. He's interested in an Achilles and Hector, and he talks about when he was a school boy and how he read the Iliad then in Greek, and how this was his fantasy when he is a teenage boy, So I think that Helen is probably his fantasy as a teenage boy in Germany.

Yeah, I mean she.

Is Germanic looking, that particular type of blondness.

Yeah yeah, she just looks very white like yeah.

Yeah, yeah, well you know when you think of German Arian.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I like to joke that, like Hector is the only kind of perfect in that movie, or the only sort of like, I guess he's just I think he is Hector in a way that I don't. I mean, Achilles is pretty pretty good, but like, don't.

You think that makes me a bit boring though Hector?

I mean, I guess, but I guess Hector is boring in a good way.

Yes, yeah, yeah, it's a nice guy.

Yeah, he's just solid, you know, he's just kind of dude. Yeah, no, it's true.

Yeah.

I mean the idea that I don't know, calling back to the reviews you were talking about about, you know, the teenage Girl one, the idea that the complaining that it's not the iliod and I know that it wasn't a comparison to suggest that like Troy is by comparison, but one of the fun the funniest things about Troy are the things that are so explicitly not the Iliad, the weird things they changed, you know, I just like Medlais dies, doesn't he have a right?

Yeah?

Yeah, But then there's also like there's like a sword of Troy at the end, and it's just, yeah, there's a lot of sort of general oddities, and the fact that there's no gods is just a bummer. And I know that that's like a decision you kind of have to make, but gods are so the key to the Iliad. Yeah.

Yeah. When people say that, and some of them in the comments will say that Troy is more like Homer, what they mean is it's about so all the people who criticized the two thousand and three epic mini series, when they criticize it for not being like Homer and not being like the Iliad or not being an epic, it's not a proper epic. Why because it's primarily about a woman. Yeah, that's the subtext, because Troy isn't Yeah, if anything, just as unrealistic.

Absolutely to the sources.

Just as uniliadic. Should we say, Yeah, it's full of crazy stuff like Perseus and and in the director's cut, Paris and Helen get Away at the end.

Oh really, I got to watch that. It's been a while since I've seen that too.

But like, I mean, I don't recommend it particularly.

Yeah, I mean, it's more for just the ridiculous of it all. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting that that's it's so true of just something's not epic if it's made for women or it's not you know, Homer. But I think for me, like reading the ancient sources and things too, Homer is one of the I mean I say Homer as if he's a real person, but you know, the Iliot and the Odyssey are some of the best sources I think we have on women in terms of the treatment of them and like the actual examination of some of them and just showing them as as characters and people. You know, it's not it's not super common in the surviving sources beyond some of the plays obviously, but yeah, it's just it's just funny that that's kind of become the thing, is that something isn't like the Iliad or or Homer, because it, you know, isn't all about men. And I think that's just such a very modern, you know, construct about it, not not a surprising one, but it's not doesn't necessarily exist in the actual ancient of it all.

Right. I mean, Greek's obviously a very masculiness themselves, very patriarchal, but they allow room for stories for women to be important in their stories as well.

Yeah, and certain stories I think more than others. That's why I love Euripidies obviously. But yeah, it's I mean, my entire her careers based on talking about how the women are kind of underrepresented in Greek myths. So certainly that part is, you know, it's very true, longstanding. But yeah, I don't know. Helen is just such a fastening character. I'm trying to form, you know, more thoughts and questions, but just generally she's so interesting. But I'm just I basically I would love to know anything more from your Helen focused brain about her in the ancient sources or just kind of anything more. I don't want to put you on the spot to just like, you know, spout out information, but I'm curious if there's more you want to share on anything.

Well, let me see. The one thing we haven't really talked about is the nineteen fifties epic, which I kind of gave it the brush off. But if you want blonde, go look at her. It's she will strike you blind with her blondness. Oh my gosh, it's And the thing is she was an Italian actor and they like gave her this blindingly blonde wig and bleashed her eyebrows and all that. Wow have they changed her skin to And I know this from doing research. There's a letter from the director or somebody saying, you know, I need to adjust his skin tone. So she's Italian and at that time in the fifties there was a huge excitement around Italian women with huge boobs, because boobs were the thing in the fifties.

I mean Marilyn, Yes, Marilyn monrou is the apotheosis.

So this think of this as the Marilyn Monroe version without any acting ability. I'm sorry, I'm sorry to say this about her, but she's really pretty terrible and she's so where you think it was like this earthy Italian presence. She has the earthiness all bleached out of her.

Yeah, it sounds like, you know, at least in terms of the heritage. I guess of the actresses that she would be closest, and yet they went and made her like considerably whiter. Meanwhile, she was at least pretty in the realm of Greece, because you know, there's very few Greek actors that ever actually appear in stuff like this.

But yes, and there are interviews, there are columnists at the time. I had a lot of fun reading those old reviews and stuff like that, and they talk about how she's really more attractive with her natural appearance and she really doesn't look that great as a blonde.

Okay, so yeah, so they did, did they register? I mean, I imagine there's not that much examination on kind of the you know, the implications the racism that's kind of inherent in that. But it's nice to hear I guess that they did recognize that, like, she didn't look good for you should take.

A look at her.

Yeah, I will.

I was gonna say something else about it. Yeah, it's interesting to me that Helena Troy is almost always played by a foreigner. And all the movies I looked at except I think all of them, No, except for the Xena. In the Xena Warrior Princess, she's America, but she's biracial, and all the others she's played by a Hungarian. A German an Italian. When I mentioned who is French and Vietnamese are there anymore? And a brit The last one is a Brit. So I don't know if that's just a coincidence or was that somehow a way of othering her and saying she's exotic, she's foreign, she's different. But then you take this exotic, different foreigner like Rassanna Potista who has the you know, Italian appearance, and she does, she has the boobs, and then you make them super blonde. It's like why why bother?

Yeah, yeah, why bother? It seems like the biggest thing, like, yeah, why I mean obviously there's just there's so much westernness in that, right, like this idea that in order for her to be Helen, for her to be the most beautiful, like she has to be really light skin and super blonde. But it's just still like, even though you can kind of, i know, like contextually and historically like why that, you know is happening, it's still baffling, Like it's still kind of mind blowing that you'd go through the effort of making an Italian woman who's playing a Greek like so much less of either of Like so much less Mediterranean.

Just kind of yeah, I know, that's crazy. I will say in defense of the filmmakers, they were looking for a big star. They looked at people like Marilyn Monroe, but none of them were available, so they couldn't get any of the big stars. They just to look like that, so they I guess they thought we'll go with the with the Italian boobs. I have to say, though, there's a huge obsession with boobs in the fifties Marilyn Monroe, et cetera. But they're honestly not that big by modern standards, which I think is an interesting comment because they didn't have breast implants or anything, so they actually look pretty natural compared to a lot of huge modern boob Yeah.

Well, it makes me think of like that that thing that was around very often of like the idea of what size Marilyn Monroe was, and there's this like this is kind of like misconception that people will say that she was like a size twelve or whatever, and then people like people who actually study this will go in and be like, yeah, it's more so because the size has changed, not actually because that she was like a size that we would equate with that now it's it's like, you know, other things are happening in that, but yeah, I mean that's really interesting. It makes me think or just the you know, the blondness of it all and just this this Western idea of what beauty has to be. But last week, you know, at the time of this recording, I did an episode talking about Aphrodite and Adonis. And until I did this research, I had no idea that the myth of Adonnis originated in like, if not Phoenicia, like even Mesopotamia. Like there's this. I think it's more eqlicitly Phoenicia though with Starte, but like this, I have, like Adonnis the most beautiful man, like arguably more beautiful in Greek mythology than than Achilles, even you know, his mythological origins are like explicitly in the East. It's just fascinating to me the way these things have become so westernized and so whitened.

Right, and all of these back in the day, back in the fifties and twenties. Also, they would give you the vital statistics of the actress, the female actors, and so you get to you can compare this woman's measurements with Malon Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor or whoever else was a big star at the time, and that was just part of the publicity.

What I know, right, my brain is smelting like like it would be. It would just be part of it.

They put out, you know, how the studios put out all kinds of stuff, and so you get these little newspaper articles that were really written by the studios. Yeah, and they'd be like one of the themes of my chapter on the fifties is about how she's compared to Miss America. She's like, she could be Miss America even though she's Italian.

Yes, And also it's a movie about grease that's happening there.

I know it's insane, but yeah, like they were all about the boobs. But going back to the measurements thing. In the twenties they also did it, and they were obsessed with the Venus de Milo. So all of these famous female actors would be compared to the Vince de Milo and they would give their vital statistics in comparison. If you think about it, the Venus de Milo was a large marble statue. Yes, you cannot, in fact take her measurements.

She's also missing arms. I feel like that's kind of key.

She's missing parts. There are many things, but somehow they conjured out of the air what they thought her vital statistics were. And you see all of these actors like with the statue or with a copy of the statue, or that they line up their measurements. It's insane. Wow. They were obsessed with the Venis demula. And there are stories. There are a lot of stories about beauty, and that's what my first chapter is really about, is beauty in early Hollywood. And there were there were lots of newspaper stories about beauty and they would be saying things like research has shown that X number of women at Wellesley College have the same measurements as the Venus demela. And that was going back to American as that was part of the kind of cultural competition. They wanted to show that Americans could be as beautiful as as the very top Europeans. Right, right, American girl. And then there are some articles that say that European beauty is sorry, American beauty is better than European beauty because actually their girls are better looking than the veenstmula. Nice for obvious reasons, because Vince de Milo is a little overweight.

Yeah, well yeah, because she's classical. They like, yeah, well that too, but they loved a soft looking woman back then. Like wow, I it' so okay. Now I'm now I'm fascinated by this. I have no I realized just even thinking about this, I have no knowledge about like when they found her. And because I've kind of made this a rule with myself, I'm going to call her Afrodity of Melos. But like, was she found around that time or did they just was it this part of I know there was, like obviously and it remains like this obsession with the ancient Greek world, But was it timely? Do you know?

Or just I am not an archaeologist and I can't speak to to the details of discovering that particular statue. And I totally get why you want to call her what you called her.

Yeah, and I know, and I know why to call her ben a Stimulo too, Like there's so many different reasons.

But yeah, but that's said in a larger context. It was very contemporary. They were really into archaeology. They were really into digging up Troy that was around the discoveries from Shliman who first dug up Troy, and they're, oh, the newspaper stories are so great, and you know, I couldn't have written this book until the last few years because all this stuff's now available online. You can go and read old magazines m and they're about finding objects at Troy that actually belonged to Helen.

Right, stuff like that, Yes, like the mask of Agamemnon and Missigny and.

All that stuff. So they were really into archaeology and they were really into it being true. And I don't know the details about the means to Milo, but they also by that point they had mass reproductive technologies for images, so you could see pictures all over the place of a famous statue everybody.

You're suddenly seeing it in a way that like, yeah, and I did a really quick google. She was found in eighteen twenty, so you know, one hundred years before. But you're right, of course, it's the idea that suddenly you are seeing these things that are so far away that you wouldn't have been able to visualize before.

They had this whole culture earlier pre Hollywood of bodybuilders and people posing like statues, which I think is funny because it's like, you know, if you go to a famous tourist site, now there'll be these people who are standing totally still like their statues. Yeah, and it's like, you know, we're still doing it.

Yeah. Yeah, I always forget about that. I forget. I had a guest on at one point it was talking about that, the bodybuilders who would appear like I think they would like fully paint themselves real quick marble and stuff too, right, like, yeah, real big thing.

It was a huge thing. Yeah.

Yeah, Oh it's just fascinating. But I didn't connect it of course, like Shlemann was that was happening like around that time in Evans too, and this. Yeah, the realism of it all, it's just it's just all fascinating. I this is my favorite thing is to have these conversations because there's just always so much to learn. Oh my gosh, So we've covered all of Have we covered all of the ones in the book?

I think we've said something about all of them? Yeah? There, I know there is more. But you know, if you do end up reading it, I would love to know what you think.

Yes, no, I yeah, I will absolutely, you know, and I really want to watch this two thousand and three, so I'll let you know about that too.

I hope you're not disappointed, but no, I mean.

I know what indeed, Yeah, I mean I know, I know the time period. Like I think probably if it was from a different time period, I might feel differently, But I'm like, no, no, I can go back to that time. Two and three was a whole a whole time in my life. But I would love to know. And I know it's doesn't it didn't fit with the book. But do you have any thoughts on the Troy Fall of a City series. I've not seen it, to be clear, but I know that it is there.

Yeah. It came out while I was working on this book, and I could have gone on it forever. There's lots, there's other There's do you know about cull Check The Night's Talker. It's a cult horror TV show from like nineteen seventy. Anyway, there's an episode about Helen in that which I would have loved. I could have written a whole chapter about. So I was already drawing lines and saying I cannot do everything. Yeah, and so then when Troy Full of a City came out, I was like, oh no, not another one. You know, I have to talk about this, but I'm like, no, it's the BBC. It's not technically Hollywood, you know. And I was I was reaching the end of the project. But I have watched it. It's not that great. I think it's really kind of gloomy.

That's why I stopped it. That's why I like, I started trying to watch it, and I was like, this just looks like it was like, it's not even trying to be in the Mediterranean.

No, it was really MOPy, while the man looked the same. Yeah, And the only one thing I did like about it was Helen's outfit. I like two things about it. One is Helen had some great outfits when she was at Sparta. She actually her clothes deteriorated once she got to Troy, but they were really kind of exotic, and since I think of beauty as constituted through, you know, adornment, I thought that was interesting. The other thing I thought was interesting was that Hermione was a character her daughter, and in ancient sources, she has her daughter Hermione. And then when that just makes going away to Troy even worse, it's much worse. You abandoned your child, you know, terrible, terrible, so most modern renditions. Of course, abandoning your child is a terrible crime now, so they they want her to seem more innocent, so they don't go with the child abanimate, but Troy Full of a City did and I thought that was interesting. I don't remember off the top of my head exactly what they did with it. I think did they have Helen flirting with Hermione's boyfriends something like that. Anyway, I thought that was an interesting twist.

Yeah.

The other thing I liked about it was that Helen was kind of devious and manipulative, and I think that's one of her main traits.

Yeah, so I like that well, and I think that it should be her trait, like but in done in that way where you can see the righteousness involved, you know, like, yes, manipulative, but she's she's righteous in it to an extent too. As much as that, like she needs to be, she also can just be manipulative, like that's her right, you know, as a character. But I having it appear, you know, having her her behave that way in the way that she is in the ancient sources, I do think just it makes her so much more interesting. Yeah, you know, especially compared to the Diane Kruger Helen of she's just nothing. She's just kind of there and.

She boo hoo. Yeah, I feel sorry for me. Woo.

Yeah, she's just kind of there to be pretty versus there to be.

Yeah, and she thinks she's not even pretty. Ah. I mean, okay, that's my judgment, my personal judgment, but it was also the judgment of ninety nine percent of movie critics. Really, Oh yeah, nobody thought she was pretty.

Oh my Goshkay. That surprises me a lot, Like I feel like she's just kind of in my head, she's just sort of that very very traditional idea of a beautiful woman but not that interesting.

Yeah. Well, that's why people didn't think she was beautiful enough. That's why she was called Helen Applecrombie and Fitch, all these other insults, many of which are described in my book. Yeah, get that she's a great face that launched that served a thousand lunches.

Oh my gosh, that was sad. Yeah, And I mean, of course I like to think it's a little better.

Now.

I can't say that for sure, but it even just talking about that so explicitly feels so two thousand and four.

Yeah, it's like awful but hilarious.

Yeah, yeah, this has been absolutely fascinating. I could talk about Helen forever very clearly. But thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. Was really nice talking to you.

Thank you so much for having me. I have really enjoyed it too.

Uh Nerds, thank you, thank you so much for listening. These conversation episodes are really my pride and joy, Like, I absolutely love speaking with authors and scholars and experts of whatever kind you know about any and all of the things about the ancient world. Sometimes I think about how just how much my title and tagline of the show just like don't do justice to the conversations that I get to have, And I'm just I'm so thrilled how much these conversations have gone beyond mythology itself. I mean, today's episode is pretty myth heavy because God damped Helen in all the ways that poor woman has been screwed over by men even up till now. But still, I just I seriously love getting to speak with all of these people and learn every fucking thing and then share it all with you. I say it all the time, but it fills me with just like an absurd amount of joy. How much you all love these conversations. It's the best thing that happened to me in this show, and I'm just I'm so grateful. Plus I get to have moments like this one where people send me free books and then set me up to have these fascinating conversations with brilliant people. Fucking fun. So huge thanks to Ruby for coming on the show and telling me everything there is to know about not only Helen herself, but how she has been portrayed on screen from the beginning of Hollywood history. I'm now officially obsessed with watching that two thousand and three series and also probably like at least the Star Trek, if not also tracking down that one Zena episode two. There's just so much and they're also fascinating, even when they're problematic as shit. Let's Talk about Miss Baby is written produced by me Live Albert and Mikayla Smith is the Hermes to My Olympians, perhaps more colloquially known as my Assistant Producer. The podcast is hosted and monetized by iHeartMedia. Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Help me continue bringing you the world of Greek mythology and the Ancient Mediterranean. By becoming a patron, we get bonus episodes and or visit patreon dot com slash myths Baby, or click the link in this episode's description. Thank you all so much for listening, for reviewing, for chatting with me on social media, for telling your friends about my show. My job is so cool and it's all thanks to you. Hi am live and I love this shit.

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