Assignment for Tuesday, 12-06-16

Dear Mythologists,

For Tuesday, December 6, we're going to take a chronological step backward and consider a film that deals with events from before the Trojan War. Please do the following:

(1) Watch Iphigenia (Michael Cacoyannis, 1977), taking notes as you see fit. The DVD is reserved at the library, BUT the film is NOT streaming on Amazon, Hulu or Netflix. It is available on YouTube in versions of varying quality. Make sure you get a version with English subtitles (it's a modern Greek-language film, like A Dream of Passion).

Being an adaptation of Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis, this film shares many of the same concerns as adaptations of the Medea. The movie overall is a feel-bad experience in the best possible way, cathartic in a most Aristotelian sense.

I'll add, for what it's worth, that it's probably my favorite movie in our filmography.

(2) Read Marianne McDonald's essay, "Eye of the Camera, Eye of the Victim," which offers a cogent analysis of the film in light of Euripides' play, as well as a personal response to Iphigenia's tragedy. Note: Her essay comes from Classical Myth and Culture in the Cinema (Oxford, 2001), one of the first major volumes combining Classical Studies and film studies, edited by Martin M. Winkler (who would go on to edit volumes on Gladiator and Troy).

(3) Remember by noon on Tuesday to comment on this post with your choice of a sequence from Iphigenia to view in class.

DC