Get Thee to a Nunnery
In Act Three of Hamlet, the young prince says to Ophelia, “Get thee to a nunnery, go. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool, for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them.” Ophelia has just returned Hamlet’s letters and gifts, which he sees as a betrayal of his love for her, further hardening his anger toward, and mistrust of, women.
Already seething at the fact that his mother has very quickly married his dead father’s brother, whom, he now knows, murdered his father, Hamlet transfers his disdain for women even more strongly toward Ophelia, as well as his feelings that it is women who are responsible for turning men into monsters.
The word “nunnery”, in the England of Shakespeare’s time, had a double meaning. Not only was it the common noun used to signify a convent, which was a place where women would be safely stashed away from the world, thus protecting men from their bewitching ways, but was also used as a slang word for a brothel, where men could simply use women without being subject (they assumed) to their power and manipulation.
Thus we see in one word the two classic roles commonly assigned to women: The Virgin Mary or Jezebel. In a larger context, it represents the battle of symbols, of competing stories, for control over who will establish the content of ongoing myths.
Who, for instance, will interpret and define the story of the “hero’s journey”? Which brings us back to our previous fascination with The Odyssey.
In her extensive essay in August 23rd’s New York Times, Susan Faludi, author of The Undeclared War Against American Women, compares and contrasts the hero’s (and heroine’s) epic journey stories set forth in The Odyssey and Barbie. Okay, stick with me here for a minute.
Interestingly, this is not the first time that Christopher Nolan (the everything guy behind The Odyssey, as well as Oppenheimer) and Greta Gerwig (who was the brains behind the Barbie movie) have appeared in the same thought bubble. Remember the popular conflation of the two films that came out on July 21, 2023? The term Barbenheimer became a cultural phenomenon.
Barbie actually had a higher-revenue opening than The Odyssey, even though it was filmed in a much softer palette, as well as a much lighter tone, but, in Faludi’s eyes, both directors are engaged in the larger myth of the hero’s journey and the struggle as to whether only one sex can claim it.
This ongoing battle is even more important for us today, because the current regime and, especially, “Mr. Testosterone”, Pete Hegseth (whom Faludi describes as modestly decorated with only a few military chest decorations, but with a lot of tattoos) as well as Elon Musk and all of his DOGE boyos (remember the one who called himself “big balls”?) and every other part of this woman-fearing-hating monstrous brotherhood (indeed they have made themselves monsters over this obsession) is working overtime to wipe out funding for any activity with the word “woman” in it, as well as to eliminate every official report that reflects leadership or historic accomplishment by women.
Let us count the ways: All female military heads fired. All federal references to women or feminism or women’s health or violence against women erased and defunded. Hundreds of federal workers put on 24 hour duty to find and erase every trace. And why?
Because they are frightened of their own mediocrity and will take whatever steps necessary to retain the myth of male superiority and their grip on power. Hence the struggle between the myths of Barbie and Ulysses, only one of whom is held to represent the hero’s journey.
But no. See Barbie again and remember her epic journey (as Faludi reminds us), by car, boat, spaceship, bicycle, snowmobile and rollerblades to a dangerous, frightening and foreign land, her fight to evade and defeat the men who try to get her back in her box, her perilous and beleaguered journey to get home, and her final return to her queendom, only to find it besieged by a bunch of bros.
There’s even a beach battle and a horse stranded on Ken’s beach (a pink plastic one). Sound familiar? Finally, her matriarchy restored, she opts to return to, and live in, the real world. Given all of this, Barbie may also be held up as one of our mythological heroes, one even more widely known than Ulysses, yet unrecognized for her courage.
The point being that you can try to erase us and our stories, but excellence will out. Male and female.
Chains, Planes and Echoing Refrains
I think we’ve heard these songs before. Not songs really, but dirges mixed with cries of pain.
In a display, shocking even for this cruel, corrupt and heartless regime, a video was posted recently showing a long line of our neighbors and fellow humans in chains, shackled at the waist, shackled at the ankles, being forced through a pouring rain, beaten and herded onto planes like animals. Or, perhaps I should say, like a horrific re-run of the same scenes being carried out on the ships of long-ago slavers, if they had set it to loud, victorious and dramatic music and shown it proudly (proudly!) to the world.
Ramping up previously promised and inflated numbers, this cowardly president and his secret police have rounded up, not the “worst of the worst” as they tried to sell it to us, but, rather, the parents of active servicemen and women, folks who came here legally under past federal programs only to see them illegally terminated in order to sweep them up, young children, students on their way to school and sick seniors.
Shivering and in despair, they are loaded onto planes and dumped in countries desperate to sell their prison space for our taxpayer dollars, countries that are completely alien to these Americans who suffer and rot away in prisons that starve and sicken them. Shameful. Despicable.
This makes me stray from my usual generous self and dream of the faux king president rotting in hell, which, I believe, he will. The problem is, it’s just too long to wait.
I find that I would rather think of him and his minions in chains, themselves, after a new Congress tries them for their blatant and easily provable crimes, even though it still wouldn’t be enough to repay history for causing such suffering, despair and loss of life.
I believe, more and more each day, that we will take this increasingly unrecognizable country back to its previous principles. No gestapo. No kidnapping and horrific imprisonment. No being shot in your car for simply trying to back away. No redaction or rewrite of history on the pages of our books or in our white house, parks, or monuments. No ridiculous name changes. No huge monuments to one orange chicken. No more images of himself as a savior. No more corrupt self dealing. No more lies.
And no more people in chains. We need a new emancipation proclamation. Emancipation from the nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue.
