In reading the Bacchae, I'd like to reach
into two of our tools in our toolbox - myth and ritual.
First of all, we already mentioned that the story pretty obviously lends itself to
a myth and ritual kind of analysis. We have a story of a God who's telling us
what rights he likes. He tells us how he wants to be worshiped.
He, we see the consequences of not worshiping that God.
And the myth can be looked at as a large story that is there to tell the background
behind ritual behaviors that you and I. Might find strange.
Why is it that we are out in the hillside? Why is it that we run around and try to
rip up some rip up a prey with our own hands and eat it raw?
Why is it that we get so crazily drunk? While this story gives us a narrative
background that helps fill in the reasoning behind all these pieces.
That narrative is what a myth and rituals claims is what myth actually is.
Myths are made up in order to give an explanation to rituals behaviors whose.
Normal, sensible qualities don't really seem apparent to us as we're doing them,
so we make up a myth in order to try to explain what it is we view those kind of
things. Now another reading that I would just.
Want to pull out and make sure we had a, a chance to go out.
It's a functionalist reading, pulling out that functionalist tool and tinkering with
the myth a bit, we might get a, try to get a sense of what kind of social or cultural
norm this myth is upholding. Now, when we start off trying to
understand this question keep in mind what we said when we first treated of
Dionysus's ritual activity. It seems pretty clear that with Dionysus
we have set of rituals that is built on an upheaval of social norms and customs.
So how could we talk about a functionalist reading if the very celebration that's
being talked about here in Dionysus is purposely built in order to overturn
normal social structures. Recapping this Dionysus's cult is.
Built on, gender bending, we've got here a, story about Pentheus taking on the
gender, of a female and being inserted into a ritual.
This mirrors, an aspect of Dionysus rites where it is actually.
Women who are in control of the ritual. They are understood to be the, the key
figures among the minads. Men can perform in the rites but it's
women who have the kind of powerful, most powerful role there.
This is thought to be very much an inversion in antiquity.
There is drinking to excess. This is more than what's normally there.
The raw and the cooked here get inverted. So the raw meat is what we eat now.
Young and old get all mixed up together. Remember how Tiresias and Cadmus
themselves are putting on leopard skins and getting ready to go out and have a
good time in this Dionysian worship. Social differences.
This is our, obliterated or just. Everyone isup in a drunken frenzy up on a
hillside. There is a loss of control of
reproduction, interestingly. Sex is engaged in Dionysiac Ritual for
orgiastic pleasure. Not having to do with strict strictures
over which women can have sex with which men.
We saw in Hesoid's Theogony that was something of great anxiety and interest to
Greek male principles, that they were trying to control.
The female powers of reproduction. Here.
Those powers linked with erotic desire are just gone, Yeah, let, let, let.
Let free. To run rampant.
Pantheus' very palace collapse. So talking about the destruction of a
social order, well, we see this, dramatized in the play.
The revolutionary power then of Dionysian ritual, is strongly apparent to us.
But let's just say that's on the one hand. And now let's try to take a look at, a
possible other side, to this revolutionary spirit built into Dionysian ritual.
First. We would.
Just remember and remind ourselves that Tyresius and Cadness are old and powerful
men. They basically represent a kind of.
Establishment kind of thinking. So when Tyrhesseus and Cadmus endorse
these rituals, well, then gosh it's probably okay for everyone to be involved
and probably everybody should do it. It's hardly, in other words, some kind of
revolutionary thing if these old gray beards are saying this is good for us,
this is good for the city, we should do it.
Following the Gods is a good thing. This is the message that they keep putting
across. Submit, in other words, to the authority
of the Gods. Another message that is built in to these
rights is that one should follow the, jump on the bandwagon and follow the crowd
that. Being out of step with what everyone else
is doing is not a good idea. Typically things that are truly
revolutionary expect that people should be out of step with some large group current.
The point that is built into this impulse to follow the crowd and jump on the
bandwagon is the point of respect and submitting to the Gods.
You should respect your elders and submit to the Gods.
And remember what happens to Pentheus for resisting this social norm.
The idea that you should get on the bandwagon and follow along.
Awful things happen to him. The play is a punishment for someone who
resists the broader social currents authorised by Tiresias and Dionysus.
So these features make us wonder to ourselves, well wait a minute, why is this
Dionysian worship. Why should we consider it revolutionary
when the whole point of the play is you should worship the Gods.
Do what your elders tell you and follow what everyone else is doing.
It's an interesting thing. What kind of social norm is the Dionysian
cult then upholding? Remember if we're gonna do a functionalist
reading we have to point to some social norm that, that, the myth is, is
endorsing. That it is, is underwriting and upholding.
Suggestion? I'll just make a suggestion here.
There'll be others. I hope that you all jump into the
discussion forums and come up with your own.
But I. My sense is that what's.
Being endorsed here is the social norm of producing a space.
Where it's okay to violate normal social practice.
You produce a space where something convoluted is allowed to happen.
There are examples of this that are common in religious calendars across many
different cultures. I'll just take one example.
In the christian calendar, 40 days before relent is supposed to arrive, there is a
customary time known as Mardis Gras, celebrated in New Orleans in the United
States and other places around the world where strict Catholics who will be
enforced in a. Period of abstention from some kind of
pleasures during those 40 days of lent will go overboard.
And engage in all kinds of slightly bending the rules kinds of behaviors.
This is, while maybe not authorized by the highest officials in the church it's
surely tolerated. And at the local level it's pretty much
probably encouraged. We have then an area in which the powers
that be circumscribe and say it's okay in this area to blow off some steam.
So first of the behavior is welcome, but only in this quarantine spot.
In the case of what happened with the Dionysian rites, it is hard to say, well
we made this point when we were talking about the rites in the first place, it's
hard to say that anything in Dionysus is anti-Olympian.
Dionysus, sure he has these kind of aspects of him that are a little strange,
a little bit out of step. There are myths about him as just kind of
arriving on the scene, but those don't make him any different than remember the
Homeric hymn to Demeter or the Homeric hymn to Apollo.
These Gods, Olympian Gods just kind of arrive and they have to find there place.
Dionysus is, is in that tradition and therefore quite traditional in the
Olympian pantheon. The point then, that each of these Gods
has their own way of being worshiped. And even when one of those ways of being
worshiped. Is a little different when what the others
are. The larger point with Dionysian worship is
that you owe respect to the Gods. You should give the Gods their ritual due.
Now that's hardly a revolutionary message is it.
So the, the larger sense I think that the Dionysian story is giving us is that you
resist the Olympians to your peril. Look what happens to poor Pentheus.
There's also another kind of cautionary note that jumps in here too, with
Dionysian worship you should also be a little bit careful.
Watch out, this authorized space in which norm can be violated.
You should. Be a little bit on alert.
Because there's always gonna be a next day when you're gonna wake up and have to pay
the price. Whether that's a, a hangover from way too
much wine or something much worse in the case of Agamede.
This story does definitely underwrite for us the idea that yes go ahead and blow off
steam but be a little bit careful when you're doing it.
Pulling back just a second and looking at the plays themselves recall that what
we're seeing here. The great tragedies that are performed in
Athens are being performed in a grand Dionysian festival.
Dionysus is the patron God. Of these place So in order to.
Show full and proper respect for Dionysus through this tragic performance its very
much the tragic performance of the bad guy is very much built into this larger set of
Athenian based respect paying to Dionysus. So its hardly a manner of a few people
thumbing their noses at authority some crazed younger ones going berserk or
anything like that. This is a performance set in a space of
Dionysus, in the city of Athens, in order for us all to understand.
And more fully our civic engagement and our proper kinds of ritual behaviors.
So I would suggest according to a functionalist reading, despite the spaces
in which it gets complex on the one hand, on the other hand, the larger message is
worship the. Olympian divinities.
They liked to get worshiped, show respect. For your elders show respect for the
customs of the day. So their, their functionalist message of
showing proper respect for the divinities gets fully endorsed and underwrited
through even this strange cousin of ours, Dionysus.
Who's always been a member of our family, we Olympians and has his own ways of doing
things. But even though, so his ways are different
than ours, all of us demand your respect, human beings.
So I think that's the message that we're gonna get from a functional standpoint in
Bacchae