Cameron Conaway sees the tragedy of Medea in our current struggle to be heard and known in social media.
Italicized sections are based on some interpretations of Medea by the Greek tragic poet Euripides.
I.
Jason of the Argonauts wanted the Golden Fleece so he could claim his inheritance to the throne—this meant he had to run all kinds of simple, everyday errands like plough a field with fire-breathing oxen and sow the teeth of dragons into the field (they didn’t have Wal-Mart at the time). The teeth grew into warriors that wanted to attack him.
Likewise, what we want (more followers, more news, more entertainment) is perhaps even more dangerous than Jason’s little jaunt. You see, Dear Reader, I’ve been dying to write to you. Literally. And you’ve been dying while reading what I write. The act of sitting for hours at work or like we do to check our social media pages and emails—even if our posture is rockin’—is killing us. If you stand and hold your handheld device, great, but the looking down at it can lead to cramps and pinched nerves and spinal problems. If you’re standing and have good posture the screen’s million little unnoticeable flickers can be a detriment to your eyes. Being a poet is perhaps more dangerous than slaying dragons. But danger is cool in the male culture. Wait, so might being a man and a poet be cool? I don’t think that’ll fly with the people who think poetry is purposeless or with those who think male poets must be gay…
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II.
Luckily, he had met Medea before all this madness and she fell in love with him and offered him tricks and herbs to help him get the Fleece with an agreement that he’d marry her afterward.
Jason enters into a dangerous situation while hiding behind potions—we hide behind our computers under the illusion that our emotional posts from years ago to ex-girlfriends or whoever or about whatever are no longer there and have no chance of impacting our future. We pretend that our social media pasts won’t remind us, or others, of who we were and what we once thought. As a culture, we often judge others 100-percent by what they did and zero-percent by who they currently are. As a man, especially a man in politics, if you admit your beliefs have changed or admit you were wrong, you are often deemed the following: a flip-flopper, a directionless imbecile, a gutless or pandering loser, or a man who can’t be a man and stick to his belief. You’ll be voted out in 5, 4, 3…
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III.
The dude couldn’t turn down that offer. He got the Fleece, married her, and they had two children together. Happily ever after? Hell no, our man J wasn’t ready to settle down. He was a man of action and wanted more, always more.
Like J, more is always better for us. At last check I had 777 (now 776, dammit) Twitter followers and 1515 on my Facebook Page. Maybe an error just occurred? Twitter now says I have zero followers. Did I accidentally delete something or did Twitter crash? Okay, it’s back. 776. Phew. For a second, maybe two, I stopped breathing. We get tweets from people who actually specialize in ways to give us tips and tricks and potions to get more Twitter followers. People have made it their life career to accommodate our never-have-enough-humanumbers mindset. We pay these specialists well. We thank them often. Humanumbers? Gross. (Stifles down image of the human centipede.) If more is both better and infinite we’re all F’d. Cue Marilyn Manson: “We’re all stars now, in the dope show.”
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IV.
While their children were still young, Jason peaced out because he wanted to hook up with the Glauce, the daughter of King Creon of Corinth (in most accounts, Glauce is a hot blonde). Medea had stayed loyal to him and even waited for him for years, so she was crushed when he divorced her and married Glauce, but he was all like, “Yo, chill out. Let me tap that and be closer to being the king up in here,” (Section Nil, Page Nada).
Mid-life crisis anyone? When we view old plays like Medea, we can’t stand the man. How could he be so selfish? Yet, for many, Medea is OK. Her trade of life-saving potions for life-long promises is okay. Love in a union trumping greed when perhaps the love was one-sided and/or not love but infatuation? Cue Chumbawamba: “Pissing the night away, pissing the night away.”
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V.
King Creon banishes Medea because he can sense that she’s about to wig out and kill him and Glauce and even Jason. But Medea plays it cool and gives Glauce a beautiful dress… laced with a poison that sticks to poor Glauce’s body and burns her to death. King Creon sees his daughter all poisoned, and he predates Romeo and throws himself onto the poison and dies a screaming, skin-searing death…for love?
We play it cool and retweet and share and like but how many of us do these things primarily for our benefit only? Do you share to get more followers? Do you like to be liked. Yeah, we do. Speaking of playing it cool: Have you ever Googlebated? I did yesterday, twice, and I came across a dude plagiarizing my nutrition writing. He played it cool too, even rearranged a few words. So I thought: Okay, he’s blatantly stealing something and taking credit for something I worked days on—and I wasn’t even paid for it either by him or the primary place where it was published. I was pissed. Then I thought, Well, he is helping to spread sound nutritional advice and that’s a good thing, right? So then I thought, Well, why do I work so hard on that nutrition writing? If it was purely for the benefit of others I wouldn’t be pissed. So then I realized I’m selfish because I play my writing career cool. Too cool. Like it’s all 100-percent for you, Dear Reader. What a fraud I am.
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VI.
To further crush Jason, Medea brutally stabs the children to death.
Revenge and jealousy are brothers from other mothers. Anger and Fear. Despite the millions of people of every different race that Oprah has helped and made more aware about situations ranging from sexual predators to healthy foods, many people won’t admit it and will still say: “Well, she’s racist.” There are even some hilarious (though seriously intentioned) sites devoted to killing the “evil” message of The Good Men Project. It’s true. Malcolm Gladwell debunked the myth that success is always directly correlated to hard work. Bluntly speaking: “Success” as our culture defines it, more often than we want to believe, simply means somebody was luckier than others. Still, seeing the success of others puts a mirror on our own lack of success and this reflection scares the bejesus out of us.
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VII.
Jason curls in a ball and becomes deranged and begins pulling his hair and making odd noises like the WWE wrestler Mankind, and Medea realizes her own craziness and they are both breathing hard and covered in the blood of their children and sometimes they’re so crazy they kiss each other’s baby-blood-covered lips.
Comedian Dean Obeidallah recently wrote a piece at CNN, titled “Are social media creating the laziest generation?” Sure, several publications told me to take Never to be Sold Again elsewhere because it was “too long for contemporary readers,” and this made me think of how social media has made us lazier information gatherers, more content with and confident in sifting through and reading blurbs or snippets or headlines instead of actual stories. But maybe we are only making ourselves crazier? Maybe we are just so intent on living the 21st century version of the classic human notion of wanting to be king of the world of our own creation that we’re willing to waste the majority of our lives sitting in a chair and striving for things by using the qualities we frown upon in ancient literary characters? Maybe our sense of self and others is disintegrating from a complex and beautiful dynamism into a ticking (hopefully upward) limitless number of unseen and unmet and uncared for (except in the sense of them giving us something or buying something we have) clickers and subscribers and followers? When we physically see or hear about a person with an utter lack of empathy or when a salesman works their game on us or when someone does us a favor and we later find their motive, we feel disgusted. Why are rules different in social media? We think we rule the throne, but we’re ruled by it. 778 and 1516, sweet. 776 and 1514, shit.
In 2006, the American College Theatre Festival nominated Cameron for a scholarship based on his performance as Jason in the Penn State Altoona’s production of Medea.
—Credits:
Medea play photos are by Gary Baranek.
The play was directed by Robin Reese.
Hope Colpan created the Medea poster.
Good to see that the play still lives on, and eventually the actors came out of it to live their lives in a more productive way than their characters.
Many a hopeless matter gods arrange (like trying to limit our time spent online)
What we expected never came to pass (from online networking efforts).
😉
Of course I’d like that, though depending on the day… maybe too much!
Food for thought. I will retweet, unless you don’t want me to? Sorry, must get back to Twitter now….
This production was directed by Associate Professor Robin Reese with photos by Gary Baranek.