#punderworld

A NEW STJEPAN + LINDA SEJIC INTERVIEW?!?!?!?!??! I'M BOUNCING OFF MY WALLS

And that is just a few of them. There is a lot. Greek mythology is constantly being used and referenced in media, though it does seem that in the last 10 to 15 years we really are experiencing a certain hype, as especially certain myths get used over and over and over again. And there is something to be said on how we can use those familiar myths to reframe modern experiences and our relationship to history.

But the thing that bugs me so much about this is how it is framed in regards to the entire "cultural appropriation" kind of thing. This was brought up about once when the Percy Jackson books were releasing, and then we kinda moved past it.

The narrative is basically like this: "Greek mythology is basically the original white mythology, so white people when using a mythology for their fantasy can use Greek mythology to do it, because that is white culture."

And it is also clear where this comes from. Because, yeah, if you have been raised in a western country and especially if you are white, this is how you have been taught to think about history. The understanding of culture that your school encouraged went: "There were the Greeks, then some of the Greek stuff was taken over by the Romans, and the Roman culture informed Christianity." Cool.

Now, a bunch of people have already pointed out the obvious flaw with this theory: for the longest time, neither Italians, nor Greeks were considered white. Or as some people joked because of the entire Luigi Mangione thing: him being charged for terrorism (something that white people seem to be immune against) is proof that Italians are still not seen as white.

But if you want a less meme-based idea about this, Yanis Varoufakis has written quite a bit on how in global politics both Greece and Italy are very much not treated as white countries most of the time.

And when we talk about the mythology, there is the elephant in the room.

Specifically Greek mythology is so much closer to both Assyrian and a bunch of African mythologies, than it is to anything European. And the relation of the Roman gods to the Greek ones is a lot more complicated than the average "the Romans just stole the Greek gods" meme or Rick Riordan's books frame it. (And frankly, I do not have time to explain that here.)

There is also something to be said about the fact that a lot of fantasy stories mix Greek myths, that historically were actually not relevant at the same time, because Ancient Greece was about in some way or form for about half a millennium, with things shifting around. And some myths that we know of also predate the main classical period by a good bit. While other stuff that we know off is based in stories that were at the time of their writing not understood in the way of how we consider mythology (aka: something people somewhat religiously believed in), but rather fictional stories that in their time were understood as fictional by the people writing and reading them. Like, nobody actually believed the Odyssey was a historic account of events. Duh.

I mean, there is a lot to be said about the fact that people somehow struggle with a lot of this today. Not just in terms of clearly fictional accounts and stories from the time.

Of course, though, the vast majority of central and northern European mythologies have been lost, because, well... they actually also were not what influenced our modern culture. A lot of Celtic stuff has been lost, and the same is true for the Nordic and Germanic stuff. I will note once more: the Edda is not an actual account of Nordic mythology, nor are many of the versions of Celtic mythology we have. Pretty much all of it is not a written account of people who believed in that mythology, or directly interacted with it, but either Christians or Romans, who wrote about it from their specific perspectives.

And in the end, of course... there is just the fact. Whiteness as an identity is linked to Christianity. If you are white, you are culturally Christian. And there is no way around this. And of course, Christianity was majorly influenced by Rome, and also by Judaism, which in turn came from Assyrian mythology. I talked about this before. Judaism came from the Canaanite religion, and that came from the Assyrian one, which, again, ironically is very, very close to Greek mythology.

So, I guess in a weird way it comes full circle, just not the way we have been taught?

Don't get me wrong. I am not saying you should not enjoy Greek mythology based stories, or should not write them. You absolutely should, and it is good, and okay to do this, and I also think that we have somewhat gotten a bit too tied up in this idea of appropriation and what not.

I mean, heck of those things mentioned above: I loved Stray Gods, and I love Hadestown. I did very much enjoy Epic as well. All three of them to me engage with the myths in a very interesting way that I loved (especially with the musical framing which feels so much on point for this). I also loved Hades and Kaos. The others were all somewhere from okay to meh for me personally, but look, I am not judging anyone who liked them.

But what I wished was that people put some more effort into reflecting on those aspects of Greek mythology rather than reflecting it through this idea of "this is Roman, and therefore Christian, and therefore ours".

A present I kept meaning to post 😋!

Ok, so...

My mother has this mini basket with some fake plants in it that she's got from a coworker. In it there's a bunch of small purple flowers and red chillies. Aside from that, she's added this fake wheat stalk.

Now every time I look at that basket, all I see is Demeter from Punderworld and that Spider-Man meme.

To make it even funnier, on the basket it says "Greece"