Another thing I never noticed about Hadestown in my years of not seeing it and just listening to the soundtrack is how much the workers are embodied onstage. They’re SO present visually and so absent in the music— all the distinct voices take precedence if you don’t have them to look at, as well. That plus Reeve Carney’s incredible stage presence really had me appreciating the political aspect of this story in a new way.
I’ve been thinking a lot about like, dreaming your way to a better world lately, (I’m still thinking about that post I made about G’Kar and Man Of La Mancha, primarily, but also the question of whether this is even possible is a central tension in The Expanse, as far as I can tell) and it really makes me feel like “we’re going to sing it again” is just as much about continuing to imagine and try to create a better world despite setbacks and despite the cycle of history seeming to crush progress down again.
Andre de Shields as Hermes made me think of some other Black artists I got to hear speak recently at Readercon, on a panel about Black characters in horror. The panelists started that discussion by talking about how they disagreed with the panel description, which was something about how we continue to fight even though we lose. These professionals all thought the idea we’d lost was silly, that we’ve made great progress towards racial equality and will continue to do so, and that it’s a pretty cynical idea that just because we face setbacks we’ve lost. That really resonated with me and I feel like it’s a sentiment I see a lot in art, horror or otherwise, made by Black Americans, that you’re not fighting because you expect to win the thing forever and have everything be easy from then on, but because in fighting things are improving— even if they get worse again later, we’ll just fight again then, too. That’s why we keep telling the story— that’s why we “spill a drop for Orpheus wherever he is now”— there will always be an Orpheus.
