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antialiasis · 5 years

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Hadestown

Whooops I have a new musical obsession, help.

I was actually mostly drawn to this one musically. I heard a cover of “Why We Build the Wall”, found the musical soundtrack on Spotify and listened to the whole thing out of curiosity, and was like “Hey, this is bangin’, I want to listen to this again.”

Hadestown, as a narrative, isn’t really particularly me. It’s a love story (or, more accurately, two love stories of sorts). As you will know if you’ve read any of my blog, I’m not much of a romantic when it comes to fiction, and the love ballad(s) are pretty consistently my least favorite songs in basically every musical; this is no exception.

But there’s something that appeals to me in Hadestown anyway. It’s a very liberal modernized-but-also-not semi-metaphorical reinterpretation of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice (that’s the one with the guy who wants to bring back his dead girlfriend from the underworld, and Hades lets her go with him so long as he doesn’t turn back to look at her on the way; spoilers, he does look back, and she ends up back in the underworld forever). It’s actually doing a vaguely similar kind of thing as Jesus Christ Superstar, which may be part of why I dig it: taking well-known mythology, developing the figures in it as characters and exploring their motivations, existing in and embracing this in-between space where it’s simultaneously about these ancient mythological figures and extravagantly modernized reinterpretations of them, intentionally skirting the line and never quite committing to exactly to what extent it’s literal or metaphorical or something in between.

Here, it’s Greek myth in something vaguely like the Great Depression. Orpheus, a poor musician (who in the lyrics is said to play the lyre, even though on stage he’s clearly playing the guitar), falls in love with a practical, down-to-earth girl named Eurydice. Times are hard and they are poor, and Eurydice is most concerned with food and shelter and basic needs, while Orpheus is devoted only to his art; in “Wedding Song”, she asks where they’re going to get wedding rings or a wedding bed and Orpheus insists that when he finishes the song he’s working on, the rivers and trees and birds will provide what they need. As Eurydice tries to prepare for the winter and storms and further hardship, while Orpheus just sits there working on his song, Eurydice is approached by Hades, a rich industrialist who rules the underworld, Hadestown, where no one goes hungry. He seduces her, or persuades her, or kills her - again, this musical exists in the space between the literal and metaphorical - and she comes with him to Hadestown, where Hades has the inhabitants, or the spirits of the dead, slaving away working to build a wall to keep out the poverty and misery of not having a wall to work on, and Orpheus journeys to get her back with directions from our narrator Hermes.

Intertwined with that story is the story of Hades and Persephone, who were in love a long time ago, but are now bitter and estranged from one another - Persephone (as in the myths) spends the summer months of the year happy above ground, but in the fall Hades comes for her and takes her down to Hadestown, where he’s obsessively building walls and machines and furnaces and electric grids that he wants to impress her but do just the opposite as she despises the heat and the light and the noise: It ain’t right and it ain’t natural. In Hadestown, Persephone runs a speakeasy of sorts, where she sells the miserable inhabitants the sky and moon and stars, or quite possibly they’re all just a metaphor for a lot of liquor and drugs (the word moonshine, of course, sees some use).

I find myself drawn to the story of the latter two here, somewhat predictably, because they are a couple of very fucked-up people in a very fucked-up relationship. Hades is absolutely the villain here, and a pretty chilling one at that: “Why We Build the Wall” is the backwards, rousing anthem of a sort of cult leader enslaving a population of people and persuading them that the wall they’re building will keep them free, and holy god damn can he make his voice terrifying. But there’s this sense of desperation to him as well. One of my favorite songs by now is “Chant II”, where Hades threatens Orpheus with death or imprisonment or some other sinister fate, and rants, practically frothing at the mouth, about women, and how they’re so seasonal (har har), they’ll come and they’ll leave, and you just have to keep them with you by chaining them and weighing them down with riches, and then:

Now I sing a different song One I can depend upon The simple tune, the steady beat The music of machinery Do you hear that heavy metal sound? The symphony of Hadestown And in this symphony of mine Of power chords and power lines Young man, you can strum your lyre, I have strung the world in wire Young man, you can sing your ditty I CONDUCT THE ELECTRIC CITY!

And you realize Hades has basically built this entire industrial city because machines are dependable and reliable and he can control them and they won’t leave him every six months. You can sort of see it laid out how once upon a time Hades and Persephone were happy, but as the cracks in their relationship developed, he channeled his fear of losing her into the most toxic possible path, and that’s what’s made him this possessive tyrant obsessed with industrialization and control, effectively just as trapped in this cage of his own making as his citizens. He’s terrible, but you get how he got there, in his awful fucked-up way, and that’s always a thing that I’m into.

In the end, Orpheus and Persephone melt him a little and grant him a bit of self-awareness, and as Orpheus gets his chance to try to save Eurydice, Hades and Persephone also decide to try again - which I hope also involves, y’know, freeing the slaves/souls/literal-metaphor-mixture-something, or at least no longer forcing them to imprison themselves behind a pointless wall, and Hades all in all redeeming himself and becoming a better, more compassionate person again, but given that, I’m actually rooting for them, which is impressive after the literally nearly everything that goes on between them. Persephone wants to try again and she deserves happiness, okay.

Orpheus and Eurydice have a healthier relationship (I mean, Hades and Persephone would be very hard to top), but it’s still fraught with Orpheus’ neglect of their basic needs, and eventually his giving in to his own inner demons as he finds himself unable to trust and believe that she’s truly behind him despite the promises that they made (and to be fair, Eurydice did go and get herself Hadestowned last time he left her alone). “Doubt Comes In” is another one of my belated favorite songs on the soundtrack; it gives such a good musical sense of that creeping dread as his confidence falters and he loses his nerve.

All in all, I just like listening to this soundtrack a lot and I mayyyy be feeling an uncontrollable urge to organize another trip to New York so I can slip in and see this performed help

#hadestown #character analysis #ramble #review #halp #why is it always musicals

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ganymedesclock · 6 years

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Based on S3E7, what do you think about the nature of quintessence? I get the impression it came from the rift, and yet so much of Altean technology that Allura seems totally comfortable using relies on it.

To my rough understanding, Honerva is being a reliable narrator when she claims quintessence is life itself. It’s not always used as energy- Allura in s1e1 noticeably says “The quintessence of the pilot is mirrored in his Lion” which would suggest that this is a sort of ephemeral vital essence- soul, or what Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra refer to as “spirit”. It is both the vitality of any living entity, and a reflection of the essential character of that person. In that sense, Blue, for example, doesn’t have to read Lance’s mind and mull over his thoughts to know he’s a worthy paladin- all she has to do is feel the energy he radiates by his natural personality and sensibilities- and know that it feels like her own.

It appears that even before the rift, the Alteans were using quintessence, but, as it’s the substance of life, it comes in, well, organic byproducts. Remember, Alteans were harvesting and powering their machines with Balmera crystals.

The majority of the energy-related minerals that we’ve encountered in the setting- crystals and scaultrite- have one thing in common: they’re organic byproducts of living creatures, Balmera and Weblums.

(This makes me have some suspicions about luxite- it’s stated to have been mined, but that doesn’t rule out that it has its origins in a living creature. Quite possibly, luxite is a material similar to ammolite, petrified wood or amber- an organic byproduct fossilized and transformed by metamorphic processes into a mineral. And that would better explain that it was seemingly only found on one planet- when even fairly esoteric mineral compounds you’d expect to be in multiple places. But a particular plant or animal, especially a prehistoric one that had been potentially extincted or its descendants moved on from it, could easily only exist at a single planet where those remains could gather and become compressed into metal)

The revolution around the rift is being able to harness this sort of vital energy in a pure undiluted form, completely free of the creature that created it. This is where the vampiric allusions of the empire, and Zarkon in particular, come in- and this is where we see Coran’s horrified reaction to the refining station in s1e11. After all, if it’s the substance of life, harvesting it in masse as the empire is... well, imagine if all of those canisters were full of blood.

This also implies some fascinating things about the rift between worlds, which... roughly, as far as I gather, the implication is that the rift is effectively a sea of quintessence, whose so far only known landmark is the Rift Entity that swims freely within it, and every individual reality is a closed microcosm nestled inside of that rift, with the rift acting as a barrier or boundary between them, and the only thing naturally endowed with the power to cross between worlds and thus open those apertures into that liminal ocean is Voltron.

Which... raises some really, really interesting questions about this model of the universe and what this proposes for the origins of life in this setting. Because Coran’s video in s2e9, at least, the bits that we hear, imply planets themselves have a beating heart and a life cycle- that they, too, age and die, independent of their native ecosystems, and when they do, the weblums exist as planetary vultures that devour what remains of their souls, digest them, and processes them in some form to pave the way for the birth of new planets.

But if we assume all quintessence originates from the rift, and perhaps seeps into existing realities, that would imply life at all is a certain degree an alien presence- perhaps invoking a kind of Prometheus legend where at the beginning of reality, all quintessence only existed within the rift, and some sort of great breach occurred- either by Voltron, another member of its “species”, or... perhaps the “goddess” it’s implied to serve- that brought life to realities. Because whatever the Baku was, it appeared powerfully connected to quintessence given the vibrant violet glow around its nest, and controlled Luxia said some very ominous things about “it is time to return to the giver of life” that wasn’t really answered with the death of the Baku.

This is especially significant given what I discussed in a prior post about the thematic elements underlying the series on the topic of life and death. Especially given that we see quintessence in three forms: the yellow, neutral state that appears to be the body of the rift, the “primordial ocean” if you will- the cyan energy associated with Voltron, and the purple energy associated with the rift.

The only entity associated with the color purple out of Voltron is the Black Lion- specifically one who appears thematically conflated with transcending opposites, and kind of a ruler of the boundary between life and death. And both of Black’s paladins, and their answer among Sincline, are, in a way, all people who come back to this matter of ‘darkness’ and dealing with the matter of death- Zarkon, our wayward Orpheus; Shiro, who passed through a hellish experience and emerged a changed person- and Lotor, so far the only person we know who has the distinction of hailing from two different destroyed planets.

Simply- it’d seem as if there’s a sort of thematic order and entropy battle here. What we see of purple energy is that it is, by and large, destructive. It’s the consuming force that sustains Zarkon’s undeath, it appears most commonly in crackling, burning electricity or the razor-sharp cutting force of Shiro’s prosthetic. Our heroes have used it, Shiro most obviously, but Allura also used it to destroy the Komar.

But also, it cannot be harnessed easily, and without ill effect. The castle running even briefly on the energy caused lasting harm and the title of “Crystal Venom” is very evocative that the violet energy was as unto a poison in the castle’s veins. Alfor’s AI, afflicted by it, gave in to despair, turned manipulative and cruel, and tried to kill Allura and the rest of the paladins.

We also have so far yet to see galra healing pods, or any sort of restorative thing using the purple energy that the empire favors. If anything, the abundance of prosthetics and that Zarkon took months to recover between Haggar reviving him in s3e7 and his retaking the throne in s4e1 would suggest the empire is miles behind its ancient enemy when it comes to medicine.

And where does Altea vastly exceed the empire? In healing, and in defense. The empire’s shields are a joke compared to the undiluted glory of the Castleship who so far in the plot has yet to take a direct hit because its shield is so damn durable. Again, the implication is clear- there are two underlying forces in the universe of Voltron. The blue Order, and the violet Entropy.

This implies some very interesting things about Voltron and the rift entity- that the two are, in a way, natural enemies. That their conflict vastly predates their respective appearances on Daibazaal, and their alignment with various people at the scene of that impact.

That Sincline, ultimately, is destined to fall on Voltron’s side of this conflict- it is an inherently Order-aligned being by its obvious blue lighting, a color scheme it shares with Lotor- who it is not an exaggeration to say, at bare minimum Lotor’s pragmatism and concern with the stability of the empire means he could never really follow and believe in the entropic worldviews of his parents.

But also, in a way, this is obvious- because the whole point of Voltron, and presumably of Sincline, if it operates the same way as its “older sibling”- is to achieve harmony and order among five very different components. Solidarity is born of knowing, conscious, mutual unity.

#voltron legendary defender #vld #Voltron #Sincline #rift entity #readmore #Anonymous

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