Dark Academia: No-Nuance Classics
I was introduced to Tumblr blogs celebrating classical literature and art when I was twelve years old. I fell into it very fast, as I have always liked Italian and British art, and the drama of the artworks was appealing to me, though I had no context for where they came from. After seeing it many times on my Tumblr feed, I read a novel called The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I fell in love with the idea of what I learned to call Dark Academia, the term used to describe an aesthetic associated with art, films, and literature relating to classical antiquity, viewed through the lens of 18th and 19th century European beauty standards. Only during college did I revisit my time on Tumblr with more scrutiny and realize I was sold a version of Classics that ignorantly buried the ugly aspects of stories like The Iliad, The Odyssey, or The Aeneid.
Much like the rest of the website during the early 2010s, Classics bloggers found an audience in depressed twelve-year-olds with high Lexile scores who were introduced to Greek mythology through young adult novels. The result was hundreds of thousands of posts perpetuating the romanticization of suicide, rape, and death that were well-received by the bloggers’ target audience. From this vast library of imagery and blog posts, I have identified several that directly compete with my current view of scenes like Dido’s suicide in Virgil’s The Aeneid and the slaughter of the enslaved women in Homer’s The Odyssey.
The slaughter of the enslaved women at the end of Robert Fagles’ translation of The Odyssey is often painted as a point of restitution and liberation for Odysseus. He arrives home where Athena disguises him as an old beggar in order to plot his revenge slowly and stealthily. Soon after his introduction as the beggar, he scolds the enslaved women for not being with Penelope. Though he appears as an old beggar, he still expects the utmost respect from these women who are wary of his presence and, understandably, taken aback by his bold reprimands.
“The women burst into laughter, glancing back and forth. Flushed with beauty, Melantho mocked him shamelessly — “ (The Odyssey, Book 18, p. 386, Lines 363–364).
Odysseus’s hatred towards these women goes deeper than their dismissal of him — he also hates that they slept with Penelope’s suitors.
“You sluts — the suitors’ whores!” (The Odyssey, Book 22, p. 453, Line 490).
Though Fagle’s translation paints these relationships as consensual, power disrupts the traditional understandings of consent, and whether these women were free maids or slaves, no woman of their status could have possibly said no without grave consequences. In Book 19, it is implied that Eurymachus and Melantho’s relationship is consensual, though if you view Melantho as enslaved, there are several important implications. First, consent may not have been given due to her status as a slave, which in turn means she was raped by Eurymachus, changing the argument for her execution drastically. Even assuming Melantho was in a consensual relationship with a man who held a significant deal of power over her, I can’t see justification as to why this justifies the horrific murder of her and the rest of the women.
Rape scenes from classical literature and mythology have commonly been downplayed on Tumblr, especially the rape of Proserpina by Pluto, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses — content for which the website is saturated. Intimately cropped mages of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s The Rape of Proserpina, Gaimbologna’s The Rape of the Sabine Woman, or any of the several depictions of the Rape of Lucretia, (most of which show more kidnapping than actual rape) all exemplify Tumblr’s obsession with a romanticization of violence against women—especially since the majority of bloggers hone in on Bernini’s soft, flesh-like rendering of the marble that grips Proserpina’s thigh. Sounds romantic, right? Of course, not all blogs are like this, and not all bloggers perpetuate this gaze — I’ve seen Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Slaying Holofernes on the platform just as many times, and Tumblr is not without its critical analyses of rape culture.
Back to Odysseus’s homecoming: The scene where the enslaved women are hanged, one by one, told in excruciating detail, is by far the most disturbing part of The Odyssey.
“Then, as doves or thrushes beating their spread wings against some snare rigged up in thickets — flying in for a cozy nest but a grisly bed receives them — so the women’s heads were trapped in a line, nooses yanking their necks up, one by one so all might die a pitiful, ghastly death… they kicked up their heels for a little — not for long.”
(The Odyssey, Book 22, p. 453, Lines 494–499).
I feel that this scene is easily brushed over by many, as the following scenes between Penelope and Odysseus mean so much more to Odysseus’s character development and the progression of the plot. But this scene should not be ignored. Not only does Telemachus slaughter these women, but he forces each of them to clean up the blood and corpses of the suitors in the hall directly beforehand.
Tumblr blogs didn’t avoid the discussion of this scene, although critical posts were far less popular than ones that casually avoided the darker implications and chose to focus on, for example, how hot they think Telemachus is. One text post seems to fall right in the middle, acknowledging the horror of the scene in a casual, darkly humorous way:
“My favorite thing about The Odyssey is how Odysseus left home when Telemachus was a baby and they haven’t seen each other in twenty years, so their first father-son bonding experience ever is when they get together and violently murder all [of] Penelope’s suitors”
(Allieinarden, 2013).
The way I view it, this post isn’t inherently harmful. What I see as perpetuating the issues at hand are the posts that lack context, lack any critical thought about the reality of what Telemachus has done. Posts like this or this, that seek to romanticize his character are the ones that gained traction and have been seen by so many impressionable kids. One post, by a blog called Betsydobsons, contains a compilation of ambiguous, aesthetic imagery attributed to what the author sees as a “Modern Telemachus,” making him out to be the subject of a young adult novel or a teen sitcom.
More harmful than the glorification of a murderous sociopath from Homer, is the romanticization of suicide, especially that brought on by heartbreak. In The Aeneid, Queen Dido falls in love and, in some versions, marries Aeneas while he and his men are staying in Carthage. Aeneas then realizes he must leave for Italy, as the Fates decree. Aeneas decides to gather his men up and ready the ships before he figures out how he will break the news to Dido. Everyone seems to know before her, and naturally, word gets out. Dido makes how heartbroken she is clear, and in Virgil’s elegant poetic style, makes a dramatic last plea for him to stay. The confrontation scene is clear. Dido professes her sadness:
“You’re running away — from me? Oh, I pray by these tears, by the faith of your right hand — what else have I left myself in all my pain?” and most importantly, she implies what is to come; “In whose hands, my guest, do you leave me here to meet my death?” (The Aeneid, Book 4, p. 138, Lines 402–403).
Aeneas has to know what is in store for her; she makes it abundantly clear. Though no partner should be deterred from leaving due to threats of suicide, Aeneas knows the consequences of this abandonment and doesn’t seem to consider it.
The most dramatic scene in Dido’s story is when Anna builds a pyre out of Trojan armor which Dido then climbs and kills herself. Dido is facing heartbreak and shock as well as the belief that there is no way to move forward since she has already denied another marriage offer in exchange for her relationship with Aeneas.
“And now what shall I do? Make a mockery of myself, go back to my old suitors, tempt them to try again? Beg the Numidians, grovel, plead for a husband — though time and again I scorned to wed their like? What then? Trail the Trojan ships, bend to the Trojans’ every last demand?” (The Aeneid, Book 4, p. 146, Lines 667–672).
She concludes that without Aeneas, without marriage prospects, she must kill herself. Her choice to commit suicide is extremely complex and it is a devastating decision. Dido is a queen who is in charge of building an entire nation; she has so much responsibility and there are more consequences than heartbreak that factor into her suicide as a result of Aeneas leaving. Especially given her history — she has lost Aeneas, but more than that, she lost her first husband. Vergil spent a long time establishing the pain she felt from this, in all of her conversations with Anna, in all of her monologues on the guilt she felt by loving Aeneas. Tumblr removes the context from all of this. Her brother murdered her husband. This isn’t Dido’s first heartbreak, and through her trauma, she built an entire empire from nothing. When Tumblr bloggers romanticize the most insignificant aspect of her decision to commit suicide, it shows highly impressionable teens that they too can seek a horrible, permanent solution to the pain they experience from their first, earth-shattering breakup.
Dido’s strong and flowery language in the scenes during and leading up to her suicide seem to resonate with bloggers on Tumblr just as much as they did with 18th century painters. Like the problematic posts about Telemachus that lacked context or nuance, many of the imagery of Dido is the same. Her image is perpetuated through fan art and famous paintings such as Death of Dido by Giambattista Tiepolo or Dido by Henry Fuseli, depicting her death and reaching thousands of Tumblr users. Many bloggers hang on to the dramatic language in her death scene. A blog by the name of And Let Forsaken Dido Die is one example of how her death is perceived as romantic, as well as many blogs that post fan art of heartbroken Dido, who is depicted sometimes as an ancient African queen and sometimes as a blond hair, blue-eyed Disney princess-type character. My favorite over-romanticized imagery of Dido on Tumblr is a painting of her committing suicide by Sir Joshua Reynolds overlayed with Sufjan Stevens lyrics.
I can’t claim that all Tumblr blogs romanticize her death. Much of the discourse I found included the “Dido deserved better” hashtag and quite a bit of critical analysis of her story. I was also impressed with the number of fan blogs that made mood boards about what they thought she would have worn and looked like, many of whom recognized that Dido would not have been white. This being said, the whitewashing of ancient Greeks is very prevalent on Tumblr, as well as throughout the entirety of Dark Academia culture, and can be attributed mainly to the glorification of 18th and 19th century neoclassical sculpture. The prevalence of whitewashing these subjects comes mainly in the form of blogs that repost strictly neoclassical paintings accompanied by dramatic lyrics or quotes. There are many more of these in the #Dido, #Aeneas, and #Telemachus tags, and they have been reblogged thousands of more times than any critical analysis has. These don’t directly tell the viewer that subjects like rape and suicide are romantic, but their imagery is so beautiful and powerful, and in the context of these blogs’ mission to provide romantic imagery, still influences Tumblr users into this cycle of over-glorification.
Tumblr has helped foster the creative community I am surrounded with at my university today. It helped me discover and eventually study Art History, and it helped many people find communities and grow into themselves as young adults. It is not a horrible place, and is, in my opinion, a net good for the world. Its difficulties lie in the unregulated, internet-wild-west type of forums it contains. This, combined with uninformed bloggers and the power of pretty images, has helped create an army of impressionable teens who latch onto the romanticization of mental illness, death, and violence, in art ranging from neo-classical depictions of Queen Dido to Lana Del Rey lyrics. The power of beautiful imagery that gets hundreds of thousands of re-blogs has taken away from the critical discourse surrounding ugly realities of classical literature. I found that the best way to combat this, being someone who had a Tumblr in 2014, was to read up on what posts piqued my interest, so that I might understand the larger context, instead of just the pretty imagery. My time studying applied classics has helped me re-learn the texts I knew from Tumblr, like The Odyssey and The Aeneid, and I hope to look at paintings and visual culture circulated on social media with a new outlook, one that considers context, as well as aesthetics.
Acknowledgements: Thank you to Sam Basa, my peer reviewer, helped edit and gave feedback on my essay, which I incorporated into my final draft.
by Sophie Rain Plzak
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