if you need a good summation of 21st century gender relations I would direct your attention to the passage in the illiad where achilles falls in love with hippolyta at the exact moment he is murdering her and then has the temerity to throw a tantrum about it
Millennia before refridgerators were even invented.
Except it’s not in the Iliad, it wasn’t Hippolyta, and that’s not really what happens. Which is not to detract from the fundamental point, but.
A basic reconstruction from the bunch of dubious sources we have is that Penthesilea the Amazon came to Troy looking for an honourable death in battle; she fought Achilles, who killed her; he shed tears over her corpse because she was so beautiful; Thersites, the Greek army’s resident troll, made fun of him for it, so he killed Thersites too.
There’s a lot of really fascinating stuff you can do with this episode regarding both the objectification of women (Achilles only notices Penthesilea’s beauty once she’s dead, i.e. rendered permanently passive and ‘objectified’ in the most literal way possible; if you want to get very 1980s you can start talking about apertures in her body versus apertures in the text) and the sexualisation of death (it’s a striking example of the ‘beautiful corpse’ motif which in heroic poetry is more commonly applied to male warriors). But it’s such an interesting point I don’t want to see people walking away with their facts wrong. Also, Penthesilea was fantastic - she took out several Greek heroes, in one version she kills Achilles and Zeus has to bring him back to life, and her name means something like ‘she who brings grief on people’ - and I’d rather she not get reduced to a helpless victim and used as a token in a Tumblr game of Spot the Misogyny. She wasn’t murdered, or fridged; she was a warrior, and she died a warrior.
(Eustathius of Thessalonica insisted that after Achilles killed her he had sex with her corpse, but Eustathius of Thessalonica was honestly a bit of a weirdo.)
you know what Hillingdon, you really don’t give us much to work with and my lot try so hard to keep the creativity and the music scene alive. I would love to be like ‘yay local gigs, yay community gigs’ but when we do gigs for the council they often treat us like shit and try and blame their…
From the now-defunct (since 2000) Melody Maker magazine 1994.
Review of Lush/Blessed Ethel gig (at the Leadmill Sheffield) by Dave Simpson. Apparently ol’ Dave wasn’t very impressed by Blessed Ethel and positively bored by Lush until someone in the crowd decided to chuck their pint in Miki’s (lead singer) face and ‘suddenly Miki is Spacek in “Carrie”, her face contorted in evil’, yeah, she went all angry punk badass. If you want ‘the animal, magnetic, raw, sexy, evil, vindictive [some Nazi comparison]’ Lush, Simpson suggests you should have your pint glass ready. (Full text version available here).
I bet it’s fucking horrible having a cold pint chucked in your face, I reckon Miki didn’t have much choice in being a bad girl. And that’s how it works being a female musician isn’t it? They want you to be bad and if you aren’t bad they aren’t happy and if they think they can get a rise out of you they will… and then you’re Carrie, then you’re the crazy bitch.
The Tuts are an indie-girl band from England whose live shows are famous for high energy and leaving crowds pleased. They also recently self-released an EP.
After supporting Kate Nash at a London gig they were chosen to support every date of her upcoming UK tour (tickets here).
Find out more about The Tuts on their facebook page!
Listen to their single (full of awesome feminist vibes) ‘Tut Tut Tut’ and buy it here!
![silentpunk:
From the now-defunct (since 2000) Melody Maker magazine 1994.
Review of Lush/Blessed Ethel gig (at the Leadmill Sheffield) by Dave Simpson. Apparently ol’ Dave wasn’t very impressed by Blessed Ethel and positively bored by Lush until someone in the crowd decided to chuck their pint in Miki’s (lead singer) face and ‘suddenly Miki is Spacek in “Carrie”, her face contorted in evil’, yeah, she went all angry punk badass. If you want ‘the animal, magnetic, raw, sexy, evil, vindictive [some Nazi comparison]’ Lush, Simpson suggests you should have your pint glass ready. (Full text version available here).
I bet it’s fucking horrible having a cold pint chucked in your face, I reckon Miki didn’t have much choice in being a bad girl. And that’s how it works being a female musician isn’t it? They want you to be bad and if you aren’t bad they aren’t happy and if they think they can get a rise out of you they will… and then you’re Carrie, then you’re the crazy bitch.
Just hope a similar thing doesn’t happen to the working-class-non-white-bad-girl closest to my heart when she plays at the Leadmill next month. Yeah I just drew a parallel between Miki Berenyi and Nadia Javed, so what?](http://25.media.tumblr.com/c98d253d006d5733ef720afc9082bab5/tumblr_mkbmxxR1Xf1qa8mn8o1_500.jpg)
