A New Briseis in Troy

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chapter 8 A New Briseis in Troy

Barbara P. Weinlich

Aside from Menelaus’ death at the hands of Hector, the refashioning of Briseis as a devotee of Apollo, defiant captive of Achilles, and murderess of Agamemnon may be the most significant variation that either version of Troy makes to the ancient myths of the Trojan War. Yet, compared to the theatrical release version, the director’s cut highlights a different aspect of Briseis. As he displays her emotions more comprehensively and even intensifies them, Petersen now grants Briseis greater capacity to act decisively than the theatrical release version had done. Now, emphasis is less on her rather passive role as Achilles’ woman and more on her actions and reactions and on the values by which these are guided. As a result, the director’s cut significantly modifies the profile of Briseis in both the ancient myth and the theatrical release version. It also places the heroine in a noticeably different narrative and, by extension, in a different contemporary context. In this chapter I hope to show how the director’s cut reframes Briseis and her actions, how these changes re-shape the ancient myth’s war narrative, and how these modifications endow the film with a political dimension, even ideology, that was—and still is—particularly appealing to American audiences of the early twenty-first century. In view of the defenseless temple virgin’s evolution to a woman who is ready to preserve her autonomy at all cost, the director’s cut adds a new dimension to her narrative, that of good—i.e. morally justifiable—violence by the weaker as opposed to bad violence of the stronger. Through Briseis and her story the director’s cut evokes the dream as well as the paradox of what we might call the empowered powerless. In doing so, it also touches on contemporary politics. The work of Alena Allen and Robert Rabel on the theatrical release version of Troy may serve as a backdrop for the approach that this chapter will choose.1 Allen focused primarily on Briseis’ profile in the literary tradition and identified four aspects in the Briseis of Troy that stem from different ancient narratives. Like

1 Alena Allen, “Briseis in Homer, Ovid, and Troy,” and Robert J. Rabel, “The Realist Politics of Troy,” both in Martin M. Winkler (ed.), Troy: From Homer’s Iliad to Hollywood Epic (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 148–162 and 186–201. Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at Monash University and the Freie Universität Berlin. I am grateful for both audiences’ helpful suggestions, and I would like to thank Jane Montgomery Griffith and Almut-Barbara Renger in particular.

192 Weinlich her counterpart in Ovid’s Heroides, Briseis is the romantic lover of Achilles; aside from that, however, the film’s Briseis appears to be a composite character derived from Polyxena, the Trojan princess whom Achilles desires, Cassandra, the Trojan priestess of Apollo, and her counterpart in Homer’s Iliad, Achilles’ war prize. Allen’s solid analysis of Briseis’ literary origins calls for a complementary study of Briseis’ cinematic presentation, in particular of the motifs that guide her actions in either version of Troy. While it is tempting to agree with Allen’s rather schematic division of Briseis’ plot involvement into a three-part sequence, at the beginning and end of which she embodies princess, priestess, and war prize combined, this approach runs the risk of deemphasizing, even devaluing any existing inconsistencies or actions that do not fit into a category. We may wonder, for example, why Briseis should not also be acknowledged as a lover when she is holding the dying Achilles in her arms, or what significance her stabbing of Agamemnon could have beyond the action of a vengeful priestess who “achieves the equivalent of an aristeia.”2 In order to measure the political dimension of the theatrical release version of Troy, Rabel suggested to regard the film as “a dialogue with the past about the present.”3 For this purpose he applied the concept of political realism, an approach that is rooted in the past, specifically in Thucydides’ realist thought. This concept has been identified by Richard Ned Lebow as the “dominant par- adigm in international relations for the last fifty years.”4 Given that political realism is characterized by a tragic view of history in general and by a pessimis- tic attitude toward a possible resolution of the “the major social and political problems plaguing mankind” in particular, Rabel chose a tool of interpretation that is geared toward confirming his chosen concept and its principles.5 His reading of the film from the perspective of political realism thus concluded that Troy “transforms the Homeric epic into tragedy. At its conclusion the film juxtaposes the horror of the destruction of Troy, seen through King Priam’s eyes, with the claims to heroic achievement that Odysseus pronounces at the funeral of Achilles.”6 Quite obviously, Rabel has prepared the ground for my own approach in several respects. On the one hand, he aimed at integrating Troy into

2 Allen, “Briseis in Homer, Ovid, and Troy,” 161. 3 Rabel, “The Realist Politics of Troy,” 186. 4 Richard Ned Lebow, The Tragic Versions of Politics: Ethics, Interests and Orders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 14; previously adduced by Rabel, “The Realist Politics of Troy,” 186. 5 Rabel, “The Realist Politics of Troy,” 187. 6 Rabel, “The Realist Politics of Troy,” 201.