ON MEDUSA

Artist Luciano Garbati’s Medusa With the Head of Perseus stands directly across from New York County Criminal Court, facing the courthouse that pronounced film producer Harvey Weinstein a sex offender. The press release would have us know that the seven-foot sculpture “inverts the narrative of Medusa, portraying her in a moment of somberly empowered self-defense”.

I don’t mean to be harsh, but this is tosh. Just because a woman is holding a sword and a man’s head does not mean she’s empowered. Also, I’m not sure why she had to be naked (beyond the whole providing “public porn” bit, as art critic Jerry Saltz put it). A seven-foot tall, skinny-enough-to-have-a-thigh-gap, body-hair-less, naked woman; striking a pose like she’s at the end of the runway — Gabrati’s Medusa is an epitome of the shallowness of our global culture. She makes for a striking picture, but beyond that, the only narrative she embodies is one that idealises and lionises skinny white women.

As activist Wagatwe Wanjuki wrote in her thread on Twitter, “#MeToo was started by a Black woman, but a sculpture of a European character by a dude is the commentary that gets centred? … a sculpture of a naked rape victim leading to jokes about her pubic hair only makes me more suspicious of this iconography’s cultural impact. … that work just feels like a man’s fantasy of a rape victim”.

Right now, the biggest plus in favour of Gabrati’s Medusa is that the head of Perseus seems to be modelled on the artist’s own face. (Medusa is not modelled on a real woman, his press representative had clarified. What a shocker.) If a man is going to make you an object of the patriarchal gaze, then the least he can do is give you his decapitated head.

Even though Gabrati’s Medusa is a gigantic nude, there’s something sanitised about the image she presents. See Cellini’s Perseus with the Head of Medusa, which Gabrati was responding to originally when he made his sculpture in 2008, and you can see Medusa’s body at his feet, spilling gore out of the hacked neck. Perseus’s own body is taut with tension, showing the effort that it’s taking him to hold up the head. Whether or not he intended this, Cellini’s sculpture is a statement of Medusa’s power as much as it is of Perseus’s heroism. Perseus has weapons and gifts from the gods, his every muscle is tense. Medusa, on the other hand, is unarmed. Her bare, mutilated body offers a reminder that Perseus needed a whole lot of help to defeat Medusa.

Also, I giggle delightedly at the fact that Cellini had his sculpture installed at the precise spot where Medusa’s head would be opposite Michelangelo’s David. Sure, the decision was spurred by arty male ego, but the net result is that for almost 500 years, Medusa’s furious, feminine gaze has petrified the classical epitome of masculinity.

Perhaps the most disappointing part of Gabrati’s installation is that it adds so little to the story of Medusa, which has been repeatedly recast over centuries to reflect the ideas and conflicts of the storytellers’ times. This sculpture at best makes for a decent photo-op, but there’s nothing to look at closely. It has little by way of detailing, which means there’s little sense of a story. This Medusa is just an object. Also, the stories of Medusa’s slaying are complex and rich with symbolism. When Gabrati inverts the myth by having her cut off Perseus’s head, it’s not a simple reversal. Medusa’s gaze had power and if anything, when it was transformed into the Gorgoneion — the hideous face that wards off enemies — it became more powerful. To turn Perseus’s head into the Gorgoneion is to rob Medusa of both her power and erase her story.

Medusa’s head as a Gorgoneion can be found in art from around 800 BCE. These depictions suggest Medusa was a talismanic god, like Bes of ancient Egypt or the Mesopotamian Pazuzu. For a long time, this head wasn’t recognisably feminine as the Gorgoneion is now. It was more of a fusion of genders, with features that were suggestively pubic and penile (and also hideous). There’s nothing sexy about the early Medusa, who would become more and more feminine when faced with the Hellenic male hero, Perseus.

As Hellenic culture became more dominant, Gorgoneion became a talisman. Its older origins are lost to us now because what has survived is the story of how this symbol was effectively created by Perseus, the mortal son of Zeus, when he beheaded Medusa. Now Medusa starts to get a backstory; possibly to establish her as a worthy adversary and to assimilate this older divinity into the Olympian world order.

In Hesiod’s Theogony, written around 6th century BCE, we’re told that Medusa is one of the many children born of the incestuous union between the pre-Olympian sea god and goddess, Phorcys and Ceto. This is when Medusa gets two sisters, Euryale and Stheino. Together, they are the Gorgons and Medusa — the one who has survived centuries in retelling — is the only mortal one in the trio.

Apropos nothing: Medusa means “guardian”. Euryale means “the one who roams far” and Stheino means “the strong”. Oddly pleasant names for a triad of monstrous women, if you ask me.

In Theogony, the Gorgons live beyond the ocean, “in the frontier land towards Night”. Clearly it’s not that far from the ocean, because Poseidon found her and “lay with her in a soft meadow amid spring flowers”. Unlike later versions of the Poseidon-Medusa relationship, this one seems romantic and consensual enough (leaving aside the minor detail of this being a serious case of “daddy issues” given her father is a primordial god of the sea). Hesiod does not explain why Perseus cut off Medusa’s head. We’re only told that he does so, and that from her beheaded body sprang forth Pegasus and the giant Chrysaor.

A century later, in the stories of Perseus and Medusa that are found in ancient Greek art and plays, Athena is added to the mix as Perseus’s guide. Just as she helps Odysseus and Herakles and Orestes, the patron goddess of heroes helps Perseus. It’s one of those curious twists of culture that at this time, most Greek societies didn’t grant much by way of rights or personhood to women. And yet, to be heroes, the men needed the blessing and help of a decidedly female (and asexual) Athena.

The version of Medusa that is perhaps best known today comes from the Roman poet Ovid. The Metamorphoses, written in 8th century CE, gives us an origin story for Medusa that is very different from Hesiod’s. Ovid’s Medusa “once had her charms”, particularly golden ringlets that drew “a rival crowd of envious lovers” to her. Medusa catches the eye of Neptune, who “seiz’d and rifl’d the young, blushing maid” in chaste Minerva’s temple. Minerva — allegedly a “bashful goddess” — turns away when Neptune rapes Medusa and later, the goddess lashes out at Medusa by transforming the young woman’s golden curls into hissing snakes. Medusa’s changed appearance is so terrifying that she can turn a man to stone just by locking her eyes on him.

As Ovid tells it, Athena/ Minerva punishes Medusa for desecrating the goddess’s space (really, the girl should know better than to be raped in a temple. So rude). The disfiguring that Medusa suffers is both an attempt to explain the ugliness of the Gorgoneion and reflect the idea that a rape reduces a woman to a mutilated other. Yet, if you think about it, Athena/Minerva’s actions help to make Medusa more powerful as a rape survivor than she was as a virginal maid, which is particularly interesting when you keep in mind Athena/ Minerva was a virgin goddess, in a society that saw virginity as a virtue. Unlike so many of the mortal heroines in Greek myths, Medusa does not remain silent after she’s been raped. She may be seen as hideous, but she is also stronger and louder than ever — largely because Athena/ Minerva’s ‘punishment’. Now, not even the male gods dare stand in the line of her sight.

Athena/ Minerva’s relationship with Medusa as Ovid imagined it remained curious. On one hand, Perseus is only able to outwit Medusa because of Athena/ Minerva’s help, but afterwards, he also has to surrender Medusa’s head to Athena/ Minerva as a votive. Athena doesn’t destroy Medusa’s head. In fact, she seems to put a fair amount of effort into preserving as much of Medusa as she can. She collects Medusa’s blood (which can both heal and kill) as well as a lock of her hair (which, technically, would be part of a snake?). Medusa’s head, Athena/Minerva places on Zeus’s aegis, turning the dead woman’s head into the immortal Gorgoneion (which is fitting for someone whose name meant “guardian”).

To an enemy, the head is a terrifying sight that establishes Zeus’s dominance over everything that Medusa embodied (eg. power, femininity). The aegis with the Gorgoneion is a statement of Zeus’s omnipotence. But think of it from an Olympian point of view. With her head on Zeus’s aegis, the gods can never forget the threat Medusa posed and the power she continues to exude even in death. It’s almost like Athena made sure Medusa would not be erased. Also, let’s take a moment to appreciate Athena’s move — the aegis of Zeus, a serial rapist, has on it the head of a rape survivor. Protecting even the gods from evil is the rage of a mortal woman who had been violated.

I wonder if Ovid realised what he’d done when he wrote Medusa’s story in The Metamorphoses.

The fact that Perseus was the one tasked with beheading Medusa is also interesting because he’s the product of an extremely weird one-night stand. Perseus’s mother Danae was imprisoned in an underground tomb because her father was told by an oracle that he would be killed by his grandson. Zeus appeared before Danae as “golden rain” and hey presto! Danae gave birth to Perseus. Exactly how Danae felt about this rain dance, we are not told. What we do know is that her father put Danae and infant Perseus in a box and chucked them into the sea.

Mother and son didn’t drown because Zeus asked Poseidon to calm the waters (that’s what passes for loving, fatherly behaviour in ancient Greek myths). Poseidon — Medusa’s (to-be?) rapist — nudged the box to the island of Seriphos where Perseus and Danae were able to sneak in a few peaceful years. Unfortunately, Danae’s troubles were not over. King Polydectes of Seriphos decided he wanted Danae as his wife. That she didn’t want him as her husband was an irrelevant detail to Polydectes.

Patriarchy being what it is, the question of what would happen to Danae was finally decided by a gent who had nothing to do with her (Polydectes) and her barely-of-age son, Perseus. Polydectes told Perseus he would leave Danae alone if Perseus could bring him the head of Medusa. For some reason, Perseus figured that the best way to protect his mother from a sleazebag was by leaving her alone with said sleazebag on an island, while he, Perseus, traipsed around the world, looking for the Gorgons. Needless to say, Polydectes went after Danae while Perseus was off being a hero. When the young man returned to Seriphos (with Medusa’s head), he discovered Danae had taken refuge in a temple.

For Medusa, child of the pre-Olympian gods, the temple is where she is violated. For Danae, it is a sanctuary. Yet, ultimately, Danae is saved, not by Perseus or Zeus or any other man; but by Medusa. It’s Medusa’s head that turns Polydectes (and his courtiers) into stone. Even in death, she is a guardian.

The point of all this is not that there’s one story of Medusa, but rather to question how we’re adding to or changing Medusa today. What do she and the Gorgoneion stand for (beyond being Versace’s logo)? If Gabrati had titled his sculpture Medusa With the Head of Poseidon, that may have been interesting and perhaps even reflective of the debates and conflicts we’re grappling with as women today. As it stands now, Gabrati’s sculpture takes away more from Medusa than it adds. She gets a sword, but she’s been robbed of her power.