US centrism is incredible. You write something about the history of your country that faced some oppression from its neighbours and you get (sometimes seemingly well meaning) USamericans all yelling "me!me!me! What about the oppression WE did? The most important oppression ever, we are THE worst, that is what must be talked about!" And it's literally silencing the voices and experiences of those whose history was NOT related to those very specific US policies. It's still a form of imperialism, too, by the way, stealing voices and agency from others for the sake of your own main character syndrome.
A more superficial symptom of the UScentrism of online spaces is that any talk about medicine ends up sounding like I'm hearing fandom discussions for a secret sword & sorcery fantasy series I've never heard of.
And so the wise wizard Zoloft rode across the lands of Tylenol on his trusty steed Prozac - aye alright I'll stop you there just gi me that paracetamol already I have toothache
The post and the tags because this person has blocked me preemptively - and they're lucky cause I wouldn't shat all over them. This person is a USAmerican very removed from Italian culture.
My Answer:
Ooooo coloniser rhetoric in the 21st century! That's a sight for sore eyes! (Which became sore cause they see such takes all the time).
Funny how this person talks about how objects belonging to Greece right after saying that our heritage figures (like our gods and heroes) don't belong to us. If Greek culture is a global culture why can't foreigners keep the objects? Hmmm I wonder…. They still put the "Greek" or "Roman" to characterise the stories but the moment Greeks and Italians speak up, then all of a sudden "the stories akksuually have no culture, they belong to all of us!" 😂😂😂
I wonder if this person understands what the term "heritage" means, because gods and heroes are definitely part of one's heritage and we never stopped preserving the texts that spoke about them, and they are still part of our living culture.
I'm all for listening to the members of the diaspora but when we are at the point when one of them is regurgitating imperialist points, not only there's a big divide with current opinions in Italy, but I also cannot leave such points unanswered. Also, many Italians, like Greeks, are sick of how their myths are treated but this person didn't even check, they just spoke over them. Because they didn't bother to ask people, obviously.
Ancient Greek heroes and gods still mean a lot to us. They always meant. They were born from visions, dreams, and other sacred methods, or oral traditions from our ancestors, reflecting specifically the ancient Greek culture. It's good that foreigners can access them and relate to a degree but divorcing any folk story from its origin is always negative. Especially when this culture is still ongoing.
Our Christianity is revamped ancient Greek religion, I wonder, does this person know that? Our temples have the same parts. We still have home altars, and divinities presiding over domains. Our hagiography is how we used to paint our gods and creatures. We still have almost the same nature creatures. The customs have remained and have persisted, and I won't have someone who clearly ignores this say "They gave the religion up". Ftou.
Also when it comes to our gods and their symbols (and yes btw we call them "our" gods lots of times), we can deduce things from our local tradition and environment, whereas an Anglophone who worships the gods or is interested in them but doesn't know stuff about the country of origin of those gods has no idea about our history, methods and environment. Example: Foreigner refuses to accept that there's a pine cone on Dionysos' thyrsos (although it looks like a pinecone) because "it doesn't make sense" and very excitedly suggests another plant instead. Greek lets them know that it is actually a pine cone not only because it looks like a pinecone but because the pinecone has been used in our winemaking process forever, and Dionysos also presided over this process. Guess Greece and its environment and it's people are still relevant to the religion, and it also turns out that the symbols of the gods derived from the Greek reality. Who knew!
Now onto another point. Op says that the Greek stories became "global culture" because they got shared everywhere. Them being shared is not a bad thing! However just studying them and be taught about them is not culture. By this logic, and since Egyptians "gave their old religion up", ancient Egyptian gods are now MY ancient gods because I can find books about ancient Egypt at my local bookstore. woww 😂 What about this? Almost every Greek knows 100 and 1 nights. We have made it into a play also. SOO... these are our cultural stories now, right? West Asians and Arabs in general shouldn't speak if they ever see us and other nations being ridiculous about the stories, and stereotypes and changing the characters a lot but still claim we are doing great, right? Got it.
The way this post is written it's like Germans and Brits kept the ancient Greek myths alive since ancient years or something. Greeks themselves never stopped preserving their own ancient texts, and they escaped with them in Europe after the fall of Constantinople, so NW Europeans REDISCOVERED them 1500 years later. They had lost interest by then.
Funny they mention different nations that were Hellenized or became Roman territories because people living in these nations are exactly those who don't speak about Greek and Roman culture as "a global culture". It's always North Westerners who start these discussions, I wonder why…..
People from the aforementioned nations already interact healthily with their ancient heritage - which is not Greek or Roman culture but always a local version with Greek or Roman elements, and that's great too. I haven't heard a Pakistani say "Theseus is our hero too!" or a Tunisian say "Zeus is our local ancient father of the gods!" Because they know exactly how the mix happened and what their national identity is. And I'm getting more and more tired of seeing Westerners erase these experiences too, and just make assumptions for other nations.
I swear I mostly see USians getting butthurt about other people getting conquered 2.000 years ago. The nations themselves don't give a shiiit. Guys, I know our antiquities are the only interesting thing about us in your eyes but Please Make An Effort to understand people from ancient cultures and how we don't give a shit about these conquests cause they happened Two Thousand Years Ago, and we had other tragic stuff in the meantime. Thanks
Also, as I said, these conquests are not why Greek myths are popular today. The conquests were so incredibly old that the average person in these countries (Balkans, the Mediterranean, West Asia) - and Greece - had no idea who built the ancient ruins they saw around! Does this person think Greek myths were handed down from Moroccan grandma to Moroccan grandchild from 300 BCE to 2024 continuously or something?
Greek myths are very popular in most parts of the world today because the West (meaning not Greece, especially at the time when we were "cattle") popularized them non-stop the last few centuries. And they did a shitty job, at that. In fact, Greeks abroad have been cringing about this treatment of our myths since the 15th century but, as usual, we were not being heard.
And what does "global culture" even mean?? As if you see any culture to how the US (because OP focuses on the US and the retellings there, from the looks of it) interacts with our stories. As if they care about the meaning of the story. (There are a few notable exceptions ofc but they remain FEW) People with such arguments just want to feel guilt-free when using our myths out of context. That's why Western academic cycles often run in circles about "what the myths mean" while Greeks have told you exactly what they mean.
The US audience is still not free of the coloniser WASP approach. They see our myths STILL as a product of modern White Supremacy instead of an ancient Greek product, and they often condemn the myths and "better" them by completely pushing them into USian lens to the point they don't look or feel like the original myths anymore. (All the above you don't dare to do with cultural stories and figures from nations you want to respect, by the way.) Is this the cultural "exchange" they're talking about?
I'm done hearing in the international spaces that my culture is "boring" because USians have seen horrible adaptation after horrible adaptation. I'm tired of USians making wild assumptions about how "horrible" our gods are because whoever told them the myths didn't give a simple explanation about our ancient societies. (Don't start crap about accessibility, there are very accessible ways to talk to kids, teens, and adults about other cultures and teach them age-appropriate tales) I'm tired of my heritage being commercialized to that degree. All Greeks roll their eyes in USAmerican movies about our culture and we call them Amerikaniés. And don't worry, I'm getting to the real stuff.
How our ancient culture is treated and how we are sidelined has real consequences on our lives abroad AND inside our culture, on how we are perceived, on how our surnames are perceived, on how we "don't look like Greeks", on how our Greek myth retellings don't get published abroad! They speak in front of us about our own words as if they are magical and mythical and strange! The opinions and perspectives of Greeks are not sought abroad, and you are a masterclass on why this happens. We make y'all uncomfortable. You feel better if you forget about us.
Another exhibit: All the hurtful comments of foreigners who centered the HUGE milestone of same-sex marriage in Greece because all they could imagine - while queer Greeks suffered a lot these last few months - was their wedding in Gay Mykonos and Lesbian Lesbos. This was their first reaction. They didn't possibly think that Greeks were seeing that because we are far away and irrelevant, right?
Obviously culture-mixing is not bad but the West didn't mix our culture with theirs. They just took it for entertainment and their popular culture never saw the depth or the meaning of it. OP speaks about how our stories were spread while actively avoiding speaking in depth about the problematic elements of that spread. They recognize to a small degree how Greeks feel about the matter but they dismiss most of our concerns in such a nonchalant way that all that comes to my mind is "privilege".
And speaking of power… Greeks have less systemic power than the countries of the West. We are the US' puppet, are you kidding me?? Our armies get deployed wherever the US wants. Our politicians don't even fart without a telephone from the US. We are the whores of the German, Belgian and French governments. Greeks abroad still face discrimination for their customs and how they look, and how their food smells, and how our religion is and how our hymns sound, and other ridiculous stuff. Our infrastructure is slowly being bought out by Germans and USians to various degrees. There are different scales to exploitation and bigotry, I agree, but that doesn't mean that only the roughest bigotry cases are worth discussing.
"We could also talk about the additional level of exploitation in how imperial powers used Greek mythology as an argument for the "superiority of the West," while at the same time plundering Greece's resources and treating it like it exists only as a tourist site" They are SO close to getting it, and yet their post says otherwise.
Fetishism of a culture makes the members of the actual culture feel alienated and hurt. As a person of Italian ancestry you should know how this specific "global culture" argument has been used to strip Greeks and Italians of any claims, so the "dirty Greeks" can be separated from the "pure WASP" USian upper class of the time who deemed themselves more suitable to engage with the material.
"Greeks spreading their culture through military force all over (eventually) most of Europe" what the hell?? Sorry, guys, (side-eyes the other Greeks) we conquered Romania??? wow!
Plus, this person doesn't know the difference between the Greek colonisation of Italy and Sicily and the recent European colonisation, and - to say it very politely - they should open a book.
By The Way
You can still interact with the Greek culture without having a colonial attitude! Nobody is barring you! I want to make this abundantly clear!
Most importantly, you don't have to make arguments for "global culture" when it's simple to place the myths inside their original context while interacting with them! You just have to read a bit more books that are on the internet and your library for free! Recognising that a foreign culture is not yours, and that you engage with it because it's just popular, doesn't stop anyone from interacting with it. You simply refuse to interact with them at the proper, deeper level, because you always want to center them around yourself. You want to interact with foreign stories just how the colonisers did it. Congrats.
I'm talking about the majority of cases. Of course people in the US can take all sorts of inspiration from foreign myths and adapt them to their reality. And it's a good result when they're being respectful and have studied the stories beforehand.
All we ask is to engage with the material in context so you can understand what our ancestors wanted to express. If your only view of Greek myths has come from other Americans and NW Europeans then you see them through coloniser lens. That's non-negotiable. I had people from other countries recite to me USAmerican viewpoints about the Greek gods, as if they were fact. Cause it's the only exposure that's happening worldwide right now.
You can interact with Greco-Roman myths whether Greece and Rome touched your country or not, we don't care. But please don't get your source from the pop US culture. These people think that it makes sense for nymphs to look like trees (that's an Anglo-Saxon and Celtic nature creature depiction. Ancient Greece was very anthropomorphic). It's not a crime if you change some stuff in a retelling but why willingly ignore the original depictions and what they have to show you for the ancient people who created them?
Pfff... Thank you anon for bringing this trash to me. I needed to - metaphorically - throw something in the trash. It took me a few hours to answer this but well... I do write a lot and this post was full of shit I had to shovel.
even marginalized Americans are painfully US-centric. I saw a take on twitter like “non-natives shouldn't make two wolves inside you jokes” and like. you're really going to sit there with your whole heart and tell me you believe that no other culture in the entire world has come up with the idea of animals being inside people (they have) or that their way of doing it is somehow inferior to the Americans? fuck off
tumblr is so US-centric that anyone outside of the US is often subjected to doubt & questioning for not using american standards to define our lives. when it comes to our country’s class systems, the way racism functions, standards of living, whatever it is... we constantly have to prove and explain our realities to these people because they refuse to understand that the US isn’t the entire world. our realities are questioned over and over just because they don’t match america’s and it gets really exhausting really fast
People will call me racist for disliking the Hades game designs but when I ask them why they think it is awesome representation for South Asian and African characters to sound british in the same game that has more blond people than POC, suddenly all I hear is crickets
The Hades game has many positive attributes but they did the classic USAmerican "representation" stuff, and they Americanized it so much that even that representation is racist 😂 I mean it is already racist to forcefully diversify a pantheon of Mediterranean gods because they "all look the same" or something (Sorry that North Mediterranean Indigenous populations exist, I suppose). But they also, in the old classic western fashion they made many characters look either Germanic-AngloSaxon or ONLY one of the minorities these Germanic-AngloSaxons are familiar with). And of course they act like this is American minority representation because nothing screams United States of America like ancient Greek gods and characters in chitons.
Hi Theitsa, I came across followers of Hellenism on YouTube, mainly Americans and I am just perplexed. Why would USians adopt native European religions/belief systems? It would be equally strange for me as a European (Lithuanian) to take on a specific Native American tribes belief system and practicing this out of its original context, or even Greek religion for that matter.
I guess Im just weirded out that Americans have been living in America for generations would gravitate towards European religions rather than Native American religions and belief systems that are tied to the continent they live on. Does Hellenism or Norse Paganism even make sense outside of their lands/environment of origin?
Why is this not considered cultural appropriation in some aspect? Hellenism consists of Greek names, Greek ideas, Greek imagery, Greek everything. Same with Norse religion, it is tied to Scandinavia. Maybe this is an extension of westerners separating Ancient Greek culture and society from modern Greeks and treating it like some magical fairyland where they can insert their own anglo selves.
I suspect western media and movies promoting characters and storylines inspired by Greek and Norse culture might be the culprit. If western media was obsessed with Hinduism for example, they would probably adopt Hinduism instead. Seems very LARP-y and superficial to me.
I apologize for the long rant, just my opinion of course. I would like to hear what you think of USians taking on these religions Theitsa, your takes are always interesting!
On the treatment of ancient cultures and religions in the US pop media I just made this post and I think you will find most points there aligned with yours. More and more people are noticing this phenomenon, meanwhile the US continues spitting out hollow retelling after hollow retelling and generic movie after generic movie on the Greek myths.
As for religion, I imagine that you, like me, don't blame anyone for being spiritual. But, like I've done in the past, you speak of those worshipers who treat the Greek religion more like a fandom than a foreign ancient practice, and insist on fully Americanising it.
Sadly, this LARP-y "worship" is quite common in the US. A writer who's kinda popular on Twitter/X right now claims to worship the gods and at the same time writes spicy erotica novels with them as protagonists for profit. And if you critique this person, they tell you that you disrespect them as a worshiper. Make it make sense dude...
Even the term Hellenism is wrongly used by them! See why here
There are minorities in the US who want their culture to be more mainstream in the country so they can enjoy their life with less bigotry. While the sentiment makes sense, I know that they will regret it if this ever becomes a reality for them, simply because that's how the US operates.
I already see Arabs, Indians, Chinese, and more, gasping in terror online when WASPs take their cultural items or customs and use them in a classic Murican way. And their voices are DEFINITELY not going to be heard even after 50 series inspired by their culture come out. If anything, their exotisation will continue. Been there, done that 😩
my tag #xenoi doing bs has similar content if you want to take a look at the expense of your mental health 😂
