#mourning becomes electra

[rxnefairs]

Eve Best in Theatre x Polaroid Movie Posters

[know-it-all-freak]

This Monday is dedicated to Paul McGann's perfect profile.

Happy McGann Monday!!!

Part 1: (Part 2 follows in the post below)

[silverfoxstole]

Paul and Helen Mirren in Mourning Becomes Electra, National Theatre, 2004.

[amourduloup]

[holyhuppert]

every time i remember that eve best and helen mirren were together in a play i gain another 10 years of life expectancy

my fav brits being hot talented and very british together in 2003 NATIONAL THEATRE I SAID THANK YOU

[eohoppeofficial]

Eugene O'Neil, Playwright, 1926.

©E.O. Hoppé Estate Collection.

[emvidal]

[megacrashcourse]

Subject: Eugene O’Neill movies Duration: 9 Days Reference Materials: Ah, Wilderness! (1976), Anna Christie (silent, 1923), The Constant Woman (inspired by Recklessness), The Hairy Ape (1944), The Iceman Cometh (1960), The Long Voyage Home (1940), A Moon for the Misbegotten (1975), Mourning Becomes Electra (1947), and “The Letter” (inspired by “Before Breakfast”) from Three Dramas (2020) Life Quote: "Death was so common, it didn’t mean anything." Extra Credit: Anna Christie (1930) and Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1962)

[kafkasapartment]

We can't escape. We can only go on... We are caught in something stronger than ourselves... We can only struggle against it, never escape... It's the past... Not our past, but something in the past that we don't even know about... Something strong and terrible that made us what we are and drives us on and on... Maybe the whole world is caught in it... Every man and woman who ever lived.

(Act V), “Mourning Becomes Electra,” Eugene O’Neill (New York, 26 Oct 1931).

[deanjohn]

Eugene O’Neill, Mourning Becomes Electra / All Hell Breaks Loose: Part 2

[norashelley]

Rosalind Russell and Walt Disney with their 1947 Golden Globe awards for Mourning Becomes Electra and Bambi.

[darkheliotrope]

The First World - Echoes of the Vanished

The planet convulsed - a dying titan in its final throes. The very ground trembled, as if mourning its own demise. I stumbled across the desolate beach, my boots sinking into the ashen sand. The sea, once tempestuous, now raged with a primal fury - an ocean of wrath. Its waves clawed at the shore, pulling ancient bones back into the abyss.

The Bones and Fossils:

More bones lay scattered - a macabre mosaic. Rib cages, femurs, and mandibles protruded like broken promises. These were not remnants of creatures; they were echoes of civilizations - their architects and dreamers reduced to calcified whispers. The fossils bore witness to cosmic indifference, their hollow eyes staring into oblivion.

The Storm-Torn Sky:

Above, the sky had unravelled - a tattered veil. The stars had fled, leaving only voids - black holes that devoured light. The Milky Way - once a celestial river - had become a chasm, its banks eroded by entropy.

The Atmosphere’s Demise:

The air tasted of sulphur and despair. The atmosphere had unravelled, molecules torn apart by cosmic forces. Steam rose from fissures in the ground, carrying with it the memories of lost cities. Debris - shards of crystalline structures - swirled like ghosts. The suns, feeble embers, cast elongated shadows - the last dance of entropy.

The Skeleton’s Scream:

And there, on the beach, sat the skeleton - a relic of defiance. Its bones were charred, fused by the heat of cataclysm. Its skull, tilted toward the heavens, bore the etchings of cosmic runes. Hollow sockets stared at the fractured sky, and its jaw hung open - a silent scream. What had it witnessed? What horrors had etched themselves into its calcium lattice?

I approached the skeleton, drawn by morbid curiosity. Its ribs seemed to vibrate - an echo of terror. Had it been a scholar, a lover, a heretic? Its bony fingers clawed at the sand, as if trying to escape its own fate. But the sky above was indifferent.

The Cosmic Tragedy:

“Why?” I whispered, though the wind carried my words away. “Why did you stay?”

The skeleton’s jaw moved - an illusion, surely. But I heard its voice - a rasp, a lament.

“Curiosity,” it seemed to say. “The hunger for answers.”

Answers that had led to oblivion. Answers that had unraveled the fabric of existence. The planet had become a cosmic tragedy - a requiem for forgotten souls. The last person - the one consumed by unspeakable horror - had left no trace. Only this skeleton remained - a sentinel of despair.

As the lava stream surged, devouring the beach, I sank to my knees. The sea roared, the sky wept, and the skeleton’s scream echoed through time. I closed my eyes, feeling the heat lick my skin. The planet pulsed - a dying heartbeat.

And then, as if in response, the ground split open - a maw of molten hunger. I fell, my fingers grazing the skeleton’s ribcage. Its scream merged with mine - a chorus of anguish.

The planet trembled, I couldn't surrender to the abyss - I had to leave. Electra why did you send me to witness the final threads of a dying world?

May its echoes linger in the void…

[youleavethetardisbrakeson]

Since @backjustforberena and I clearly like to find pictures of baby Eve and Steve, here are some that make me think of young Rhaenys for one reason or another:

'Tis a Pity She's a Whore, 1999

Macbeth, 2001

Mourning Becomes Electra, 2003

Laurence Olivier Awards, 2006

Part 1/2

[hornyforpoetry]

Must-read plays for darkest academics *

• Prometheus Bound - Aeschylus (between • 479 BC - 424 BC)

• Phaedra - Seneca ( before 54 AD)

• The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus - Christopher Marlowe (1592)

• Hamlet - Shakespeare (between 1599-1601)

• Faust - Goethe (first part 1808, second part 1831)

• Cain - Lord Byron (1821)

• Ghosts - Henrik Ibsen (1881)

• Spring Awakening - Frank Wedekind (1890)

• The Living Corpse - Lev Tolstoy (1900)

• The Pelican - August Strindberg (1907)

• Mourning Becomes Electra - Eugene O'Neill (1931)

• Caligula - Albert Camus (1944)

*the years represent when the play was finished/published, not when it was performed for the first time

[gatutor]

Michael Redgrave-Rosalind Russell "A Electra le sienta bien el luto" (Mourning becomes Electra) 1947, de Dudley Nichols.

[goosemixtapes]

max’s top books of 2022 :3

past top tens here & here! as always, these rankings are based on some nebulous alchemical combination of “it’s objectively good” and “i like it a lot.”

weird reading year! lots of mediocre books! lots of rereads! lots of things i felt very mid about! but i did finish the shakespearean canon, so, fuck yeah! more details beneath the cut.

in place of runner-ups this year, i’m pioneering a brand new category called BOOKS I LOATHED. those being: Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O’Neill (why would you write a retelling of something as cool as the oresteia and make it stilted, misogynist, and incestuous); Dracula (holy fucking shit is this book boring. i did enjoy dracula daily, though); this fucking Dan Brown book i couldn’t even finish which is rare for a guy with completionism OCD; and, of course, my least favorite book of this year & one of my least favorites ever, Robinson Crusoe (i can’t summarize my thoughts in parentheses. click my review)

my top anticipated 2023 release is alecto the ninth. no notes.

okay, the list, in order of increasing enjoyment:

10. The Ides by Stephen Dando-Collins

roman history hyperfixation went fucking insane this year, gang. roman history hyperfixation went fucking one thousand. i haven’t read every book about the late republic (not even close to it), so i can’t speak to how this measures up in the field, but if you’re interested in the assassination of julius caesar, you should check this shit out. i particularly appreciated the amount of direct quotes from historical figures included, because that 1) made it easier to read 2) made the historical figures it concerned feel closer. this book flows like a thriller until the actual ides; the discussion of the aftermath is a little less gripping, but so goes history.

9. What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon

this is the first of its kind i’ve ever read--a book centered around the oppression fat people face, focused on 1) breaking down fatphobic factual misconceptions (like the idea that diets are a cure-all or even that diets are all that effective) and 2) examining the effect that fatphobia has on individuals and society. beautifully well-researched; beautifully written. wish i could beam this entire book into the head of everyone around me. (gordon has a new release coming out in 2023!)

8. Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come: One Introvert’s Year of Saying Yes by Jessica Pan

this is not a self-help book, but i read it like one. it is not, either, despite what the title may suggest, some trite thinkpiece about introversion being So Cool And Quirky Special!, or about introversion being A Curse On The Bloodline That Must Be Cured. it’s more autobiographical than that: it’s the author’s story of a year in which she tried to exposure-therapy herself into being more outgoing, friendly, and honest, and not only is it very well-written, it’s also just really fun to read! have you ever wanted to experience improv vicariously without actually having to do improv? this is the book for that.

7. Aeschylus’s Oresteia

greek tragedy doesn’t do it for me like shakespearean tragedy, but hooooooly shit. holy shit. i had the pleasure of studying these plays in a class and they made my head spin inside out. the IMAGERY! the VIOLENCE! the TOXIC FAMILY DYNAMICS! the RAGE! the GRIEF! the VENGEANCE! the MILF! the oresteia has it fucking all! if i pop up with a lesbian orestes book in five months, look away. (goosemixtapes, inc would like to note that there is no lesbian orestes book in progress.)

6. The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

AKA the only vampire media that exists. in which vampirism is a contagious disease, and vampires are sectioned off in government-run quarantine “coldtowns,” where some of them kill people and some of them become instagram influencers. (not literally, but they might as well; this book is almost metacommentary on the allure of the romantic-gorgeous-sparkly-pop-culture vampire). every character is beautifully well-drawn, especially for a YA standalone; i even found myself rooting for the heterosexual romance! also, there’s a trans girl, and she doesn’t even die! this was a recommendation from my dearest @yvesdot​, and it has crack in it. it has crack cocaine in it

5. Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher

apparently i’m on a nonfiction sweep. (to be fair, “read more nonfiction” was one of my reading goals this year.) this is what it sounds like--a candid and shockingly clear-eyed memoir chronicling the author’s fourteen-year struggle with eating disorders--and also more than that--an incisive exploration of both hornbacher and the family and society that shaped her, with some of the rawest and most evocative prose i’ve read in a long time. not recommended for the faint of heart or people with triggers around disordered eating (or, at least, i recommend you step very carefully), but wow, i’m going to be thinking about this one forever.

4. Cassandra by Christa Wolf & Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

okay, this one is a double feature. which i recognize is weird, because these are different books by different authors published in different years, but on a metatextual level, these books are holding hands. these books are lesbian kissing, even. both of them take a character from classical epic/theater--cassandra the prophet from troy; lavinia from the latter half of the aeneid--and tells the story through her eyes, in a very deliciously metatextual way. wolf’s novel (more of a monologue), written in east germany under the looming threat of nuclear war in europe, is rife with themes about war and destruction and the rise and fall of cultures. le guin’s novel is more interested in narratives, fate, and fictionality, but war themes are again at play, because it’s the aeneid. also, both of these authors truly understand aeneas from the aeneid and i don’t say that fucking lightly. books written for a target audience of me

3. Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds and Women by Coppélia Kahn

okay i don’t even have anything to say for myself here. i’m thinking about victor @asimpleram​ saying my yearly top 10 list is just an english class assigned reading list. but as one of the few people in the world who is derangedly interested in how gender is constructed in antony and fucking cleopatra (and also julius caesar. and shakespeare in general. but i got really into FUCKING antony and cleopatra this year), i could annotate this book for ages. i filled a google doc with so many screenshots from this book that it negatively affected my drive storage situation. shakespeare fans eat fucking good

2. Saga by Brian K. Vaughan

i’m not particularly into outer-space scifi, so i wasn’t expecting to like saga, but i started it, again, at the behest of @yvesdot​ (as i was in their house and they were handing it to me). and then it proceeded to do horrible horrible things to me to the point where i haven’t picked up the new issue because i’m still recovering from the way volume 9 got my ass*. this comic is a fucking masterclass in 1. creating compelling characters in a reduced amount of space and 2. maintaining constant narrative tension while also sprinkling in just enough happy/hopeful moments that the devastating plot beats hurt all the more. also, the character concepts go crazy hard and it’s anti-war as fuck. also, again, trans woman who doesn’t even die! cw for lots of, um, explicitly drawn sexual content (sooo many dicks in this comic oh my god) but if you are ready to have your heart broken you need to pick this up.

*i am physically fucking incapable of attaching myself to characters who survive things. just fyi

1. the Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir

and speaking of having your heart broken. i dearly dearly hope nobody is surprised by this one. lumping all three of these into one category because i don’t want to pick a favorite (it’s GTN), and because i have the same thing to say about all three of them: READ THESE BOOKS. i knew before i turned the last page that Gideon the Ninth was going to be my book of the year; it’s been a long, long, LONG fucking time since i’ve wished so badly i had written this exact book myself. do you like BUTCHES? do you like NECROMANCY? do you like CATHOLIC AESTHETIC THAT ALSO CRITICIZES CATHOLIC IMPERIALISM? do you like DYNAMICS WITH THE COMPLEX TOXICITY LEVELS OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS? do you like SEXY WORLDBUILDING? do you like expertly-crafted ENSEMBLE CASTS? do you like STORIES THAT ARE WELL-WRITTEN? do you like WORDS? man, you’ve gotta try TLT. yes, i know that the worldbuilding is sometimes abstruse; i know that everyone spends 90% of the first read in absolute confusion; i know that muir’s sense of humor isn’t universal. but i also know these are some of the best books i’ve ever read, and some of my favorites of all time. absolutely world-changing.

if you’ve read this far--you’re very brave! please tell me your favorite (and least favorite) books of the year! drop recs if you have them! and have a happy new year!