Reflection 1

Today we watched a presentation done by Fernanda, Vincenzo and Elena. The presentation talked about a slightly racist yet very interesting approach to Lysistrata, giving it a "hood" aspect. Even though this approach can be considered as a joke, it is an amazing opportunity to exploit the stereotypical qualities contained within us. All the "throwing the baby" and the "baby daddy" jokes made during the presentation,(and Vincenzo´s comparison of "balls as blue as the trashcan") are a very unusual, satirical and stereotypical approach to Lysistrata, but hey, what´s greek comedy if not stereotypes and penis jokes right? Until now, all of the representations of Lysistrata that have been projected in the class wall have, even though changed from the original version, conserved the original script and concept of the play. The alternative suggested today was to keep the idea of women abstaining from giving into men´s seduction, yet let the script flow in a different manner. This is pretty funny in a crude way, since women from the "ghetto", at least as Hollywood projects it, with no intention to be stereotypical and racist, promiscuous, which leads it to irony at it´s purest. Overall in this unit I have learned about the "dark side" of greek theatre, and the funniest one. At the beggining of Lysistrata I expected it to be another boring read like all the books sent by school. After the first fifteen pages, the crude humor and the sexual jokes had me hoping for the next time we would read in class. Also Alessa´s inability to pronounce "hocus pocus" cracked me up. Overall this unit has been enjoyable, and I look forward to starting the next one.