 From the conversation this is essays on air where we bring you the best and most beautiful writing from Australian researchers Today Paul Salmond Honorary associate in the classics and ancient history at La Trobe University reads his essay Journeys to the Underworld Greek myth film and American anxiety The success of Patty Jenkins Wonder Woman depicting warring Olympians and Amazons Continues to stoke moviegoer interest in Greek mythology Wonder Woman is the first foray of DC movies into classical mythology a path well trodden by the Marvel Cinematic Universe But is Greek myth simply a favorite and enduring wellspring for heroic sagas full of supermen and monsters? Or are there deeper forces at play? To the Greeks the Underworld journey was an ideal vehicle for the hero to display his exceptional qualities Often involving the rescue of a soul trapped there A central convention of Greek mythological narratives is Katabasis the hero's journey to the underworld or land of the dead At Cersei's urging a dicious consultancy at Teraeus in the land of the dead where many departed souls including Achilles appear to him Similar journeys are made by Heracles who rescue theses during his 12th labor Hermes who rescue Persephone from Hades and a nears who is reunited briefly with his dead father Desents into and a sense from the underworld are themes incorporated repeatedly into modern cinema Film developed from theater which in its earliest form was a way of animating mythical sagas The Katabasis has endured in cinema because it can be applied to most characters times and settings Often eschewing a literal journey to the underworld a cinematic Katabasis may follow a quest into a type of hell Whether a physical or psychological space One particularly celebrated underworld myth recounts Orpheus's retrieval of his wife Euryduchy Against the warnings of Hades and Persephone Orpheus looked back at her only for his wife to disappear this time permanently Roman Polanski's Chinatown drew directly on this myth by sending its hero like Orpheus Into the realm of the dead to retrieve an imperiled soul trapped there Polanski and screenwriter Robert Town created a bleak vision of 1938 Los Angeles parched by drought and corrupted by a shadowy cabal of oligarchs Private investigator Jake Gittis Investigating the death of city water commissioner Hollis Mulray uncovers a web of corruption and murder His attempts to rescue Mulray's wife Evelyn from the violence enveloping her results in her brutal death In its shocking conclusion Polanski rooted Chinatown more firmly in its mythological ancestry Pivoting the plot towards an incest revelation My daughter I said I want the truth Like Oedipus redress comes through putting out eyes Having failed to save his former love years before Jake grieves over her death a second time with Evelyn Chinatown is broadly accepted as a response to Watergate Like many films of its time it responded to an instant subversion of US political institutions By depicting a world where shadowy underworld denizens win and the hero fails to rescue his euridity from Hades In this response Chinatown demonstrates how the influence of greek mythological conventions on american filmmakers Appears strongest during times of heightened political stress Everyone from bets to youngsters reveals his inborn dislike of communism When many perceived americas attacked from within by communists during the 1950s for instance Hollywood responded by reimagining Homer's perfect warrior Achilles through the towering figure of John Wayne through no coincidence the most violently anti-communist actor of all In John Ford's The Searchers Wayne's embittered confederate veteran Ethan Edwards mutilates the body of Comanche war chief scar to avenge Ethan's defiled nieces Like Achilles mutilating Hector in Homer's Iliad Ethan hates his enemies beyond death In the 1970s a younger cadre of filmmakers and audiences saw the enemy sitting in seats of power Underworld quests found more subversive avenues for expression like Francis Ford Coppola's apocalypse now Which conveyed the horrors of the vietnam war through a nightmarish journey up the river sticks Underworld narratives also formed part of hollywood's response to widespread moral panic around ritual child abuse and murder that spread throughout america in the 1980s and 1990s The horrific sprees of society's new apex predators like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy linked to hysterical rumors of organized child sacrifice Inspired a film cycle fueled by pervasive anxiety that children could be snatched up and born away to horrible fates in hidden lairs When Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs swept the 1992 Oscars It was our neighbors or the cornergrocer not the government preying on our fears First principles Clarice, simplicity Read Marcus Aurelius of each particular thing ask what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do this man you seek? Demme's film deftly refashioned the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur Into a race against time manhunt Cadet FBI agent Clarice Starling pursues a serial murderer who has abducted a senator's daughter To track the beast Clarice must ascend into the den of captured cannibal monster Hannibal Lecter for clues to slay the monster at large Buffalo Bill For this Underworld quest Lecter is the pedagogue not the monster His role isn't to eat Clarice he passes up that opportunity when she ventures within striking distance But to prepare her for her journey Lecter provides the ball of string enabling Clarice to venture into the Minotaur's labyrinth in return Why does American cinema reflect ancient Greek narrative conventions most strongly at times of profound moral anxiety? The answer may lie in part in political similarities between Americans and ancient Athenians And the perceived vulnerability of their constitutional foundations Traditionalists interpret Greek art as an expression of soaring confidence in the triumph of humans over the old gods But the Athenians were obsessed by the ephemerality of their achievement And how it rested on foundations that could collapse at any time The late critic Robert Hughes once asserted that ancient Greek sculpture is used to advance a specious political argument of man being the measure of all things Yet Greek art, he argued was just as focused on warding off monsters representing political threats Ancient mythological themes are employed most unmistakably in American movies during times of witch hunts to expose hidden enemies Communist saboteurs in the 1950s corrupt political burgers of the 1970s and the satanic panic of the 1980s In response to 9-11 however, Hollywood was oddly reticent As if the seismic scale of the event meant translating 9-11 to screen was unimaginable But television responded forcefully particularly through the great HBO crime dramas the sopranos or the wire deadwood All of which at various times employed underworld sagas in confronting the scarring and resounding effects of violence But soldiers, you know Soldiers don't go to hell It's war soldiers they kill other soldiers Ancient myth and cinema in a time of trump What can we expect to see next as the rise of trumpism promotes internal american division possibly unmatched since the civil war Certainly taking at face value trump's identified public enemy the liberal media which includes filmmakers US political institutions are under attack like in a manner not seen since 1974 Like nixon trump accuses his critics of witch hunts aimed at sabotaging the will of the people And uprooting american values respect the move, but the entire thing has been a witch hunt and there is no collusion between Certainly myself and my campaign But I can always speak for myself and the russians zero We are yet to see reactions to the president reflected in the cinema Films responding to his presidency are still in production But the social trauma that saw the ascendancy of trump's base The impoverishment of the russ belt paranoia over mexican gang culture The erosion of the natural environment in the face of rape iron corporations are already part of the cinematic landscape And we are already seeing key political battlegrounds The migration of drug crime across the southern border and the violation of the natural world at other frontiers Framed as underworld quests in film A director screenwriter Taylor Sheridan recently explored issues of american decline in his unofficial frontier trilogy Using greek mythological conventions to do so The middle film hell or high water is a relatively straightforward backwards heist saga putting bank robbing brothers against a texas ranger nearing retirement The script reflects the financial angst of trump voters largely sympathizing with their perceived disenfranchisement I'm poor my whole life Tell my parents that parents before them But the first film sicario and the most recent wind river are dramatic bookends using mythology to explore the social anxieties that saw trump elected Directed by canadian denny villanier Sicario depicts an idealistic FBI agent kate maser recruited by a government task force to combat drug cartels in the mexican border Overseen by a shadowy operative alejandro Kate descends into a moral and literal abyss to track her quarry Even eventually rejecting her handlers demands that she become a monster to fight monsters In wind river the discovery of a younger rapper ho woman's body on a snowbound wyoming reservation teams hunter quarry lambit with another rookie FBI agent jane banner to track down her killer Wind river and sicario are violent electrifying films Which embrace greek mythic conventions by sending the heroes to the realm of the dead both in pursuit of monsters and an embrace of loved ones In sicario, kate and hella hundrow pursue the drug lord a la con across a mexican landscape made hellish through darkness and night vision technology Whereas kate emerges from the underworld with her moral compass intact Alejandro maddened by the murders of his wife and daughter now resides there permanently As he tells kate, you will not survive here You're not a wolf And this is the land of walls now in wind river the murdered girl natalie Was a friend of quarry's daughter who had died in similar circumstances three years earlier Like orpheus quarry experiences the loss of his beloved twice Hightening his corrosive need to have her back. Yeah, we Tried to be very careful with him But the land of the dead is not always hostile In the film's final scene quarry and natalie's father martin Sit together in silence mentally visiting their lost daughters in the spirit realm Both films are sprinkled with references to mythological death scapes Frozen wyoming mountains and darkened mexican foothills become landscapes of dread quarry like the hero heracles is a hunter of lions and wars traditional guardians of dead souls In body links between living and dead Greek mythological conventions will likely again be used to critique what many see as a uniquely lawless us administration It will pay to watch the output of jos weeden for one Who's the avengers depicted an americ world where spectacular battle scenes framed an exploration of the transformative effect of violence The weight of heroic expectations and the toll both take on men and women who deal in warfare Few directors working today are as familiar with greek heroic archetypes as weeden In his signature television production buffy the vampire slayer Weeden reimagined the doomed achilles as a teenage girl who at one point returned from a literal journey to the realm of the dead i've had a lot of people talking at me the last few days Everyone just lining up to tell me how unimportant i am And i finally figured out why power They don't Given trump's treatment of and standing with women It'll be interesting to see the nature of the heroine's quest and the monsters she encounters along the way In weeden's upcoming project bat girl We may not yet know what kinds of underworlds will need to be negotiated in years ahead But american filmmakers are uniquely experienced in passing through landscapes of dread Emerging stronger and more enlightened Today's episode was recorded by Eliza Burlage and edited by Sarah Matthews You can see a full list of audio and music credits on our website at theconversation.com