Spielberg, Munich and the classic Greek Furies
No one except Steven Spielberg knows how big a part Greek and Roman mythology will place in his newest movie, Munich. But considering that it revolves around tragic events occurring in the ultimate Greek institution, the Olympics and that this tragedy occurred in a city in Germany – once considered the seat of the Holy Roman Empire and that the Nazi movement that rose out of the ashes of the historic relic adopting much of the ritual and rhetoric from that same source, you can bet western myth will play an important and probably central role in defining Munich’s themes.
If use of these myths is as unavoidable as I believe they will be in the final production, you can get your grandmother’s rocking chair (and throw in her false teeth) that the Greek Gods, the Furies (commonly called Erinyes or sometimes the Eumenides) will play a pivotal role in defining Spielberg’s themes, images and subtext.
For those who don’t know, Spielberg’s new movie is about Israeli hit squads sent out to hunt down those terrorists responsible for planning and execution of an operation that slaughtered 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich Germany.
In keeping with this theme of vengeance, Spielberg would be remiss if he did not in someway use the Furies to enhance his story, since they seem a most appropriate addition to what we might expect in this most ironic and tragic tale where one of the angels of death suddenly comes up with a guilty conscience.
Eumenides means “the kindly ones” reflecting the sharp irony event the Classical Greeks had in regards to these gods, while Erinyes means “the angry ones” or Furies from the incredible violence with which they seek vengeance for ill deeds done.
While they are – as are the characters in Spielberg’s upcoming film – considered the most pitiless pursuers of those who violate the laws of nature and whom commit crimes of gross inhumanity, the furies also later become the guardians of a new concept for Ancient Greek culture, mercy – an aspect that Spielberg’s film seems to employ in its attempt to resolve one of the most puzzling dilemmas of modern man: how can warriors for good act as ruthlessly and unforgiving as those they seek to inflict vengeance upon? In other words, how can good people do evil deeds in the name of combating evil?
As with the death squads Israel employed in its effort to hunt down the members of Black September, the terrorists responsible for the murder of the athletes, the furies initially made no allowance for circumstance. They sought out all souls who committed an act of inhumanity and punished them.
While the Roman poet Virgil painted the Furies as the punishers of souls in the underworld (hell), Greek myths claimed the Furies operated in the living world to hunt down villains while still living, refusing to wait for death to provide such evil doers with eternal damnation.
Although Israel has in contemporary times greatly expanded the number and range of operations of these hit squads against suspected terrorists throughout the world, the original operation that started after the Sept. 5, 1972 employed only a handful of teams, this limited number roughly corresponding to the number of Furies that worked for vengeance in Greek myths. In myth there were three Furies, Alecto the Unresting, Magaera, the Jealous, and Tisiphone (Poine) the Avenger (sometimes referred to as Vengeance).
As said previously, these gods avenge crimes against the natural and moral order and were particularly concerned with case of murder.
The Furies were product of yet another Spielberg-like pattern when Mother Earth appealed to her children the Titans to rise up against their abusive father, Heave. All but Chronos, father of Zeus, were too frightened to heed the call. Lying in wait like one of the Israeli hit squads, Chronos sprang out wounding his father terribly. From Heaven’s spilled blood were born the mythological Greek Giants, but also the Furies.
This gives us one more coincidental parallel to the historic slaughter at Munich that Spielberg is basing his movie on since the Mossad hit squads were born out of the blood spilled at the Olympics.
And also like the Mossad hit squads, the role of the Furies from their beginning was to pursue and punish sinners. In a description that could well fit those of a Mossad hit squad, the Furies were called “they who walk in darkness.”
Myth painted the Furies with terrible aspect, sometimes depicting them as fearsome goddesses clothed in black with serpent like hair and arms. Roman writers gave them more practical descriptions saying they were people who wore black cloaks, glad in tunics, walked with canes ect.
Overtime, of course, the more familiar Greek gods – to which the Olympics somewhat still pay tribute – drove out the Giants, Titans and other monsters born of Heaven and Earth, but could not get rid of the Furies saying, as long as there is sin in the world the Furies could not be banished.
The Furies played a particularly strong role in the Trojan Wars – a historic conflict that might easily be compared to the Israeli-Palestine conflict of today. The Furies were often called upon to punish one side or the other for what were considered inhuman acts beyond the scope of violence expected in war.
So when Aigisthos murdered Agamemon and his family on the return from laying siege of Troy, Poine (Vengeance) filled Agamemon’s song Orestes with the power to get even – skills easily compatible with those of the Israeli hit squads – giving him a lust for secret combat, stealth, cunning and vengeance.
Yet in a point that Spielberg will undoubtedly make his a film depicting a weary Mossad hit man who seeks relief from his role of vengeance, the duties of the Furies changed in Greek myth.
After Orestes kills Aigisthos for murdering his father, he must then also kill his own mother since she – Aigisthos lover – had helped plan the murder of Agamemon. Orestes – through whom the wrathful god Apollo is acting out vengeance – hesitates, knowing that to kill his own mother is almost as immoral as the murders for which he is killing her. But pressed by conflicting commands, Orestes obeys the more urgent need for vengeance and slays his mother.
In these myths we are confronted with what will likely become an important element in Spielberg’s film (which reflects contemporary Israeli politics): the conflicting moral obligations each faces to the state or to self, to seek vengeance or to refrain from acts of violence that violate the code of moral conduct.
But even in Greek myth, there is the understanding that wickedness cannot be ended by wickedness. With Orestes as with the script written for Spielberg by Tony Kushner, we are confronted with this question of conflicting obligations, whether it is more important for Orestes to avenge his father’s death or to refrain from the nearly equally immoral act of murder. In both film and myth, murdering a murder is still murder and society on some levels requires punishment, and if society has become so twisted as to condone murder, then a man of conscience will punish himself with guilt or madness. So in the myth, Orestes becomes the target of the Furies vengeance, and he often sees them even when others cannot, and is always pursued by their terrible shapes.
But here Greek myth comes remarkably close to the central beliefs of Judo-Christian beliefs, that a person can cleanse his or herself of guilt through suffering. In a moment of supreme revelation, Orestes realizes (perhaps reflecting the high point of Kushner’s script) that “No one is beyond atonement” and that anyone who suffers enough and is truly repentant can be made clean again.
Although such a message injected in the Spielberg’s film risks putting him at odds with the Israeli State – which has become divorced from his own sacred traditions – we might fully expect Munich to reflect this transition from vengeance to redemption, although Spielberg might seek to make the point symbolically to keep from becoming a target of the Mossad.
In Greek myth, as in the Judo-Christian tradition, repentance voids the need for vengeance.
Orestes – when confronting the dreadful forms of the Furies when they finally array against him – prays to the gods for forgiveness, saying he has cleanse himself through his suffering.
There is a caveat here, of course, in that the crime he committed was at the order of Apollo and so that like the hit men who secretly roamed the cities of Europe in the 1970s reeking havoc on Black September – Orestes cannot be punished alone for doing the bidding of a god. Apollo must bear some blame.
There are huge implications to this the reverberate in today’s society and in Jewish history that would require too much ink to go into here, but in response the got Athena agrees, accepting his plea and issues a degree creating a new concept for Greek society: the concept of mercy. And she even goes beyond this, decreeing that the Furies are to become the guardians of such supplicants, defenders of those souls who are truly repentant.
This has an incredible potential for Spielberg if he has courage enough to pursue this theme in his film, that there comes a time when Vengeance is no longer a valid response to violence, and that time is when the guilty recognize their crimes, suffer for their crimes and are honestly repentant for their crimes. At that point, Vengeance must evolve into a higher moral obligation called forgiveness.