Lysistrata and Aristophanes’ Inherent Lack of Finesse

            Having read Lysistrata before for a theatre history class, I was relatively excited to go back to it. Unfortunately, I ended up disliking it this time around. From a theatrical perspective, the play is incredibly effective, with Aristophanes acting as a pioneer in the comedic field as well as the genre of historical fiction. Looking at it through the lens of its being banned, it becomes much more uncomfortable. Aristophanes’ Lysistrata is, at its core, a comedic approach to two societal issues. The former, the Peloponnesian War the female characters are striking against, and the other being the inherent insanity that lies within a society run by men so sex-obsessed that they let it control their political affairs. The issue here is that Aristophanes makes no effort to pay attention to the gravity of the latter.

Sex is a funny subject, I can acknowledge that and move forward with it. As such, a comedic play about sex being full of jokes is fine. Objectively, it’s even a good play, both structurally from my perspective as a theatre student and in terms of its writing. But, there becomes a point where comedy simply falls short. Getting specific, while convincing other women around her to participate in the sex strike, Lysistrata tells her fellow women that, should they be forced to have sex—i.e., should they be raped—to “give in. But do it with a very bad grace—give him nothing for his trouble.” (Aristophanes, 14). It’s common knowledge that the play is written by a man, but the detachment in that specific line is still absurd. Aristophanes plainly believes that victims of rape can simply detach themselves from the situation, and expresses it freely. Not only are characters in his work so easily controlled by sex that it gives them a laughable lack of control, they’ve also seemingly normalized assault. 

Looking at the subject of the play leading to its banning, it’s very clearly due to the unabashed sexual language. The play ends with a group of Korus and Spartan men actively sporting erections while fixating upon “a beautiful woman led onto the citadel… naked” (Aristophanes, 89). Instinctively, I disagree with the act of banning the text. I do agree with the idea that it is unnecessarily crude. Of course, this leads to the idea that nothing in any text is ever truly necessary, but my point is that before Lysistrata is unfit for audiences, it raises more issues than it solves.

The war is over by the end of the text, but the men are still proudly objectifying women, only agreeing to a truce upon benign faced with the naked woman, Peace, at the text’s closing. The idea of assault is never brought up again, but is obviously never denounced, either. Yes, historical context is a factor, but I simply do not care about it. While a pioneer in his field, Aristophanes lacks finesse in a way that was likely never expected of him, but that modern readers have rightfully come to expect.