Lysistrata – a comedy addressing not-so-comic issues

 Xavier de Venecia

            While I admire Aristophanes for attempting to address major societal issues, many of which persist today, I think the play has many flaws when attempting to approach these ideas. One of the main issues that the play addresses is the social dynamics around sex. This has many components but a large one being female sexuality and sexual desire as opposed to male sexuality and desire. Countless jokes are made about these topics and it seems like there isn’t a page without innuendo. While this does serve the play’s purpose as a comedy, I think the amount of innuendos and jokes was way too high and at a certain point it just became somewhat annoying and consumed a bulk of the text, this greatly detracted from the gravity of the issues that were discussed. By the end of the play, the actual meaningful message of the play was buried beneath the amount of comedy, although it was so over-saturated that it ceased being comedic. Another factor that played into this was the translation that I read, it modernized a few parts of the play and to me, it felt out of place for an ancient play.

            Besides the sexual and gender issues that the play addresses, there is quite a bit of politics that is easy to look past, especially with the constant sexual innuendo. One of the most interesting parts was when one of the women said, “Miserable graybeards— the richer you get the less you pay” (54). This stood out to me most because it is an issue that we see every year during election season and considering that this play from thousands of years ago addressing the same issues was very striking.

            Due to the controversial topics and opinions that the play mentions, I can see why it was banned in particularly oppressive regimes. However, I think it has great merit for at least bringing awareness to these problems in society and it definitely belongs on library shelves.

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