Echoes of Antigone

Thick eyeliner, red lips, blush, smoking a cigarette in her punk mouth, she stares at you with eyes that look like they would rather be staring at anything else. Sucking on the tip of her cigarette, she breaths deeply, then flicks it away, stomping on it with her foot. Smiling as it squishes under her hiker boots on the wet, dark street in some back alley. "So, you finally came to see me," she says. You don't reply. You notice the little things about her that have changed. She used to wear her hair in a cute pony-tail, but now it's a pink mohawk. Her skin used to be smooth, innocent, now its grey, and full of pot-marks. Her eyes were once full of that energy you could never quite place, but now they were hopeless, drunk. This is Antigone, some punk rocker chick who loves Rancid and MxPx, weed and tattoos, getting drunk and pissing her life away. Her motto, "The second best thing is to die," ask her what the best thing is, "Well, idiot, that would be to never be born at all." Ask her about herself and she'll tell you her family is dead, and she doesn't give a fuck what you think. Yeah, seems like a girl I could fall hopelessly in love with.

There was a girl I met over the summer. She had this energy that was almost indescribable, like some nymph, a trickster, Hermes. Her laughter was chaotic, a little kid overjoyed with something clever thing they did. Giggling as her malicious scheme came to fruition. It was so addictive, so illusive, so unlike anything I have seen or felt before. Her hair changed every time I ran into her. One day it would be a mohawk, the next it would be short, the next it would be long, blue, pink, red, blond, black. But it was this energy that she gave off that drove me straight to her. The next time I saw her it was at a concert. I have never been so sweaty in my life or danced as furiously. Whipping my head, drenched in sticky liquid. My hair dyed blue, and it was coming off, running down my skin into my cheeks. Thrusting my head and body with the music, the words, guitar, bass, and drums. The moshpit in the center was like a pit of anarchy. People bouncing off eachother, slamming, hitting, falling to the floor. People all around me grinding like lovers. And then she came. And we danced. She was a meteor from space, descending, descending smashing into me. Her anarchist spirit and her wild pink hair. It went on for what seemed like hours. And then she left, and I never saw her again.

She was my own personal Antigone. Strong-minded, beautiful, believed in things. Why don't women like this show up that often in our modern culture? And what's so intriguing about them when they do? The most recent example of a fictional character that I can compare to Antigone would be Juno, from (ha!) the film, Juno. Like Antigone, she does what she does, no matter what anyone else thinks. In this case, give birth to a baby in high school. Anyone who has seen the movie can tell you how attractive, addictive that girl's spirit is.



But my favorite modern day Antigone has to be Clementine from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The movie is about a couple's disintegrating relationship (and another killer example of men vs. women) and the lengths they go to forget about eachother. But is it destiny for them to keep falling in love with one another over and over and over again? Clementine is definitely the "bad sister". She is selfish and has self-esteem issues, getting drunk and being a jerk, but that's what makes her so beautiful are these qualities. She is wonderful.



I hate falling in love with fictional people.

But this repeats, again, the phrase: "The past possesses the present". All these "modern" characters have come before. We like to think the 20th century invented the term, "strong-minded women" and all the women from the past were meak and subordinate, but that's just not the case. The gods of old, Antigone, even Joan of Arc, they were all examples of these types of characters, and again and again we can find echoes of Antigone in our world today.