of all those debts I owe because of you.2
It’s not as if much has changed. The tension between free speech and libel, unbridled tongues and political correctness—that particular dynamic continues to animate our conversations today. Tell a lie enough times, put it on heavy rotation on social media, spin it with the side-eye of alternative facts, and quickly the truth becomes blurry, and if you lose sight of the truth, then a society based on rule of law and free expression can begin to wobble. It may have been his personal experience with litigation for insulting Kleon, or it may have been his fear of the populism of the day—the demos wound up by a smooth-talking orator could get you booted out of the city—but Aristophanes was sending a warning to the people of Athens in the best way he knew how: in the form of a joke.
You can see echoes of the Athenian desire for parrhêsia if you stroll through Exarchia: the street art and political graffiti that cover virtually every surface of the neighborhood are an extension of that original impulse that turned the Pnyx into the center of democratic Athens. They are the unbridled tongue presented with a can of spray paint.
Yanis Varoufakis Is in the House (of Parliament)
On the other end of the phone, newly elected member of the Greek Parliament Yanis Varoufakis let out a sigh. “This new government … they’re introducing three new bills that will really do some damage. So I’ve got to be on the floor of parliament every day trying to stop them.”
I understood, he’s a very busy guy. I said, “Someone’s got to save the world.”
Varoufakis laughed. “I don’t know about that. I’m just trying to throw obstacles in their way to slow them down.”
Varoufakis is the author of several books. One of my favorites, Adults in the Room: My Battle with the European and American Deep Establishment, chronicles his brief time as the finance minister of Greece, where he and the left-leaning Syriza government challenged the European Union to try to fight their way out of austerity. French and German banks had over-leveraged themselves in Greece and, when the 2008 financial crisis hit, would’ve gone bankrupt if the EU, particularly Germany and the International Monetary Fund, hadn’t ridden to the rescue. Of course this was done in a sneaky way, where the EU bailed out the banks and stuck the Greek people with the bill. Varoufakis was not shy about pointing out the obvious and refused to play along. He was right, of course, but that didn’t make him any friends and didn’t save Greece from austerity. But he is a compelling figure on the international scene, an avid motorcyclist with a shaved head and a quick smile, and someone who stands up to the powers that be and speaks with some legit parrhêsia unencumbered by any sense of aidôs. As finance minister, he had promised his country he would try to end austerity and he wasn’t, as Big Daddy Kane put it, half-steppin’.
Not unlike Socrates, he was betrayed. Sometimes one person standing up and speaking truth can change the world, and so the world scrambles to shut them up, humiliate them, and attempt to shame them into silence. Look at what the adults in the room in the United States tried to do to climate activist Greta Thunberg when she came in 2019 to speak to the United Nations. They lost their shit, calling her a “mentally ill child” and commenting on her physical appearance, as if not looking like a teenage sex symbol somehow negated what she had to say. All she was doing was standing up to the capitalist machine, the economic structures that need continuous growth, exploit working people, and suck resources out of the earth like vampire robots—and money and hope out of the Greek people—and saying enough. She drew a line. She didn’t ask the grown-ups for permission.
Varoufakis’s career as finance minister ended in disaster, but Adults in the Room is a fantastic read. The Guardian called it “one of the greatest political memoirs of all time,”1 and in 2019 it was turned into a feature film directed by Greek director Costa-Gavras.
In response to his experience with the “deep establishment,” Varoufakis and some other like-minded individuals started a movement to renew democracy called DiEM25. It is a pan-European, multiparty political group organizing to resist the current drift of the EU into a kind of bureaucratic corporate oligarchy designed to exploit the weakest members. Much like the early Athenians, the manifesto for DiEM25 calls for simple democratic reforms. They want full transparency in decision-making by the EU and the “urgent redeployment of existing EU institutions in the pursuit of innovative policies that genuinely address the crises of debt, banking, inadequate investment, rising poverty and migration.” Those are just the immediate priorities; longer term they are working toward a pluralist, egalitarian, productive, and ecologically sustainable Europe.*
Like his Athenian ancestors, Varoufakis is a believer in democracy. I saw him speak when he was in Los Angeles, and when asked why he was working so hard to bring about democratic reforms, he chuckled and said something about it being necessary and that it was “important to have fun with it.” When I spoke with him in Athens, I asked if humor was essential to democracy. Comedy needs democracy, but does democracy need comedy?
He replied, “Absolutely. The most progressive, radical, and paradigm-changing ideas were introduced by Aristophanes via the medium of comedy. For example in the Ecclesiazusae, where he introduces the notion of a vote for women and, indeed, of a takeover of the assembly by women opposed to patriarchy, war, and inequality. Without comedy, he would never have been allowed to put such radical ideas to the citizenry.”
At the time this play was staged, women were distinctly second-class citizens in Athens and were, as Aristophanes portrays in the play, thought to be lazy, adulterous drunks. The play depicts what would happen if women took over the government. What they do is revolutionary: they re-create society so that all wealth and food are shared, people live together in communal housing, and hot young men are required to sexually satisfy women considered old and ugly. In other words, they create a kind of communist utopia where all friends have benefits. If you ask me, this seems like a good thing. I would happily live in a society like the one Aristophanes describes in Ecclesiazusae. But I don’t think Aristophanes meant it that way. I can imagine these ideas might have been seen by the patriarchal society as a cautionary tale—just look what would happen if women were in charge. No doubt the men of Athens—the benefactors of a patriarchal war machine—got a good guffaw out of Aristophanes’s fanciful tale. Much the same way the CEO of a Fortune 500 company might patronize a female executive and her plan to give family leave to employees.
It is unclear which interpretation Aristophanes was trying to promote. Maybe he was just causing trouble, which is undeniably part of his charm. And yet whatever his motivation, many of the points Aristophanes was trying to make, particularly his opposition to war, got embedded in the jokes and, let’s call them, seeds were planted in the city’s consciousness. I imagine that the women watching the production might have had an entirely different takeaway from the men. They might’ve thought, Yeah, what if we ran things? and then discussed the play and the ideas with other women. Which might have, in turn, created some changes at the household level, which would then have expanded to the neighborhood, the city, and eventually the world.
While many historians believe Athenian women were seen only as homemakers and reproductive units or safety valves for lust, they did manage to overthrow the oligarchy, who had assumed power in a coup in 411 BCE. A group of noble families calling themselves “the Four Hundred” decided it would be better if they ran things and so they took over. It didn’t last long. Apparently the women of Athens climbed up on their roofs and pelted the oligarchs with garbage whenever they walked past. This is yet another thing we can learn from ancient Athens. If the women of the world want to climb on their roofs and throw garbage at Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and the CEO of Goldman Sachs, I’ll hold the ladder.
Like Varoufakis said, comedy allows us to imagine things that might normally make us uncomfortable. We can talk about subjects that are forbidden and we can bring a different point of view to solving problems. And it’
s good for you. The Mayo Clinic reports that studies have shown laughter is beneficial for your overall mental and physical health; it stimulates your organs and increases your circulation, releases endorphins, de-stresses, helps people with anxiety and depression, and is good for your immune system. So why is everyone so serious all the time?
If democracy needs a sense of humor, if radical ideas need to be presented in a way that eases them into our consciousness, why are so many people so quick to denounce comedians and squash uncomfortable conversations? I’m not going to deny that there are comedians who are racist or sexist or just plain bad, but our current climate of political correctness, of the rush to cancel someone for what he or she said, lacks nuance and imagination. Some humor is offensive. That is undeniable. But we don’t have the legal right to not be offended.
As Australian comedian and writer Hannah Gadsby said in her 2020 one-woman show, Douglas: “Now, if in that bit, you find yourself offended by anything I say in the joke section, please just remember they are just jokes. Even if you find yourself surrounded by people who are laughing at something you find objectionable … just remember the golden rule of comedy, which is, if you’re in a minority, you do not matter. You don’t.”
This is not a defense of racist or sexist jokes. All I’m saying is that we might benefit from using humor as a jumping-off point or a way in to thinking about and discussing issues and ideas that make us uncomfortable. A joke about rape is obviously offensive, on many levels, but why someone would think that was something to joke about is worth talking about. Comedy doesn’t have to offend; a joke can explain why universal health care might be a good idea or why human rights and rule of law need to be respected. Laughing connects us to our fellow humans. Allowing for parrhêsia and then having the ability to sustain a dialogue, to look at uncomfortable and unpleasant topics from multiple angles, to think about why something offends, might actually move the consciousness of society forward. Comedy has power. It might save our democracy.
* I highly recommend a visit to their website: https://diem25.org.
Tilemachos at Sea
Tilemachos Aidinis is a sailor—a captain for hire who pilots charter boats around the Aegean—and proprietor of a company called Greco Sailing. He is a thoughtful man with an easygoing personality and a great laugh. He is strong and roughly handsome, his skin burnished a deep olive brown by the sun, and looks pretty much like how you’d think a Greek sailor might look, only maybe a little more sophisticated because he lives in Athens and keeps his hair up in a kind of samurai man bun. He is an excellent pilot—I have seen him park a forty-two-foot catamaran in a slip that looked too small for a dinghy. And he knows the small islands in the Cyclades. When our friends were desperate to sail to Santorini despite high winds and great distance, he considered their request long enough to say, “Mmmm. No.” Getting there with a strong Meltemi at our back might be fast; coming back up into it, impossible. Instead he promised to “show us the real Greece.” Which is how we ended up on a small island like Koufonisia.
One of the more remarkable things about Tilemachos is his ability, almost superpower, to enter any taverna, walk right into the kitchen, and demand, “Show me your fish!” I saw him do this a dozen times. No one ever kicked him out. They would nod and immediately open their refrigerators for him, like he was a government-certified fish inspector. Sometimes they would step aside and let him bend down and look at the fish, or they would give him a fish-by-fish description of where it was caught, how long they’d had it, and how they might cook it. I can’t imagine anyone doing something like this in a restaurant in Los Angeles.
Tilemachos is well-read and can talk easily about theology, art, politics, ocean currents, climate change, and Greek theater. He knows a lot about theater because his partner is Dimitra Papadopoulou, a playwright and actress. Dimitra became famous when she wrote and starred in a hit television show in the early ’90s called Oi Aparadektoi (The Inadmissible), which was a comedic look at everyday Athenian life. Since then she has written and/or acted in dozens of plays and television shows. Most recently her play Mr. and Mrs. Nicolaides Sex Life, an interactive comedy about a couple and their therapist, ran for three years in Athens. And if you happen to find yourself watching the Greek-language version of Finding Nemo, she is the voice of Dory, the animated fish with ADHD.
In other words, she is a successful Athenian comedy writer, a direct descendant of a long line that connects to Aristophanes and Ariphrades.
I wanted to talk to Dimitra about her experiences, so I arranged to have dinner with her and Tilemachos at a restaurant in the Plaka.
The Plaka is the oldest neighborhood in Athens, a mishmash of small streets and stairways piled on top of each other at the base of the Acropolis. It’s jammed with bars and tavernas, sometimes three or four stacked on top of one another in an arbitrary way, and filled with a mix of tourists and locals. Diana and I followed Tilemachos and Dimitra down a street, up some stairs, down an alley, up more stairs to even more stairs, into a courtyard of some kind, to a restaurant that was up a spiral staircase, to a roof that seemingly had no electricity and was lit by candles, so you had to kind of shuffle across the surface, bumping into chairs and tables splayed haphazardly over every usable space, until we came to a hard wooden bench. Somewhere directly above us, the Acropolis loomed. Athenians had probably been stumbling into this place for the last thousand years or so.
It was so dark in the restaurant I couldn’t tell if that shadow passing by was a waiter, a customer, or a phantom—some ghost in a chiton—and yet somehow a bottle of wine appeared, followed by tasty little pies filled with spinach and cheese, a beetroot salad, a Greek salad, and some more cheese. It had been hot, almost 100 degrees that day, but now the city was cooling down and a soft breeze was wafting along the roof, guttering the candles and causing my skin to prickle with a sensation that was not at all unpleasant.
Dimitra has sharp, intelligent eyes that flash when she gets excited, and her face is lively and expressive, like those of comic actresses Kristen Wiig and Aubrey Plaza. In other words, she seems made for Hollywood. Refreshingly, she has no interest in the American entertainment-industrial complex: “Because I like to speak Greek. It is a beautiful language.” And then, as if I didn’t quite understand what she meant, she added, “I feel it more.”
Her English is a million times better than my Greek, but still Tilemachos needed to jump in from time to time with a translation. She asked what my book was about, and I told her about Ariphrades and how he was accused of inventing cunnilingus. At first she didn’t understand. Tilemachos said, “Could you explain?” I tried again, resisting the urge to act it out. Finally Tilemachos understood and broke into a fit of laughter. He then gave a rapid-fire explanation in Greek. Dimitra gave me a quizzical look and said, “This guy invented the blow job for women?”
Diana shrugged and said, “Welcome to my life.”
I turned to Dimitra and nodded. “That’s what Aristophanes said.”
Dimitra laughed. “Aristophanes wouldn’t lie.”
And I suppose that’s it, because there was no reason for Aristophanes to lie about Ariphrades or Cratinus, and there is no existing record of anyone contradicting him. For Dimitra and Tilemachos it seemed perfectly reasonable that a Greek writer invented cunnilingus; the Greeks invented everything.
She leaned forward and said, “Sex is super important, that is for sure. And the connection between sex and satire is very Greek. It goes deep.”
I asked what she meant.
“The connection between Aristophanes, long time ago, and today is very close.” She put her two index fingers together to demonstrate how close it was. “It’s how Greek people relate. It’s like epitheorisi.”
“What?”
“Epitheorisi.”
Tilemachos chimed in. “Only in Greece is this. There is a lot of songs and music and dancing and speaking.”
Dimitra nodded. “Skits. Sketch. Like cabaret maybe. This comes direct fr
om Aristophanes.”
Which immediately brought to mind the unhinged energy of the parabasis in Karantzas’s production of Clouds. It was like cabaret on mushrooms.
Early epitheorisi was equally raunchy and wild, a connection to the drunken phallus parade of the Dionysian revels. Nothing was off-limits. Which doesn’t surprise me. Sex is an ideal subject for satire: universal, fundamental, and awkward, it drives people to behave in ways they might normally not; it causes individuals to make bad decisions and noble sacrifices, reveals our humanity, our regrets, and our vulnerabilities and desires. The ancient comedy writers understood that sex was the window into our souls. Sex, and the lengths we go to have it, is what makes us human, and what makes us human is what makes something funny.
Like the ancient comedies, epitheorisi was political and timely and spoke to the news of the moment. It was humor and performance rooted in a specific place and time and community. Although nowadays, if you look for something close to epitheorisi, it is either a variety show like Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway or America’s Got Talent or a sketch comedy show like Saturday Night Live. Maybe it’s me, but I find that kind of programming a bit too polished, watered down for public consumption and not as raw as our current political moment requires. Perhaps closer to the original spirit of epitheorisi are some of the performances you might find at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe or in improv sketch comedy groups like the Upright Citizens Brigade.
Dimitra adjusted her scarf and gave me a serious look. “But these days it is dead. Instead, all the new persons they do stand-up comedy. An American kind of joke and laugh.”
Dimitra is concerned that the Greeks are losing their unique sense of humor, adopting American stand-up, which she says “is very poor.” She shook her head sadly and said something in Greek as she reached for the wine. Tilemachos translated. “This has been the last thirty years. Maybe less. Stand-up comedy replaced epitheorisi, which was very, very Greek with roots for centuries.”
Rude Talk in Athens Page 10