Once I worked out the whole thing they were going with here - Hades is the boss man, the enforcer of debts and obligations, Persephone runs the company store, where you spend your excess cash on booze to numb the pain - it's really really powerful
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The "seasons" of our post-agrarian, late capitalist world are the economy When Persephone goes back underground, that's when the stock market crashes and interest rates go negative and "money is tight"
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Hades is hard money, the gold standard, bills coming due, austerity (he of the stern and austere countenance) Persephone is easy credit, runaway inflation (soft money, *green*backs), stimulus packages (she does love her stimulants)
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(I love that in contrast to her mother, the goddess of grain and the autumn harvest, Persephone is the goddess of spring and green growing things The goddess of vegetables Which seems to contradict the party girl image until you remember other green leafy vegetables)
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The whole show is extremely accessible without any of this nerdy stuff and yet as you keep thinking about it it's a lit major's dream, you can talk about these connections all day
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My favorite thing is that classicists love to ding pop culture like Disney's Hercules etc for making Hades into a Satan figure To the Greeks he wasn't, he was just a stern enforcer of the balance between death and life
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...Okay but that means he IS a Satan figure Dying is terrible If we could be immortal but instead we have to wither and perish because the gods want to keep us humble then holy shit fuck Hades The subversive legend of Hercules beating up Hades exists for this whole reason
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And, like, Hadestown really does get this Hades as Evil because he's Lawful, because that's how the way things have to be You signed a mortgage and your immortal soul is due Nothing personal (The word "mortgage" literally means death)
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Hades and Persephone were honored in Greece as the ideal man and wife, brides venerated Persephone as the ideal of the passage from girlhood to womanhood, being abducted so she could come of age, shed being a carefree maiden and take the duties of a wife That's ALSO fucked up
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The whole show walks this line between "Let's just bluntly show how this value system is fucked up" and "Let's take it as read that they're right that this is how things have to be" Maybe it can't be changed but that doesn't make it not fucked That's what tragedy is
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And it's not really about the ancient Greeks We're no different We also live in a society (You imagine that in the framing device the "real" Hadestown was written by 1930s thespians struggling with how much suffering was being wrought by bankers "upholding the law")
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