Why romcoms are all Greek to me
Just like me, Lampo is unemployed, and loves nothing more than having a cheeky glass of red wine on a Friday night. However, Lampo is also living in war-torn Syracuse in 412 BC. Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon follows him and his best mate Gelon as they try and put on a play in a quarry, cast entirely with prisoners of war. What can I say, we all do mad shit when we’re bored. Along the way there are disastrous dates, a surprising amount of blood-shed and musings about life, love, loyalty and death. It’s easily my favourite book I’ve read this year (and the booksellers at Waterstones must agree, as it won this year’s debut fiction prize). Most importantly, it doesn’t end easily. To keep this as spoiler-free as possible, all I will say is that Gelon and Lampo don’t exactly skip off into the sunset having ended all war among the Greeks with art. Just like real life, their eventual fates are difficult, knotty and complicated. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one.
Speaking of fates, it would be impossible to talk about media that echoes the chaos of our world without mentioning Netflix’s Kaos. For those of you who haven’t seen it, the series reimagines stories from mythology in a modern world that is still ruled by the ancient Greek gods, with Theseus and the Minotaur, Orpheus and Eurydice caught up in the corruption of Zeus (played by a brilliantly-cast Jeff Goldblum). Everybody’s lives are connected, every action influences someone else, and almost all of the players are clueless as to where they actually stand. Meanwhile, all of their lives are being unspooled by the fates (Sam Buttery, Suzy Eddie Izzard, and Ché) – even the gods are beholden to their prophecies and cannot escape. I don’t know if I have ever seen a tv show with a more tangled plot, and I mean this as a compliment. In this show, sometimes bad things just happen to people. Find me a rom-com that starts with a woman getting hit by a car and I will give you a million pounds. We live in real life, not a Richard Curtis film. Shit happens.
We may be under the power of late-stage capitalist corporations not the Greek pantheon, but I’m willing to bet the net-effect is the same: we all spend our days begging a man in a robe to be merciful. The only real variation is whether it’s Jeff Goldblum or Jeff Bezos. We may be able to read and write (I’m assuming you can, because you’ve got this far), but at the end of the day most of us are like Lampo, wondering where our next paycheck is coming from, and if we’re going to pull at the end of the night. Romantic comedies may contain the trappings of real life, but I don’t know anyone real who can afford an apartment in Paris or New York, or has met their doppelganger who just so happens to be minor European royalty at a baking competition. As much as the world we live in is kind of falling apart right now, and life can feel random and cruel, it’s real. And I want my media to feel real too, so for now I’m sticking to ancient Greece.