It is also unlikely that a bronze statue celebrating the inversion of a myth would install shame in guilty men even if they knew the literature and the myths by heart if an individual conscience is so broken as to be unable to justly install shame after committing a crime, bronze gorgons in a park probably won’t do the trick either. I may be wrong, but rapists are probably not up to speed on feminist literature or on the various strands and versions of classical myths. But would a bronze statue of a monster produce this emotion in hypothetical rapists? They would have to know who Medusa is, the myth as Ovid told it, and its feminist revision. If only male rapists are to feel ashamed as they walk into the courthouse, that crucial detail should have been added. For what do men, as a group, have to be ashamed? In Western countries, women are now better educated, more successful, and more ambitious than men and all because their culture was created on principles that made the political equality of the sexes possible through the workings of its own inner logic. On that surface reading alone, Garbati’s “Medusa” would be a lie. The end result is a city-approved work of bronze which Jessica Mason gushed would “shame men entering the New York County Criminal Courthouse.” This re-imagined Medusa went viral and became a symbol of resistance worldwide, inspiring thousands of women to reach out and share their own stories. In 2018, Garbati posted a photograph of his original sculpture to social media. This narrative of victim-shaming in stories of sexual violence echoes through time, and into the present day ‘me too’ movement. It is no surprise then that feminists have linked Medusa to the MeToo movement which is what happened with Garbati’s “Medusa.” This was done not only privately but publicly with NYC Parks, in their statement on the statue, making a direct connection between MeToo and the gorgon: Medusa’s closed eyes and lips speak volumes about both the history of women’s oppression and the submersion of women’s histories. Now, they can see that Perseus is the aggressor, not a hero but a symbolic rapist standing astride the body of his victim, her bloodied head held high in victory. With this context, my students look anew on art like Cellini’s sculpture. The poet Mary Sarton wrote she was not turned to stone but “clothed in thought” when she looked upon Medusa, discovering that the gorgon did not have the face of a monster but her own: “That frozen rage is what I must explore–/Oh, secret, self-enclosed, and ravaged place!” In The Atlantic on the eve of the 2016 presidential election, Elizabeth Johnson provided the culmination of the feminist viewing of Medusa: Marija Gimbutas, an archaeologist and anthropologist, postulated that Medusa was a symbol of ancient matriarchal societies destroyed by men. Second-wave feminists saw Medusa as a victim of gods and men, making her the incarnation of Woman, oppressed by men and the patriarchal system. But its very incorrectness is why Medusa was transfigured into a feminist icon. This story is too politically incorrect for our enlightened times, however, particularly because in the Roman poet Ovid’s retelling, Medusa was cursed to become a gorgon after being raped by Poseidon, the god of the sea. But the conversion from dynamism to static blandness is fitting, seeing as Garbati’s statues is the total inversion of the Greek myth wherein Perseus slew Medusa. In that, Perseus is dynamic, left leg bent forward, right arm bent back while the left is held up and out to show the world the head of the slain monster. Tonally, the piece is the opposite of “Perseus with the Head of Medusa ,” completed by Benvenuto Cellini in 1554.
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