I created these self-portraits in reaction to Mario Camerini’s Ulisse (1954), an intriguing movie adaptation of Homer’s epic poem about a hero’s tumultuous journey home after war. Actress Silvana Mangano portrays both Pennelope, his faithful and pious wife who waits years for his return, and Circe, the seductive and dangerous witch who holds him in her clutches.
They chose to cast the same woman in both roles for a few reasons: Culturally, affairs were taboo. This made his affair with Circe more palatable so he would remain likable. He was, afterall, only sleeping with his wife. This departure from the epic poem also highlighted his deep desire to reunite with his wife. It’s worth noting another change from the epic poem that the Sirens, humanlike beings that lured sailors to their doom through song, called to Odysseus in his wife’s voice.
At first, I was somewhat offended about this casting decision. It felt like an erasure of the female identity, like women could be cut out and reused. In the movie, Circe asks the title character Ulysses: “Why is it strange [that I have Penelope’s face]? Isn’t the difference between one woman and another only in the mind of the man?”
Upon further reflection, I realized that of course, we all have different roles to play in each other’s lives. Acknowledging that we sometimes see someone only by the role they have to play in our lives, rather than seeing them as individuals, says more about our needs, reasons, and purpose rather than diminishing theirs. The truth of who they are is obscured by the “role lens” that we use to view them, but that truth is still there.
I drew myself in Mangano’s costumes, hidden behind symbols which represent her roles to Ulysses. I’ve depicted Circe with a crab as she is depicted throughout art history; she is the woman who can’t let go. I’ve depicted Penelope with an olive branch; she is the woman who waits, who saves her marriage bed which Ulysses built from an olive tree himself.
