Interiority in Greek Rap, Television, and Film

For much of the twentieth century, Greek music, literature and film posited an organic relationship between people and the varied landscapes that they traditionally inhabited.  The landscape, in other words, functioned as both a vehicle for history and a forge in which Greek character was molded and shaped. Recently, however, this relationship has faded from prominence. Interrogation of identity has shifted from questions of exteriority—how Greek identity relates to the Greek world around it—to questions of interiority—how Greek identity relates to the Greek world within. 

This presentation will trace the genesis of this inward turn in Greek identity and explore its manifestations in three modes of culture production: popular music, television, and film.  Specifically, the discussion of popular music will focus on rap, examining how recording artists such as the Imiskoumbria and Active Member, by situating Greek identity within a distinctly urban and cosmopolitan context, have sought to define new cultural identities that are responsive to the changing linguistic, iconic, and political environments of the contemporary world.  This discussion will segue into an examination of Greek situation comedies, a television genre that has consistently attempted to distill a core of Greekness that is resistant to the changing outside world.  The third stop in this discussion will be Philipos Koutsaftis’s Agelastos Petra, a documentary film that captures the increasingly ambivalent relationship of Greeks to the landscape that they inhabit by exploring the attitudes of the inhabitants of Eleusina toward the antiquities that cohabit their city. The presentation will discuss the future of Greek identity in an increasingly globalized world.