Helen of Troy - Modern Culture

Modern Culture

• Helen appears in various versions of the Faust myth, such as Marlowe's play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus - of which Faustus' summoning Helen and courting her is one of the most well-known scenes, and which contributed the line "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships...?" which inspired many later references to Helen (see below).
• German poet and polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe re-envisioned the meeting of Faust and Helen. In Faust: The Second Part of the Tragedy, the union of Helen and Faust becomes a complex allegory of the meeting of the classical-ideal and modern worlds.
• Rupert Brooke's poem Menelaus and Helen portrays an aging Helen who has born "Child on legitimate child" and become a shrill voiced scold who weeps at memories of the dead Paris.
• In 1928, Richard Strauss wrote the German opera Die ägyptische Helena, The Egyptian Helena, which is the story of Helen and Menelaus's troubles when they are marooned on a mythical island.
• In 1928, a silent film The Private Life of Helen of Troy, was made.
• In 1956, a British-Italian epic titled Helen of Troy was released, directed by Oscar-winning director Robert Wise and starring Italian actress Rossana Podestà in the title role. It was filmed in Italy, and featured well-known British character actors such as Harry Andrews, Cedric Hardwicke, and Torin Thatcher in supporting roles.
• In 1971, Michael Cacoyannis directed a film version of The Trojan Women in which Helen is played by Irene Papas.
• A 2003 television version of Helen's life up to the fall of Troy, Helen of Troy, in which she was played by Sienna Guillory.
• Helen was portrayed by Diane Kruger in the 2004 film Troy. In this adaptation she does not return to Sparta with Menelaus but leaves Troy with Aeneas when the city falls.
• Helen appeared in episode 12 of Season 1 called "Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts" in Xena: Warrior Princess. Played by Galyn Görg, Helen was supposedly a close friend of Xena's and sent out a messenger to fetch her during the Trojan War.
• Helen of Troy is referenced in the climactic scene of The Truth About Cats & Dogs.
• Helen of Troy is referenced in Episode 11 of Season 5 called "Comes A Horseman" in Highlander: The Series.
• Margaret George wrote an epic adult novel, Helen of Troy, in 2006, told through Helen's first-person narrative.
• Esther Friesner wrote a young-adult novel, Nobody's Princess, published in 2007, of Helen's childhood and early life, and its sequel, Nobody's Prize.
• Caroline B. Cooney also wrote a young-adult novel, Goddess of Yesterday, where Helen is one of the main characters.
• Kimberly-Clark's 2010 TV campaign for Poise adult underwear with Whoopi Goldberg as Helen.
• Josephine Angelini wrote a young adult novel, Starcrossed about Helen of Troy.
• Irish poet William Butler Yeats compared Helen to his lover, Maude Gonne, in his poem "No Second Troy".
• Canadian novelist and poet Margaret Atwood re-envisioned the myth of Helen in modern, feminist guise in her poem "Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing".
• Henry Rider Haggard wrote a novel, The World's Desire in which Odysseus finds Helen in Egypt as a priestess and they wed.
• Frederick Rolfe, in The Weird of the Wanderer, has the hero (Nicholas Crabbe) discover that he is a reincarnation of Odysseus and marry Helen: both are deified.
• Inspired by the above-mentioned line "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships...?" from Marlowe's Faustus, Isaac Asimov jocularly coined the unit "millihelen" to mean the amount of beauty that can launch one ship.
• Also inspired by the same Marlowe quotation is "If a face could launch a thousand ships, then where am I to go?", a line from the song "If" by David Gates and Bread.
• The modernist poet H.D. wrote an epic poem Helen in Egypt from Helen's perspective.
• Jacob M. Appel's play, Helen of Sparta, retells Homer's Iliad from Helen's point-of-view.
• The Memoirs of Helen of Troy by Amanda Elyot is about the life of Helen.
• The anthology The Dark Tower by C. S. Lewis includes a fragment entitled "After Ten Years". In Egypt after the Trojan War, Menelaus is allowed to choose between the real, disappointing Helen and an ideal Helen conjured by Egyptian magicians. Which would Menelaus choose?
• The band Glass Wave entitled a song on their 2010 album "Helen". In the song, Helen remembers her life before the Trojan War.
• Star Trek: The Original Series produced an episode that is called "Elaan of Troyius" in which a woman's beauty causes problems for the crew of the Enterprise.
• In the movie English dubbed version of Kung Fu Hustle, The Beast asks if they are the fated Lovers, to which the Landlord and Landlady refer to themselves as Paris and Helen of Troy.
• Her cuff bracelet is briefly mentioned in a Warehouse 13 episode as having seductive properties.
• In the novel "Faust Among Equals" by Tom Holt, the relationship between Faust and Helen of Troy is a central theme.
• Helen of Troy appears as a recurring character in Disney's Hercules: The Animated Series as the most popular student of Prometheus Academy and girlfriend of Adonis.
• In 2008 BBC Radio 4 broadcast a trilogy of plays under the umbrella title of Troy: "Priam and His Sons", "The Death of Achilles" and "Helen in Ephesus" written by Andrew Rissik and featuring Geraldine Somerville as Helen. Helen is depicted as originally being self-absorbed and concerned only with her own desires and fleeing with Paris to Troy by her own choice; after Troy falls, she is forgiven and taken back by Menelaus, but on the way back to Sparta their ship is wrecked in a storm. Helen is rescued by pirates who rape her and permanently scar her face. She is sold as a slave in Ephesus and bought by a weaver and healer named Parmenion, with whom she lives chastely for two years and learns inner peace before she returns to Sparta to be reunited with Menelaus and restore his tortured soul.