The Watcher Girl
Medusa is one of the most popular Greek myths. In addition to being a figure of Greek mythology, Medusa is also a character from classical literature and art. Medusa is most famous for her hair-snapping abilities; when she looked at someone with her eyes, that person's eyes turned into snakes. Although she is a character from ancient Greek mythology, some recent movies have utilized her image as inspiration for contemporary art. For example, photographer Jillian C. George incorporated images from theMedusa myth into her photo project Waking the Watcher Girl. In this project, George photographed herself as Medusa to see how she would feel about her own body image issues. She also interviewed women about the issues that they faced as they aged and like Medusa watched their own bodies change.
When comparing The Watcher Girl to George's other work, it is evident that The Watcher Girl takes inspiration from the Greek myth of Medusa. For example, this novel takes its name and premise from George's previous work The Watcher Girl: A Portrait of Medusa as a Young Woman. In this earlier work, George explored how people perceived and responded to the young woman Medusa in ancient Greece. By exploring this era through the eyes of a young woman who looked like Medusa, George illustrated how women felt about and responded to the fear that Medusa's image projected onto them.
The core idea of The Watcher Girl is that adolescent girls often face internal conflicts when deciding whether to trust their bodies or not. To illustrate this concept, George incorporated aspects of the Greek myth of Medusa into her work. In particular, she incorporated the concept of Athena determining which aspects of the Medusa myth she would use in her work. According to this concept, Athena had to determine which aspects of an archetype conveyed negative connotations and which aspects embodied positive ones. From there, it was easy for an author to incorporate these ideas into a work of fiction. Doing so enabled authors to create works grounded in real-life experiences but with fictionalized premises that illuminate universal truths about human nature.
Medusa represented several adolescent girls' fears when she encountered Perseus in Greek mythology. As she looked at him, he became petrified with fear and turned into a statue. When Perseus then cut off Medusa's head with his sword, all her snakes came alive and attacked him. This is because - like many adolescent girls - Medusa trusted her body so much that she could not bear seeing what she looked like without a brain. To illustrate this point, George incorporated photographs portraying people with no eyes in them into her project Waking the Watcher Girl. She also interviewed women about their body image issues so that they could compare their experiences to those of ancient Greek heroine Andromeda.
Based on these considerations, Margaret George's The Watcher Girl incorporates the Greek myth of Medusa into a Cold War era setting. Because fear circulates within human society regardless of geopolitical conditions, Medusa represents many adolescent girls' fears when facing the pressures of adolescence. She represents their fears when deciding whether to trust their bodies or not; thus, The Watcher Girl illustrates how world leaders continually manipulate fears within global society through media depictions of iconic women like Medusa.
