Fifth Annual Symposium on Pop Culture and International Law: Perceiving Time and Hope in International Law Through Hadestown

[Ruby Rosselle ‘Ross’ Tugade is a PhD student at the Faculty of Law & Justice, University of New South Wales (Sydney), researching anti-communicst state violence in the Philippines]

Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown, a ‘folk opera’ and later Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, retells the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice against the backdrop of an industrial underworld. Hadestown was first staged in 2006 and later developed into a concept album in 2008, the latter featuring artists like Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Ani DiFranco. 

One simply cannot miss the political themes in the musical numbers of Hadestown, with some even seemingly too on the nose. Though when one realises that ‘Why We Build the Wall’ precedes Donald Trump’s campaign to build the Mexico-US border by a decade, what emerges is not so much the singular prescience of a song, but the ancient instinct to create structures of exclusion and separation. And while the International Court of Justice had long issued the Advisory Opinion on the legal consequences of the construction of a wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, enclosures and restrictions remain, sustaining the violence inflicted upon Palestinian lives.

One could, as well, write on the main themes of Hadestown from the perspective of international environmental law and international human rights law by examining its plot points as against doctrine. Anthropogenic climate change is upon us, and Hadestown does well as a medium to convey what is unnatural about scorching heat amid unabated industrialization—issues that are now legible in the language of international obligations. Indeed, Hadestown deftly enmeshes the tropes of the Greek myth it adapts with the problems of modernity: class divide, inhumane labour conditions, the construction of barriers as a display of power and domination, and climate change from unchecked capitalist expansion. With the allure of protection under his wing, Hades traps labourers in his harsh factory to toil forever.

I take on a modest introspection on what Hadestown can tell us about international law. I see Hadestown as a helpful frame by which to analyse the themes of temporality, decay, and hope within international law, at least on the several things we can still grasp and steer. When it comes to adaptations of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, I also identify Asterios Polyp as a thoughtful piece of art engaging with the age-old myth. Unlike David Mazzuchelli’s graphic novel, though, Hadestown strikes me with powerful, defiant hope even in the face of outwardly fixed movements—whether from gods or cycles of time.

Linear, Progressive Time and International Law

Hadestown is built on ‘old’ motifs: the cycles of agriculture and nature, death, and renewal. The musical’s power lies less in the novelty of its plot, but in its cyclical rendering of time. It begins with Hermes telling the story of Orpheus, already knowing his fate, and at the curtain call signals to the audience that his story will begin again. Hermes warns the audience that the story that will unfold is ‘a sad song’ yet insists it is ‘worth singing.’ Structurally, the narrative of Hadestown is circular, foreclosing any other possible ending. Still, we are invited to take in Orpheus’ stubborn refusal, again and again. It goes without saying that within this trope of trying-but-doomed-to-fail is a particular insight on human endeavours for a better world.

International lawyers, for better or worse, might find resonance in Orpheus’s assertion of agency—silly and foolish—despite existential questions that make us confront the limits and relevance of our discipline in all its fragile, fallible quality, and even in its failure to prevent things turning for the worse. Part of using this prism is an invitation to interrogate our discipline’s ideas on time, especially its linear trajectory.

International law’s notion of linear time had earned its place as a subject of critique in scholarship. The onward, linearity of time is anchored on a flattened idea of progress and constant improvement, moving out of previously ‘uncivilised’ periods to the era of civilisation and modernity. The view that the march of history is only through one direction is intimately tied to the material production of our present conditions, that is, of the excessive accumulation of the anthropocene. The progressive temporality of international law also orients itself towards a fixed vision of events, made possible through a ‘sense of disciplinary movement.’ In essence, there is only one possibility—progress—which is paradoxically promised to be unbounded. 

Yet examining particular points in history would allow us to see that the progressive notions of time we have internalised were partly tethered to a synthetic process of standardization under conditions of imperial expansion. With this standardisation, techniques built around measuring progress (as ‘development’) have flourished. International law has even incorporated periodisation of time into a doctrine rule. Hadestown provides one handle to re-examine international law’s progressive temporality.

In one of the musical’s numbers entitled ‘Chant,’ there appears to be an indictment of a specific vision of progress, propped by Hades-as-industrial-baron: ‘Every year, it’s getting worse/Hadestown, hell on Earth’ with Persephone telling him how growth has, in fact, become grotesque: ‘Warehouse walls and factory floors/I don’t know you anymore/And in the meantime up above/The harvest dies and people starve/Oceans rise and overflow/It ain’t right, and it ain’t natural.’ And yet the chorus’ yearning isn’t so much for a sense of return to a state of innocence and ignorance, but that for things to be repaired. The seasons are all wrong, they sing; Orpheus scrambles to materially produce the song to have everything back in sync.

This brings me to the question of whether international law’s imposition of standards of development and improvement has effectively thwarted the dread of repeating the ‘bad’ parts of world history. Obviously, hardly so. 

On the other hand, would rejecting prescribed forms of progress necessarily entail regression? Which, upon greater consideration, isn’t even the most relevant question. The use of force that modern international law sought to prohibit keeps happening, now more destructive than ever, directly impacting the environment and health systems.

In confronting the repeated failures of international law, as well as the discipline’s shift to crisis, we are compelled to sharpen our own perceptions that it can no longer be business as usual, finding pockets of alliances that amplify calls for freedom in various parts of the world. We also are invited to ask: how can we cultivate attitudes of resistance against purportedly ordained inevitabilities like endless expansion?

The Promise of a ‘Fix’ in Orpheus’s Song

In Orpheus’s attempt to set things straight by writing ‘a song to fix what’s wrong’ and ‘bring the world back into tune,’ we can detect an impulse to order everything through law. Another possible parallelism in this plot point is the drive that animates constitutionalist ideas of public international law. Again, in tackling head on the idea of disciplinary crisis, international lawyers may find themselves disagreeing on practical horizons. 

Still, Orpheus’ attitude towards Hades can be instructive for international lawyers today, albeit to a qualified extent. The Fates taunt Orpheus as he marches on: ‘Who do you think you are? Who are you? Who are you to lead her? Who are you to lead them? Who are you to think that you can hold your head up higher than your fellow man?’

On the one hand, one can see in Orpheus’s attempt pockets of hope through defiance and a great deal of reflexivity. Yet without wholly discrediting the questions posed by the Fates, it is also worth asking if declarations of moral leadership from within the discipline, especially in privileged spaces, could only amount to an empty liberalism. At this point in time, declarations of inclusivity could very well be conditional, ‘if not entirely hollow.’

Yet we may still be able to detect the enduring value of international law for many of the world’s peoples facing different forms of destructive violence. While we cannot deny our despair especially ‘when doubt comes in,’ we can still insist on hope and defiance, militancy and even joy, especially in the face of structures of brutality and greed. The clue could be located in the musical’s early numbers, before the doom becomes certain for the viewer, with Orpheus singing innocently an ode ‘to the world we dream about, and the one we live in now.’