Like a Greek God(dess)
Though Myra Breckinridge is splattered with religious imagery and its side effects (circumcision/Puritanism & sex, etc), I found it exceptionally fascinating how many references to different gods and goddesses were brought up during the rape and destruction of Rusty’s masculinity.
In one passage, Myra writes: “I approached him, dildo in front of me like the god Priapus personified,” (183) referring to the Greco-Roman god of fertility, gardening, fruit plants, and more importantly for Myra, male genitalia. I did some research on Priapus and found out that he began mainly as a joke of a god, having few truly dedicated followers, but became immensely popular as time passed, giving the Roman Catholic church a lot of trouble from pagan followers in the early days of Christianity.
Most depictions of Priapus emphasize his massive member, drawing a clear connection to Myra’s frighteningly large dildo (although it’s important to note that this rubber representation of male sexuality was borrowed from a man under the pretense of using it for artistic reasons, and was not actually Myra’s to use sexually).
As fitting as the god of long schlong is, I found it fascinating that Myra remarks, “I delved and spanned that innocent flesh. Oh, it was a holy moment. I was one with the Bacchae” (184). For some quick history, the Bacchae are the female followers of the god Dionysus (god of wine, ritual madness/ecstasy/generally partying hard and having a good time) who would get so ecstatic celebrating with Dionysus that they were lose their minds, become sexually aroused, and generally tear animals and humans to pieces in their madness. So for Myra to see herself as holy and see herself as one of the Bacchae, she is insinuating that this act is a ritual both sexual and cannibalistic as she destroys Rusty both sexually and physically.
Earlier on, I though the inclusion of “holy” throughout the text as well as frequent blasphemous references to Christianity were simply included to shock and offend the audience of the 60s (which I’m sure still happened). After finishing Myra, however, I see the union of sex, power, and ritual as a very religious sort of experience for Myra. She is fulfilling her deepest fantasies, which can only be a feeling of ecstasy, and the mythic way she describes herself and her sex acts with Rusty is symptomatic of the grand vision Myra is realizing.
Is Myra Breckinridge a religious text? In many ways, the mythologies of stardom/the American dream/television/sex as the ultimate culmination of human experience represents the cultural shift of American minds from a focus on religion to a focus on sex and entertainment.
Clearly, in a country where “In God We Trust” is written on the money used to buy both entertainment and sex, it’s hard to avoid the discussion of religion when critiquing our society in any way, and Vidal had to be very aware of this when writing Myra Breckinridge.
