Coppélia premiered in 1870.
It would have premiered earlier if Arthur Saint-Léon's favorite ballerina, Adèle Grantzow, hadn't become gravely ill. He originally imagined the role of Swanhilda being filled by an older, more experienced dancer, but after he'd spent nearly two years looking, even traveling to neighboring countries, he and the director, Émile Perrin, found Giuseppina Bozzacchi right there in Paris. Though, of course, she was from Milan originally.
The entire role of Swanhilda was restaged to suit her skillset. Something about her was special enough to be worth doing that, apparently. When I think of how the opera was literally designed with a room backstage for wealthy men to ogle little girls and women in clothing that was very revealing for the time period, I don't feel like giving anyone the benefit of the doubt to be honest. Still, whatever it was, she didn't have the experience that Adèle Grantzow or the other picks that didn't make the cut did.
She performed the role 18 times before the Franco-Prussian war began. She was from a working class background, as nearly all the dancers were. Ballet was how she made money for her family. We don't know for sure, but she was probably performing sexual acts to earn money, too. Most less-than-famous dancers were. These girls were called the "little rats of the opera."
When the opera shut down for the war, and she wasn't earning money from Coppélia, she just couldn't afford to live. She died less than a year later on her 17th birthday. She caught smallpox and was too weak from starvation to survive it.
I wonder what it must have felt like for her right before the war. Did she feel like she'd made it? Did she feel like she'd never have to worry about food again? Was she still being abused? She didn't even get to finish turning 17.
Then there's Avdotya Arshinina. She was sold by her father to a Russian prince, beaten, sexually assaulted, and left on the steps of a hospital to die by a group of wealthy elites. She didn't make it either. Her father was punished. The prince and the aristocrats never were.
It was a horrific, horrific time in history. But it’s still happening, isn’t it?
These pedophiles who prey on these so-called "little rats of the opera," didn’t go anywhere. Amanda Bynes. Demi Lovato. Drake Bell. That's just off the top of my head and in recent memory. Those are only the famous ones, too. How many cases are forgotten or dismissed as false? How many just weren't interesting enough for headlines or documentaries? How many never came forward in the first place? What about the ones outside of the entertainment industry?
We’re all too familiar with it. Statistically, most of you reading this probably know someone who was the victim of CSA/CSE or were yourself. Roblox, Minecraft, Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, Discord, etc, etc, etc. Anywhere people can talk online, it happens. It happened on the SCP Wiki. Thousands of times all over the internet every single day, it happens. As I’m writing this, someone is probably asking a child to do something no child should ever be asked to.
My grandmother married my grandfather at 17. He was 34. There’s so much I wish I could have asked her. One of my earliest memories is of her dead body in the bed they shared. It was ovarian cancer from a powder she used to “keep fresh down there.” She died still with him. She never even acknowledged it. I inherited her face, her hands, a book she wrote for me, her box of jewelry, and
I have no call to action for you. I don’t know how we can make things better. The Epstein List situation’s been bringing up difficult emotions and making me feel like no one actually gives a shit if it’s not convenient for them in some way. I want so badly for those files to be released so we can do something about the powerful pedophiles and rapists that have been protected for God knows how long. But, every attempt to try and right this grievous injustice now that people ARE paying attention to it (because, of course, it’s convenient now) has been struck down by the Republicans in congress.
I was going to say something relevant to the SCP wiki. Something about TheDuckMan. It feels like we’d have more power in the small-scale. But, we don’t. No matter what happens to their works, no matter what actions the SCP wiki takes, TheDuckMan, like most abusers throughout history, functionally got away with it. They just fucked off and faced no real life repercussions for the harm they caused. Sure, we can (and should) delete their works. It’s not like they’re irrecoverable and aren’t preserved anywhere else. But their amazon wishlist is still up and actively being added to. They’re still profiting off of this.
I wish I could have had Éloïse leave him. I wish I could have had them acknowledge it and confront what happened to them in the moment instead of burying it until it bubbles up in a decade or eight. I wish they could have screamed from the rooftops, said the word RAPE and felt their feelings, and killed him in his sleep with that jackknife. I wish they could have written their ballet and performed with a mask en travesti like Eugénie Fiocre and had their own perfect happily ever after. I wish they’d never been put in that situation in the first place.
But, that’s not fair. That doesn’t feel fair. I can’t write that. It’s unrealistic to the time period and they had no support system to fall back on. Worst of all, if I write about them being smarter than than my grandmother was, than those dancers in the opera were, than anyone who’s ever been sexually abused were, and than I was, it feels like it really was our fault. Like we could’ve just been fucking smarter. Like none of the other factors, a lack of support system, social isolation, and past abuse setting us up for failure, mattered. Like it was all on us.
I know this is long, rambling, and pointless. I know this changes nothing. But, I have so many thoughts and I cannot stand to not say what I need to after writing what I did for 9kcon. But I don’t have a solution. I don’t know what else to say.
So, if you’ll forgive me for the grievous crime of account sharing, here’s what my cat, Thistle, has to say on the complicated and sensitive topics of restorative justice, sexual abuse, PTSD, purity guilt, recovery, the contribution of child abuse to both experiencing and perpetrating abuse later in life, child sexual exploitation, and pedophilia instead.
https://www.crosswalk.com/culture/features/nicholas-cage-plays-the-father-of-jesus-in-new-horror-film-the-carpenters-son.htmlbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbaXXX<DZSX
Thank you, Thistle. I’m sure she and her sister, Fern, are going to grow up to become the greatest authors of our time.
