Behind the Scenes Minis: Asoka and Catherine

Tracy and Holly talk about Asoka and connections to pop culture, and the revelations of Catherine the Great's devotion to the arts.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hi, and welcome to our casual Friday.
I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Uh. We
talked about a Shoka this week? Yes, and not once

(00:22):
did I mention Ashoka leaving the Jedi order. Now that
you mentioned that, I'm I'm surprised that, um that you
there was no Star Wars talk. Nah. I Also, as
as we were working on this, I wondered, um, when
we published the episode, if Star Wars fans are going
to be um lured in and they'd be like, they

(00:44):
tricked me, It's not about a Showka from Star Wars
at all. Well, Star Wars Asoka is Asoka, Yeah, and
not Ashoka and spelled differently. Yeah. The spellings listeners will
not know this. Holly knows this. There are at least
three spellings of a Shoka in the outline, because it's
spelled in a bunch of different ways because it is

(01:05):
a name that you know, it's two thousand years old
from a different language, and so they're like different methods
of of transliterating it. And and the consensus is that
the h is it's pronounced with this sound, but there
are lots of different spellings, and some of the spellings
could be more easily mistaken for the Star Wars character. Yes,

(01:27):
but also that is a she that is also true. Um. Yes,
the Star Wars that show is not man. It is
cool though, because there are similarities between the two. You
asked me while you were prepping this. I don't remember
how exactly you phrased it, like, is it known that,

(01:48):
George that the Star Wars characters are named after Indian
subcontinent historical figures? Yeah? I think I think the question
was something like, isn't intentional in the Star Wars you
know first that there are characters who seem to be
named for ancient Indian historical figures. Yes, there are characters
in the Star Wars universe named after lots of historical

(02:09):
figures or um words from other languages that have meaning. Yeah,
because someone else who has been on my list for
years at this point is Opera the first who was
another long ago historical figure on the Indian subcontinent. Um
whose name is spelled like Admiral achbar Uh not pronounced

(02:31):
the same way? Is it spelled the same? I don't
think it is, but I'm not positive. This is our
our new podcast called how do We Spell Words? Are
they spelled the same as Star Wars characters. But the
thing is, I don't know how much you have watched
Clone Wars. I haven't watched much because Ahsoka is very

(02:53):
much driven by similar ideology as a Shoka. There's no
accident that those names are similar. She her whole driving
principle is always to care for others. Like in the
new episodes that we have just been released. We're not
through this season yet, we're eight episodes in. As we
record this, there are moments even when she says, when

(03:15):
someone needs help, you help them. That's all there is
to it. Uh, And that's kind of part of foot um.
I've I've spoiled things a little bit by commenting right
out of the gate it's a thing that happens to her,
her character. Though to be fair, that spoiler is years.
But yeah, so it's one of those fabulous and fascinating things.

(03:36):
I also made a strange pop culture um connection in
my head that will make no sense probably to anyone
but me, having nothing to do with Star Wars, but
instead Larry mcmurtury's lonesome Dove. Okay, have you read that
book now? So, as we were talking about all of
these carvings of the Edicts, it made me think there

(03:57):
is this item in Lonesome Dove. This whole idea is
that it's ranchers out in the west, uh, when that
was not a settled area, and they have set up
this horse stable and they have a sign, and it's
one of those things where the sign keeps getting additional
things painted on it. It's long, it's like I don't

(04:20):
know if it was a door or if it's his
door shaped, but it keeps getting additional script added to it,
including a freezing Latin and just all of these things
too that people that come up to it find themselves
puzzling over what the heck it's all supposed to be about.
And it made me think of that when we were
talking about the Edicts and people not knowing how to
read the and what they were. I cannot in good faith,

(04:46):
like I would be disingenuous if I tried to call
myself Buddhist. But the principles of Buddhism have been really
important in my life and have helped me in a
lot of ways. Um So, reading so much about this
leader who um like, seems to have definitely had a

(05:08):
past that would not conform to any kind of Buddhist
ideology of what is correct or good and then to
try to rectify that. I just found very comforting and
soothing in in these troubled times. Yeah, it's even if
we were not in these troubled times. Right, there's a
reason that this story has become important culturally to so

(05:30):
many people, and it's like a redemption story is soothing,
as you said, it's also aspirational. It makes people feel
like there's always hope that they can do better in
their own lives. Yeah. So, Uh, it is especially poignant
now as we struggle through a lot of a lot
of difficulty and people not always being their best. Um.

(05:51):
But I think that's why it's so it is so
persistent historically, is because that's like a basic everybody needs
to feel like things could get Yeah. So, our second
episode this week was on Catherine the Great, her specifically
opera librettist work. Yeah, so, I had seen passing reference

(06:12):
to her having written opera before we got into brainstorming
for this, uh this episode, but I did not know
any of the detail about it, having had more of
the detail about it. There are several of them that
I would like to just read all the way through.
Uh if I can find an English translation of them somewhere, um,

(06:35):
because some of them sound really delightful. I wish someone
would stage them fantastic. I it hurts my heart knowing
that she got slammed by so many people for promoting
the arts, because yeah, people really thought it was an
evidence of her frivolity. Yeah, but we need art. Yeah,

(06:55):
I mean it's it's a combination. If she she clearly
genuinely really loved it it, but then also she she
really thought that being a patron of the arts and
developing an artistic culture could change the way the world
viewed Russia and changed the way Russia viewed itself. It's
interesting because it's so parallel to Louis the fourteen so ideology. Absolutely,

(07:19):
I had that thought as I was working on it,
and you know Louis being like, well, I'm going to
make France the place of culture, France's apex culture of
the world. Yeah, um, it was. It did have a
lot of similarity to that one thing that came up
that I I had in the outline, and I just
as I was revising it to try to make it
into something cohesive. UM, I just could not find a

(07:42):
great place to put it. We talked about the these
four empresses um in the In the eighteenth century in Russia,
one of the things that her son Paul as Emperor
did was outlawed depictions of any of the monarchs in
opera or other theater. And part of that was sort

(08:05):
of still to to protect his own legacy. It was
like if somebody wrote a really satirical opera that satirized
Catherine the Great and raised a bunch of questions about
the parentage of her children, like that was going to
call to question whether he was supposed to be on
the throne. Then there were just general worries about whether
the kinds of scandalous rumors that were spread about her,

(08:28):
whether that was going to like fall back on him.
So um it was it was illegal to specifically um
depict the previous monarchs, and that wasn't always followed. But
one thing that did happen in the eighteenth century was
that in a lot of comic opera in Russia this
um serena stock character evolved who was not specifically a

(08:53):
past Impress of Russia. It was this you know, fictional
character of the sarina Um who was normal only a
foreigner who normally had some kind of magical or supernatural powers.
So a lot of times it was like a Serena
slash sorceress Um and at best was an anti hero
or might just be the outright villain of the work.

(09:14):
And a lot of people have traced that stock character
back to the reaction to these four Impresses Um, most
of whom had either been born outside Russia or educated
outside Russia, so there was this whole idea that they
were a foreign influence. And I thought that was a
really interesting through line between the eighteenth century empresses of

(09:37):
Russia and the trends that developed in comic opera. Yeah,
it is such a pity to have Um to know
that her son erased so much of her legacy. Yeah.
He he really did, just to come in and be like,
I'm gonna undo all this stuff that my mother did.

(09:58):
Their relationship wasn't great. Um, like the Empress Elizabeth had
mostly raised him. He he did not really trust his mother.
There was some some indication that she may be planned
to put someone else on the throne instead of him.
It just it he. He seems to have done a

(10:20):
lot of intentional work to try to take her legacy
apart as much as possible. Ah the intrigues. Yeah yeah,
uh that seems like an okay stopping point for this Friday. Um,
I hope folks are going to have as much as
possible a RESTful and relaxing weekend starting uh May. You

(10:43):
can watch The Great on Hulu, which was the sponsor
for the second episode this week. I'm excited for that
show because legitimately, outside of any sponsorship, it looks very fun. Oh,
it looks like a lot of fun. Uh. We we
had already agreed to do it before seeing the trailer,
which in any context makes me a little nervous because

(11:04):
you know, TV shows and movies can go all kinds
of directions. And as soon as I saw the trailer,
I was like, this was like fun. Yeah, I'm on
board with this. It looks fun, and I just liked
the idea of something that you can just sit back
and laugh at, yes, while we are living through crazy
stressful times. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a

(11:30):
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