‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’ Is Secretly All About Ancient Greek Philosophy

Last year we clued you into the fact that the whole first season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is a twisted take on “The Allegory Of The Cave” from Plato’s Republic. If you missed it, here’s the general gist:

Plato recounts that his mentor Socrates tells a tale about a bunch of people who have lived their entire lives chained in a cave, facing a blank wall. Their warped understanding of their reality comes from their interpretation of shadows. Socrates makes the comment that a philosopher is like a prisoner who escapes the cave and who then must realize that true reality isn’t what he saw in the shadows on the wall, but what is illuminated by the sun.

Of course, there is a harsh transition and it takes a while for the philosopher to adjust. Once the philosopher embraces the real world, he would pity those still living in the lie of the cave. The philosopher’s task would be to return to the cave to save them, but by returning, he would be temporarily blind and the cave dwellers who find him crazy.

Compare this to Kimmy escaping the bunker and struggling to make sense of the world. Season one ends with Kimmy returning to the bunker with the other victims to find proof that they were imprisoned there.

Boom! It’s basically the Allegory of the Cave.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’s second season surprised fans by going deep into the darker side of Kimmy’s psyche. In each and every episode, her understanding of herself was questioned or challenged. She was forced to confront the trauma of her past. Words like “fear” and “pity” were tossed around. The season ended with Kimmy and her long-lost mom (Lisa Kudrow) screaming out their pain during a roller coaster’s fall.

So what was all this about? Aristotle’s theory of “Katharsis” or catharsis (as we spell it today).

Aristotle was the student and successor of Plato. He’s also the guy responsible for laying out our first guide on dramatic criticism: Poetics. According to Aristotle, for a story to be good, it has to elicit a cathartic response, generated by a co-mingling of fear and pity, in its audience. Catharsis is felt as an emotional cleansing. Later critics and philosophers expanded this theory to show how catharsis helps people understand how to deal with emotions like fear and pity in their everyday life.

Worth noting: When most teachers try to explain dramatic catharsis, they use the metaphor of an emotional roller coaster. Everything builds until it is released in an emotional fall. You know, sort of how the second season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt ends.

Yeah, we don’t think it was a coincidence that the concept gets a shout out in episode 11.

Kimmy Schmidt may be a perfectly Mid-Western name, but there are other monikers on the show that are totally Greek.

Titus the character was inspired by Tituss Burgess the actor, so that explains his Roman name, but his self-made surname is yet another nod to Greek culture. Andromedon is a masculine form of the feminine name Andromeda, which means “to be mindful of men.” Would it be reaching to say that this is a wink to Titus’s own personal interests.

Sure, we didn’t see much of Xanthippe this season, but she is based upon the beautiful and argumentative wife of Socrates. The great philosopher was once asked why he married such a querulous bride and said that if peace could be found with her, peace could be found with all women. Kimmy finally pushes Xanthippe to make peace with her situation by ruining everything this year.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is a comedic smorgasbord of jokes referencing every culture you can think of — and, yes, there are ones that riff on Ancient Greece.

Titus references the Greek myth of Icarus in this sly joke riffing on our own associations with the name: “Much like Icarus — a friend of mine who once put too much stuff in his closet — I put too much stuff in my closet.”

Then, when Deirdre sizes up Jacqueline at the end of Episode 2, she mades a very bold and very precise allusion to Athenian history: “And now she’s returned in full like Alcibiades to Athens! And I have become her Eupolis.”

Alcibiades was a famous general and orator (and pal of Socrates) who was mocked ruthlessly by comedic poet Eupolis. Then, when Eupolis was enlisted in the army and put under Alcibiades’ command. One tradition holds that Alcibiades ordered Eupolis drowned on the army’s way to Sicily.

I especially like this last joke because it acknowledges that Fey’s comedic style is very much in line with the works of the Ancient Greek comic writers like Eupolis and Aristophanes. They often attacked the wealthy and powerful with scathing wit mixed with absurdist humor. She is a part of this tradition.

Oh, and it’s a stretch, but there was a visual cue in “Kimmy Goes To A Hotel!” that evoked Ovid’s tale of “Pyramus and Thisbe.” The star-crossed lovers Dong and Kimmy speak to each other through a crack in the wall and plan their doomed escape.

When we meet Andrea — which is a Greek name meaning “man” — she is drunk, combative, sexualized, and pushing Kimmy to unleash her darkest emotions. In the light of day, however, Andrea turns into a calm, uptight, rational, and brilliant psychiatrist. These two sides of Andrea represent the classic Greek tension between the gods Apollo and Dionysus.

German philosophy tapped into this concept and referred to is as “Apollonian and Dionysian.” It speaks to the dichotomy of man. “The Apollonian” is the phrase used to describe all the rational and virtuous qualities ruled over by Apollo, the Greek god of logic, art, poetry, athleticism, and the sun. He is the maintainer of order. He represents discipline. “The Dionysian” represents the emotional and chaotic side of man. Dionysus was the god of wine and his festivals sometimes encompassed drunken frenzies and mass orgies that sought to free mankind from our self-imposed shackles so we could uncover hidden truths in ourselves. Nietzsche argued that the marriage of the Apollonian and the Dionysian creates great artistic tragedies.

The key to this theory — and how it related to Fey’s character — is that one is not greater than the other. They work in harmony in the best art and in concord in the hearts and minds of men. Kimmy wants to separate the two sides. She wants only the rational to win, but in the end, she has to acknowledge that Andrea is both a rational person and a drunken mess.

The larger point of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt season two? Kimmy can’t mentally suppress the darkness within. She has to confront her anger, pain, and madness. She has to allow her Apollonian and Dionysian natures to achieve harmony for her to be able to move forward.

[Watch Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on Netflix]

*See, Mom, I didn’t take all those Classical Studies courses in college for nothing. I did it for this blog post.