Taylor and Florence ask: Why didn't you believe Cassandra then, and why don't you believe her now?

Image by Beth Garrabrant. © Beth Garrabrant and Taylor Swift.

“I love this track so, so, so much. [...] In Greek mythology, Cassandra was brought on by Apollo to always warn people of impending doom, but she was cursed to never be listened to. So read into this what you will based on our current social and cultural climate.” – Taylor Swift, "Cassandra (First Draft Phone Memo)"

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"So they killed Cassandra first."

So says Taylor. The Cassandra figure is having a renaissance, and the reason she is not believed has shifted, as she becomes a projection of leftist fears, funneled into works of art that are still desperately trying to get through to people when other avenues have failed. The Trojan prophetess, cursed never to be believed, has a long history of metaphorical use, from ABBA’s pitying elegy “Cassandra” to experts being labeled Cassandras.

However, recent pop culture shifts the blame for the “curse.” In Taylor Swift’s “Cassandra” from her most recent album, The Tortured Poets Department, the repetition “they knew, they knew, they knew” proposes a different theory: People 100% knew that Cassandra was right. Recent film and television also showcase scenarios wherein people at least should believe “Cassandra,” but deliberately ignore her for their own plans, which ultimately have an expiration date.

In mythology, there allegedly is no social commentary; Cassandra isn’t believed because she is cursed. However, Emily Wilson, a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, argues that Agamemnon dismissed Cassandra because her being right would mean that he is not a glorious hero admired by his wife. “He’s only going to process the information that confirms that belief about himself,” says Wilson. This episode of NPR’s Hidden Brain also describes how the mythical Cassandra’s prophecies often come to her in incomplete or incoherent ways, another reason they fall on deaf ears.

Billie Piper as Cassandra in Kaos. © Netflix.

While magic may perceptibly be the root cause, undertones of the original myth have evolved into today’s depiction. The Trojans probably wanted to believe that the long war was over and that the Greeks had finally bowed to their prowess, honoring them with the Trojan Horse. In one version, Cassandra was cursed by Apollo because she rejected his advances, translating into a too-frequent real-life occurrence where a bitter man slanders a woman who calls him out on unacceptable behavior, and she is the one who is denounced and persecuted.

Three thousand years later, Taylor Swift pours her personal experiences as well as her perception of contemporary politics into the haunting ballad “Cassandra.” She says, “they killed Cassandra first, cause she feared the worst,” and not just for herself. Perhaps the song’s most important lyrics are:

“The family, the pure greed, the Christian chorus line

They all said nothing

Blood's thick, but nothing like a payroll

Bet they never spared a prayer for my soul

You can mark my words that I said it first

In a morning warning, no one heard.”

Here, she tackles themes of religion's relationship with political and ideological loyalty and a lack of human empathy for Cassandra. Swift’s “Cassandra” captures the ethereal and somewhat perplexing nature of Cassandra’s prophecies, but still lands on the conclusion that she wasn’t lost in translation, as Hidden Brain suggests; people knew what she was saying, but disregarded her for profit.

This is exactly what happens in Glass Onion, a whodunit movie set in Greece, which features characters pointedly named Helen and Cassandra. Andi was phased out of her own company when she tried to prevent her co-founder’s (a not-so-subtle Elon Musk figure) plans to invest in a dangerous fuel. Her “friends” backed her rival in exchange for his corrupt support of their own careers.

Janelle Monáe as Helen Brand in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. © Netflix.

When Andi is murdered, her twin sister Helen recruits a fan-favorite detective to discover her killer. Meanwhile, Lionel and Claire, a scientist and politician, respectively, still plan to endorse the “Klear” fuel. But they both know that it is highly explosive, that Andi was right. Which is baffling, because if Klear goes out into the world, it will get people killed, and their own credibility is then in question.

And we know from the Broadway musical Wicked, the basis for the smash hit 2024 movie, that no one ever believes Elphaba about the Wizard’s deceit. The human population of Oz is satirized in their hysterical fear of the Wicked Witch of the West, but at least some of them went to school with Elphaba and never saw her harm anyone, and should really know better. Yet this story is still a compelling depiction of a smear campaign against a person and a subgroup of the populace being very effective.

We also have Kaos, Netflix’s contemporary adaptation of multiple Greek myths. Its Cassandra, part of the displaced and impoverished Trojan population in Crete, apparently can’t convince people to take action because of her slightly demented persona. There’s some inconsistency with this depiction, as she seems to be capable of articulating but doesn’t at some points for the plot’s sake—her fellow Trojans still should have figured out by now to run when she says so.

Why people don’t heed Cassandra, when it means their own destruction, is the subject of much socio-political analysis. But Hidden Brain’s subsequent breakdown of Andrew Natsios’ advisement of the Bush administration proves the opposite point. The explanation of what it takes for warnings to be effective—established credibility with a political party, irrefutable proof, their request ultimately not being too different from what the authorities would do anyway, and, implicitly, being a man—somewhat belittles Cassandra.

Cassandra's not having the credentials or privilege to get people to trust her doesn’t make her prediction any less true. Pop culture showcases how, even when she does have the credentials, it doesn’t matter. Just look at the 2016 and 2024 elections: Despite the problems I acknowledge with the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris had objectively better resumes, were professional and articulate, and held up better against fact-checks.

Journalist Oliver Hall “spent hours [on the phone] trying to persuade US voters to choose Harris not Trump,” and reported via The Guardian that they repeatedly told him that they simply didn’t believe “America is ready for a female president.”

In an episode of The Colin McEnroe Show, scholars Joel Christensen and Amanda Rees are consulted on what the Cassandra myth reveals about “the way we understand systems of expertise” (Rees). “We don’t listen to our experts now except when it's convenient,” says Christensen. But also explored is the idea that sometimes, Cassandra’s thought process really is one that very few people can understand. Charity Dean is one of the scientists who saw the COVID-19 pandemic coming; said during this podcast is that lockdown was a time of “weird tension,” where “everybody wanted good information,” but there was the “contrasting rejection of good information if it seemed too dire.”

However, regarding the very complicated math and science behind her predictions, Dean says, “I don’t fault any decision maker for having a difficult time wrapping their brain around exponential growth. I have a difficult time wrapping my brain around it, hence the whiteboard, and the utility of actually doing the math […] I wouldn’t say it's a governor’s or a decision maker’s job to be an expert in this, it’s mine, which means it’s my job to explain it in a way that people can understand […].” But people also have to trust the experts when they don’t have the background to totally grasp it. Dean also discusses how she was potentially in danger of losing her job for speaking out at all.

While it is not entirely the case in the aforementioned pieces of media, there are some situations where fictional Cassandras are on an entirely different plane than the laypeople, making communicating their warnings nearly impossible. She is “in touch with a different reality” (Rees). Back in the realm of fantasy, Salon’s Nicholas Liu argues that certain female characters in HBO’s House of the Dragon are on a mystical plane beyond the patriarchy, allowing them a subversive power.

House of the Dragon tells a topical story when it is a tacitly acknowledged fact that both Rhaenyra and Rhaenys would have been better rulers than the men the country chooses instead. Notably, Westeros’ monarchs are chosen by the aristocratic houses, not the people. Against this backdrop, season 2 sees some very Cassandra-esque characters in Helaena Targaryen and Alys Rivers. However, these Westerosi women are fascinatingly not so concerned with trying to convince the men in their lives.

Phia Saban as Helaena Targaryen in House of the Dragon. © HBO.

Helaena used to try to warn her family, saying nonsensical things that she didn’t even seem to totally understand, but desperately trying to convey her feeling of wrongness. By the season 2 finale, she calmly and rather clearly informs her brother of his impending death. Alys and Helaena purport that destiny is already set in stone, and convincing people is inconsequential. But as they aren’t trying to stop what’s coming, it makes for a less potent message of why we need to listen to Cassandra.

Like with most Cassandra scenarios, there is no long-term plan by not listening to her because if you know she is right and forge ahead anyway…Klear will kill people. The Greeks will slaughter all of Troy. House Targaryen will fall. Essentially, everyone dies in a fiery inferno. So why do people do it? Apparently, for the interim goals of wealth and power.

Let us return to Taylor and the idea of people prioritizing short-term goals over long-term survival. Swift says “blood runs […] like a payroll,” implying that those who dismiss Cassandra are too distracted by the profit they stand to gain, and will ignore the bloodshed of others for it, and the possibility of their own someday. But as Swift also tells us, Cassandra is the first, so everyone can keep believing the lies.

In a different, deeply harrowing tune, Florence Welch sings more of the silencing of Cassandra. A year before TTPD, the British group released their own “Cassandra” track on the album Dance Fever. Like Swift’s song, this one describes a woman being forced into a wretched domestic role so she can’t do any more “damage,” with some added gory notes of how this is accomplished:

“I used to see the future, and now I see nothing

They cut out my eyes and sent me home packing

To pace around the kitchen for scraps of inspiration

Crying like Cassandra, I

Used to tell the future, but they cut out my tongue

And left me doing laundry to think in what I've done

It wasn't me, it was the song.”

Dance Fever cover art. © Florence + The Machine.

Dance Fever was driven by the experience of lockdown, making for a prophetic connection to Dean and further illustrating some of the marginalization tendencies of the pandemic. But intentionally or not, this “Cassandra” song touches upon the same core theme of feigned ignorance of something much bigger. Consider “It wasn’t me, it was the song.” What Cassandra says is pure truth, a desperate warning from a woman wanting to save her fellow humans, sent to her by divinity itself. It’s not her fault that the world can’t comprehend such a gift being bestowed upon a haggard woman.

Later in the song is my favorite line: “All the gods have been domesticated […].” The song also specifically alludes to Christianity (see “they put crosses on the door to try and keep me out”), but the former lyrics could refer to any god; humanity has still reduced and ignored the divine, so it cannot disrupt their agendas. When we turn anything of real spiritual significance into tools of personal gain, we can trick ourselves into thinking the consequences will never come, when logic says otherwise.

So what happens when Cassandra is proven right? Most often, nothing at all, because it’s too late. Swift says, “when the truth comes out it's quiet,” comparing it to “when it’s ‘burn the bitch,’ they’re shrieking.” The reaction against Cassandra is much bigger, and when the truth is revealed, she is overshadowed by the disaster, or people willingly forget that she was right all along, so that they can ignore her again the next time.

The acknowledgement of truth isn’t anywhere near as big, so the cycle continues. And artists keep trying to reveal that with anti-fascist fiction, with a shocking lack of media literacy sometimes getting in the way. Thus, the fictional prophets are more obviously right than ever, because their creators are “crying like Cassandra,” hoping their craft will allow them to be heard by someone.

“I regret to say, do you believe me now?”